Prabhat Jha

Adult survival among non-Hispanic white (‘white’) people in the USA has stagnated in recent decades, driven by rising mortality among adults with low educational attainment. We examined national mortality and population data to quantify the contributions of smoking-attributable diseases and selected other causes—notably opioids—to survival between ages 30 and 79 years from 1992 to 2019, stratified by three education levels: ≤11 years (low), 12 years (middle) and ≥13 years (high). We found that the absolute gap in the 50-year risk of death between low- and high-education white adults doubled among men and tripled among women. Smoking-attributable mortality increased markedly among low-education white adults but decreased in the two higher-education groups. Among 3.2 million excess premature deaths in low- and middle-education adults, smoking accounted for 63%. At ages 30–64 years, opioids accounted for 3% of excess deaths, rising to 8% during 2010–2019. Smoking-attributable mortality is the leading contributor to stagnating survival among white adults in the USA.

Objective India had an estimated three to five million excess deaths from causes attributable to SARS-CoV-2 during 2020–2021, far exceeding official government statistics. Most deaths in India occur in rural areas, where medical certification of deaths is limited. Yet, the effects of the pandemic in rural settings remain largely undocumented. We estimated the cause-specific excess mortality in rural areas of selected states of India. Design Longitudinal analyses of hospital mortality data. Settings India’s Health Management Information System (HMIS) reports the number of deaths by cause for adolescents or adults aged 10 years or more. We examined eight states with high coverage of the expected number of deaths in rural areas. Participants We analysed monthly death reports from the HMIS, which covered approximately 0.2 million health facilities during 2018–2023. We compared excess deaths during the peak COVID-19 months in rural health facilities to pre-COVID-19 and non-peak periods of 2021, and categorised reported causes by their probable association with COVID-19. Primary outcome measure Excesses of cause-specific and total mortality. Results During the April–June 2021 SARS-CoV-2 wave, predominantly driven by the Delta variant, monthly deaths in rural health facilities across India surged from approximately 200 000 to 500 000. In eight states with high-quality reporting, rural facility deaths increased by 270% (95% CI 267% to 272%) compared with the same months in 2018–2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, this surge occurred despite a sharp decline in hospital admissions following the national lockdown in March 2020. The largest relative increase was for fever-related and respiratory diseases, and these deaths were markedly elevated even when compared to non-peak months of 2021. Generalising these findings from eight states to all of rural India yields an estimate of approximately 2.6 million excess rural deaths in April–June 2021. In contrast, there were few excess deaths during the Omicron viral waves in 2022–2023. Conclusion COVID-19 substantially increased deaths in rural India during April–June 2021, but reassuringly, no significant excess mortality was observed in subsequent years. The HMIS provides an important opportunity to strengthen routine mortality surveillance in rural India.

One in four of all global suicide deaths occurs in India, yet the epidemiology of suicide mortality in India remains largely undocumented. We analyzed over 20,000 suicides among 829,000 deaths collected from 2001-2019 within a nationally representative random sample of about 1% of Indian homes using lay field reporting with dual central medical adjudication of causes. We applied suicide death proportions to national demographic totals to estimate death rates and used proportional mortality to examine risk factors. While suicide death rates fell by 1.5% annually, the absolute number of suicides remained constant at around 200,000 annually (or 3.8 million from 2001 to 2019) due to rising population. Over this period, 44% and 50% of all suicides occurred at ages 15–29 and 30–69 years, respectively. Suicide death rates declined fastest in women aged 15–29 years, particularly after 2015. Suicide death rates from poisoning, mostly organophosphate pesticides, fell but those from hanging rose. Suicide death risks at ages 15–69 years were about eight times higher in selected southern high-burden states than in selected northern states. Individual suicide risk was highest among sons or daughters’ in-law, rural residents, and men who drank alcohol. Suicide is preventable, but requires accelerating prevention policies to address acute social stress, ongoing efforts to reduce lethality of attempts and reliable epidemiological monitoring.

Background: Verbal autopsies (VAs) collect information on deaths in low and middle-income countries occurring outside healthcare facilities to estimate causes of death (CODs) for use in epidemiological or planning studies. Physician coding of VAs focused on the narrative of deaths and past symptoms is current best practice. Large language models (LLM) such as GPT-5 enable possible use of the narrative portion of VAs to assign CODs. However, there are few if any robust comparisons of LLMs to physician coding. Methods: We analyzed 6,939 VA records from a random sample of deaths in Sierra Leone (2019–2022) to compare five models: three LLMs (GPT-3.5, GPT-4, GPT-5) and two based on symptom algorithms (InterVA-5, InSilicoVA), against physician-assigned CODs. GPT models used narratives, whereas InterVA-5 and InSilicoVA relied on questionnaires. CODs were grouped into 19, 10, and 7 categories for adult, child, and neonatal deaths. We used cause specific mortality fraction (CSMF) accuracy and partial chance corrected concordance (PCCC) to assess population and individual-level agreement respectively, compared to the standard of physician coding. We stratified analyses by age group as CODs vary among neonates, children and adults. Results: Overall, GPT-5 outperformed all models (PCCC = 0.71), followed by GPT-4 (0.61), GPT-3.5 (0.56), InSilicoVA (0.44), and InterVA-5 (0.44). GPT-5 achieved the highest performance for adult (0.68), child (0.71), and neonatal (0.65) deaths. Across ages, performance increased from 1 month to 14 years and declined from 15 to 69 years. GPT-5, GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and InSilicoVA achieved the highest PCCC in 14, 7, 7, and 2 of the 30 CODs, respectively. At the population level, GPT-5 achieved the highest CSMF accuracy (0.9), while all other models had comparable performance (0.74–0.79). Conclusions: GPT models and InSilicoVA showed greater performance for specific CODs at the individual-level. GPT models demonstrated improvements over InterVA-5 and InSilicoVA models. This study provides foundational evidence for integrating LLM and algorithmic models with physician coding to improve the quality of VA data.

