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Valvular heart disease

The Lancet

Published: March 27, 2024

Valvular heart disease (VHD) is becoming more prevalent in an ageing population, leading to challenges in diagnosis and management. This two-part Series offers a comprehensive review of changing concepts in VHD, covering diagnosis, intervention timing, novel management strategies, and the current state of research.

The first paper highlights the remarkable progress made in imaging and transcatheter techniques, effectively addressing the treatment paradox wherein populations at the highest risk of VHD often receive the least treatment. These advances have attracted the attention of clinicians, researchers, engineers, device manufacturers, and investors, leading to the exploration and proposal of treatment approaches grounded in pathophysiology and multidisciplinary strategies for VHD management. The second article focuses on future innovations, including computational, pharmacological, and bioengineering approaches. These include integrating artificial intelligence and imaging, novel pharmacological strategies, and engineered heart valve tissue. Together, these articles emphasise the importance of early detection, personalised management, and cutting-edge interventions to optimise outcomes amid the evolving landscape of VHD.

Ponch Hawkes 2021

Menopause 2024

The Lancet

Published: March 5, 2024

Menopause is an inevitable life stage for half the world’s population, but experiences vary hugely. Some women have few or no symptoms over the menopause transition while others have severe symptoms that impair their quality of life and may be persistent. Many women feel unsupported as they transition menopause. To better prepare and support women, the Lancet Series on menopause argues for an approach that goes beyond specific treatments to empower women with high-quality information, tools to support decision making, empathic clinical care, and workplace adjustments as needed. Targeted support is needed for groups who experience early menopause or treatment-induced menopause, and for those at increased risk of mental health problems. The authors recognise how gendered ageism may contribute to negative experiences of menopause and call for reduced stigma and greater recognition of the value and contribution of older women.

Peter Dazeley/Getty Images

The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Transforming Mental Health Implementation Research

The Lancet Psychiatry

Published: March 26, 2024

Effective approaches exist to prevent and treat mental illness and to promote mental health but most people who could benefit from evidence-based interventions (policies, programmes, and individual-level practices or services) do not receive them. Too often, research produces interventions and implementation strategies that are difficult to scale owing to misalignment with the political, cultural, policy, system, community, provider, and individual realities of real-world settings. This Commission considers strategies for transforming how research is done to produce more actionable evidence. It examines how to integrate research and real-world implementation; centre equity in mental health intervention and implementation research; apply a complexity science lens to mental health research; expand designs beyond the randomised clinical trial; and value transdisciplinarity across endeavours. Most mental health implementation research has been done in high-income countries but the Commission’s recommendations incorporate research from low-income and middle-income countries and call for strategies to expand mental health implementation research globally.

Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Under threat: the International AIDS Society-Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights

The Lancet

Published: March 21, 2024

A commitment to human rights has motivated the health field to demand access to affordable, quality, and respectful health services for all, especially the most marginalized, and to strive towards gender equality, social justice, and basic minimum standards of living commensurate with human dignity. Seventy-five years after the United Nations’ historic ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the global commitment to protect the fundamental human rights of all people is under grave threat. The International AIDS Society-Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights explores the alarming deterioration of human rights over the past two decades globally and the serious implications of this trend for human health, particularly the health of the most vulnerable. The report examines the social, political, and environmental factors that are undermining the centrality of human rights and human dignity and develops recommendations to reverse the recent backtracking from this commitment.

Our manifesto

Highest standards for medical science

The Lancet sets extremely high standards. We select only the best research papers for their quality of work and the progression they bring.

Improving lives is the only end goal

Too much research is done for research sake. We believe that improving lives is the only end goal and that research is only relevant when it has an impact on human lives.

Improving lives is the only end goal

Too much research is done for research sake. We believe that improving lives is the only end goal and that research is only relevant when it has an impact on human lives.