NEW ORLEANS — In this video from the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting, Jennifer I. Lim, MD, highlights the impact of AREDS vitamins and a Mediterranean diet on geographic atrophy progression.
Lim, of the University of Illinois Chicago, discussed AREDS1 and AREDS2, which showed that vitamins can slow the rate of GA progression by approximately 35% and 36%, respectively, regarding growth of the lesion toward the foveal center.
“I think it’s important for everybody to realize that although there are two FDA-approved complement inhibitors, what we take into our bodies can also slow down

PHOENIX — Eplontersen monotherapy without baseline transthyretin stabilizers preserved the health status of patients with transthyretin amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy out to 140 weeks, a speaker reported.
The results of a post hoc analysis of the CARDIO-TTRansform trial of eplontersen (Wainua, Ionis/AstraZeneca) in patients with transthyretin amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) were presented at the Heart Failure Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting.
Eplontersen is an RNA-targeted silencer designed to lower production of transthyretin (TTR) by the liver and was previously FDA

LAS VEGAS — Physicians can mitigate their legal risk by documenting their clinical reasoning and staying informed about emerging medical-legal issues, a speaker at OMED said.
Medical legal “is always a great topic for people to learn more” about, John R. Casey, DO, MA, FACOEP-D, director of medical education at OhioHealth Doctors Hospital, told Healio.
“It’s not meant to be scary. Some people think it’s a bit dry, but I think it’s interesting if you look at it with the same lens that you look at quality review,” Casey said. “If you think about it from the fact that we all do medicine, we’re

SAN DIEGO — The age-standardized mortality rate following ischemic stroke in the U.S. has declined significantly since 1990, but the rate has plateaued since the mid-2010s while the number of people living with ischemic stroke has increased, according to a poster presentation.
The top risk factors contributing to disability-adjusted life years are largely related to vascular health, indicating the need to bolster vascular risk control and expand post-stroke rehabilitation, Ahar Bhatt, MBBS, a graduate of Smt. NHL Municipal Medical College in Ahmedabad, India, said at the American Neurological

For decades, retinal evaluation has been defined largely by what clinicians can see.
But in many chronic retinal and optic nerve diseases, structural change is not the beginning of the disease process. It is the visible consequence of a much earlier breakdown.
That distinction matters because eye care is beginning to move from a purely structural model of ocular disease toward a metabolic one. The emerging paradigm can be summarized simply: Metabolic stress occurs first, functional decline follows and structural damage appears last.
The retina is not just an anatomic structure to be imaged. It

Women who viewed a brief video within a week of surviving sexual assault experienced less acute stress and pain a week later than those who had treatment as usual, according to data published in JAMA Network Open.
Similarly, women who received supportive and educational texts reported less pain at 4 weeks, Kate Walsh, PhD, H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellow, department of psychology and gender and women’s studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues wrote.
“More than one in two women in the U.S. experience a sexual assault in their lifetime. Although 75% will meet criteria for posttraumatic

Children and young adults who previously had differentiated thyroid cancer had increased risk for future malignancies compared with those who did not have thyroid cancer, researchers reported in Thyroid.
“Second primary malignancies represent an important late outcome among children, adolescent and young adult differentiated thyroid cancer survivors and often occur decades after the initial diagnosis, underscoring the need for prolonged monitoring,” Samah Hayek, DrPH, senior lecturer in the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine, School of Public Health at Tel Aviv University in

PHOENIX — Adults with COPD and an eosinophilic phenotype had lower exposure to systemic corticosteroids in a year with add-on mepolizumab vs. placebo, according to findings presented at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
“Reducing the exposure to systemic steroids will have a benefit on patients with severe COPD because it reduces the risk of systemic comorbidities associated with their use,” Nicola A. Hanania, MD, MS, FCCP, Brown Foundation Endowed Professor of Medicine and director of the airways clinical research center at Baylor College of Medicine, told Healio.
In a pooled analysis of data from the

PHOENIX — In hospitalizations for diabetic ketoacidosis, the odds for in-hospital mortality were decreased among those with asthma or COPD vs. no pulmonary comorbidity, according to data presented at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
In a retrospective case-control study, Anthony Lim, MD, PGY-3 internal medicine resident at The Brooklyn Hospital Center, and colleagues evaluated 2,743,079 adult hospitalizations for diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) from the National Inpatient Sample (2016 to 2023) to determine if having asthma or COPD impacts the odds for mortality, in-hospital complications, length of stay

The FDA has approved a liquid formulation of Evoxac for the treatment of dry mouth symptoms in Sjögren’s disease, according to a press release from the manufacturer.
Evoxac oral solution (cevimeline HCl, Cosette Pharmaceuticals) was developed as an alternative for adults with Sjögren’s disease and dry mouth symptoms who have difficulty swallowing Evoxac capsules, the company said. It is expected to become commercially available by the end of 2026.
The approval also represents the first successful new drug application for Cosette Pharmaceuticals, which acquired Evoxac from Japanese