Health reviews
Plain-language, citation-grounded reviews of 69 diseases — from the general public to the science. Pick a topic and dig as deep as you like.
Infectious disease 13
A neglected parasitic infection that does almost nothing for decades and then destroys the heart.
A public-to-science account of dengue: the four serotypes and antibody-dependent enhancement, NS1 and serostatus testing, WHO warning signs and the plasma-leak window, the Dengvaxia cautionary tale…
The pandemic-preparedness case study, explained without alarm: why H5N1 is a bird virus that infects people only sporadically, what the species barrier is actually made of (receptor binding, airway…
One of the largest reversals in the history of medicine, and the mechanism behind it.
The tick-borne infection that is reliably cured early and hardest to test for at exactly that moment: why erythema migrans in an endemic area needs no blood test (only about a third of such patients…
A public-to-science account of Plasmodium: the two-host life cycle, microscopy and HRP2 rapid tests and how parasites evade them, ACTs and the artemisinin resistance now reaching Africa, the first…
A public-to-science account of the most contagious human infection: immune amnesia that deletes years of accumulated immune memory, IgM and genotyping in an elimination setting, vitamin A as the one…
A leading infectious killer — 2.38 million lower-respiratory-infection deaths in 2016, with S.
The archetypal neglected tropical disease, and an unusually elegant one.
A public-to-science account of TB: the latent-versus-active distinction and the 1.7-billion-person reservoir, Xpert and the limits of IGRA, the six-month regimen and why it must be that long, BPaLM…
One of the commonest bacterial infections — 10.8% of US women report one a year, a third have had one by age 24 — and easy to treat, which is why the review is about the two things that are not…
A public-to-science account of coccidioidomycosis: the dimorphic life cycle that makes it airborne, complement-fixation titres as a severity marker, why most cases need no antifungal while…
Two unrelated viruses causing 57% of the world's cirrhosis and 78% of its liver cancer, with opposite shapes: hepatitis B is prevented by the first vaccine shown to stop a human cancer but…
Cancer 6
A public-to-science account of breast cancer: the molecular subtypes that decide everything, mammographic screening quantified on both sides (20% mortality reduction against 11-19% overdiagnosis), a…
A public-to-science walkthrough of screening and the adenoma-carcinoma sequence, TNM staging and molecular markers, stage-directed therapy, and a tumour-growth model of the detection window.
The leading cause of cancer death, and the one with two interventions that actually work.
The dangerous skin cancer, because it can spread while still small — and the disease that proved checkpoint blockade before it was exported to lung, kidney and bladder.
One of the deadliest common cancers — overall five-year survival around 9% — but that average hides the structure: stage IA disease reached 83.7% five-year survival, and metastasis happens late in…
The most common non-skin cancer in men, and the clearest case in oncology of detection and benefit coming apart.
Heart & vascular 4
The commonest sustained arrhythmia and, in the very old, the cause of more than a third of strokes — 36.2% at ages 80–89 in Framingham, and the one cardiac risk factor whose stroke effect does not…
The #1 killer worldwide, organised around two clocks: the decades-long one that decides whether you get atherosclerosis, and the minutes-long one that decides how much heart muscle you keep once a…
A public-to-science account of heart failure as a syndrome: the ejection-fraction categories and natriuretic peptides, a Frank-Starling model whose failing curve is flat, the four pillars of HFrEF…
A front-door public explanation of BP phenotypes, measurements, and medications, with a Windkessel-style pressure-control model.
Brain & nerves 8
The archetypal motor-neuron disease: upper and lower motor neurons lost, spread across body regions, respiratory failure in two to five years — and cognition less spared than the standard…
A public-to-science walkthrough of diagnosis, measurement layers, and therapy progress, with biomarker-first workflows and frontier-stage treatment architecture.
A common neurological disease that is not one disease, and whose treatment response has a decisive shape: nearly two-thirds become seizure-free, but 50.5% on the first drug, 11.6% on the second and…
A public-to-science account of the CAG repeat: how a count becomes a diagnosis and where its grey zones are, why repeat length explains only half of onset age, somatic instability as the other half…
A disorder of sensory processing rather than a bad headache, and the first condition in neurology to get drugs designed for it after CGRP infusion was shown to cause migraine rather than merely…
An immune-mediated disease whose cause now appears largely identified — a cohort of over 10 million found MS risk rose 32-fold after Epstein-Barr infection and after no other virus.
Completes the neurodegeneration set.
A public-to-science account of ischemic stroke: core versus salvageable penumbra, FAST and NIHSS and the three imaging questions, thrombolysis and thrombectomy and how their benefit decays with…
Mental health 3
Among the commonest mental-health conditions — 7.3% current global prevalence, median onset age 11, and 41% of primary-care patients with an anxiety disorder receiving no treatment at all.
The mood disorder most often mistaken for unipolar depression — in a community screen, more people with a positive bipolar screen had been told they had unipolar depression (31.2%) than bipolar…
A public-to-science account of major depressive disorder written for honesty about effect sizes: no biomarker and what rating scales do and do not capture, the PHQ-9's 5-point minimal clinically…
Hormones & metabolism 6
A plain-language guide through measurements, medicines, and progress with a public-to-science path to the HbA1c model.
The most common inflammatory arthritis, and almost the only curable one: urate crystallises above a solubility threshold, and holding serum urate below it dissolves the deposits and stops the attacks.
