For patients with noncardioembolic ischemic stroke or high-risk transient ischemic attack, asundexian, a factor XIa inhibitor, reduced risk for secondary stroke with no excess risk for any bleeding vs. placebo, a speaker reported.
This is the first time an antithrombotic therapy reduced risk for stroke without increasing bleeding risk in this population, and the results were consistent regardless of age, sex, race and medical history, including atherosclerosis, according to a presentation.
The positive results of the placebo-controlled, double-blind, event-driven phase 3 OCEANIC-STROKE

Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace dropped by more than 1 million users in the face of stalled federal resolutions to skyrocketing health care costs in the United States.
According to CMS, in 2025, 24,166,491 people enrolled in the ACA’s marketplace. In 2026, there are 22,973,219 — a drop of 1,193,272.
Shari M. Erickson, MPH, ACP’s chief advocacy officer and senior vice president of Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, told Healio the “dramatic reversal we are seeing in the enrollment trend this year is a tragedy for many patients.”
“Patients

Criteria for who should get heart surgery and when are based primarily on research in men, but two studies suggest this leads to women getting procedures they need late or not at all.
The studies, led by Catherine M. Wagner, MD, MSc, cardiothoracic surgery resident at University of Michigan Health, examined sex differences in tricuspid repair during mitral valve surgery and sex differences in ascending aortic diameter at the time of acute type A aortic dissection.
For the tricuspid repair study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Wagner and colleagues determined

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA, predicts AI will eventually help people live to an average age of 120 years.
It will detect when someone is dehydrated based on their trip to the restroom or predict when a patient may have a UTI.
“This reactive medicine will go away. It will be predictive analytics,” Castro, founder of Dr. GPT and strategic advisor for ChatGPT and health care, said.
That future is years away though.
Castro joined Hansa Bhargava, MD, Healio's chief clinical strategy and innovation officer, in a Healio Community webinar to help guide clinicians use of AI today.
“The last thing we want is a

In patients with type 2 diabetes and heart failure, those assigned oral semaglutide had reduced risk for heart failure events compared with those assigned placebo, according to new data from the SOUL trial.
As Healio previously reported, in the main results of SOUL, oral semaglutide (Rybelsus, Novo Nordisk) reduced risk for major adverse cardiovascular events by 14% compared with placebo in high-risk adults with type 2 diabetes regardless of SGLT2 inhibitor use. A new analysis of HF events in the SOUL trial population was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
“This was a prespecified analysis of

The FDA cited concerns about human factors in the use of Aquestive Therapeutics’ Anaphylm sublingual film for anaphylaxis and other type 1 allergic reactions in its complete response letter to the company’s new drug application.
“The FDA cited no deficiencies regarding pharmacokinetics, or PK bracketing, repeat dose safety and sustainability of Anaphylm’s performance,” Daniel Barber, MBA, president and CEO of Aquestive Therapeutics, said during a webinar announcing the letter.
The FDA did not have any comments about chemistry, manufacturing or controls (CMC) either, Barber continued.
“We believe

The risk for respiratory tract infection hospitalization was significantly heightened among U.K. adults with severe vitamin D deficiency vs. sufficient vitamin D, according to results published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
“Vitamin D is vital to our physical well-being,” Abigail R. Bournot, MSc, ANutr, PhD researcher at the University of Surrey, said in a press release. “Not only does it keep our bones and muscles healthy, its antibacterial and antiviral properties are also thought to help reduce the risk of respiratory tract infections that can lead to hospitalization.
“This

LAS VEGAS — What if creeping fat in Crohn’s disease isn’t collateral damage, but rather the body’s attempt to trap microbiota escaping the intestine, only to become a driver of fibrosis and disease progression itself?
Data presented by Suzanne Devkota, PhD, during Crohn’s & Colitis Congress suggest that when intestinal microbiota fugitives persist in the adipose tissue, patients may become locked in a “vicious cycle” that could worsen disease: Fat continues to grow, immune cells accumulate and tissue becomes fibrotic.
“We are familiar with the classic extraintestinal manifestations of

Medications targeting the neonatal fragment crystallizable receptor have gained attention due to multiple recent FDA approvals in generalized myasthenia gravis, as well as studies in rheumatoid arthritis and Sjögren’s disease.
However, some agents in the class have stumbled through the pipeline, making their future uncertain in the rheumatology space, according to experts.
“It is going to be some time before an FcRn inhibitor is available as a licensed therapy for standard rheumatological conditions, with perhaps an indication for Sjögren’s disease looking the most promising,” Paul Emery, MD,