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In two weeks, we’re holding our Breakthrough Summit West in San Francisco. I’ll be there interviewing OpenEvidence co-founder and CTO Zachary Ziegler. The agenda is positively loaded, and there’s still time to register.
Researchers at University of California, San Francisco and Imperial College London have shown that a single dose of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, causes likely anatomical brain changes that last for up to a month after the experience.
The study, involving healthy volunteers who had never taken a psychedelic, links temporary shifts in brain “entropy”—which is the diversity of neural activity occurring in the brain—to insight. This suggests the psychedelic trip itself is important to the drug’s longer term therapeutic effects.
The researchers found that a high dose of psilocybin led to increased entropy in the minutes and hours after taking the drug. The degree of entropy predicted how much insight, or emotional self-awareness, the participants felt the next day; and this, in turn, forecasted improvements in their sense of wellbeing a month later.
The findings may help to explain psilocybin’s therapeutic effects on conditions such as depression, anxiety, and addiction. “Psychedelic means ‘psyche-revealing,’ or making the psyche visible,” said senior author Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, the Ralph Metzner distinguished professor of neurology at UCSF. “Our data shows that such experiences of psychological insight relate to an entropic quality of brain activity and how both are involved in causing subsequent improvements in mental health. It suggests that the trip—and its correlates in the brain—is a key component of how psychedelic therapy works.” Carhart-Harris is senior and corresponding author of the team’s published paper in Nature Communications, titled “Human brain changes after first psilocybin use.”
“Psychedelics have robust effects on acute brain function and long-term behavior but whether they also cause enduring functional and anatomical brain changes is largely unknown,” the authors wrote. Psilocybin is the precursor of the compound psilocin, a serotonin receptor agonist. “Converging evidence supports a role for serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) agonism in eliciting the characteristic brain and subjective effects of this and related psychedelics in humans,” the team continued.
For their newly reported study, Carhart-Harris and colleagues carried out an exploratory, placebo-controlled, within-patient study in 28 psychedelic-naïve participants who each received a single, high-dose (25 mg) of psilocybin. The researchers used an assortment of brain imaging and brain measurement techniques, some of which were carried out during the peak of the psychedelic experience, as well as before and one-month after drug administration. “This was an exploratory, hypothesis-generating mechanistic study in healthy volunteers,” the authors noted. None of the 28 people in the study had a diagnosed mental health condition, which gave the scientists greater freedom to do more testing.
In the first part of the experiment the subjects were given a 1 mg dose of psilocybin, which the researchers regarded as a placebo, and were then monitored with EEG, which records brain activity from electrodes on the scalp. Over the next few weeks, the researchers measured their subjects’ psychological insight, wellbeing, and cognitive ability. They examined brain activity with functional MRI (fMRI) and brain connectivity with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
One month after the placebo, the subjects were given 25 mg of psilocybin, a dose capable of eliciting a strong psychedelic trip. During the experience, researchers again measured the subjects’ brain activity with EEG, and in the following weeks they repeated the same tests they had given after the 1 mg dose.
This enabled the scientists to compare the effects of the psychedelic trip on the brain and mind to the effects of the placebo. “The multimodal neuroimaging design allowed us to observe changes in brain function and (potential) anatomy from 1-h (EEG) to 1-month (DTI) after high-dose psilocybin,” they explained.
The investigators found that within 60 minutes of taking the 25 mg dose of psilocybin, EEG revealed higher entropy, suggesting that the brain was processing a richer body of information under the psychedelic. A month later, the researchers looked at their subjects’ brains using DTI, which measures the diffusion of water along neural tracts in the brain, and found that they were denser and had more integrity. This is the opposite of what happens in aging, which makes these tracts more diffuse.
The researchers cautioned that more work needs to be done to better understand the meaning of this finding, but the result is a never-before-seen sign of how psychedelics can change the brain. ”The inclusion of DTI enabled us to test for long-term changes in the integrity of white matter tracts post psilocybin,” the authors stated. “Results revealed decreased axial diffusivity in prefrontal-subcortical tracts 1-month post 25mg psilocybin.”
The day after the 25 mg dose, all but one of the 28 subjects rated the trip as the “single most” unusual state of consciousness they had ever experienced. The remaining person rated it as among their top five. The study participants said they had experienced more psychological insight after taking the 25 mg of psilocybin than they had after the 1 mg placebo. The subjects also reported increased wellbeing two and four weeks after the study. This was measured from responses to statements such as, “I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future,” and “I’ve been dealing with problems well.”
