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Geospatial estimates of the prevalence of anemia in women of reproductive age across 82 low-income and middle-income countries reveals considerable heterogeneity and inequality at national and subnational levels, with few countries on track to meet the WHO Global Nutrition Targets by 2030.

Global Burden of Disease estimates show that between 1990 and 2023, the prevalence and burden of drug use disorders, inclusive of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use, have been increasing in high-income countries, particularly in the USA.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

A Bayesian framework based on partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) not only predicts subjects’ confidence in a perceptual decision making task but also explains well-known discrepancies between confidence and choice accuracy as arising from incomplete knowledge of the environment.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

In this multicentered observational study, Rotavac, an indigenous, monovalent, live, attenuated, oral rotavirus vaccine, had an adjusted vaccine efficacy of 54% and protected against severe gastroenteritis in Indian children during its rollout between 2016 and 2020.

The immune system is known to play an important role in regenerative processes. Here, Baht and colleagues identify Metrnl, a myokine/cytokine expressed in macrophages, as mediator of muscle regeneration. Metrnl promotes macrophage IGF-1 production that, in turn, activates satellite cells.

Although progress in the coverage of routine measles vaccination in children in low- and middle-income countries was made during 2000–2019, many countries remain far from the goal of 80% coverage in all districts by 2019.

Humans often interact without knowing the cooperative or competitive intentions of others. Here, the authors determined the neurocomputational mechanisms engaged in adapting to fluctuating intentions of others over repeated social interactions.

Bhattacharjee and Schaeffer et al. map exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) in 94 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), finding increased EBF practice and reduced subnational variation across the majority of LMICs from 2000 to 2018. However, only six LMICs will meet WHO’s target of ≥70% EBF by 2030 nationally, and only three will achieve this in all districts.

Chiea Chuen Khor, Tin Aung, Francesca Pasutto, Janey Wiggs and colleagues report a global genome-wide association study of exfoliation syndrome and a fine-mapping analysis of a previously identified disease-associated locus, LOXL1. They identify a rare protective variant in LOXL1 exclusive to the Japanese population and five new common variant susceptibility loci.

Prov-GigaPath, a whole-slide pathology foundation model pretrained on a large dataset containing around 1.3 billion pathology images, attains state-of-the-art performance in cancer classification and pathomics tasks.

In this disease mapping study, the authors estimate disability-adjusted life year rates for three of the major causes of mortality for children under five 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They identify significant heterogeneity at the subnational level, highlighting the need for a targeted intervention approach.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become a key tool to discover genetic markers for complex traits; however, environmental factors that interact with genes are rarely considered. Here, the authors conduct a GWAS of obesity traits, and find that smoking may alter genetic susceptibilities.

Stem cell quiescence is generally considered as an inactive state with poised potential. Here, Khoa et al. find that quiescent embryonic stem cells actively maintain a dynamic reservoir of cells with unrestricted cell fate that converges on S-adenosylmethionine and H3K27me3 status.

Olfactory navigation is a well-studied topic in insect behaviour, but many aspects of the challenging task of odour plume tracking are unknown. In a deep reinforcement learning approach, artificial agents are trained to produce (in silico) trajectories to localize the source of an odour plume, showing dynamics that mimic real insect behaviours.

RNA sequencing data and tumour pathology observations of non-small-cell lung cancers indicate that the immune cell microenvironment exerts strong evolutionary selection pressures that shape the immune-evasion capacity of tumours.

A survey of T cell repertoire evolution in the tumors, healthy tissue and blood of patients with early-stage untreated lung cancer offers an opportunity to monitor and identify neoantigen-specific T cells for personalized immunotherapy.

Histone–lysineN-methyltransferase 2 (KMT2) family proteins, initially named the mixed lineage leukaemia (MLL) family, are altered in many types of cancers beyond MLL. Inhibitors of KMT2 function are being developed and could work as therapeutics in a variety of cancer types.

Recent studies suggest a close interaction between sensory and motor processes across the neocortex. In this Perspective, Rao proposes active predictive coding as a sensory–motor theory that explains the structure of the neocortex as well as some of its diverse computational capabilities.

Wu et al. utilize multiparametric analysis of early-stage human NSCLC to characterize a population of Vδ1 T cells displaying a resident memory and effector memory phenotype, which were associated with ongoing remission.

Analysis of whole-genome doubling (WGD) by using cancer sequencing data combined with simulations of tumor evolution suggests that there is negative selection against homozygous loss of essential genes before WGD but not after.

Pulmonary venous tumor cells disseminating before tumor resection are heterogeneous, predict relapse and seed future metastasis of lung cancer

A robust, cost-effective technique based on whole-exome sequencing data can be used to characterize immune infiltrates, relate the extent of these infiltrates to somatic changes in tumours, and enables prediction of tumour responses to immune checkpoint inhibition therapy.

Studies of neurally inspired silicon circuits are showing how networks of neurons can select and multiply input signals. They may also provide alternative ways to build computers modelled on biology.

TRACERx Lung: Intratumoral transcriptional heterogeneity, which often hinders the development of clinically useful RNA-expression-biased biomarkers for cancer, can now be overcome with an approach for the identification of clonal expression biomarkers.

Ghorani et al. use a multiomics approach to characterize the effect of tumour mutational burden on the differentiation of CD4 and CD8 T cell subpopulations in non-small cell lung cancer.

Multiregion spatial histology, exome and transcriptome data from patients with non-small cell lung cancer suggest that cancer subclones from immune cold regions diversify later than subclones from immune hot regions