Health Report

Researchers have tricked participants with placebo pain relief in an effort to map the brainstem. 

Also, how immunotherapy might be used to treat mental health conditions in some young people. 

And delays in diagnosing frontotemporal dementia means some people are missing out on important care. 

References

• Answering common questions about GLP-1s for weight loss
• GLP-1s and eating disorders — what are the risks?
• A Case Series of Young People Receiving Adjunctive Immunotherapy for Neuroimmune-Mediated Major Mood or Psychotic Syndromes
• Fourteen years later: Reviewing the diagnostic criteria for behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia
• Somatotopic organization of brainstem analgesic circuitry
• A radical new way to treat low back pain - ABC listen

You can listen to more episodes of the Health Report podcast with presenters Dr Norman Swan and Dr Preeya Alexander on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. Covering topics like Trump’s policy changes to the growing trend of young people being diagnosed with cancer, we bring you the latest in health and medical news. 

Lots of people develop a daily skincare routine for anti-ageing purposes, but what if there are benefits from starting even earlier — at just nine weeks old?

Also, a discussion in the United States about SSRI antidepressants in pregnancy has caused lots of anxiety. We talk through the risks versus the benefits. 

And a common drug used to treat everything from nerves to heart conditions could show promise in stopping the spread of triple negative breast cancer. 

References

• Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) Meeting Outcomes - July 2025
• Allostatic Load and Racial and Rural Disparities in Breast Cancer Survival | Oncology | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network
• Structured vs Self-Guided Multidomain Lifestyle Interventions for Global Cognitive Function
• Emollients to Prevent Pediatric Eczema: A Randomized Clinical Trial
• Paternal Depression as a Risk Factor for Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Offspring: Implications for Maternal Depression and Its Treatment During Pregnancy
• Association Between Serotonergic Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy and Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children
• Hox-C12 coordinates β2-adrenoceptor coupling to a cAMP/calcium feedforward loop to drive invasion in triple-negative breast cancer
• Australian Physiotherapy Association

You can listen to more episodes of the Health Report podcast with presenters Dr Norman Swan and Dr Preeya Alexander on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Covering topics like Trump’s policy changes to the growing trend of young people being diagnosed with cancer, we bring you the latest in health and medical news.

Cognitive Functional Therapy can help relieve low back pain, and shows some positive long-term results.

Ovarian cancer doesn't start in the ovaries, but in the fallopian tubes, and opportunistic surgery could prevent it.

And is your gut microbiome responsible for your insomnia or is your insomnia changing your microbiome?

Dietary guidelines tell us what we should eat for good health, but at the moment it is possible to follow the guidelines and still eat predominantly ultraprocessed foods. 

A new study has looked at the impact this has on your health, and compared it to a minimally processed diet chock full of whole foods. 

Also, there are calls to change the criteria for diagnosing perimenopause. And the benefits of psilocybin for depression might have been overstated. 

If you reach for a no-sugar drink, thinking you're making a wise choice, you might need to think again. 

A new study suggests artificially sweetened drinks carry a similar type 2 diabetes risk to sugar sweetened beverages. 

Also, loneliness is a growing public health issue, especially among younger people. What can we do to address it?

And gynaecological cancer survivors are flipping the script, teaching health professionals. 

There are ways to rejuvenate old memories, but a new study has compared the process to the myth of Sisyphus, who was cursed to repeatedly roll a stone up a hill. 

Also on the show, many doctors are already using artificial intelligence to help take notes. But are patients always aware these AI scribes are in the room?

The emergence of vaping has slowed our progress when it comes to smoking cessation. 

And looking at a sick person might activate your immune system, getting it ready to fight off infection.

Just like human children, young bats have been found to harbour and spread lots of viruses. 

Their susceptibility to contracting multiple viruses at once makes them the perfect breeding ground for new disease variants. 

Also, we take a look at a study that seemed to show private hospital were better than public hospitals for childbirth. Is it that simple?

And a survey of people with chronic conditions shows where Australia is ahead, and where we need to improve. 

Five risk factors explain 50 per cent of cardiovascular risk at age 50, according to a new study. 

Addressing those risk factors can add years to your life, even if you address them in middle age. 

Also, the UK demonstrates a cutting edge IVF technique is effective at avoiding mitchondrial disease. 

ADHD treatment has real world positives, but the effects are lessening as more people get diagnosed. 

And an update on how RSV vaccination in pregnant women is going, five months into the program.  

The human exposome is the environmental equivalent of the human genome, and there's a project in the works to map it. 

It's a huge project that needs to take into account our lifestyles, cultures, economics and politics. Essentially, everything but our genome. 

Also, a concerning disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians when it comes to kidney transplants. 

And a small risk comes to light in relation to GLP-1s used for diabetes and weight loss. 

References

• Guidance on medicinal cannabis prescribing targets unsafe practice - AHPRA
• GLP-1 Drugs Linked to Higher Risk of Age-Related Macular Degeneration
• Am I on the list? Clinician‐reported factors for kidney transplantation non‐waitlisting among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with kidney failure: a cross‐sectional study
• The Human Exposome Project
• Generation Cancer - 4Corners
• Mapping the chemical complexity of plastics - Nature

Immunotherapy uses the body's immune system to fight cancer. In blood cancer, a revolutionary t-cell therapy has cured patients and could show promise in solid tumours. 

In bladder cancer, the tuberculosis vaccine is infused to treat non-invasive cancer. However a shortage of BCG means researchers are having to test out other methods. 

Also, is Australia on the front foot when it comes to type 2 diabetes treatment? And what does copper in the brain have to do with Parkinson's disease?