As the scientists noted in their paper, “A predictive relationship was also found between brain entropy and longer-term mental-health changes—namely, improved wellbeing. Improved wellbeing could be predicted directly from acute increases in brain entropy as early as 1-h post dosing.”
A month after the study the study individuals also scored better on a test of cognitive flexibility. “Psilocybin seems to loosen up stereotyped patterns of brain activity and give people the ability to revise entrenched patterns of thought,” said first author Taylor Lyons, PhD, a research associate at Imperial College London. “The fact that these changes track with insight and improved well‑being is especially exciting.”
The scientists found that the subjects who had experienced the largest increases in brain entropy in the minutes to hours after taking psilocybin were the most likely to have increased insight the next day and increased wellbeing a month later. The researchers concluded that improved wellbeing was driven by the experience of insight.
The authors suggest that the study findings could improve treatment for people with mental illness using psilocybin, for example, by ensuring that the right dosage is used to produce the right amount of brain entropy to promote insight. “We already knew psilocybin could be helpful for treating mental illness,” Carhart-Harris said. “But now we have a much better understanding of how.”
In their paper the team concluded, “The present multi-modal neuroimaging study in healthy participants sheds light on the brain effects of first-time high-dose psychedelic use and the therapeutic action of psilocybin-therapy, suggesting that therapeutically relevant changes—i.e., improved wellbeing—can be forecast via an acute human brain action, i.e., an entropic brain effect, that is well-known to relate to the psychedelic experience … Results support a role for psychological insight in mediating the causal association between the entropic brain effect and potentially enduring improvements in wellbeing.”
The post Psilocybin-Induced Brain Changes May Explain Therapeutic Effects appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
Researchers at the University Medical Center Freiburg in Germany, say that detailed measures of body composition derived from whole-body MRI scans can predict diabetes, cardiovascular events, and mortality risk better than current methods that rely on body mass index (BMI). Using MRI imaging data from more than 66,000 people, the team has developed age-, sex-, and height-adjusted reference standards that show how fat and muscle are distributed across the body and how these patterns relate to health outcomes. Their findings, published in the journal Radiology, show analysis of both the quantity and quality of skeletal muscle, along with where fat is distributed in the body, can provide a more accurate way to determine risk as opposed to weight-based methods alone.
“Many risk scores and treatment decisions still rely on BMI or waist circumference because they are simple to obtain,” said senior author Jakob Weiss, MD, PhD, an interventional radiologist at University Medical Center Freiburg. “But BMI does not reliably reflect a person’s actual body composition.” This is one of the central findings of the study: that individuals with similar BMI values can have markedly different distributions of fat and muscle, which carry different levels of risk for cardiometabolic disease and mortality.
The team’s retrospective study analyzed whole-body MRI scans from 66,608 people using data from the UK Biobank and the German National Cohort collected between April 2014 and May 2022. The cohort had a mean age of 57.7 years and an average BMI of 26.2. Using a fully automated deep learning framework, the researchers quantified multiple body composition measures, including subcutaneous adipose tissue, visceral adipose tissue, skeletal muscle, skeletal muscle fat fraction, and intramuscular adipose tissue. These measures were normalized for age, sex, and height. A score is developed from these data to show how far individuals deviated from a population-adjusted reference.
“Whole-body MRI–derived BC (body composition) z-scores were used to identify at-risk individuals and predict cardiometabolic outcomes and mortality beyond traditional risk factors.” They then used the z-score categories to assess associations and clinical outcomes.
Their data showed that individuals with high visceral fat had a 2.26-fold increased risk of developing diabetes. High intramuscular fat was associated with a 1.54-fold increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, while low skeletal muscle was linked to a 1.44-fold increase in all-cause mortality.
The deep learning system used to develop the risk profiles was trained and evaluated against radiologist-defined reference standards, allowing it to extract volumetric measurements across the entire body rather than relying on single cross-sectional slices. This method allowed the researchers to capture meaningful variations in muscle quality and fat distribution that are not visible through other techniques.
