During the COVID-19 pandemic, tuberculosis (TB) mortality surged for the first time in two decades. While these increases were widely attributed to disruptions to TB services, such as diagnostic delays and treatment interruptions, a new study suggests that we may have overlooked the impact of food insecurity during pandemic lockdowns.

Using individual interviews and focus group discussions, researchers from Boston University, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, found that 78% of households had no income, 67% resorted to distress financing to afford food, and 44% changed their diets—often by eating less or substituting less nutritious foods during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Southern India. Given the well-established link between undernutrition and TB progression, these findings raise important concerns about how food insecurity during crises may fuel TB-related deaths.

Academic medicine is in urgent need of a revolution, say experts in the first report of The BMJ Commission on the Future of Academic Medicine as they set out principles for transforming academic medicine and improving population and planetary health.

Large granular lymphocytic leukemias (LGLLs), including T-cell LGLL and natural kill (NK)-cell LGLL variants, are rare lymphoproliferative disorders characterized by the chronic proliferation of cytotoxic lymphocytes. Despite recent advancements, challenges remain in distinguishing these entities from one another and from related disorders, such as T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia, adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma, Sézary syndrome, and aggressive NK-cell leukemia, owing to overlapping clinical and morphologic features. This article aims to review the role of molecular and immunophenotypic markers in guiding diagnosis and prognosis of LGLLs, with brief review of their clinical and morphologic features by synthesizing current advances in molecular pathogenesis, immunophenotypic profiling, and updated World Health Organization (WHO) classification criteria in order to enhance diagnostic precision, improve prognostic assessment, and inform personalized treatment strategies for these challenging disorders.