‘Night owl’ lifestyle may bring higher risk of heart disease: Study
In this photo illustration a girl looks at the screen of her smartphone on April 16, 2021 in Bonn, Germany. (Ute Grabowsky/Photothek via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — So-called “night owls” may face a higher risk for heart attack and stroke, a new study published Wednesday finds.
Researchers found that “evening type” people had poorer cardiovascular health scores than those who were neither “morning type” or “evening type” people and had an associated 16% higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, analyzed survey and biometric data from more than 320,000 British adults aged 39 to 74.
Participants were asked whether they considered themselves a “definite morning” person, a “definite evening” person or somewhere in between, termed “intermediate.”
Researchers then calculated each person’s heart health using the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) score. These factors include four health behaviors — diet quality, physical activity, sleep duration and nicotine exposure — and four health factors, including blood pressure, body mass index, blood sugar and blood fat levels.
“These are the factors the American Heart Association has identified as cardiovascular disease risk factors,” Kristen Knutson, associate professor of neurology and peventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine specializing in sleep and circadian rhythm research and fellow at the American Heart Association, told ABC News.
“Different people will have them in different combinations, but they are all correlated with one another,” she added.
Evening people were 79% more likely to have poor overall heart health compared with those in the intermediate group, the study found. Morning people did slightly better than the intermediate group, with a 5% lower risk of having a poor LE8 score.
Researchers found the evening people had a 16% higher risk of both heart attack and stroke. Researchers estimated that about 75% of this higher risk was explained by other LE8 factors, rather than sleep timing alone.
“It isn’t being a night owl that’s a problem,” Knutson said. “I think being a night owl who’s trying to live in a morning lark’s world is a conflict between one’s internal clock and their social clock.”
The higher risk appeared to be due to certain lifestyle behaviors and other health factors, the study found.
Nicotine use had the strongest impact on heart health, explaining 34% of the link between late bedtime and heart disease. Shorter sleep duration accounted for 14% of the extra risk, high blood sugar for 12% and body weight and diet each accounted for about 11% of the increased risk.
Behavioral effects of being a night owl were stronger in women than in men — women were 96% more likely to have lower LE8 scores compared to 67% in men, though they did not have a higher risk of heart attack or stroke.
“Women are further stressed by that lifestyle because they’re having to still get up and be the primary caregiver for family members,” Dr. Sonia Tolani, preventative cardiologist, Associate Professor of Medicine, and co-director of the Columbia University Women’s Heart Center, told ABC News.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers concluded prevention efforts should focus on improving lifestyle habits when spending more time awake at night.
“The most obvious way is to quit smoking and that’s not new advice,” Knutson says. “But sleep regularity, meaning trying to go to bed at about the same time every day and not jumping around the clock — particularly on days off — can really help lead to regular timing of other behaviors like light exposure, meals, exercise activity.”
“Prioritize the low-hanging fruit” recommended Tolani. If an hour at the gym is not doable, “maybe you can find a way to do a 10-minute walk or cut a little bit of salt from your diet. Just try to make small changes,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a final version of its report on pediatric gender-affirming care on Wednesday, claiming it found “medical dangers posed to children,” which is receiving pushback from medical groups.
The report alleged that gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender-affirming surgeries — caused significant, long-term damage.
It comes after HHS published in May an early version of what it referred to as a “comprehensive review” of transgender care for children and teens, in which it called for a broader use of psychotherapy for young people with gender dysphoria rather than gender-affirming medical interventions.
The HHS referred to the final version of the report as “peer-reviewed,” but some of those who reviewed the contents are researchers who have spoken against gender affirming care.
Some major medical groups have pushed back, stating that psychotherapy first is the standard approach in gender-affirming care and that additional care, such as hormonal therapies, only occurs after in-depth evaluations between patients and doctors.
The American Psychological Association (APA), which reviewed the report, argued it lacks transparency and that scientific research does not support the authors’ theories.
Experts in the gender-affirming care space questioned the validity of the findings, saying that studies have found that gender-affirming care is generally safe and that youth with gender dysphoria are typically evaluated, diagnosed and treated based on an individual assessment by qualified providers.
“This report does not add to the science. It adds to the noise around care for transgender young people, care that is provided by licensed clinicians according to a standard of care,” Kellan Baker, senior advisor for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project, an independent think tank that provides research, insight and analysis on LGBTQ+ issues, told ABC News.