“Manual BC measurement in large-scale imaging datasets is prohibitively time-consuming,” the researchers wrote. “However, recent advances in deep learning have enabled fully automated, accurate, and efficient quantification from cross-sectional imaging.” This capability allowed the team to construct reference curves reflective of how body composition changes with age and differs between men and women.
Importantly, the research shines a light on the limitations of using BMI to determine future risk. Because BMI is calculated using only two metrics, height and weight, it does not distinguish between fat and muscle or account for where fat is stored. Because of this, two people with the same BMI may have very different levels of visceral fat or muscle mass, factors that can lead to different to different health risks. The researchers showed that deviations in these specific components, captured via their MRI-based z-scores, were predictive of outcomes even after accounting for traditional risk factors.
“It’s not only how much muscle you have, but also it’s the quality of that muscle,” said first author Matthias Jung, MD, a radiologist at University Medical Center Freiburg. “Knowing the volume of intramuscular fat gives us a window into muscle quality that other methods like BMI, bioelectrical impedance analysis, or DEXA can’t easily provide.” This distinction is relevant because intramuscular fat is linked to metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular risk.
The study also produced a web-based calculator that allows clinicians and researchers to compare individual patient data with population-based reference values. According to Weiss, this tool could be applied to existing imaging studies. “A dedicated whole-body MRI is not necessarily required. If a routine CT or MRI body scan already exists, the information can be extracted for benchmarking against the reference values,” he said.
The study has limitations, including a cohort of primarily White Western European adults, which may impact the generalizability of the findings. The researchers also pointed out that whole-body MRI is not routinely performed in clinical practice, although they provided reference values for commonly imaged regions such as the chest, abdomen, and pelvis to address this.
The team will continue their work by seeking to validate the reference curves in clinical populations and exploring their use in predicting treatment outcomes, including toxicity, survival, and recurrence in cancer patients. The team also plans to develop disease-specific reference values for broader patient groups to broaden the use of body composition analysis into clinical care.
The post Muscle Quality and Fat Distribution Predict Mortality Risk Better than BMI appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
The IOCDF is proud to be a member of the Mental Health Liaison Group, which distributed the below statement. To learn more about appropriate treatment for OCD, including the use of medication and SSRIs, visit IOCDF’s Treatment Guide.
Following the MAHA Institute May 4, 2026, Summit entitled, “Mental Health and Overmedicalization,” and HHS’ MAHA Action Plan to Curb Psychiatric Overprescribing, the Mental Health Liaison Group (MHLG)— a nonprofit coalition of national organizations representing people with mental health and substance use conditions, family members and caregivers, providers of mental health and substance use treatment and support, advocates, and other stakeholders— reaffirms that improving mental health outcomes requires expanding access to comprehensive, evidence-based care.
MHLG recognizes that mental health care should be appropriate, individualized, and guided by clinical expertise and informed patient decision-making. The goal is the right care, delivered at the right time and tailored to each person’s unique needs.
A strong body of evidence supports a range of effective, individualized treatments, including psychotherapy and, when clinically appropriate, medications such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). These treatments are effective for many individuals when appropriately prescribed, monitored, and supported as part of a comprehensive care plan. Individuals should be supported in working with their health care providers to determine and refine over time the care plan, including the benefits and risks, that best meets their needs, and engage in medical professional recommendation-based treatment, which for many may include psychotherapy and medication as part of a comprehensive approach to care.
Public discussion of mental health treatment should be informed by scientific evidence to support informed decision-making and patient-centered care. Misinformation or claims not supported by evidence may discourage individuals from seeking or continuing treatment, particularly at a time when many already face significant barriers to care.
MHLG supports policies that support ongoing research to expand access to comprehensive, evidence-based mental health services, reduce stigma, and strengthen the ability of individuals to initiate and remain engaged in appropriate care across the continuum of prevention, treatment, crisis and recovery. These priorities are consistent with MHLG’s principles, available at https://www.mhlg.org/about-us/
MHLG stands ready to engage with the Administration and policymakers as they consider and advance approaches impacting mental health care.
The Mental Health Liaison Group (MHLG) is a nonprofit coalition of national organizations representing people with mental health and substance use conditions, family members and caregivers, providers of mental health and substance use treatment and support, advocates, and other stakeholders committed to strengthening Americans’ access to mental health and substance use care. As trusted leaders in the field, our 100+ member organizations are dedicated to elevating the national conversation around mental health and substance use. Together, we work to advance federal policies that support prevention, early intervention, treatment, crisis response, and recovery services and supports.
