Work and Health Programme Official Statistics to February 2026 - GOV.UK

Ketamine, a medication used in operating rooms for anesthesia and pain control, may offer another benefit for some new mothers: easing early symptoms of postpartum depression after cesarean delivery (C-section), according to a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2026 annual meeting. A new meta-analysis found that administering ketamine or esketamine (a ketamine derivative) during or immediately after a C-section was associated with a statistically significant reduction in depressive symptoms within the first two weeks after birth, a vulnerable period for women as they recover from surgery and care for their infants.

Mobile app-based monitoring may help address the vulnerable days and weeks after surgery when recovery shifts from the hospital to home with little direct supervision. Patients using mobile apps had lower risk of serious complications, emergency room visits and readmissions after surgery, but the benefits depended on physician or other clinician involvement, rather than the technology alone, according to research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2026 annual meeting. Just using an app may not make recovery safer. The biggest benefit occurs when a clinician is actually reviewing what patients send and can act on it. Patients should ask: 'Who is looking at this information, how quickly will they respond and what happens if something looks wrong?'"

Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) is an autosomal recessive disorder and the most common form of neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation (NBIA), whose imaging hallmark is the "eye-of-the-tiger" sign of the globus pallidus on brain MRI. We report the case of an eight-year-old girl, born to first-cousin parents, with a history of delayed walking and language acquisition, who presented with a four-month history of worsening gait instability and frequent falls. Neurological examination revealed dysarthria, lower-limb dystonia, postural tremor, brisk deep tendon reflexes, and bilateral extensor plantar responses. Brain MRI at 1.5 T showed bilateral, symmetric T2 hypointensity of the globus pallidus surrounding a central hyperintense focus, consistent with the eye-of-the-tiger sign, with marked pallidal signal loss on susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI). The substantia nigra, dentate nuclei, cerebellum, and remaining brain parenchyma were normal, as were serum copper, ceruloplasmin, and lactate levels. This combination of a progressive extrapyramidal and pyramidal syndrome with the eye-of-the-tiger sign pointed to PKAN, pending genetic confirmation. This ca

GLOBAL dementia incidence is projected to more than double by 2050, reaching 24.7 million new cases annually, according to a meta-analysis of population-based studies. The researchers estimated 11.4 million new cases worldwide in 2023, highlighting differences by sex and country income level. The analysis included individual participant data from 38,418 people across 22 longitudinal cohorts spanning 18 countries or territories on six continents. The cohorts formed part of the Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC), with baseline recruitment between 1990 and 2011 and follow-up data collected through 2021.