Adults and adolescents without risk factors for hepatic or pancreatic conditions prescribed isotretinoin for acne should not be required to undergo routine laboratory testing, according to a viewpoint published in JAMA Dermatology.
The motivations behind streamlining these clinical practices are to ease patient health anxiety, reduce the financial burden on patients and align more closely with emerging evidence that suggests clinically important hepatic and pancreatic complications associated with isotretinoin are rare or associated with symptoms and identifiable risk factors, according to

Vivienne S. Hau, MD, PhD, spoke about a session she moderated at the American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting on current wet age-related macular degeneration treatments and their use in real-world practice.
“This is when it really brings it home and provides some practicality to how retina specialists are using these medications,” Hau, of Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, told Healio in a video interview.

In this video, Vivienne S. Hau, MD, PhD, discussed a session presented at the American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting on emerging durable treatments for wet age-related macular degeneration.
“This was really interesting because we talked about several different types of mechanisms, the safety and efficacy, and the long-term duration and how we’re moving beyond basically just anti-VEGFs now onto another phase of treatment for macular degeneration,” Hau, of Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, said.

Subretinal injection of human stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium yielded promising results in patients with geographic atrophy, according to preliminary data presented at the American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting.
“[This is] some very exciting study data that potentially shows the promise of using stem cells to repair damage in the eyes from these diseases, which we’ve never been able to do before,” Vivienne S. Hau, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, told Healio.

One-fifth of cancer drugs initially denied coverage by Medicare Part D insurance plans ultimately received approval from independent reviewers after second-level appeal, according to study results.
“This suggests that Part D plans may be making decisions that deny people with cancer access to potentially clinically appropriate medications,” lead author Youngmin Kwon, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of health policy at Vanderbilt Health, told Healio. “Especially concerning is the fact that the ‘overturned rate’ for cancer drugs that are prescribed on label — meaning they

Primary prevention of heart disease may be improved with the use of waist circumference or waist-to-height ratio rather than BMI to guide cardiovascular disease risk assessment, researchers reported.
Many people with otherwise normal BMI but more central adiposity may experience increased risk for CV events. Conversely, those with obesity based on their BMI but lower central adiposity may have lower CV risk compared with those with obesity and higher central adiposity, according to data published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“It is becoming more recognized that

The Deseyne contact lens for presbyopia significantly improved near and intermediate visual acuity vs. a control lens and extended depth of focus by an average of nearly 1 D, according to a trial published in Optometry and Vision Science.
“Many soft lens wearers drop out when they experience early presbyopia due to decreased intermediate and near vision,” study author Mark Bullimore, FCOptom, PhD, FAAO, adjunct faculty at University of Houston College of Optometry, told Healio. “The Deseyne lens will improve intermediate and near visual acuity, giving them increased function.”

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Certain lipid parameters and biomarkers are better predictors of heart disease in women than LDL cholesterol level, a speaker said at the American Society for Preventive Cardiology Congress on CVD Prevention.
The insight was part of the 2026 Nanette Wenger Award Lecture delivered by Samia Mora, MD, MHS, director of the Center for Lipid Metabolomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The award, named after Healio | Cardiology Today Editorial Board Member Nanette Wenger, MD, who pioneered research on sex-specific CVD risk, is

Only about one in five patients with chronic kidney disease met the 2021 Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes systolic blood pressure target, according to study data published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
The 2021 KDIGO guideline on BP recommends a systolic BP target of less than 120 mm Hg for patients with CKD — a target lower than other BP guidelines at the time, according to Hyeok-Hee Lee, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School.
“The SPRINT trial showed that targeting systolic BP under 120 mm Hg led to a lower risk of CVD than

People who test positive for type 1 diabetes autoantibodies and have overweight or obesity may lower their risk for stage 3 type 1 diabetes if they reduce their BMI to normal range, according to data published in Diabetes Care.
“Among individuals with islet autoantibodies who had overweight or obesity, those whose BMI subsequently returned to the healthy range had an approximately 48% lower risk of progressing to clinical, or stage 3, type 1 diabetes,” Maria J. Redondo, MD, PhD, MPH, professor of pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital, told Healio. “This association was observed primarily in