The post Statement on Mental Health and Access to Evidence-Based Care appeared first on International OCD Foundation.
Prescribing antidepressants according to a patient’s genetic makeup could help manage depressive symptoms in the long-term, a clinical trial suggests.
The findings, in JAMA Network Open, suggest pharmacogenetic guidance could have extended benefits, which may not be apparent early on.
Primary results did not indicate that genotype-guided SSRI treatment was better than usual care at three months in A Depression and Opioid Pragmatic Trial in Pharmacogenetics (ADOPT PGx).
However, significantly more patients receiving genotype-guided therapy achieved the secondary endpoint of depression remission at six months.
“Although outcomes were similar early in treatment, differences emerged over time,” noted Kathryn Blake, PharmD, from Nemours Center for Pharmacogenomics and Translational Research in Jacksonville, Florida, and colleagues.
“These findings suggest a possible longer-term clinical benefit and indicate that future studies should focus on evaluating the durability and long-term impact of genotype-guided prescribing in the management of depressive symptoms.”
SSRIs are the most common pharmacotherapy for depression and variants in cytochrome P450 enzymes CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 can affect their metabolism, influencing exposure to this medication.
Indeed, guidelines from the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC) provide recommendations for SSRI prescribing when genotype information is available.
However, most psychiatry experts and practice guidelines for treating depression have not yet endorsed pharmacogenetic-informed therapy, citing insufficient evidence.
ADOPT PGx was a set of three randomized clinical trials, designed to test whether routine use of pharmacogenetic testing improves medication response among patients with depression, acute pain, or chronic pain.
The ADOPT PGx Depression trial included 221 children and 1239 adults, aged eight years or older who had experienced depression for three months or longer.
A total of 692 patients (47.4%) had an actionable phenotype, of whom 351 (50.7%) were assigned to the intervention, and 341 (49.3%) to usual care.
Among this group, two-thirds reported having depressive symptoms for more than two years, and three quarters were female. The vast majority were on pharmacologic treatment, at 87.1%, with just over half receiving nonpharmacologic treatment.
Participants were randomly assigned to genotype-guided SSRI prescribing or usual care to examine whether pharmacogenetic guidance improves depression over six months.
At three months, there were no significant differences between the intervention and usual care groups in the primary endpoint of change in Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression T scores among patients with an actionable phenotype.
At this timepoint, there were also no differences in the secondary outcome of adverse effect severity.
However, another secondary endpoint of depression remission according to a PROMIS depression T-score of 16 or less was more likely with the intervention than usual care, at 48.3% (153 of 317 patients) versus 39.4%. (122 of 310 patients).
Based on this, the authors proposed: “These findings suggest that pharmacogenetic testing, including evaluation for CYP2D6 enzyme inhibition (phenoconversion), may offer meaningful benefit with longer follow-up.”
The post Genotype-Guided Antidepressants Could Have Long-Term Benefits appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
The pharmaceutical industry saw its reputation among patient groups inch up last year, but the rise masks fresh concerns about the extent to which some companies are sufficiently focusing on patient needs, according to a new survey.
Of more than 2,400 groups queried, 57% reported that drugmakers had an “excellent” or “good” reputation as they went about the business of developing and providing medicines. That was up a notch from 56% in 2024 and back to the level seen the previous year. Even so, the results place the industry below the 60% rating in 2022.
The biggest factors contributing to the slight turnabout were patient centricity — which refers to prioritizing patient needs — and ensuring patient safety, according to PatientView, a research firm that canvassed patient groups from 35 countries between December 2025 and March 2026. The firm rated the reputation of 47 companies.
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House oversight committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) is taking aim at the American Medical Association, linking the biggest doctor lobby’s billing codes to potential fraud, waste, and abuse.
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Good morning. I was having a fine day yesterday until my colleague shared this game that tests how good (or how bad in my case) your color perception is.
Cytokinetics said its drug Myqorzo significantly improved heart failure symptoms and cardiovascular fitness in patients with non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an inherited heart disorder.
Stronger Together: A Path Towards an EU Mental Health Strategy for All is Mental Health Europe’s policy brief for the European Mental Health Week 2026
The post Policy Brief – Stronger Together: A Path Towards an EU Mental Health Strategy for All appeared first on Mental Health Europe.