Disability burden linked to alcohol-related cirrhosis and heart failure projected to rise sharply by 2050

The disability burden associated with alcohol-related cirrhosis complicated by heart failure is projected to rise substantially by 2050 across Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States (US).

Beyond

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(Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, 17 October 2026) The disability burden associated with alcohol-related cirrhosis complicated by heart failure is projected to rise substantially by 2050 across Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States (US), according to new research due to be presented at UEG Week 2026.1

Researchers analysed Global Burden of Disease data from Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the US between 1990 and 2023, examining years lived with disability (YLD) – a measure of time spent living with ill health or disability – by age and sex. They also modelled how the burden could change through to 2050.

The study found that the burden has already increased considerably across all four regions since 1990, with particularly pronounced increases among older adults and men. By 2050, further rises of around 50–67% are projected in the US, Central Europe and Eastern Europe, while Western Europe is projected to see a 19% decline.

Alcohol-related liver disease remains a major public health challenge. The WHO European Region has the highest level of alcohol consumption globally, and alcohol is causally linked to more than 200 diseases and health conditions, including liver cirrhosis and cardiovascular disease.2 Scientists are increasingly exploring the interrelationship between the heart and liver along shared disease trajectories, often referred to as the ‘heart-liver axis’. In Europe, alcohol is also the most common cause of death from liver disease.3

Between 1990 and 2023, Western Europe consistently had the highest YLD rate, increasing by 28.6%. However, the steepest increases occurred in Central and Eastern Europe, where rates rose by 82.9% and 74.7%, respectively. The US recorded a 38.5% increase.

The burden was substantially greater among older adults. Across all four regions, people aged 70 and over experienced YLD rates 10 to 16 times higher than those aged 15–49 years.

Marked differences were also observed between men and women. Men experienced a consistently greater burden than women across all four regions, with male-to-female YLD ratios ranging from 1.86 in Eastern Europe to 3.27 in Central Europe.

“Our findings show that the disability burden associated with alcohol-related cirrhosis complicated by heart failure has increased substantially over the past three decades, but the pattern is far from uniform,” said study author Dr Ashesh Das. “Older adults and men are particularly affected, and the marked differences between regions show why a one-size-fits-all approach to prevention and healthcare planning is unlikely to be enough.”

Looking ahead, modelling conducted by the researchers projected that by 2050, the YLD burden could increase by 65.4% in the US, 49.6% in Central Europe and 66.6% in Eastern Europe compared with 2023. By contrast, Western Europe is projected to experience a 19.0% decline.

Older adults in the US are projected to experience a particularly pronounced increase, with the YLD rate among those aged 70 and over predicted to reach 1.893 per 100,000 by 2050 – 73.7% higher than in 2023.

Dr Das said, “The projections suggest that without effective prevention and appropriate healthcare planning, the burden could continue to grow substantially in several regions over the coming decades. With populations ageing, health systems need to consider the combined demands that cirrhosis and heart failure can place on hepatology, cardiology and wider care services.”

The researchers emphasise the importance of strategies to reduce alcohol-related harm. WHO identifies measures including alcohol taxation and restrictions on alcohol availability and marketing as important approaches to reducing alcohol-related harm.3

Dr Das concluded, “These projections underline the importance of strengthening strategies to reduce alcohol-related harm, particularly as populations age. The contrasting trajectory projected for Western Europe also highlights the need to understand what may be driving differences between regions, and whether lessons can be applied elsewhere.”

END

Notes to editors

For further information or to arrange an expert interview, please contact media@ueg.eu  

We kindly ask that a reference to UEG Week 2026 is included when communicating any information within this press release.

About the author

Dr Ashesh Das completed his MBBS from KPC Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, India in 2024. He is a research trainee and conducts his research under the guidance of his mentor Dr Scott Tenner (SUNY Downstate, New York). He plans to pursue Residency Training in the United States. He is deeply passionate about gastroenterology. In his free time he loves to travel and explore new places.

Love Your Liver at UEG Week 2026

For the first time, UEG Week 2026 will host the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL)’s Love Your Liver initiative, offering free, ten-minute liver health checks to congress delegates, venue staff and members of the local community in Barcelona. The initiative aims to raise awareness of liver health and encourage people to seek further medical advice where appropriate, reflecting a shared ambition between UEG and EASL to extend the impact of medical congresses beyond the congress venue and into local communities.

