70 years ago this year, a researcher at University College of the West Indies in Jamaica published a paper in The Lancet describing a case series of patients with diabetes who did not have the typical hallmarks of type 1 or type 2 disease. They were young, underweight, resistant to insulin, and did not tend to have ketoacidosis.

The condition was coined J-type diabetes, after Jamaica, and it was briefly recognised by WHO as malnutrition-related diabetes. However, WHO removed it from its official classification in 1999, because of insufficient evidence of its association with malnutrition.

In this episode of In Conversation With, Professor Meredith Hawkins and Professor Nihal Thomas explain how this “lost” condition, which they estimate affects 25 million people worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, is now becoming more widely recognised and better understood, albeit with a long way to go in terms of additional research. They also propose a new name: type 5 diabetes. Listen now to explore the fascinating history of the disorder and the urgent need for effective treatments.

Read the full Viewpoint:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00263-3/fulltext?dgcid=buzzsprout_icw_podcast_September_25_langlo

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Chronic respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma are on the rise in many countries, including low-income and middle-income countries such as Kenya that also have a sizeable burden of tuberculosis.

What does this mean for patients in terms of the affordability of potentially long-term management? How are government-run social health insurance schemes working for individuals and their families? And what might be the individual-level drivers of catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket health expenditure in this population?

Listen to first author Dr Stephen Mulupi and corresponding author Dr Tom Wingfield discuss the nuances of their cross-sectional survey in public health-care facilities in Meru County, Kenya and what they mean for government policy going forward.

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https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00061-0/fulltext?dgcid=buzzsprout_icw_podcast_June_25_langlo

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In a resource-constrained setting like Bangladesh, what proportion of a hospital's capacity is taken up with admissions for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)? How many children needing admission are turned away every year because of lack of bed space? And how many of these "denials" and subsequent deaths might be prevented by the introduction of a maternal RSV vaccine or the monoclonal antibody nirsevimab?

Listen to Senjuti Saha, Deputy Executive Director of the Child Health Research Foundation, describe the results of her fascinating and potentially policy-changing study to our Editor-in-Chief, Zoë Mullan.

Read the full article:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00048-8/fulltext?dgcid=buzzsprout_icw_podcast_May_25_langlo

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