A measurement-first, mechanism-aware review of phenotype, treatment classes, and durable control with a simple energy-balance model.
The most common endocrine disorder in women of reproductive age, and badly named: it is not about cysts but about irregular ovulation, androgen excess, and the insulin resistance underneath both —…
Hypo- and hyperthyroidism, mostly autoimmune, and the control-systems reason a single TSH measurement screens the whole pituitary-thyroid axis: the feedback is log-linear, so a 10 pmol/L move in…
Not a variant of type 2 — the immune system destroys the beta cells, so there is no insulin to sensitise anyone to, and replacement is what keeps the person alive.
Lungs & breathing 3
A public-to-science account of asthma: reversibility as the diagnostic signature and how it differs from COPD's fixed obstruction, FeNO and eosinophils as phenotyping biomarkers, an…
A public-to-science account of airflow obstruction: the post-bronchodilator FEV1/FVC threshold and how it contrasts with the restrictive dust diseases, the Fletcher-Peto decline model and what…
Opens the sleep domain: roughly a billion adults affected and most undiagnosed, the apnea-hypopnea index and why a count is a crude severity measure, the sympathetic surge behind the cardiovascular…
Kidney & urinary 4
Not prostate cancer, and not a precursor of it — hyperplasia grows in the transition zone where it obstructs, malignancy in the peripheral zone where it does not.
A public-to-science walkthrough of eGFR and albuminuria staging, three eras of kidney-protective drugs, and a linear eGFR-slope model of time to kidney failure.
A public-to-science account of chronic kidney disease of non-traditional cause and Mesoamerican nephropathy: diagnosis by exclusion, the cross-shift and cross-harvest eGFR declines that broke the…
Common, intensely painful and highly recurrent — 53% within eight years of a first stone — but at bottom a physical-chemistry problem.
Digestive & liver 3
A public-to-science account of MASLD and MASH, including why the field renamed them from NAFLD/NASH: the steatosis-to-fibrosis ladder, FIB-4 and elastography as triage, a Markov progression model…
The third supersaturation disease, after gout and kidney stones — and it shares their twist: normal bile is routinely supersaturated with cholesterol and forms no stones.
Reflux affects up to a quarter of adults in North America and Europe, and proton-pump inhibitors are among the ten most-used drugs on earth.
Autoimmune & rheumatology 5
An autoimmune enteropathy — not an allergy, not an intolerance — affecting about 1%, with most cases undiagnosed: of 35 found in a national survey, 29 did not know.
Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and the shift that reorganised their management: from treating symptoms to treating the mucosa.
The most common joint disease, affecting 240 million people — and not “wear and tear”: prevalence has doubled since the mid-20th century by 2.1-fold even after controlling for age and BMI, so it is…
A systemic immune-mediated disease, not a cosmetic one, and the clearest case of a pathway being mapped and then deliberately targeted: dendritic cells make IL-23, IL-23 sustains Th17 cells, Th17…
A public-to-science account of RA, opening the autoimmune domain: why it is immune rather than wear-and-tear, autoantibodies detectable a median of 4.5 years before symptoms, DAS28 and the…
Blood 2
The commonest nutritional deficiency on earth — WHO puts anaemia at 24.8% globally, 1.62 billion people — and a condition where the decisive move is finding why, since iron is lost only by bleeding.
A public-to-science account of how a single beta-globin substitution polymerizes haemoglobin, the delay-time race that unifies every therapy, the balancing-selection model that explains why the…
Eyes 3
The leading cause of blindness worldwide — and the hopeful one, because a twenty-minute operation gives the sight back.
The leading cause of irreversible blindness, and silent while it does the damage — half the people with optic-nerve damage in a 5,308-person survey did not know.
The leading cause of central vision loss in older adults — the exact inverse of glaucoma, which takes the periphery first.
Skin 1
Eczema, where the itch is the disease and the rash is largely what scratching does.
Bones, joints & muscle 1
A public-to-science account of osteoporosis, opening the musculoskeletal domain: bone remodelling and why loss is silent, the T-score and why it is a convention rather than a boundary, a model…
Reproductive health 1
A common cause of pelvic pain and infertility whose defining problem is recognition, not biology: six studies across eight countries and twenty years put the interval from first symptom to diagnosis…
Ear, nose & throat 1
One person in five on Earth — 1.57 billion — has hearing loss, and the Global Burden of Disease study reports the moderate-or-worse count twice in one sentence, adjusted and unadjusted for hearing…
Occupational & environmental 2
A public-to-science account of coal workers' pneumoconiosis: ILO radiographic grading and the simple-CWP/PMF divide, why management is prevention rather than cure, a cumulative-exposure risk model…
A public-to-science account of respirable crystalline silica: ILO grading and the accelerated/acute forms, why management is prevention rather than cure, a zero-free-parameter dose-response model…
Genetic 2
A public-to-science account of CF: newborn screening and the sweat chloride test as a quantitative CFTR-function readout, mutation classes and why they decide drug eligibility, a zero-free-parameter…
A lesser-known disease with a startlingly simple cure: inherited over-absorption of dietary iron that silently loads the liver, heart, pancreas and joints.
Critical care 1
A public-to-science account of sepsis: the Sepsis-3 definition and why it retired 'severe sepsis', where qSOFA works and where it does not, lactate and source control, the time-to-antibiotic…