The UK is set to bask in 26C temperatures from today with the mercury predicted to soar even further to a potential 32C by next week -as hot as Barbados and Malibu.

On that note, we have assembled a menu of tidbits to help you get started. Meanwhile, we have also fired up the coffee kettle for another cup of stimulation. Our choice today is Mexican cinnamon. We hope your day is simply smashing and, as always, do keep in touch if something saucy arises …

Sarepta Therapeutics is halting shipments of its Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy for patients who can no longer walk, following the death of a second person who received the treatment, STAT writes. The company disclosed the first patient death — a 16-year-old boy — in March. Both occurred from acute liver failure, a side effect that has been seen with other gene therapies. Sarepta said both patients were non-ambulatory, meaning their disease had progressed to the point they relied on a wheelchair. Most children with Duchenne lose the ability to walk by adolescence. The company is now working with experts to come up with an enhanced immunosuppressive regimen that could make the therapy, called Elevidys, safer for non-ambulatory patients. Sarepta also said it was pausing dosing in an ongoing clinical trial of Elevidys, called Envision, that is focused on older ambulatory and non-ambulatory patients. 

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Angus King (I-Maine) introduced a bill that would ban pharmaceutical manufacturers from using direct-to-consumer advertising, including social media, to promote their products, The Wall Street Journal writes. The bill would prohibit any promotional communications targeting consumers, including through television, radio, print, digital platforms, and social media. It will apply to all prescription drug advertisements. The bill comes after repeated calls from Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to end prescription drug advertising. Kennedy said while running for president that he would issue an executive order kicking pharmaceutical commercials off television, arguing that Americans take too many prescription medicines and suggesting that industry spending was influencing news coverage of the drug industry. Sanders and King each voted against Kennedy’s confirmation, but are critics of prescription drug ads. King in February introduced a bill to prohibit pharmaceutical advertising to consumers in the first three years after a medicine’s approval, following other efforts in past years.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

Meanwhile, despite the issue being referred for further action, the names of the doctors have not been made public or shared with the National Medical Commission (NMC), raising questions about the progress of the case.

The DoP has refused to share the names of those 30 doctors, who were to face action from the National Medical Commission (NMC) for accepting pharma freebies in the form of those trips to Monaco and Paris.

For more information, click on the link below:

Who were the 30 doctors? RTI sparks questions over secrecy in Pharma Freebies case

Independent of weight reduction, study participants showed significant improvements in cardiometabolic markers, including higher HDL cholesterol (the healthy type of cholesterol), lower levels of leptin (the hormone that signals hunger), and less visceral fat (belly fat found deep inside the abdominal cavity, sometimes wrapping around organs).

“We have been conditioned to equate weight loss with health, and weight loss-resistant individuals are often labeled as failures,” said lead author Anat Yaskolka Meir, postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School. “Our findings reframe how we define clinical success. People who do not lose weight can improve their metabolism and reduce their long-term risk for disease. That’s a message of hope, not failure.”

The study will be published June 5 in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

The researchers analyzed changes in weight and health among 761 individuals with abdominal obesity in Israel who participated in three landmark workplace-based nutrition clinical trials (DIRECT, CENTRAL, and DIRECT-PLUS) with high adherence rates and comprehensive metabolic profiling. At each trial, participants were randomly assigned to adopt and adhere to healthy diets-including low-fat, low-carbohydrate, Mediterranean, and green-Mediterranean diets-for between 18 and 24 months.

The study found that, across all of the clinical trials and all of the diets, 36% of participants achieved clinically significant weight loss (defined as losing more than 5% of their initial body weight); 36% achieved moderate weight loss (losing up to 5% of their initial body weight); and 28% were resistant to weight loss, losing no weight or gaining some. Weight loss was associated with a variety of health improvements: The researchers calculated that each kilogram lost was associated with a 1.44% increase in HDL cholesterol, a 1.37% decrease in triglycerides, a 2.46% drop in insulin, a 2.79% drop in leptin, and a 0.49-unit reduction in liver fat, along with reductions in blood pressure and liver enzymes.