About UEG

Founded in 1992, United European Gastroenterology (UEG) is Europe's leading non-profit organisation for digestive health. Based in Vienna, UEG is the professional home of the multidisciplinary digestive health community, uniting 17 European specialist societies, 50 national member societies and around 40,000 UEG Associates at all career stages. Through education, research, clinical standards and advocacy, UEG works to reduce the burden of digestive diseases and improve digestive health across Europe, bringing the community together each year at its annual congress, UEG Week.

For more information, visit ueg.eu.

References

1. Alupei, E., Das, A., Keswani, K., et al. Trans-Atlantic burden of alcohol-attributable cirrhosis and its contribution to heart failure in United States vs Europe (1990–2023): A systematic analysis of years lived with disability from the Global Burden of Disease 2023 study. Presented at UEG Week 2026; 19 October 2026; Barcelona, Spain.
2. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. Alcohol use. Accessed September 2026. https://www.who.int/europe/news-room/fact-sheets/item/alcohol-use
3. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. European Health Alliance on Alcohol launched to reduce the unsustainable toll of alcohol harms in Europe. Published 8 May 2025. https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/08-05-2025-european-health-alliance-on-alcohol-launched-to-reduce-the-unsustainable-toll-of-alcohol-harms-in-europe

 

Horse-assisted therapy linked to lower stress in children with autism, study finds

Colorado State University

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Occupational therapy that incorporates horses helps reduce the body’s stress response in autistic children, according to new research from Colorado State University. 

“That power of the horse-human interaction for autistic children has often been referred to as ‘magic,’ but this study provides empirical data to support and explain how interacting with horses impacts autistic children physiologically,” said Caiti Peters, an assistant professor in CSU’s departments of Occupational Therapy and Animal Sciences. She leads research at the Temple Grandin Equine Center in Denver and Fort Collins and is a co-author on this study. 

Previous studies have found that equine therapy has beneficial effects on behavioral skills and social communication in people with autism spectrum disorder. The new CSU study deepens on those findings by illustrating a measured physiological response to working with animals, and shows a greater impact when horses are involved compared to traditional clinical therapy settings. 

The research, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, examined how children’s bodies responded to 10 weeks of occupational therapy involving horses and compared that data with outcomes from traditional, clinic-based therapy. Researchers at CSU’s Temple Grandin Equine Center on the CSU Spur campus in Denver enrolled 72 children ages 6 to 11 and measured two biological markers in their saliva: cortisol, a hormone involved in the body’s stress response, and alpha-amylase, an enzyme linked to nervous system activity.

Cortisol levels decreased during therapy sessions in both groups, but the reduction was greater among children receiving therapy with horses, which researchers say indicates the children felt calmer and more comfortable. 

Researchers also found that alpha-amylase levels increased during therapy sessions in both groups and then returned toward their baseline levels within 20 minutes. The pattern suggests that the children’s bodies became more physiologically activated during therapy and then recovered. Researchers said this response, paired with the decreased cortisol, may reflect excitement and positive engagement. 

“Autistic children often experience physiological hyper-arousal when they come into the therapy center. That can look like a child who is irritable or hyperactive, which limits their ability to participate. But oftentimes, as an autistic child is riding a horse, you can see them calm down, almost like a big sigh of relief, which then enables them to better socially engage,” Peters said.

The findings are significant as participation in equine-assisted therapy rises worldwide among people with a range of physical, cognitive and emotional challenges, including people with autism spectrum disorder.

University Distinguished Professor Temple Grandin, an autistic woman and namesake of the center where the research occurred, is globally renowned for improving the welfare of beef cattle and for serving as a champion for people with autism and their families. She often says horses saved her when she was struggling as a teenager and began riding and working at the horse barn at her boarding school. Those interactions with horses set Grandin on her path to becoming an internationally respected animal scientist. 

People frequently tell Grandin that their nonverbal autistic children spoke for the first time after equine-assisted therapy; the newly published CSU research provides scientific evidence helping to explain why that might occur.  

The study’s other authors include Ellen M. Rankins, a postdoctoral researcher at CSU’s Temple Grandin Equine Center when the study was conducted; Stephen Aichele, an associate professor in CSU’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies; Douglas A. Granger, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine; Susan Hepburn, a professor in CSU’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies; Robin Gabriels, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; and Arlene A. Schmid, a professor in CSU’s Department of Occupational Therapy.

