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4 Cool New Features Your Fitbit Air Is Getting In October 2026

With the latest update, your Google Fitbit Air can check your blood pressure trends, measure insulin resistance trends, and automatically detect more workouts.

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Oct 19 • 9:47 AM EDT • Technology • bgr.com
Scientists Uncover a Hidden Factor That Could Change How We Manage Diabetes

Timing may matter in insulin-treated type 2 diabetes; patients with the steadiest daily rhythms were 2.3 times as likely to meet blood sugar goals, while afternoon activity was linked to smaller swings. People with type 2 diabetes who use insulin need to keep blood glucose from climbing too high or falling too low. In a

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Oct 18 • 7:27 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com
Continuous glucose monitors help type 2 diabetes patients spend 5 more hours a day in healthy blood sugar range

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) could transform diabetes management for millions of Americans with type 2 diabetes who don't take insulin, according to findings published in the New England Journal ...

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Oct 17 • 3:00 PM EDT • Health • medicalxpress.com
People Ate 2 Meals With The Same Calories And Macros. Scientists Watched As 1 Spiked Their Insulin Much More

Ultra-processed food impacts brain activity associated with rewards, as well as our metabolisms.

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Oct 12 • 11:12 AM EDT • Science • iflscience.com
Scientists Gave People 2 Nearly Identical Meals. One Triggered Much More Insulin.

"We were shocked."

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Oct 11 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
GLP-1s: the science behind today’s weight-loss drugs

The medicines reshaping obesity treatment grew out of research into how the body handles a meal. Long before weekly weight-loss injections became familiar, scientists were studying signals that travel from the intestine to the pancreas, helping it release insulin when nutrients arrive.

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Oct 7 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • thepharmaletter.com
The Pixel Watch 5's Blood Pressure And Insulin Resistance Trends Are Rolling Out This Week

The first trend reports for the health data will be available in early October.

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Sep 24 • 1:00 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Google rolling out blood pressure & insulin resistance, more on Pixel Watch 3, 4, 5

As previewed during last month’s Pixel Watch 5 launch, Google is now starting to roll out blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends...

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Sep 24 • 1:00 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Astronomical Aspirin And Interstellar Insulin: Are Space-Made Medicines The Future?

The long-anticipated manufacturing of medicines in microgravity has now been done twice at prototype scale, but is the cost and effort worth it?

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Sep 12 • 6:10 AM EDT • Science • iflscience.com
Peroxisome structure can help protect insulin and maintain beta cell health

Researchers at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center have identified a previously underappreciated role for tiny structures inside cells called peroxisomes in protecting insulin and maintaining ...

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Aug 29 • 12:00 PM EDT • Health • medicalxpress.com
Price Transparency, Insulin Top Lawmakers’ Health To-Do Lists

Lawmakers are facing crunch time on healthcare priorities, with very few in-session days left in the year — and for some, their legislative careers.

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Aug 24 • 5:07 AM EDT • Health • news.bgov.com
One Type of Diabetes Responds Better to a Weekly GLP-1 Drug Than to Insulin

GLP-1 wins again.

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Aug 23 • 4:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
Coffee drinkers have less fat, more muscle, and surprising hormone differences

Coffee drinkers may be getting more than an energy boost. A Finnish study found that people who drank more coffee tended to have less total and abdominal fat, more muscle, and healthier metabolic markers despite having similar BMIs. Higher coffee intake was also linked to lower levels of certain amino acids associated with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes risk.

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Aug 19 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Newsom Promotes Affordable Insulin, But California's Generic Label Off To A Slow Start

By Angela Hart and KFF Health News HealthDay ReportersTUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2026 (HealthDay News) — At a Walgreens in San Francisco’s bustling Japantown neighborhood, pharmacist Margaret On stocks two boxes of long-acting insulin pens from California’s new prescription drug label, CalRx, emblazoned ...

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Aug 18 • 5:30 AM EDT • Health • usnews.com
Spanberger touts progress keeping insulin, prescriptions affordable during tour of Northern Va. health clinic

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger is touting the progress the state has made in capping insulin costs and keeping prescription drugs affordable.

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Aug 13 • 7:21 PM EDT • Health • wtop.com
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Google unveils Health Guardian features for Pixel Watch, Fitbit

During its Made by Google event on Wednesday, the tech giant announced new features, including insulin resistance, blood pressure and sleep breathing quality trends.

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Aug 12 • 4:59 PM EDT • Health • mobihealthnews.com
Google's Pixel Watch 5 Can Keep Track Of Your Blood Pressure And Insulin Resistance

The biggest additions on the Pixel Watch 5 are new health features.

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Aug 12 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Google unveils the Pixel Watch 5 with a smarter Gemini and advanced health monitoring

The new smartwatch, which starts at $399, can track blood pressure patterns and insulin resistance, as well as deliver personalized help and better sleep tracking.

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Aug 12 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com
For decades, we were told to choose low-fat dairy. New research says otherwise

Full-fat dairy may be healthier than conventional advice has suggested. In a 12-week study, adults who ate three servings a day showed no meaningful increases in weight, body fat, cholesterol, or insulin resistance. They also experienced improved blood pressure and consumed more calcium, protein, and vitamin D. The findings suggest dairy’s complex structure may matter more than its saturated fat content alone.

