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NASA astronaut returns to Earth after 245 days in space

admin - Latest News - December 9, 2025
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NASA astronaut returns to Earth after 245 days in space



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Dec. 8, 2025, 5:00 PM ESTBy Lindsey LeakeDespite previous excitement around a potential link between GLP-1 drugs and a reduced risk of cancer, new research suggests the popular medications “probably have little or no effect” on a person’s risk of developing one of the 13 obesity-related cancers.The findings, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, may seem counterintuitive, said co-author Dr. Cho-Han Chiang, who conducted the study earlier this year as an internal medicine resident at Mount Auburn Hospital, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.“GLP-1 can make people lose weight, and so, if obesity increases the risk of cancer, then, hypothetically speaking, losing weight through GLP-1 may actually reduce the risk of developing cancer,” said Chiang, now a medical oncology fellow at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute in New York. “That was the excitement in this whole research of GLP-1 and cancer risk.”Accordingly, previous research had suggested the drugs — which include Ozempic and Zepbound — may help lower cancer risk. For example, a 2024 study published in the journal JAMA Network Open showed that people with Type 2 diabetes who took GLP-1s had significantly reduced risks of 10 obesity-related cancers. However, that study was observational, Chiang said, meaning it analyzed existing patient data rather than performed a clinical trial. The patients who took GLP-1s may have had access to better health care and a lower risk of cancer to begin with, he said.Chiang and his colleagues, on the other hand, reviewed 48 randomized controlled trials with a combined 94,245 patients who had Type 2 diabetes, overweight or obesity. Of those, more than 51,000 took a GLP-1 medication, while nearly 43,000 took a placebo. Patients were observed for a median follow-up period of 70 weeks.Researchers focused on the 13 types of obesity-related cancers identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer Working Group and their possible links to GLP-1 drugs, with varying levels of statistical certainty.Researchers found, with moderate certainty, that GLP-1 drugs had little or no effect on the risk of developing four types of obesity-related cancers: breast, kidney, thyroid and pancreatic cancers.World Health Organization recommends GLP-1 drugs for obesity02:43The findings were similar for eight other obesity-related cancers — liver, gallbladder, colorectal, ovarian, endometrial, esophageal, meningioma (a tumor of the brain lining) and multiple myeloma (blood cell cancer) — but with low certainty. The effect of GLP-1s on the risk of gastric cancer was “very uncertain,” the authors wrote.“It’s not that GLP-1 does not reduce the risk of cancer; I don’t think we can make that conclusion from our study,” Chiang said. “I would say GLP-1 [drugs] probably do not increase the risk of cancer. It’s a little different.”Longer-term studies neededThe new study has two major limitations, Chiang said. One is that none of the nearly 50 trials his team analyzed was designed to measure cancer outcomes.Dr. Kandace McGuire, chief of breast surgery at the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University, said that might explain the counterintuitive nature of the findings.“When you take a bunch of studies that weren’t looking at cancer risk and you throw them together, sometimes you find things that are contrary to what you would hypothesize,” said McGuire, who wasn’t involved in the research. “Some of that may be just the makeup of the studies, rather than the actual data itself.”“From a cancer prevention perspective, I think more data is needed,” Chiang said, noting that there’s also a lack of data on GLP-1 usage among patients who already have cancer.Another limitation of the research was its relatively brief follow-up period of under a year and a half.Patients prescribed GLP-1s should be monitored for far longer, particularly for slow-growing diseases like breast and thyroid cancers, McGuire said.“You really don’t know when in somebody’s lifetime they’re going to have a clinically significant cancer,” McGuire said. “While you may not effect a difference in the first two to three years, you may effect a difference five, 10 years down the road with continued use” of GLP-1s.Can GLP-1s increase risk of some cancers?The Food and Drug Administration cautions people with personal or family history of a rare form of thyroid cancer, medullary thyroid carcinoma, against taking certain GLP-1 medications. However, such boxed warnings stem from decade-old rodent research, Chiang said.“Once there’s an association with a drug, it’s hard to repel that,” he said.Findings in human studies have been mixed, according to Dr. Bassel El-Rayes, deputy director of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. One study, for instance, found an association between GLP-1s and increased risk of thyroid cancer, but only within the first year of medication use. El-Rayes said he finds the results of Chiang’s research promising.