In a 2021 study led by Peters, researchers found that autistic children ages 6 to 13 who participated in occupational therapy incorporating horses made progress toward personal goals, showed increased social motivation and decreased irritability. The new research builds on that work by examining children’s physiological responses during therapy, offering clues about how the therapeutic environment may influence their experiences.

Examining the differences between two therapeutic environments 

During the new study, the children were assigned to one of two groups: occupational therapy involving horses and therapy in a more traditional clinical setting. 

The participants underwent one hour of therapy each week for 10 weeks. During each session, researchers collected saliva samples at four points: before the session began, while it was in progress, immediately afterward, and 20 minutes after therapy ended, when patients had spent time winding down and quietly playing with toys. 

The researchers sent the samples to a laboratory in California to analyze the levels of the two biomarkers. 

“Engagement in therapy is a strong predictor of therapeutic outcomes,” Peters said. “We believe that integrating horses into therapy can be both calming and motivating for many autistic children, increasing their engagement and therefore improving therapeutic outcomes.” 

She added: “This study demonstrates that integrating horses into occupational therapy facilitates that calm but engaged physiological state, significantly more so than the same therapy in a traditional clinic.”  

The latest study happened alongside research led by Rankins analyzing how horses respond to these therapy environments. During this study, Rankins monitored the physical response of the animals as well as their heart rate and cortisol levels. 

A facility committed to the human and animal connection 

The research activity being conducted by Peters and her team is part of the Temple Grandin Equine Center’s larger mission of using horses for the betterment of individuals with all types of abilities and disabilities. 

The center has branches in Denver and Fort Collins, and annually hosts around 11,000 appointments per year between the two locations. 

“There is an animal-human bond,” Adam Daurio, center director, said. “So, as we explore, ‘What is that animal-human bond? Why do we enjoy it? Why is it self-motivating?’ Those are the questions we really want to answer with our research.”

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Journal

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Effects of Incorporating Horses into Occupational Therapy on Adrenocortical and Sympathetic Nervous System Reactivity and Regulation in Autistic Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Article Publication Date

10-Oct-2026

COI Statement

In the interest of full disclosure, DAG is the founder and chief scientific and strategy advisor at Salimetrics LLC and Salivabio LLC and those relationships are managed by the policies of the committees on conflict of interest at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of California at Irvine. No other authors have competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

 

New study finds escalating treatment earlier for patients with life-threatening septic shock doesn’t improve survival or recovery

Intermountain Healthcare

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A new study from researchers at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City found that starting an advanced medication earlier for critically ill patients with life-threatening septic shock does not improve their survival, shorten hospital stays, or improve their recovery compared with waiting until their condition potentially worsens. These new research findings provide clinicians with important evidence to guide best-practice treatment decisions for patients with septic shock, a severe form of sepsis that causes dangerously low blood pressure and contributes to an estimated one in three hospital deaths nationwide.

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Credit: Intermountain Health

A new study from researchers at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City found that starting an advanced medication earlier for critically ill patients with life-threatening septic shock does not improve their survival, shorten hospital stays, or improve their recovery compared with waiting until their condition potentially worsens.

These new research findings provide clinicians with important evidence to guide best-practice treatment decisions for patients with septic shock, a severe form of sepsis that causes dangerously low blood pressure and contributes to an estimated one in three hospital deaths nationwide.

Sepsis is one of the most common and deadly medical emergencies that affects 1.7 million Americans each year. It occurs when the body's response to an infection damages its own tissues and organs. Septic shock occurs when this response causes blood vessels to dilate too much, resulting in blood pressure so low that it impairs the flow of blood and oxygen in the body to vital organs such as the brain, kidneys, and heart. 

Sepsis is also a leading cause of intensive care unit admissions and one of the most expensive conditions treated in U.S. hospitals, costing billions to treat annually, so developing best-practice guidelines for treatment is vital, researchers note.

The new Intermountain Health study, published online on October 14 in JAMA, found clinicians can safely wait to see whether a patient's shock worsens before starting vasopressin, a medication that is a naturally occurring hormone, to restore blood pressure when first-line medications related to adrenaline are not enough.

Doctors use medications called vasopressors to tighten blood vessels and raise blood pressure to a safe level, so organs continue to function while they treat the underlying infection.

