WASHINGTON — The general population may not be as educated about the prevalence of dry eye disease or its impact on vision as many ophthalmologists may believe, according to a speaker.
At the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting, Francis S. Mah, MD, of Scripps Clinic Medical Group, and colleagues recruited 2,003 participants for an online survey administered by the Harris Poll to assess the perception of dry eye disease among U.S. adults, 461 of which self-identified as having dry eye.
“These were over 2,000 people online that said either that they had symptoms of dry eye

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Genetics can influence patients’ cholesterol responses to dietary patterns, according to research presented at the annual NUTRITION conference.
“A major challenge in nutrition science is that people often respond very differently to the same diet, and we still do not fully understand why,” Alexa Barad, PhD, MS, RDN, a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center, told Healio. “This variability makes it difficult to provide dietary advice that works well for everyone and has also contributed to conflicting and sometimes

People who lived within 50 km of a coal-fired power plant were 72.9% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease pathology than those living farther away, according to data presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.
“The exposome doesn’t work alone, but rather, it works in tandem with our genome,” Eleanna Melcher, an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during her presentation. “Our genetic influences plus our environmental influences form the basis of our health.”
Melcher noted that the exposome can be

Erica Schwartz, MD, JD, MPH, received limited bipartisan support Thursday from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on her nomination for CDC director.
Senators voted 13-10 in favor of advancing Schwartz’s nomination to the full Senate, with all Republican members voting yes, along with Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine.
Schwartz served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first presidential term. She spent 24 years as an occupational medicine physician in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard and was the U.S. Coast Guard’s chief medical officer and director of health, safety and

Men using testosterone therapy do not have increased risk for developing prostate cancer, according to a review article published in The Journal of Urology.
Researchers found testosterone therapy was not linked to higher risk for prostate cancer in a review of four large randomized controlled trials and five meta-analyses. Similar findings were also seen in observational trials and other studies assessing prostate cancer incidence among men using testosterone.
Abraham Morgentaler, MD, FACS, the Blavatnik Faculty Fellow in Health and Longevity at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the

An analysis of cancer medicines approved in the past couple decades to treat adults with solid tumors revealed what investigators consider multiple troubling trends.
The proportion of FDA approvals based on trials that used OS as a primary endpoint declined by more than 50% between 2006 and 2025, findings published in JAMA showed.
Meanwhile, the proportion based on trials that used surrogate endpoints increased, with response rate surpassing PFS as the most commonly surrogate marker.
The percentage of approvals based on single-arm trials rather than randomized studies increased more than

Younger age, marital status and use of other substances were independently associated with active cannabis use among patients on hemodialysis, according to study data.
With cannabis legalized in various U.S. states, the number of patients on hemodialysis using cannabis for chronic pain or other reasons may be on the rise, according to Jennifer S. Scherer, MD, MS, FASN, associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and colleagues. However, data on factors associated with cannabis use for patients on dialysis are limited, they wrote.
“I see so many patients

Fathers who took paid paternity leave were at less risk for depression and anxiety, and those who took longer leave were at less risk for depression as well, according to two studies published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Economic and cultural obstacles prevent many new fathers from taking this leave, the researchers said, but changes in employer and government policy as well as in cultural expectations may ease these burdens.
In the first study, Michael B. Wells, PhD, MS, associate professor, and Jingyi Wang, PhD, MS, assistant professor, department of women’s and children’s

SEATTLE — Absorbable single-stay suture bridge fixation may be a viable option for osteochondral fractures after patellar dislocation with low reoperation, good patient-reported outcomes and excellent healing on MRI, according to results.
“The historical fixation method for osteochondral fractures has been to use metal or bioabsorbable screws but using suture bridge fixation with a variety of anchors is an alternative fixation option that may expand fixation indications for thin or fragmented lesions,” Henry Bone Ellis Jr., MD, a pediatric sports medicine surgeon, told Healio about results

The FDA granted orphan drug designation to IKT-001 for treating patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension, according to a press release from Inhibikase Therapeutics.
IKT-001 (Inhibikase Therapeutics) is a prodrug of imatinib mesylate, and the release highlighted that the designation applies to imatinib because it is the active moiety of IKT-001.
According to the release, IKT-001 improved pulmonary vascular and hemodynamic PAH markers and had a lower potential for gastrointestinal toxicity vs. imatinib mesylate in preclinical data.
“We believe that IKT-001’s potential to be the first