“That standard of care is based on the same comparable quality of evidence as care across any other area of medicine,” Baker continued. “There is nothing new or unusual about care for transgender young people except for the extraordinary degree of political antagonism that is being focused on this very, very small group of young people.”
In a press release on Wednesday, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, called the report “a turning point for American medicine,” adding that “we are committed to ensuring that science, not ideology, guides America’s medical research.”
David Aizuss, MD, chair of the American Medical Association Board of Trustees and Susan J. Kressly, MD, FAAP, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, released a joint statement on Wednesday.
“We reject characterizations of our approach to gender-affirming care as negligent or ideologically driven, and take particular issue with the false assertion that our members have committed ‘malpractice’ or betrayed their oath in any way,” the statement read.
“These claims, rooted in politics and partisanship, misrepresent the consensus of medical science, undermine the professionalism of physicians, and risk harming vulnerable young people and their families,” Aizuss and Kressly added.
The final version of the HHS report listed nine authors, all of whom have expressed skeptical views of, or have opposed, pediatric gender-affirming care.
The initial May report did not list the names of its authors to “help maintain the integrity of this process.” Critics at the time pointed out that this prevented readers from gauging whether the names were credible or had any conflicts of interest.
The disclosures in the final report show that at least six of the nine authors have financial interests or have spoken out extensively opposing gender affirming care.
This includes authors who have been paid to offer expert testimony on legislative efforts to ban pediatric gender medicine and have published papers critical of pediatric gender medicine, including claims that such care does not improve depression or suicidality among trans youth.
The report included 10 reviewers, including individual physicians and medical groups, some of whom praised the report as “scientifically sound” and said the main findings and conclusions are “correct.”
Other reviewers were critical, including the APA, which accused the authors of the report of cherry-picking which studies it used in its findings and not justifying why other studies were excluded. Additionally, it says key findings in studies that were relied on were unexplained or absent.
“While the HHS Report purports to be a thorough, evidence-based assessment of gender-affirming care for transgender youth, its underlying methodology lacks sufficient transparency and clarity for its findings to be taken at face value,” the APA wrote in its review, found in the report’s supplement.
In conclusion, the group wrote, “the report’s claims fall short of the standard of methodological rigor that should be considered a prerequisite for policy guidance in clinical care.”
In a response to the report, the Endocrine Society said in a statement to ABC News that mental health care is already part of treating transgender and gender-diverse youth with health care protocols requiring initial mental health support and evaluations.
However, they add that access to medication such as hormone therapy can be used in conversations between patients, their families and their doctors. They add that such care is also relatively rare.
“The use of puberty-delaying medication or hormone therapy remains rare and reflects a cautious approach as recommended in our guideline,” the statement read. “Fewer than one in 1,000 U.S. adolescents with commercial insurance received either treatment during the five-year period from 2018 to 2022, according to a January 2025 study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. And our 2017 guidelines recommend against prescribing any medication for gender dysphoria before puberty starts.”
Gender-affirming care is supported by multiple major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) and the APA, and the Endocrine Society.
Studies have shown that many of the treatment options are generally safe and that care can have a positive impact on mental health, which psychotherapy alone cannot provide, experts said.
Some experts have questioned the significance of interventions on long-term mental health as well as the possibility of regret and point out potential risks to future fertility.
Additionally, systematic reviews from Sweden, Finland and the U.K. have resulted in the three countries restricting gender-affirming care. England’s National Health Service ended prescribing puberty blockers for minors experiencing gender dysphoria outside of clinical trials. Sweden and Finland have followed psychotherapy-first models.
Jayanta Bhattacharya, director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Last week, the Trump administration announced it was banning the use of human fetal tissue from some abortions in federally funded medical research.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the policy would go into effect immediately and advance “science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease,” NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement.
Scientists told ABC News that research using human fetal tissue has contributed to understanding diseases better, such as HIV and Ebola, and helped in the development of some vaccines and drugs.
Some scientists worry the ban could prevent groundbreaking discoveries about the behaviors of certain diseases and stop the development of life-saving therapies.
“It’s not a scientific decision,” Dr. Lawrence Goldstein, a professor emeritus of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. “It’s a moral decision that places the rights of fetal tissue that would be discarded above the rights of sick people who will benefit from that research.”