“The question wasn't whether vasopressin works. We already know it can help raise blood pressure in patients with septic shock. The question is when it should be added to other vasopressors,” said Ithan D. Peltan, MD, principal investigator of the study and an Intermountain Health critical care physician and researcher. 

Some critical care clinicians begin vasopressin relatively early when a patient’s blood pressure starts to become difficult to control. Others wait until patients need higher doses of other blood pressure medications before adding it.

“For years, clinicians have known what medications to use for septic shock, but there has been little evidence about when to add vasopressin after initial vasopressor therapy,” said Dr. Peltan. 

“This trial directly answers a common bedside question that affects thousands of patients every year: is it safe to wait to see if a patient’s sepsis gets worse before giving them costly infusions they may not need? Our study found that it is.”

The findings come from the Vasopressin for Septic Shock Pragmatic (VASSPR) Trial, which evaluated two vasopressin treatment strategies across 13 Intermountain Health hospitals in Utah and Idaho between February 2024 and July 2025. 

The trial enrolled 3,959 adults with septic shock. Researchers then compared hospital-level recommendations for starting vasopressin earlier or later and evaluated outcomes over the following 28 days. They found no meaningful differences between the groups. 

Survival, time alive and out of the hospital, and other measures of recovery were similar regardless of when vasopressin treatment was initiated. While rates of cardiogenic shock were slightly higher in the early-treatment group, researchers found the difference had no meaningful impact on patient-centered outcomes. 

Beyond its clinical findings, the VASSPR trial is an example of an important advancement in how health systems conduct research. By conducting large-scale clinical trials within routine patient care, researchers can answer important questions efficiently in real-world settings. 

The infrastructure developed for the study is already being used to launch additional clinical trials within Intermountain Health designed to address challenging questions frequently encountered by physicians and nurses at the bedside.

"Trials like this one have the potential to make meaningful changes and guide us on difficult questions that are hard to answer with traditional clinical trials," said Dr. Peltan. 

Researchers say the findings will help inform future clinical practice guidelines and provide physicians with greater confidence when making treatment decisions for patients with septic shock.

“In healthcare, findings that show a treatment doesn't need to be used earlier are often just as important as findings that support a new therapy,” said Dr. Peltan. “Our study suggests that hospitals can take a more conservative approach, helping deliver effective care while using resources wisely.”

                                                                                                             ###

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Journal

JAMA

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Effect of Vasopressin Initiation Threshold on Septic Shock Mortality – The VASSPR Cluster Crossover Randomized Strategy Trial

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

 

Survival mechanism in the brain may help explain PTSD

Surprising finding about memories of danger and safety could ‘reshape how scientists think about trauma’

McGill University

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A surprising feature of how the brain stores memories could help explain why harmless situations can sometimes quickly feel threatening, a hallmark of anxiety and trauma disorders.

Scientists have long believed that fear helps the brain draw a clearer line between danger and safety. The new study from researchers at the Douglas Research Centre at McGill University and the University of Toronto-Scarborough, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggests the opposite.

In preclinical experiments, mice learned to associate one environment with danger and another with safety. Rather than creating more distinct brain maps for the two, the maps began to overlap.

“Our findings suggest fear may blur the boundary between danger and safety rather than sharpen it,” said senior author Mark Brandon, Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Psychiatry and Researcher at the Douglas. “This could reshape how scientists think about anxiety and PTSD.”

Augmented reality experiments

Researchers built an augmented reality arena that allowed them to “teleport” mice between an environment associated with danger and one with safety, using changes in sights and sounds. Miniature microscopes recorded the activity of hundreds of hippocampal neurons in real time.

"That gave us something conventional fear conditioning experiments cannot easily provide: a moment-by-moment view of the brain switching between competing maps of dangerous and safe memories," said Robert Rozeske, Assistant Professor in University of Toronto’s Department of Psychology and lead author on the publication.

A survival mechanism in overdrive

The researchers said they believe this brain pattern may be part of a survival strategy, rather than a flaw.

In the study, overlapping memories appeared to help the brain recall past threats more quickly and respond faster to potential danger.

“The ventral hippocampus may be part of a system that prioritizes a rapid ‘better safe than sorry’ response,” said Rozeske. “In other words, the brain may sacrifice precision for speed when danger matters.”

People with anxiety and trauma-related disorders can experience intense fear when an otherwise safe situation triggers a certain memory.

