Marilynn Larkin
Marilynn Larkin is an award-winning medical journalist and editor who focuses on translating emerging research in obesity, metabolic health, and chronic disease into concise, clinically focused news. Her coverage is distinguished by close attention to how new data, drugs, and digital tools change everyday decision-making for clinicians, especially around weight management, risk stratification, and prevention. She moves easily between highly technical findings and patient-centered concepts such as “food noise,” consistently foregrounding practical implications over abstract theory.
Weight-loss controversies and GLP-1 therapies
Larkin devotes a substantial portion of her work to obesity and weight loss, often unpacking controversies where evidence, guidelines, and clinical practice diverge. In pieces such as “Is Rapid Weight Loss More Effective Than Gradual Loss?” and “Experts Debate Weight-Loss Controversies,” she synthesizes trial data and expert commentary to contrast different approaches to weight reduction and their real-world outcomes. She reports on breakthrough pharmacologic options, including agents like retatrutide that deliver “unprecedented weight loss” in phase 3 studies, explaining mechanisms, efficacy, and safety in terms that clinicians can immediately apply.
Her reporting on the question “Is BMI Good for Anything These Days? Yes — At Least for Now” illustrates her tendency to interrogate entrenched metrics rather than accept them at face value. In that work, she juxtaposes critiques of body mass index with its remaining clinical utility, highlighting alternative risk markers such as waist-to-height ratio and fat distribution. The article on pancreatic and “skinny fat” profiles and their links to brain risks extends this theme, showing how different adiposity phenotypes relate to gray matter atrophy, cognitive decline, and neurological disease. Across these stories, she elevates phenotype-based thinking about obesity and body composition, moving beyond simple weight or BMI toward nuanced risk stratification.
Larkin also attends to the lived experience of patients. Her coverage of “food noise” — intrusive, persistent thoughts about food that can accompany obesity or treatment with GLP-1 drugs — positions subjective symptom burden alongside clinical endpoints. By balancing pharmacologic innovation, statistical outcomes, and day-to-day patient experience, she offers a more complete picture of what “effective” weight loss looks like in practice.
Clinical news on chronic disease and prevention
Beyond obesity, Larkin regularly reports on regulatory decisions and major studies in chronic disease and prevention. When the FDA approved bulevirtide for hepatitis delta virus, she framed the decision within its clinical context, explaining the unmet need, key trial results, and practical considerations for prescribing. Articles such as “Ascending Thoracic Aortic Aneurysms: A ‘Silver Lining’?” and “D-Day for Vitamin D Disease-Prevention Guideline?” show her interest in how new data reshape risk-benefit calculations around cardiovascular disease and micronutrient supplementation, rather than treating these topics as static.
She frequently covers guideline debates and prevention strategies, examining where recommendations may tighten, loosen, or become more individualized. In her vitamin D guideline reporting, for example, she details shifts in disease-prevention messaging and the evidence driving those changes, helping clinicians anticipate how practice standards might evolve. Her work on older adults and other high-risk groups, referenced in her archive, indicates a recurring focus on how age and comorbidities complicate prevention and treatment decisions.
Trial design, eligibility, and inclusive care
Larkin’s coverage often returns to questions of who benefits from new therapies and who is left out, particularly in oncology and metabolic disease. In “Should Cancer Trial Eligibility Become More Inclusive?” she examines how restrictive enrollment criteria can limit the generalizability of findings and exclude patients commonly seen in practice. She pairs discussions of trial design with physician and researcher perspectives, emphasizing the trade-offs between internal validity and broader access.
Her reporting on phenotype-based testing for obesity treatments, reflected in coverage of biologic processes driving individual weight gain, extends this concern for tailored care. By detailing how distinct obesity phenotypes might guide anti-obesity medication selection, she underscores a shift from one-size-fits-all regimens toward precision treatment. This lens on inclusivity is methodological as well as ethical: she highlights how better trial structures and more granular patient profiling can improve both evidence quality and equity in care.