How human fetal tissue has been used
Human fetal tissue has been used to study serious diseases and disorders, including AIDS, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, dengue, Ebola, hepatitis C, diabetes and spinal cord injuries.
Cell lines have been created from human fetal tissue that have led to the development of vaccines for rubella, rabies, chickenpox, shingles and hepatitis A. Research has also led to the development of drugs to treat HIV, hemophilia and sepsis.
President Donald Trump himself benefited from the research: the experimental antibody treatment he took to treat COVID-19 was developed using cells derived from human fetal tissue. At the time, Trump praised the treatment as a “cure.”
The tissue has been also used in reproductive medicine research to study fertility issues, pregnancy issues, and pregnancy conditions such as pre-eclampsia.
Goldstein said that human fetal tissue research also helps create humanized mouse models to study human immune systems.
“Using fetal tissue, you can make mice that have human blood-forming and immune systems,” Goldstein said. “And that’s valuable because a lot of the viruses that trouble human health don’t grow properly in mice. But if you can make mice with human blood and immune systems, those viruses will frequently grow, and you can learn how to make therapies to block them.”
There are very strict guidelines that researchers have to follow when using human fetal tissue, ensuring they are in compliance with federal and sometimes state requirements.
Additionally, the research must be reviewed and approved by the NIH’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), which specifically assesses federally funded research that uses human subjects.
The IRB assures that donation and reception of human fetal tissue were done with consent and not coercion and that there were no enticements provided to the participant, the clinic or the research team.
A researcher with knowledge of the matter, who asked that their name not be used due to fears of retribution, told ABC News that federal law states that donation cannot be even brought up to a pregnant individual deciding to terminate their pregnancy before the decision to terminate.
“These are extremely important guardrails that are in place to ensure that everything is handled properly,” the researcher with knowledge of the matter said.
Impacts of ending NIH funding
The Trump administration first instituted a ban ending all human fetal tissue research at NIH in 2019, but it was reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.
The current ban stops NIH funds from supporting all “grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards and research and development contracts,” the agency said in a statement.
Some groups praised the Trump administration’s new policy, including the Independent Medical Alliance, a group that promoted unproven treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is no ethical justification for performing experiments on tissue derived from aborted human beings,” Dr. Joseph Varon, president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance, said in a statement. “The fact this practice continued for years within federally funded research institutions shows just how far removed parts of HHS had become from foundational medical ethics. This correction is long overdue.”
However, some scientists say the ban will affect ongoing and future work.
Dr. Anita Bhattacharyya, an associate professor of cell and regenerative biology in the school of medicine and public health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she was hoping to apply for a future NIH grant to study human fetal tissue research and will now not be able to do so.
Bhattacharyya explained she currently uses human-induced pluripotent stem cells, which are reprogrammed cells that are similar to embryonic stem cells, in her work. However, the loss of NIH funding for human fetal tissue research could affect future work.
“My reaction was, ‘How are we going to do some of our research if we can no longer use human fetal tissue?'” she recalled to ABC News. “In particular, my lab studies Down syndrome and so we know that in Down syndrome, the brain develops differently to lead to the intellectual disability that people with Down syndrome have.”
Bhattacharyya said human fetal tissue is valuable when studying Down syndrome or neuropsychiatric disorders because it can recapitulate what’s happening in brain development.
“And so that’s where the human fetal tissue really provides us with a benchmark or the ground truth so that we can validate our models,” she said.
Finding alternative methods of funding is another issue, scientists told ABC News. The NIH was the largest funder of research involving human fetal tissue, and no longer financially supporting such research may leave scientists scrambling to find other donors.
Goldstein said there are private disease foundations that will sometimes fund human fetal tissue research, such as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which funds stem-cell-related research in California.
However, experts say the hole left behind by the lack of NIH funding cannot be made up through private donations.
“There’s really nothing adequate to substitute for the federal effort,” Goldstein said. “It is the largest funder of medical research in the United States. It has systems in place to regulate quality and ensure that ethics and scientific principles are being adhered to. We really can’t move ahead as efficiently as we would like with the absence of the NIH.”
Although the NIH said tissue from spontaneous abortions will still be available, the researcher with knowledge of the matter said this tissue is very often not suitable for research purposes.