“Our study suggests that's not necessarily a broken pattern-separation system, but possibly an overactive version of a normal survival mechanism gone into overdrive,” said Brandon. “That reframing could guide therapeutic approaches to address an overly fast transition to ‘danger mode’.”

About the study

“Overlapping representations in the ventral hippocampus support rapid fear memory retrieval” by Robert Rozeske and Mark Brandon, was published in Nature Neuroscience. The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering and Research Council of Canada.

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Journal

Nature Neuroscience

DOI

10.1038/s41593-026-02435-5

Article Title

Overlapping representations in the ventral hippocampus support rapid fear memory retrieval

 

Backed by rigorously validated data and a world-class scientific team, new Blue Zones Research Institute launches

First-of-its-kind initiative steered by American Federation for Aging Research will help advance study of behaviorial, environmental, and biological drivers of aging and healthspan

American Federation for Aging Research

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NEW YORK, October 13, 2026 – The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), in partnership with Blue Zones, today launched the Blue Zones Research Institute (BZRI). 

The Institute will advance the scientific study of human healthspan and lifespan extension by supporting new research on long-lived human populations across the globe. The Institute will begin by making publicly available, for free, demographic data on Blue Zones that have already been validated — additional data on other long-lived populations will be made available on an ongoing basis as the research rolls out and new data are collected.   

The new scientific center will:

• Fund ongoing scientific research on the world’s longest-lived communities,
• Become the central repository for all existing and new data and evidence from Blue Zones and other long-lived populations,
• Foster partnerships and lead initiatives to enhance our understanding of exceptional human longevity and healthspan, and
• Make the data freely available to scientists and non-scientists alike.

The first initiative announced by BZRI is a partnership with the Human Mortality Database (HMD), the field’s most-trusted source for global mortality data, maintained by the University of California, Berkeley, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and France’s National Institute for Demographic Studies. This new database, coined HMD-Blue, will build out a dedicated collection of rigorously validated data on long-lived populations and be housed within HMD. 

“Until now, there has been no single place to find verified demographic data devoted exclusively to exceptional human longevity. HMD-Blue is being designed to become a primary source of it, held to the standard demographers already trust, and open to anyone who wants to check the work,” said S. Jay Olshansky, PhD, Professor Emeritus, School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Chair of the BZRI Advisory Committee. “The Blue Zones Research Institute will serve as a foundation for other projects and research like this, furthering our understanding and increasing collaboration around the science of aging.”

The launch follows a study published on October 5 in Frontiers in Aging that identified Bolotana, a mountain village in central Sardinia, as a candidate blue zone. The study was led by Giovanni Mario Pes, MD, PhD, of the University of Sassari and co-authored by AFAR researchers Olshansky and Steven N. Austad, PhD, and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner and other local scientists from Sardinia. The team verified the ages of every identified centenarian using civil birth records and independently cross-checked 97% of recorded centenarian deaths against parish archives. The findings strengthen the demographic evidence for exceptional longevity while opening new questions about its causes.

The study also showed that from 2021 to 2025, women in Bolotana who reached 70 were more than three times as likely as American women to reach 100 and are among the longest-lived women recorded anywhere. This research from Bolotana will be the first data set in HMD-Blue and serves as a strong foundation upon which to add data from other long-lived populations.

“I’ve spent my career studying creatures that age unusually slowly, from island opossums to clams that live for centuries. The most intriguing case may be our own species, in a handful of villages where reaching 100 is remarkably common,” said Steven N. Austad, PhD, Scientific Director of AFAR. “For a scientist, it doesn’t get much more exciting than that, and the Blue Zones Research Institute will help support the already growing scientific community in this space as we continue exploring how to live longer, fuller lives.” 

BZRI rests on a simple thesis: healthy aging to extreme ages depends on better understanding of the various behavioral, environmental, and genetic forces at work. The Institute pairs 45 years of AFAR-supported aging research with two decades of Blue Zones fieldwork in the world’s longest-lived communities. AFAR will administer the Institute and award all of its research grants using established internal and external review protocols, starting with a first launch award cycle of $85,000.

