A new study from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics finds that reducing prescriptions of sleep medication in older adults could provide substantial health and economic benefits.

New research has shown opt-out organ donation policies may reduce living organ donors, leaving systems overall no better supplied with lifesaving organs.

Opt-out organ donation policies which enrol everyone into post-mortem donation programmes by default unless people choose to opt out are being adopted by an increasing number of countries as a way to increase the supply of desperately needed organs.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham were part of an international team that analysed data from 24 countries from 2000 to 2023 and found that although opt-out policies did increase deceased organ donors by a small, non-significant amount of 7%, the number of living donors dropped significantly by 29%. Overall, the opposite effects of deceased and living donors on the supply of organs result in no additional benefit in donor numbers from moving to an opt-out policy.