“This study gives us more reassurance about using these drugs in the treatment of things like obesity and Type 2 diabetes,” said El-Rayes, who wasn’t involved with the study. “There are questions left unanswered, like, Could it be protective against cancer? Could there be a small increase of risk that we’re not recognizing yet?”He added, “The patients who are using the drugs at this moment are safer than what we thought before this paper came out.”Still, El-Rayes cited tobacco-related cancers as an example of the need for longer-term GLP-1 research.“If you were to look at people who smoked for one year, you may not see a big impact of tobacco use,” he said. “You need to follow them up for a longer time to really see the effects of tobacco on cancer development.”“Of course,” he added, “we’re not saying that GLP-1 [drugs] are as risky as using tobacco. We’re not saying that at all.”Dr. Susan Wolver, a colleague of McGuire’s, directs the Medical Weight Loss Program at VCU Health. She said that when she counsels patients on the benefits and risks of GLP-1 drugs, cancer isn’t typically top of mind.“Nobody comes to me and says, ‘I’d like to go on some medication to reduce my cancer risk,’” said Wolver, who wasn’t involved in the research. “They’re going on these medications to lose weight, to improve their diabetes, their sleep apnea, their heart failure — all their obesity-related conditions, but not cancer.”Wolver praised the thoroughness of Chiang’s research, noting that it broke down analyses by factors such as GLP-1 type, including older versions of the drug that were approved more than a decade ago.Because GLP-1 drugs are relatively young — the FDA didn’t approve Wegovy and Zepbound for weight loss until 2021 and 2023, respectively — physicians and scientists have much to learn of their long-term effects on the body, Wolver said. Even so, the observed benefits of GLP-1s, such as improved blood pressure and reduced odds of heart failure, outweigh known risks, she said.“I am relieved with the findings of this study that there does not appear to be any increased cancer signals,” Wolver said, “but I am also not dismayed that there was no reduction in the development of cancer or metastases, because I think we just didn’t have a long enough time.”Lindsey LeakeLindsey Leake is an award-winning health journalist and contributor to NBC News. She holds an M.A. in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. in journalism and digital storytelling from American University and a B.A. from Princeton University.
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Sept. 23, 2025, 7:55 PM EDTBy Liz Szabo and Lauren DunnDr. Heidi Leftwich, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UMass Memorial Health, said she has gotten many more questions about acetaminophen from some of her pregnant patients in recent weeks.The safety of the fever and pain reliever “comes up periodically,” especially when there’s a news story about it, said Dr. Allison Bryant, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Mass General Brigham.Rather than scare them or dictate what they should do, Bryant said, she favors “shared decision-making” with her patients, with them “at the center” of her guidance.At a news briefing Monday, President Donald Trump promoted unproven claims that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy was linked to a risk of autism in children. The Food and Drug Administration has sent a letter telling doctors to “consider minimizing the use of acetaminophen,” the active ingredient in Tylenol and a wide range of other over-the-counter medications, for routine low-grade fevers in pregnant women.Trump’s announcement came after several weeks of reports about the warning. Pregnant women experiencing pain or fever should “tough it out,” Trump said.Dr. Laura Riley, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, said patients have come in since Trump’s briefing anxious and unsure what to do. “There was a lot of head-shaking,” Riley said. Are doctors changing their guidance about acetaminophen? More than half of women worldwide use acetaminophen during pregnancy. It is used in hundreds of products, including cough and cold treatments. Doctors said in interview that their advice hasn’t changed, in spite of the Trump administration’s concerns.