Health - Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Kennedy continues to make waves across health care, but he's pulled back on a number of core MAHA issues.

A new Medicare prior authorization test is delaying care at Washington state hospitals – and should be scrapped, senator says.

Naming a former Imperial Brands executive for a CDC job is the latest example, advocates say, of tobacco industry influence in Trump administration.

At AACR, there was talk of Chinese biotech's place in cancer research, oncology’s comms issue, and more.

A newly discovered virus hiding inside a common gut bacterium could help explain one of medicine’s long-standing mysteries: why a microbe found in both healthy people and cancer patients is linked to colorectal cancer. The research suggests that the interaction between bacteria and the viruses they carry may be key to understanding disease risk. It may even lead to future screening tests that detect cancer risk earlier.

Watch RFK Jr. testify before the Senate's health care panel.

A routine blood marker tied to inflammation may reveal Alzheimer’s risk years in advance. Scientists found that higher neutrophil levels—part of the body’s first immune response—were linked to a greater chance of developing dementia. The discovery suggests this common lab value could help flag at-risk individuals before symptoms appear. It also raises the possibility that immune cells themselves may be fueling the disease.

Suicide rates among young people dropped 11% after the U.S. launched the 988 national suicide and crisis hotline, a new study shows

After gene therapy for a rare form of deafness, 90% of participants in a clinical trial in China had significant improvement in hearing.

Scientists have discovered that combining two existing drugs can dramatically reduce liver fat linked to a common and often silent disease. The treatment not only improved liver health in animal models but also showed potential to lower heart-related risks. Interestingly, using lower doses of both drugs together worked just as well as higher doses alone. While promising, the findings still need to be tested in humans.