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Aug 9 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Misfolded insulin may be quietly driving diabetes

Researchers found that insulin-producing cells depend on a team of helper proteins to keep insulin production on track. When one key partner was missing, damaged proteins built up and the cells made less insulin. Strengthening this system could offer a new way to protect the pancreas as diabetes progresses.

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Jul 27 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Why losing weight may not be enough to prevent type 2 diabetes

A healthy lifestyle can prevent type 2 diabetes for many people, but new research suggests that weight loss alone may not be enough for one particularly vulnerable group. Even after losing about 8% of their body weight and keeping it off for years, people in a high-risk category known as cluster 5 continued to experience rising blood sugar, weakening insulin production, and a strong risk of developing diabetes.

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Jul 27 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Health Committee advances Collins’ insulin price cap over GOP objections - Live Updates

The bill would limit the private insurance price for the diabetes drug to $35. Its approval by the GOP-led panel was highly unusual.

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Jul 22 • 3:08 PM EDT • Health • politico.com
CVS is now filling pet prescriptions at its 9,000 pharmacies nationwide

The pharmacy chain will dispense select medications for dogs and cats, including antibiotics, insulin, and flea and tick treatments

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Jul 22 • 7:44 AM EDT • Health • qz.com
Does the science of peptides live up to the hype?

Synthetic peptides are getting some serious hype, from fitness influencers on your FYP to people seeking new options for chronic conditions. And while the human body already makes peptides, like insulin and the hormone oxytocin, most of the viral synthetic peptides are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Scientists say that raises some big concerns about safety and efficacy. So ahead of this week’s FDA meeting to discuss seven commonly used peptides, we get into the science with health reporter Sarah Boden.Interested in more science behind health trends? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.

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Jul 22 • 3:00 AM EDT • Science • npr.org
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FTC Reaches Settlement With CVS Health Over Insulin Prices

Shares of CVS Health closed slightly higher Tuesday, about a quarter of a percentage point.

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Jul 14 • 4:47 PM EDT • Health • barrons.com
Challenges and opportunities for diabetes treatment and policy right now

Johns Hopkins experts share insights from their recent research on diabetes management, disease effects, and insulin affordability.

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Jul 10 • 9:57 AM EDT • Health • washingtondc.jhu.edu
Diabetes patients in Gaza face survival battle amid war shortages

Insulin and equipment shortages in Gaza pose fatal risks, leading to critical health complications.

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Jun 24 • 2:04 AM EDT • Health • aljazeera.com
One common fat may fuel type 2 diabetes while another helps fight it

Not all fats affect your body the same way. Researchers found that palmitic acid, a saturated fat common in many foods, may contribute to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes by triggering inflammation, toxic fat buildup, and cellular stress. In contrast, oleic acid—the heart-healthy fat abundant in olive oil—appears to help protect insulin function and may even counter some of the harmful effects of palmitic acid.

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Jun 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
FDA approves new inhalable insulin treatment for kids with Type 1 diabetes
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Jun 8 • 11:47 PM EDT • Health • cbsnews.com
High-Signal Publisher
Metro Health, H-E-B offering affordable insulin to Bexar County residents
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Jun 2 • 7:07 AM EDT • Health • ksat.com
Planetary Health Diet May Lower Obesity Risk at Menopause

The planetary health and low-insulinemic diets — rich in plants and whole grains and low in red and processed meats and fried foods — can aid weight management during menopause, a recent study shows.

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Jun 1 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • medscape.com
Role of Physical Activity in Obesity Treatment and Cardiometabolic Health

Obesity affects 42% of adults in the United States and is strongly associated with major cardiovascular disease risk factors, including high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance, making effective obesity treatment a critical public health priority.

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May 31 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • professional.heart.org
Move more for your health, not just for the scale

Statement Highlights: Regular physical activity improves blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol levels and cardiorespiratory fitness in adults with overweight or obesity, independent of weight loss, according to a new scientific statement...

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May 31 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • newsroom.heart.org
Omega-3 fish oil shows promise against type 2 diabetes

A new study suggests fish oil may help reduce insulin resistance even in people who aren't obese. In diabetic rats, omega-3 supplementation improved blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and inflammation by shifting immune cells into a more anti-inflammatory mode.

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May 30 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Insulet recalls 7M insulin delivery pods due to safety risk

A total of 24 adverse safety incidents—including cases of diabetic ketoacidosis—have been linked to this issue.

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May 27 • 2:39 PM EDT • Business • cardiovascularbusiness.com
Surprising study finds beef doesn’t worsen blood sugar or diabetes risk

A new clinical trial suggests that eating beef every day may not be as risky for people with prediabetes as many assume. Researchers found that adults who ate 6–7 ounces of beef daily for a month showed no worsening in blood sugar control, insulin function, inflammation, or other key markers linked to type 2 diabetes when compared to people eating poultry instead.

