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Declining Metabolic Health Associated With Increased Cancer Risk

People with advanced cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome (CKM) may have an increased risk for cancer, according to a study published April 27, 2026, in Circulation: Population Health and Outcomes. CKM syndrome describes the clinical overlap among heart disease, kidney disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Nearly 9 of 10 U.S. adults have at least one condition related to CKM syndrome, HealthDay reported. The American Heart Association (AHA) characterized the condition in 2023 to stress how dysfunction in one organ often triggers systemic decline in the others. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 1.4 million people in Japan. Over a median follow-up of 3.4 years, people with higher stages of heart, kidney and metabolic disorders at the start of the study had increased cancer risk. Researchers tracked the extent of CKM syndrome using the AHA’s staging system from 0 through 4. While stages 1 and 2 indicate early markers like high blood pressure, cancer risk was greater in people with the later stages. Stage 3 patients—those showing signs of high risk for kidney or heart disease—faced a 25% higher cancer risk than those at stage 0. For stage 4 patients, with established heart disease, that risk increased to 30%. The findings remained consistent across all cancer types, regardless of the person’s age or sex. “The study findings suggest that it is important to consider not only cardiovascular disease risk but also cancer risk in people with CKM syndrome,” Hidehiro Kaneko, of the University of Tokyo in Japan and the study’s lead author, said in a press release. Researchers noted that the study findings from a Japanese population may not apply to other populations, even though the link between poor metabolic health and cancer appears to be a global concern.

Pooled Cord Blood Cells Reduce Severe GVHD in Blood Cancer Transplant

The addition of dilanubicel to umbilical cord blood transplant was safe and helped speed up engraftment for people with blood cancers, according to a study published April 27, 2026, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dilanubicel, an investigational cell therapy, uses cells from multiple umbilical cord blood donors. Unlike traditional transplants, it does not require a close genetic match to the patient. Umbilical cord blood provides a source of stem cells so patients lacking matched donors can proceed with transplant, but cord blood transplants carry risks of delayed engraftment—the time it takes for the cells to travel to the bone marrow and produce healthy new blood cells—and slow immune recovery, MedPage Today reported. The phase II trial evaluated 28 patients with blood cancers who received a single matched cord blood unit alongside dilanubicel. “It’s quite fascinating because basically, we give one unit that matches with the patient,” Filippo Milano, director of the cord blood transplant program at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle, told MedPage Today. “Then we pair with this other unit, a pooled unit, which usually contained between six and eight cord blood units pulled together, so we are basically doing a transplant with up to nine different individuals.” All patients underwent conditioning with chemotherapy and radiation, followed by medications to prevent graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a common side effect after transplant when donor cells see healthy tissues as foreign and attack them. After a median of 1.4 years, 27 patients remained alive and disease-free. No patients developed severe symptoms of acute or chronic GVHD. Compared with a group of 24 people treated with conventional cord blood transplant alone, people who received dilanubicel saw faster engraftment and recovered certain immune cells more quickly. The dilanubicel group had 96% overall survival compared with 66% in the transplant-alone group. “We know that cord blood is a powerful stem cell source and for pretty much every patient,” Milano told MedPage Today. “We might now focus only on patients with high-risk disease to see if this approach can rescue these patients as well.”

AI May Detect Pancreatic Cancer up to 3 Years Before Clinical Diagnosis

An artificial intelligence (AI) model helped specialists identify pancreatic cancer on abdominal scans taken up to three years before a clinical diagnosis, according to study findings published April 28, 2026, in Gut. Nearly 85% of people diagnosed with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common type of pancreatic cancer, are not eligible for surgery when the cancer is finally detected, researchers said. “Early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is the most powerful approach to improve survival,” Ajit H. Goenka, a radiologist and nuclear medicine specialist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues wrote in the study. However, pancreatic cancer appears similar to normal tissue on scans, making it a challenge to find when it is still curable, Goenka said. Researchers used the AI model to assess nearly 2,000 CT scans that were originally interpreted as normal. Some of these scans belonged to patients later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The AI model identified 73% of these cases in images taken a median of 16 months before a clinical diagnosis, Inside Precision Medicine reported. This was nearly double the 39% detection rate of specialists reviewing the CT scans without AI. For scans taken more than two years before a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, the AI model identified 68% of cases, approximately three times as many as found by the comparison group of radiologists, at 23%.