From consumer wellness to clinician-facing reporting
Larkin’s background includes work as a writer for consumer magazines, and she now operates as a medical journalist and editor whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Medscape. That trajectory is visible in her style: she writes in clear, accessible language while maintaining the technical detail expected by physicians and scientists. Her portfolio includes content for professional audiences, consumers, and business clients, with specialties in health and wellness, which allows her to bridge clinical evidence with everyday health concerns.
Pieces like “Gear Up Now for Daylight Savings Time: Five Steps” show her willingness to treat seemingly routine calendar events as public health moments, translating sleep and circadian science into practical advice. In “GLP-1 Apps: Helpful Companions or False Sense of Security?” she applies a similar approach to digital health, weighing the promise and pitfalls of technology meant to support patients on anti-obesity medications. Whether she is covering AI use during colonoscopy, new aortic aneurysm data, or the nuances of vitamin D prevention guidelines, Larkin’s work is consistently oriented toward how clinicians can integrate emerging evidence and tools into everyday practice.
4 more health journalists.
Abida Tasnim
Abida Tasnim is a health writer for The Daily Star who focuses on clear, practical guidance that helps readers recognise risks early and act before everyday illnesses turn into wider public health problems. She reports on infectious disease prevention, using measles coverage to show how outbreaks start with individual decisions and behaviours, not just hospital statistics. Her work explains what happens during an outbreak and then anchors the story in simple steps people can take, such as avoiding crowded places when symptoms appear, practising good hygiene, and seeking medical advice early. She writes direct, action‑oriented health explainers that turn clinical questions about contagion and disease burden into everyday choices. Across her beat, she stresses early recognition, timely care, and prevention as the foundations of healthier communities.
Adrián Carballo Casla
Adrián Carballo Casla stands out for turning complex cohort data on ageing into clear, food‑level advice on what older adults should eat to protect brain health and slow chronic disease. He is a researcher in nutritional epidemiology focused on ageing and chronic disease prevention and a postdoctoral researcher in geriatric epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, writing health explainers for The Conversation. He reports on how diet quality, especially Mediterranean and Mind‑style patterns, shapes dementia risk, grey matter loss and neurocognitive ageing, and how healthy versus pro‑inflammatory diets alter multimorbidity trajectories. His articles translate findings on flavonoids, polyphenols, folate, omega‑3 fats and dietary nitrates into specific food choices and small, practical changes. Much of his coverage is anchored in his own studies on multimorbidity, high‑risk older adults and tailored dietary recommendations, often syndicated to other outlets.
Ahmed Elbediwy
Ahmed Elbediwy brings a lab-based understanding of cancer biology and clinical biochemistry to public-facing health reporting, linking drug mechanisms and molecular pathways to everyday choices about medicines and products. He writes for The Conversation on weight-loss injections, cancer overdiagnosis and anti-ageing supplements, focusing on obesity medicine, cancer signalling, screening trade-offs, skincare and supplement science. His pieces on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro explain why some people do not respond, how gut hormones and appetite signals work, and where psychological support and nutrition fit alongside prescriptions. He co-authors explainers on cancer risk and overdiagnosis and on whether supplements can reverse ageing, separating established knowledge from emerging research. An award-winning senior lecturer at Kingston University, he favours clear, structured explainers, careful definition of key terms and evidence-based appraisal over hype.
Amanda Sheppeard
Amanda Sheppeard is a managing editor and health journalist known for long, detailed explainers that connect complex clinical research, disability policy and political narratives with the daily realities of doctors and patients. She works at The Medical Republic across editorial leadership and commercial content while reporting widely on medicine for its specialist titles. Her real beat spans autism, disability policy, autoimmune disease, infectious threats and system pressures in primary care and hospitals. She covers subjects such as autism diagnosis and the NDIS, rheumatology’s clinical shifts, weight-loss agents in rheumatoid arthritis, infection control, antimicrobial resistance and new modalities like CAR T-cell therapy and microneedles. She reports by doing the synthesis inside the story, linking trial design, molecular targets, funding rules and policy changes to concrete decisions and workflows in clinics and hospitals.