“We normally advise women with pain or fever to take acetaminophen, unless there is some other reason why we think it might be unsafe,” such as when women have allergies or pre-existing liver disease, Bryant said. Riley said the most common reasons pregnant women take acetaminophen are fever, headache and low back pain. “I’m telling women not to do anything differently than what we started with, which was Tylenol is one of the best pain relievers that we have in pregnancy,” she said.Untreated fever, especially in the first three months of pregnancy, increases the risk of miscarriage, birth defects and premature birth, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Fever in the second and third trimesters can trigger contractions and may be associated with early labor, Riley said, so “it’s important to treat.”Emily Heumann, 31, was 10 or 12 weeks pregnant when she spiked a fever of 104 degrees because of a viral infection. She’d developed hand, foot and mouth disease — a highly contagious virus that typically spreads among children — after she was infected by her 4-year-old son. The infection causes sores in the mouth and a rash on the hands and feet.Heumann said that although her son experienced only minor symptoms that went away quickly, she experienced severe pain for 10 days, especially because of sores in her throat and inside her ears.Her doctor told her that it was important to bring her temperature down and suggested she take acetaminophen, often sold under the brand name Tylenol.“If the Tylenol didn’t work, they said to go to the emergency room,” said Heumann, who is now 36 weeks pregnant.Bryant suggests that women with questions about any medication during pregnancy talk to doctors they trust and who know them well.Both the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine continue to recommend acetaminophen as safe for pregnant women and say the bulk of medical evidence doesn’t show a link to autism. Bryant noted that the groups base their advice on the total body of evidence about acetaminophen and neurodevelopment disorders, not just one study.“That guidance is not likely to change anytime soon,” Bryant said.Leftwich said she feels comfortable talking with her patients about the treatment of fever and pain with acetaminophen during pregnancy. “This is a very important conversation to have with a trusted physician.”Untreated pain in pregnancy can be risky, tooRiley said that after Trump warned about acetaminophen use during pregnancy, she’s had patients asking, “‘the next time I get a headache, what should I do?’” Her response: “Take Tylenol.” “There’s no reason for you to tough it out,” Riley said. “That’s not an appropriate way of managing pain.” If women ask Bryant about research suggesting a link between acetaminophen and autism, she tells them that the strongest, most rigorous study to examine the question found no association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or intellectual disability.An important feature of that study of more than 2.4 million children, published last year in JAMA, is that it included siblings of children with autism as a control group. Autism tends to run in families, with twins or siblings of people with autism having a higher risk.Leftwich said Heumann’s doctor did right by putting the patient first and keeping her needs in mind.“Instilling undue fear in pregnant individuals could lead to inadequate management of fever and pain,” Leftwich said, adding that untreated pain is associated with depression, anxiety and high blood pressure, which can increase the risk of preterm births.Heumann said she is grateful that her doctor suggested acetaminophen for her fever, which began to fall within an hour of her taking the medication. Acetaminophen also helped relieve the intense pain from the infection.“It was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced,” said Heumann, 31, who lives in central Florida. When she tried to sleep at night, “laying on the sores was especially painful. The throat pain was the worst.”Lowest dose for the shortest amount of timeLeftwich said she advises pregnant women to be cautious when they use any medication. “It’s really important to talk about the judicious use of any medication,” she said. “You should use the lowest dose possible to get the treatment that you need, for instance, for fever reduction or pain control. I would say the same about Tylenol as I would for any other medication.”Heumann said pregnant women have enough to worry about without adding unproven risks.“Every mom I know feels guilt regularly,” she said. “We want what’s best for our kids so badly, and no matter what we do, most of us worry … if what we’ve done is the right thing. This just adds one more thing for moms to worry about. And it’s based in misinformation, which is so dangerous.”Kati Woock, who developed frequent migraines during her pregnancy five years ago, said her doctor reassured her that taking acetaminophen — one of the ingredients in her usual migraine treatment — was safe.“Sometimes with a migraine, I can’t even be vertical,” said Woock, 36, who lives in Illinois.Woock said she was with family members when she developed the first migraine of her pregnancy, which occurred mainly during the first three to four months. Her family told her, “You shouldn’t take anything when you’re pregnant because you’re going to hurt the baby,” Woock recalled. “I was kind of nervous about it, but I decided that my doctor probably knew what she was talking about.”Liz SzaboLiz Szabo is an independent health and science journalist. Her work has won multiple national awards. One of her investigations led to a new state law in Virginia.Lauren DunnLauren Dunn is the executive editor of the NBC News Medical Unit.
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