Background: Rising cancer incidence, particularly for colorectal cancer, has been reported in young adults. This study examined whether this is related to an increase in mortality. Methods: We analyzed World Health Organization mortality data among young adults aged 25-49 years in 15 most populous upper-middle and high-income countries from 1990 to 2021 with reliable data. Midyear populations were retrieved from the United Nations for the American Countries and from the World Health Organization for the other countries. We compared age-standardized mortality rates in 2019-2021 with those in 2009-2011 and performed joinpoint regression analysis for all cancers and selected most common cancer sites: colorectum, pancreas, lung, and breast. Results: In 2019-2021, the highest age-standardized mortality rates (per 100 000) were in Romanian males (38.6) and Argentinian females (45.9), while the lowest ones were in Japanese males (16.3) and females (22.7). Age-standardized mortality rates for colorectal cancers increased in 2019-2021 compared with 2009-2011 in 9 countries among men and in 7 countries among women. The highest increases were in the United Kingdom (males: +26.1%; females: +33.7%), Canada (males: +25.3%), and Mexico (males: +33.5%; females: +29.7%). Long-term analysis over the last 3 decades showed declining trends in total cancer mortality in the majority of countries, in lung cancer mortality across all countries, and in breast cancer in all countries except in Latin America. Conclusions: Although mortality from common cancers has generally decreased over the past 3 decades, mortality from colorectal cancer has increased in some countries. This highlights the need to control the obesity epidemic and implement targeted surveillance strategies in young populations.

While SARS-CoV-2 infection appears to have spread widely throughout Africa, documentation of associated mortality is limited. We implemented a representative serosurvey in one city of Sierra Leone in Western Africa, paired with nationally representative mortality and selected death registration data. Cumulative seroincidence using high quality SARS-CoV-2 serological assays was 69% by July 2021, rising to 84% by April 2022, mostly preceding SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. About half of infections showed evidence of neutralizing antibodies. However, excess death rates were low, and were concentrated at older ages. During the peak weeks of viral activity, excess mortality rates were 22% for individuals aged 30–69 years and 70% for those over 70. Based on electronic verbal autopsy with dual independent physician assignment of causes, excess deaths during viral peaks from respiratory infections were notable. Excess deaths differed little across specific causes that, a priori, are associated with COVID, and the pattern was consistent among adults with or without chronic disease risk factors. The overall 6% excess of deaths at ages ≥30 from 2020–2022 in Sierra Leone is markedly lower than reported from South Africa, India, and Latin America. Thus, while SARS-CoV-2 infection was widespread, our study highlights as yet unidentified mechanisms of heterogeneity in susceptibility to severe disease in parts of Africa.

Background: Few national-level studies have evaluated the impact of ‘hybrid’ immunity (vaccination coupled with recovery from infection) from the Omicron variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).Methods: From May 2020 to December 2022, we conducted serial assessments (each of ~4000–9000 adults) examining SARS-CoV-2 antibodies within a mostly representative Canadian cohort drawn from a national online polling platform. Adults, most of whom were vaccinated, reported viral test-confirmed infections and mailed self-collected dried blood spots (DBSs) to a central lab. Samples underwent highly sensitive and specific antibody assays to spike and nucleocapsid protein antigens, the latter triggered only by infection. We estimated cumulative SARS-CoV-2 incidence prior to the Omicron period and during the BA.1/1.1 and BA.2/5 waves. We assessed changes in antibody levels and in age-specific active immunity levels.Results: Spike levels were higher in infected than in uninfected adults, regardless of vaccination doses. Among adults vaccinated at least thrice and infected more than 6 months earlier, spike levels fell notably and continuously for the 9-month post-vaccination. In contrast, among adults infected within 6 months, spike levels declined gradually. Declines were similar by sex, age group, and ethnicity. Recent vaccination attenuated declines in spike levels from older infections. In a convenience sample, spike antibody and cellular responses were correlated. Near the end of 2022, about 35% of adults above age 60 had their last vaccine dose more than 6 months ago, and about 25% remained uninfected. The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection rose from 13% (95% confidence interval 11–14%) before omicron to 78% (76–80%) by December 2022, equating to 25 million infected adults cumulatively. However, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) weekly death rate during the BA.2/5 waves was less than half of that during the BA.1/1.1 wave, implying a protective role for hybrid immunity.Conclusions: Strategies to maintain population-level hybrid immunity require up-to-date vaccination coverage, including among those recovering from infection. Population-based, self-collected DBSs are a practicable biological surveillance platform.Funding: Funding was provided by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Pfizer Global Medical Grants, and St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation. PJ and ACG are funded by the Canada Research Chairs Program.