It's plausible that they could represent a new smoking cessation tool, but as @tcrgbath.bsky.social have been highlighting, as with vapes, they're not marketed at older smokers, but the young.

Favoured by professional footballers, and with high-profile partnerships with festivals, use of these pouches has soared since their introduction to the UK market back in 2019.

Yet we're still learning about the long term consequences for oral health and much of the risks surrounding addiction

It's a terrifying trend. Obesity seems like the obvious connection, but many of those diagnosed are seemingly in excellent health.

What's going on? As I explain on the pod, the possible answers include newer and less understood potential carcinogens from microplastics to even artificial light.

To end HIV as a public health threat for good, we need to be preventing over a million new infections each year. Now with such effective preventative drugs, this could actually be done, if they're targeted at HIV hotspots and administered on a sufficient scale.

This was being planned but now....

Thanks so much Chris!

2/

Childhood cancer survivors suffer from premature frailty (in their 30s) and their life expectancy is greatly diminished due to the impact of intensive cancer treatments at a young age.

A trial in the US is testing senolytics in these people to see whether they can reverse these signs of ageing.

1/

One day we might all be able to benefit from senolytics, and they're a key focus of various longevity investors.

Right now we're a long way from giving these drugs to healthy people, but there's a whole range of clinical trials which are testing senolytics in people with accelerated ageing

Thanks to @costas-koumenis.bsky.social and others for their insights

5/

Some of the early clinical trials at hospitals in Cincinnati and Lausanne are fascinating. I'm looking forward to continuing to follow and report on this fascinating area.

4/

- Perhaps even more impactful for public health as a whole, treatment courses with FLASH radiotherapy are shorter, allowing many more patients to be treated in the same amount of time - creating the possibility of cutting waiting lists

3/

As I explain in this story, this could be revolutionary for a few reasons:
- It could treat complex diseases like glioblastoma, where cancer is dispersed through the brain

- It could offer a new treatment for people with cancer that has metastasised across multiple organs.

2/

Last September, I visited Geneva to meet scientists at
CERN and Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) pursuing a potentially game changing approach. Called FLASH, it delivers more radiation, but at ultra-high dose rates of less than a second, which seems to make it possible to spare healthy cells.

1/

Like many cancer treatments, radiotherapy has always faced the problem that upping the dose would be so toxic to the patient's healthy cells, it could kill them or leave them with debilitating injuries.

For a long time, it just hasn't been possible to do this safely