health

Nature Medicine, Published online: 22 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04136-1

Profiling over 6.5 million peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 1,047 patients and 19 diseases at a single-cell transcriptome resolution led to a comprehensive model of inflammation in circulating immune cells. Leveraging this foundational resource enabled us to identify disease-driving inflammatory mechanisms and to build a foundation for a universal diagnostic classification framework.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 21 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04167-8

The Translational Research and Innovation Laboratory (TRAIL) model for accelerating discovery through a shared institutional resource

Nature Medicine, Published online: 21 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04129-0

Ancestry-aware genomic analyses of 6,011 people from the Mexican Biobank characterized allele frequency variation in 42,769 clinically relevant variants across Mexico, accounting for local ancestry and fine-scale geography. Results are accessible through a web-based application, MexVar, to enable data exploration and to foster biomedical research in Hispanic populations.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 21 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04142-3

Rising demand for dialysis poses a central challenge to universal health coverage systems: not just whether to expand access, but how to sustain equitable, high-quality kidney failure care. In this Comment, I argue that long-term viability depends on system architecture, rather than modality choice alone.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 21 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04187-4

The first Nature Portfolio Commission Report outlines paths to sustainable dialysis policies, robust evidence-to-policy translation and south–south collaboration.

Wondering what actions you can take to make a real difference for global heating? The world’s top climate scientists ranked voting for politicians who back strong climate measures as the number-one most effective move you can make. After that, reducing air travel, eating less meat, and cutting emissions from home heating and cooling systems are the best steps individuals can take.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 20 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04151-2

MedHELM, an extensible evaluation framework including a new taxonomy for classifying medical tasks and a benchmark of many datasets across these categories, enables the evaluation of large language models on real-world clinical tasks.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 19 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04176-7

In a trial involving 2,069 patients and 111 clinicians across 24 disciplines, patients performing a preconsultation session with an LLM-powered chatbot had a significantly lower consultation time and both patients and clinicians reported improved communication and satisfaction.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 19 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04140-5

Upregulation of the ventral tegmental area via neurofeedback is associated with a stronger immune response to hepatitis B virus vaccination, and VTA upregulation is achieved through conscious positive expectations.

Nature Medicine, Published online: 19 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-025-04168-7

A randomized trial provides direct human evidence that the placebo effect can shape humoral immunity, showing that reward-related brain activity correlates with vaccine-induced antibody production and opening new avenues for treating many medical conditions.