Bird flu, brain rot and booze – the health problems you’ll hear about in 2025 | Devi Sridhar
blink and another year passes: but 2025 offers a chance for a fresh start, and some reflection on where we’ve come and what’s to come. I don’t have a crystal ball and can’t fully predict what the year will bring (astrology is still not a recognized science at the University of Edinburgh, where I work), but what I can do is draw on my expertise and data signals from across the world. around the world are highlighting seven public health topics – from potential pandemics to widespread weight loss drugs – that I think are likely to be important in the coming months.
So first the not so happy news: bird flu will continue to maintain its worrying prominence. Since my last column, the US has confirmed the first serious case of H5N1 in Louisiana in a patient infected with the strain circulating in birds (as opposed to the mild infections in humans linked to the strain in cattle). California also has one state of emergency about the growing number of people infected with the disease and concerns that it could mutate further. Given the widespread spread of H5N1 in wild and domestic birds worldwide, and in dairy cows in the US, human infections will continue to be detected. The question is whether these will remain isolated cases, each linked to contact with an infected animal, or whether we will see clusters of human cases in the coming months – the latter could indicate that the virus can be transmitted between humans, which could next step would be. important step in a pandemic scenario. Let’s hope this remains a scenario and not a future reality.
On the positive side, more and more studies are showing the beneficial impact that regular exercise and exercise has not only on the body but also on the mind. We now have good evidence about the effect exercise has on reducing depression and delaying dementia, in addition to improving overall health, such as reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, stroke and chronic pain . Expect this good news to continue to roll in, and for more findings to emerge about the biological and cellular mechanisms that explain this brain-body connection.
In terms of mental health, I would bet that we will see more regulation of adolescent social media use in the coming year. We now have scientific evidence that extended periods of screen time, especially on social media platforms, are detrimental to mental health. It’s no surprise that 2024 is the Oxford Word of the Year brain rot. As the evidence piles up, you can see it country after country introduce legislation to protect minors under the age of 16 from social media algorithms and harmful content, especially as it is an issue that has cross-party support.
Is there anything else that can bring us down? Drinking alcohol. It’s common knowledge that alcohol is a depressant, but we now have solid evidence that alcohol, even red wine, is bad for our bodies, and that ethanol (a key ingredient in alcoholic beverages) causes cellular mutations. Enjoy a drink if you want – as humans we weigh risks and benefits every day – but don’t pretend it’s good for your health. This year is likely to bring more evidence about the harmful effects alcohol has on our bodies, especially on cancer risk.
In 2024, we saw celebrity after celebrity lose a large amount of weight in a short period of time and then admit to taking drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy. These injections contain semaglutide, which suppresses appetite by mimicking the role of a natural hormone called GLP-1, which tells the brain that we have eaten and are full. But far from being a magical weight loss solution, its side effects (including kidney damage, gallbladder problems and certain types of cancer) are documented, as is rebound weight when the injections are stopped. In 2025, expect increasing hesitancy about the use of these medications and the realization that they should be limited to people with a clear medical need; not for those who want to lose 15 pounds to fit into a size 0 dress.
To send you into the year 2025 with good news: we are getting closer eliminating cervical cancer use of the HPV vaccine; and we also see more being done to reduce this child mortality due to malaria thanks to the rollout of the malaria vaccine in African countries. Vaccines are sometimes seen as controversial, but the science is simple: they train our immune systems how to respond and fight pathogens. Safety and efficacy are carefully studied and documented so that scientists can analyze and discuss them. Every minute a child dies from malaria and every two minutes a woman dies from cervical cancer. There is now a real opportunity to prevent these early deaths and give millions of children and women the chance to live longer. That’s worth celebrating this new year.