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May 22 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
San Antonio Metro Health, H-E-B relaunch insulin financial assistance program

San Antonio Metropolitan Health District and H-E-B will cover $100 per prescription, including refills, under its relaunched Diabetes Insulin Assistance Program to those who need financial assistance.

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May 15 • 7:30 PM EDT • Health • ksat.com
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San Antonio Metro Health, H-E-B relaunch insulin assistance program for residents

SAN ANTONIO - San Antonio-area residents who are struggling to afford insulin may be able to get help starting today.San Antonio Metro Health and H-E-B are re-l

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May 15 • 1:42 PM EDT • Health • news4sanantonio.com
City Launches Diabetes Insulin Assistance Program with H-E-B

The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District and H-E-B are relaunching the Diabetes Insulin Assistance Program beginning May 15, 2026, to help residents manage the cost of life-saving diabetes medication.

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May 15 • 10:41 AM EDT • Health • sa.gov
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Scientists say this common sweetener may be quietly rewiring your metabolism

Researchers say fructose is not just “empty calories” — it may actively push the body toward fat storage and metabolic disease. A new review found that fructose affects the body differently from glucose, disrupting normal energy regulation and promoting processes linked to obesity, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular problems.

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May 11 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines advocates for affordable health care

While a vial of insulin takes as little as $2 to manufacture, it can cost consumers $250 in the United States. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, an international advocacy organization that has chapters at universities including UCLA, raised awareness about medication unaffordability during its annual North American conference at the Neuroscience Research Building from April 3 to 5.

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Apr 12 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • dailybruin.com
CVS Health Corporation (CVS): Legal Clarity and Core Strengths Support the Bull Case

CVS Health Corporation (NYSE:CVS) is one of the undervalued large cap stocks to buy. On March 25, UBS analyst Kevin Caliendo reiterated a Buy rating and $97 price target on CVS Health Corporation (NYSE:CVS). Caliendo said that CVS’s proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over insulin pricing could lift a major cloud that […]

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Apr 12 • 2:16 PM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com
If you cap insulin at $35 a month, people with type 2 diabetes stick to treatment, study finds

$35 insulin, more evidence abortion meds are safe OTC, and other health news from Morning Rounds

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Apr 7 • 8:43 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
Scientists cured type 1 diabetes in mice by creating a blended immune system

By creating a hybrid immune system between the recipient and the donor, researchers were able to transplant insulin-producing cells that were not rejected.

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Apr 2 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Tirzepatide Boosts Metabolic Health in Partial Lipodystrophy

Tirzepatide significantly improves metabolic health and reduces insulin dependence in patients with partial lipodystrophy.

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Mar 30 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • medscape.com
CVS Health and FTC Staff Agree to Proposed Insulin Settlement

The agreement would cover the company’s Caremark pharmacy benefit manager unit, which has denied wrongdoing.

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Mar 24 • 3:32 PM EDT • Health • barrons.com
Insulin pills may soon replace daily injections

For over a century, scientists have chased the dream of insulin pills, but the digestive system kept destroying the drug before it could work—forcing millions of patients to rely on daily injections. Now, researchers at Kumamoto University have developed a clever workaround using a tiny peptide that helps insulin slip through the intestinal wall.

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Mar 23 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Your Thymus and Your Healthspan

Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.

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Mar 22 • 2:18 PM EDT • Health • erictopol.substack.com
Needle-free insulin? Scientists invent gel that delivers insulin through the skin in animal studies

A new polymer gel can deliver insulin through intact skin in animal tests. It could someday offer a path toward needle-free diabetes treatment, some say.

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Feb 11 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • livescience.com
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Scientists discover how to turn gut bacteria into anti-aging factories

Researchers found that small doses of an antibiotic can coax gut bacteria into producing a life-extending compound. In worms, this led to longer lifespans, while mice showed healthier cholesterol and insulin changes. Because the drug stays in the gut, it avoids toxic side effects. The study points to a new way of promoting health by targeting microbes rather than the body itself.

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Jan 31 • 7:00 PM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com
“Crushing” healthcare choice: College for one child or insulin for another

A mother in rural Georgia is among millions facing a health insurance crisis as Obamacare subsidies expire, costs skyrocket and Republicans oppose extensions.

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Jan 15 • 3:30 AM EST • Health • ms.now
Scientists uncover a hidden type of diabetes in newborns

Researchers have discovered a rare new type of diabetes that affects babies early in life. The condition is caused by changes in a single gene that prevent insulin-producing cells from working properly. When these cells fail, blood sugar rises and diabetes develops, often alongside neurological problems. The findings help explain a long-standing medical mystery and deepen understanding of diabetes overall.

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Jan 14 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com
Scientists tested intermittent fasting without eating less and found no metabolic benefit

Time-restricted eating has been widely promoted as a simple way to boost metabolic health, but new research paints a more complicated picture. When calorie intake stayed the same, an eight-hour eating window did not improve insulin sensitivity or cardiovascular markers. What did change was the body’s internal clock, which shifted based on meal timing and altered sleep patterns. The results suggest calorie reduction, not the eating window itself, may be the real driver of health benefits.

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Jan 2 • 7:00 PM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com