Radically different
Nature Medicine, Published online: 11 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04400-y
A first-in-human trial involving selective removal of the placental protein sFlt-1 in preterm pre-eclampsia provides critical safety data, and could mark the beginning of a new era of targeted therapy for this potentially lethal pregnancy complication.
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Good morning and happy Monday. Lots of infectious disease reading today, and some political movement, too. I hope your coffee is ready.
Late last month, Utah’s Medical Licensing Board called for the immediate suspension of the state’s pilot program with the AI company Doctronic. The program lets a chatbot evaluate patients and recommend prescription renewals for nearly 200 chronic condition drugs, with the state planning to phase out physician review of each case.
The board said that it only learned about the pilot after it had launched. Its warning was blunt: proceeding without proper clinical oversight “potentially places Utah citizens at risk.”
People on Medicare are not getting the recently approved Alzheimer’s medications nearly as much as federal officials anticipated.
Uptake for the drugs, Leqembi and Kisunla, has been so muted that Medicare is not forecasting significant spending on them in 2026 or 2027, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told STAT. It’s a dramatic shift from two years ago, when Medicare projected it would spend billions of dollars annually on Leqembi alone.
The lower-than-expected spending lines up with the challenges that the Alzheimer’s drugs have faced since their approvals, neurologists and Medicare experts told STAT: The intravenous medications are not easy to administer and require a lot of imaging; the population of eligible patients is limited; and the drugs continue to have little meaningful benefits while carrying a risk of severe side effects like brain bleeding.
Researchers in France and Spain have diagnosed a number of men who have sex with other men with dermatophilosis, a skin disease that normally infects livestock, even though the cases had no known exposure to affected animals. Cases have also been detected in Germany, one of the researchers told STAT.
The clusters of infections are in some ways reminiscent of the emergence of mpox in 2022 in networks of gay men and other men who have sex with men. But people who have diagnosed some of these dermatophilosis cases describe a disease that is much milder in presentation.
Any day now, the federal government is supposed to unveil a suite of changes to the No Surprises Act’s controversial arbitration process. Health care providers and insurers are racing to have the final word before the new rules are published, but one side is getting a lot more face time with officials.
The four agencies crafting the Independent Dispute Resolution Operations final rule have held 20 meetings — mostly virtual — with industry groups so far this year. Just four of those were with health insurers or their trade groups. Thirteen were with providers or their trade groups, and another three were with other sectors. Stakeholders can request to meet with agency officials to highlight their priorities and submit relevant materials.
The final rule has been a long time coming. The departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Treasury, and the Office of Personnel Management released an initial version of the rule in November 2023. The proposed changes include tweaks to how claims can be grouped together, more transparency into pre-arbitration negotiations, and changes to fees.