“The reason is because, most often, spontaneous abortion happens as a result of some sort of genetic abnormality or some injury, infection, some kind of damage to the fetus itself, that renders that tissue completely unusable for scientific research,” they said.
“Additionally, because spontaneous abortions are just that, they’re spontaneous and therefore completely unpredictable,” the researcher continued. “We have to be very careful in the way that we handle that tissue. It makes those studies intractable. And so, for that reason, spontaneous abortions are not a suitable replacement for fetal tissue research that we would normally obtain.”
Pink ribbon flag in support of breast cancer awareness. Brent Lewis/The Denver Post via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — When it comes to early detection, mammograms remain the only screening test proven to reduce deaths from breast cancer in average-risk women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, only about 75% of eligible U.S. women schedule regular screenings, according to a JAMA study published earlier this month.
Experts believe that misunderstandings about who needs screenings and how often may be part of the reason some women skip mammograms. Here are eight evidence-based facts about breast cancer screening to help set the record straight.
CLAIM: Only women with a family history need screening
Although some women with family history of breast cancer may need earlier or more frequent screenings, all women need regular screenings, doctors said.
“Only about five to 10% of breast cancers are hereditary,” Dr. Aparajita Spencer, a breast surgical oncologist at CHI Memorial in Chattanooga, Tennessee, told ABC News. “Most women with breast cancer do not have a family history.”
CLAIM: A lump is the earliest sign of breast cancer
Although a lump is one of the most common symptoms of breast cancer, it is not the only sign and can be missed when performing self-examination.
“The whole point of the mammogram is to pick up the earliest signs of a breast cancer, which are usually calcifications, not really a mass,” Dr. Preeti Subhedar, breast surgery chief at Hackensack Hospital in New Jersey, told ABC News.
“When people come in with a mammographically or image-detected breast cancer, usually it’s fairly small and outcomes are really good,” she added.
CLAIM: Breast size affects your cancer risk
Subhedar said that breast size has nothing to do with risk.
“An average-risk woman has a 12% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer,” she said.
Spencer added that breast size and breast density are often confused, but they’re not the same. A mammogram will read dense breasts as having a higher proportion of glandular and fibrous tissue compared to fatty tissue. Mammary glands typically produce milk while fibrous tissue forms the breast.
This can slightly raise cancer risk and make tumors harder to catch, which is why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized a rule in 2024 requiring providers to inform women if their breast tissue is dense and may require additional follow-up screenings.
CLAIM: Younger women don’t need mammograms
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommends annual screening mammograms starting at age 40 for average-risk women.
For women with a strong family history of breast cancer or a known genetic mutation, the American Cancer Society recommends beginning annual screenings with both a mammogram and a breast MRI at age 30, or even earlier if a close relative was diagnosed at a young age.
CLAIM: A negative mammogram means you don’t have breast cancer
Experts said a mammogram does not mean a patient doesn’t have breast cancer but rather that breast cancer wasn’t found on that specific mammogram.
“Mammograms occasionally miss early-stage cancers,” noted Spencer. “There is always a chance that you have something that pops up between screenings. We can’t say 100%, which is why it’s really important to get those yearly screenings.”
CLAIM: Mammograms can cause cancer because of radiation
The benefit of early detection far outweighs the tiny risk from the small amount of radiation, experts said.
The total lifetime risk for radiation-induced breast cancer is still very low at one in 5,000 — compared to about one in every eight women who will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, and roughly one in 43 women who will die from it.
CLAIM: There are safe and effective alternatives to mammograms
“There’s no universal replacement for screening mammograms. That is why that is the gold standard,” Spencer said.
Mammograms are safe — even during pregnancy when needed, she added. Other diagnostic tools including, an MRI and an ultrasound, may be used to provide additional information, but they do not replace the mammogram.
CLAIM: A breast biopsy spreads breast cancer
Medical experts agree that breast biopsies are safe, and the benefit of getting an accurate diagnosis far outweighs the minimal risks.
“It is extremely, extremely important that we get a tissue biopsy when someone comes in with an abnormal mammogram because there’s a lot of biological information that we learn about a tumor from that biopsy,” Spencer said.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women after skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death, according to the American Cancer Society.
In 2024, more than 300,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and about 40,000 died from the disease. Today, more than 3 million breast cancer survivors live in the U.S. — a powerful reminder of the importance of early detection, doctors said.
Allyson Heng, MD, is resident physician in neurology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
