Health news watch: what patients read about in January

In our new monthly round up, we look at the clinical stories patients might be reading in the mainstream news media and provide the original evidence behind the stories so that you can answer any questions that may come up. Cahal McQuillan reports.

Scabies cases increase in the UK

This month, on 18 January, The Guardian ran a story on the increase of scabies cases in the UK, which are significantly above the five-year national average.

The story was based on data from the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Research and Surveillance Centre. Its weekly report for England shows that cases were double the five-year average from September to December in 2025.

Steady annual increases were reported between 2021 and 2025 by the UK Health Security Agency, with a notable surge beginning in 2023.

Sexual health clinics saw a particularly sharp 44% jump in diagnoses between 2023 and 2024 – from 3,393 to 4,872 cases.

Scabies is an itchy rash caused by microscopic mites. It’s spread through close skin contact. The infection is sometimes confused with STIs since the groin is a commonly affected area.

Euronews highlighted that these increases mirror a similar rise across Europe, with an increase of 99 to 1341 scabies incidents per 100,000 people between 2014 and 2023.

Shingles vaccine reduces dementia risk

On 7 January, The Independent ran a story on an Italian-Canadian neuroscience review that examined links between several common vaccines and dementia risk.

Published in Age and Ageing, the review analysed data comprising over 100 million people older than 50, they found that both shingles and flu vaccines are linked to lower dementia risk.

The shingles vaccine showed particularly strong associations – a 47% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease and a 24% reduced risk of dementia.

GLP-1 injections and acute pancreatitis risk

On 29 January, the BBC and The Guardian ran stories on how product information for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs – including semaglutide (Wegovy and Ozempic) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro) – had been updated to warn for risk of severe acute pancreatitis, including rare cases of necrotising and fatal pancreatic inflammation.

The BBC highlighted that hundreds of pancreatitis cases have been reported among individuals taking these weight loss drugs. Consequently, a study into potential serious pancreatic side effects was launched in July 2025 to investigate the link further.

According to recent research published in BMC Medicine, about 1.6 million adults in Great Britain are estimated to have used GLP-1 medication to lose weight between early 2024 and early 2025.

UK loses measles elimination status

On 26 January, numerous outlets, including Nursing in Practice and the nationals, covered the news that the World Health Organization (WHO) had revoked the UK’s measles elimination status due to the disease becoming re-established.

The WHO had deemed the UK to have eliminated the disease between 2021 and 2023. However, cases surged to 3,681 in 2024, with 20 measles deaths recorded between 2019 and 2025 – matching the same total that occurred between 1999 and 2018 – causing the organisation to reconsider the status.

As highlighted by the media, measles requires 95% coverage to prevent outbreaks. Yet first-dose coverage of the MMR vaccine has fallen below this critical threshold, decreasing from 95.3% in 2016 to 92.3% in 2024, while second-dose coverage dropped from 88.2% to 84.4% over the same period.

The latest data for England from the UK Health Security Agency show that in 2024/25 just 91.9% of five-year-olds received one MMR dose – the lowest level since 2010/11.

AI improves cancer screening diagnosis

On 29 January, The Guardian ran a story on a Swedish study, which found that artificial intelligence (AI)-supported mammography screenings reduced the rate of later-stage breast cancer diagnosis by 12% and the rate aggressive sub-type cancers by 27%.

The study, published in The Lancet, was conducted over the course of 2 years and involved more than 100,000 participants. The control group’s mammograms were allocated a standard double reading by radiologists, while the intervention group’s mammograms were analysed by AI. The AI system assigned low-risk cases to a single reading and high-risk cases to a double reading by radiologists, while also highlighting suspicious findings.

Some 81% of cancer cases were detected in the AI-supported mammography group at the screening stage, compared with 74% in the control group.