Beyond HMD-Blue and mortality data, BZRI will aim to fund research into why these communities live longer, including investigations into communities with record numbers of centenarians and unusually long survival attributes at extreme ages, and why many of those added years are healthy ones. Studies of genetics, behavioral risk factors, and patterns of physical activity among the long-lived will be part of the BZRI research portfolio, complementing existing research studies on long-lived communities, such as AFAR’s SuperAgers Family Study, which aims to uncover the biological factors contributing to healthy aging and exceptional longevity among individuals 95+ and their families.

The economic stakes are high. Given that one year of healthy life has been estimated to hold a value of $38 trillion, the economic value of figuring out how to close the healthy longevity gap between the US and Bolotana is well worth the investment. 

BZRI will welcome research and researchers across this field of study, not only from Blue Zones. BZRI recognizes that not everyone will age exceptionally but everyone can age more healthfully and will also prioritize the implications for today’s younger people, who stand to gain the most from longer, healthier lives and healthier, fiscally sustainable societies as a whole.

“After twenty years of learning from these exceptional places, I know there is still much more to learn about why nonagenarians and centenarians live so long,” said Buettner. “By bringing together the best of our learnings from Blue Zones research with AFAR, which has supported the best researchers in the science of aging in the world, we are going to unlock a whole new level of knowledge and know-how about living healthier, longer lives.”  

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About AFAR - The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) is a national non-profit organization that supports and advances pioneering biomedical research that is revolutionizing how we live healthier and longer. For nearly half a century, AFAR has served as the field’s talent incubator, providing nearly $232,000,000 to close to 4,600 investigators at premier research institutions to date — and growing. In 2026, AFAR expects to provide approximately $6,522,000 to 56 investigators through a range of programs. A trusted leader and strategist, AFAR also works with public and private funders to steer high-quality grant programs and interdisciplinary research networks. AFAR-funded researchers are finding that modifying basic cellular processes can delay — or even prevent — many chronic diseases, often at the same time. They are discovering that it is never too late — or too early — to improve health. This groundbreaking science is paving the way for innovative new therapies that promise to improve and extend our quality of life—at any age. Learn more at www.afar.org.

About Blue Zones - Blue Zones employs evidence-based ways to help people live better, longer. The company's work is rooted in explorations and research done by founder and National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner in blue zones regions around the world, where people live extraordinarily long and/or happy lives. The original research and findings were released in Buettner's bestselling books including The Blue Zones Solution, The Blue Zones of Happiness, Blue Zones Kitchen, Blue Zones Challenge, and Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer — all published by National Geographic books. A hit docuseries, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, was released on Netflix in 2023. Using original Blue Zones research, Blue Zones works with cities, counties, and organizations to make healthy choices easier through permanent and semi-permanent changes to our human-made surroundings. Participating communities have experienced double-digit drops in obesity and tobacco use and have saved millions of dollars in healthcare costs. For more information, visit www.bluezones.com.

 

Study identifies geographic cluster of prenatally detected fetal defects in California’s San Joaquin Valley

Analysis of fetal sonography reports highlights a regional pattern and the need for further research into potential environmental and other contributing factors

SAGE

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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Researchers have identified a geographic cluster of prenatally detected fetal defects in California’s San Joaquin Valley, according to a study published in the Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography.

The retrospective study examined fetal sonographic reports from maternal patients living in rural and urban communities across the region. Using a causal-comparative design, the research team assessed whether the distribution of prenatally detected defects showed meaningful geographic clustering.

The findings provide evidence of a regional cluster and establish an important foundation for the next phase of investigation: determining why the pattern exists. The study does not identify a cause or establish that any particular exposure produced the detected defects. Rather, the authors call for additional research into possible contributing factors, which could include environmental conditions and exposures involving soil, water, air, or agricultural chemicals.

The project brought together advanced perinatal sonography trainees representing practices across the geographic region and a fetal echocardiography laboratory at Community Regional Medical Center. This regional collaboration enabled the team to examine reports across multiple clinical settings and compare patterns among communities.

The authors emphasize that prenatal sonography can contribute not only to individual diagnosis and care but also to population-level surveillance. Recognizing geographic patterns may help clinicians, public health leaders, and researchers identify priorities for more detailed epidemiologic and environmental study.

The article, “Identification of Clusters of Prenatally Detected Fetal Defects in the San Joaquin Valley of California,” was published online May 13, 2026.

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Journal

Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography

DOI

10.1177/87564793261428863

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Identification of Clusters of Prenatally Detected Fetal Defects in the San Joaquin Valley of California