Patients who wear contact lenses are more profitable for eye care practices than patients who only wear glasses, according to topline study data.
Compared with patients who wear single-vision eyeglass lenses only, those who wear spherical contact lenses were 78.6% more profitable, and toric lens wearers were 85.6% more profitable, according to the analysis. Multifocal contact lens wearers were 28.9% more profitable than progressive eyeglass lens wearers.
“For a long period of time now, there’s been this thought from practitioners that it’s a lot easier to make money from spectacle wearers than

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Prebiotic sodas may not always live up to expectations for fiber content but could still be a good alternative to some sugar-sweetened beverages, according to research presented here.
“Consumption of sugary beverages in the U.S. is high, so we were interested in prebiotic sodas because they market themselves as a lower sugar, high fiber alternative to regular sodas ... and they’ve continued growing since they were introduced in 2021,” Carlos R. Soto Díaz, MPH, a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Healio. “We also were motivated seeing

Click here to read the Healio Exclusive, "Embrace the future’ of robotics in ophthalmology."
Ophthalmology has a history of integrating innovation, from phacoemulsification and IOLs to advanced imaging, lasers and minimally invasive surgical techniques.
Each transition has required surgeons to rethink how they learned, how they made decisions and how they defined excellence.
As robot-assisted ophthalmic surgery moves from concept to clinical reality, the field will need to evolve in the same way it always has: by combining deep respect for surgical fundamentals with a willingness to adopt

Roughly 20 years ago, there were no pathogens resistant to broad-spectrum antibiotics in Africa and Southeast Asia, but antimicrobial resistance in these regions is increasingly common among children, according to study findings.
Last year, Yanhong Jessika Hu, MD, PhD, MPH, a research fellow at the University of Sydney School of Public Health and Joseph Harwell, MD, from Brown University, presented findings at ESCMID Global 2025 estimating that 3 million children died from antimicrobial resistance (AMR)-associated complications in 2022 alone.
Using the same dataset, their latest study published

Ziltivekimab, a novel interleukin-6 inhibitor, reduced inflammatory markers in patients with atherosclerosis and chronic kidney disease but did not lower risk for major adverse CV events, according to results of the ZEUS CV outcomes trial.
For the double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 ZEUS trial, researchers enrolled more than 6,300 patients with atherosclerotic CVD, chronic kidney disease (CKD) and inflammation, defined as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels of at least 2 mg/L, and randomly assigned them to once-monthly subcutaneous ziltivekimab 15 mg (Novo Nordisk) or placebo,

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The American Society for Nutrition and The Obesity Society recently announced a partnership that offers opportunities for discounted pricing and will advance clinical practice.
According to a press release from The Obesity Society (TOS), the alliance allows TOS members to register for the annual NUTRITION meeting at the same price rate as American Society for Nutrition (ASN) members, and ASN members will receive TOS member rates for ObesityWeek.
TOS said the organizations will also “work to accelerate the translation of cutting-edge research into effective practice,

About 36 million U.S. adults have chronic kidney disease, with increasing prevalence tied to diabetes, according to study data published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
National trends on the prevalence of CKD are limited by structural challenges, evolving eGFR equations and other constraints, according to Ashish Verma, MBBS, assistant professor of nephrology at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. Verma and Sophie E. Claudel, MD, a nephrology fellow at Boston Medical Center, aimed to quantify CKD prevalence using nationally representative data.
“The National

GLP-1 receptor agonist therapy was associated with an increased risk for hair loss among adults with type 2 diabetes compared with other commonly used diabetes drugs, according to a study published in The BMJ.
The risk, which was specific to nonscarring alopecia, was greater among people receiving GLP-1 treatment vs. sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-IV) inhibitors for type 2 diabetes.
“These associations were consistent across subgroup and sensitivity analyses, supporting the robustness of the findings,” Huilin Tang, PhD, a postdoctoral

Parts of southeastern Pennsylvania with higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease mortality had levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that exceed federal minimums, according to data from Temple University researchers.
Findings from the ecological study were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2026. Erin Kulick, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Temple, said the Alzheimer’s disease mortality rate in the study area is approximately 13% higher than the overall U.S. rate.
“Regardless of sex, we saw overall that the highest exposure

Click here to read the At Issue to this Healio Exclusive.
When new technology is developed, even one that seems revolutionary or inevitable, skepticism is normal.
John A. Hovanesian, MD, FACS, remembers the initial rollout of self-driving cars and some of the disaster stories he saw in the early days after that technology became available to the public. However, he told Healio | OSN — as he headed to the office in a self-driving car — this innovation has made him much more comfortable with something that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
“I’m shocked how good it is,” he said,