The study also found, however, that participants who were resistant to weight change-who tended to be older and/or women-showed many of the same improvements. They had more good cholesterol; lower levels of leptin, leading to less hunger; and less harmful visceral fat.

“These are deep metabolic shifts with real cardiometabolic consequences,” said Yaskolka Meir. “Our study showed that a healthy diet works, even when weight doesn’t shift.”

The researchers also utilized cutting-edge omics tools and discovered 12 specific DNA methylation sites that strongly predict long-term weight loss.

“This novel finding shows that some people may be biologically wired to respond differently to the same diet,” said corresponding author Iris Shai, principal investigator of the nutrition trials and adjunct professor of nutrition at Harvard Chan School. “This isn’t just about willpower or discipline—it’s about biology. And now we’re getting close to understanding it.”

The study had some limitations, namely that the majority of participants were men. The researchers noted that future similar studies should focus on women.

Reference:

Anat Yaskolka Meir, Gal Tsaban, Ehud Rinott, Hila Zelicha, Dan Schwarzfuchs, Yftach Gepner, Assaf Rudich, Ilan Shelef, Matthias Blüher, Michael Stumvoll, Uta Ceglarek, Berend Isermann, Nora Klöting, Maria Keller, Peter Kovacs, Lu Qi, Dong D Wang, Liming Liang, Frank B Hu, Meir J Stampfer, Iris Shai, Individual response to lifestyle interventions: a pooled analysis of three long-term weight loss trials, European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2025;, zwaf308, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurjpc/zwaf308

North Chicago: AbbVie has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a label expansion for MAVYRET (glecaprevir/pibrentasvir), an oral pangenotypic direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy.

It is now approved for the treatment of adults and pediatric patients three years and older with acute or chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection without cirrhosis or with compensated cirrhosis. With this approval, MAVYRET is now a DAA therapy approved to treat patients with acute HCV in eight weeks with a 96% cure rate. 2,†

HCV is a highly infectious blood-borne disease affecting the liver. People recently infected, or those with acute HCV, may not have symptoms. If left untreated, HCV could lead to liver-related complications, such as cirrhosis or liver cancer. The United States is expected to incur ~$120 billion in total medical costs over the next 10 years through 2035 linked to chronic liver disease and other related conditions caused by untreated HCV.

"The physical, emotional, and economic burden of a curable condition like hepatitis C is far too great in the United States and around the world," said John Ward, M.D., director, Coalition for Global Hepatitis Elimination. "If treated early with safe and effective therapies, providers can cure virtually all patients with hepatitis C before it escalates to chronic disease and eventually cirrhosis or liver cancer. The public health community now has a good opportunity to cure nearly all persons to support eliminating the toll of this deadly virus. No one should die of hepatitis C."

Current global clinical guidance calls for the universal treatment of nearly all people with acute or chronic HCV infection. Widespread implementation of these guidelines has the potential to substantially reduce the global spread of the disease. Additionally, the public health community has set a goal to eliminate HCV by 2030. Nearly 80% of high-income countries, including the U.S., are not on track to achieve this goal until after 2050.

"MAVYRET has treated more than one million patients with HCV, but we recognize that a significant need remains for patients with acute infection," said Roopal Thakkar, M.D., executive vice president, research and development, chief scientific officer, AbbVie. "The label expansion for MAVYRET, coupled with the implementation of test and treat models of care, serve as tools to support the public health community in treating more patients and bringing us closer to achieving the global 2030 elimination goal."

The FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) for MAVYRET for the treatment of acute HCV. The BTD program is designed to expedite the development and review of medicines that are intended to treat a serious condition, and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints.

The label expansion was supported by data from the Phase 3, multicenter, single-arm prospective study evaluating the safety and efficacy of MAVYRET eight-week treatment in adults with acute HCV infection. The study results showed MAVYRET to be a highly efficacious treatment for people with acute HCV. The majority of the adverse events reported were mild or moderate in severity.

Blood type “B” positive or any other type is urgently needed for Grismeily Benítez Contreras, 13 years old, who is at Dr. Robert Reid Cabral Pediatric Hospital.

The minor, who, along with her sister, suffers from a rare skin disease called epidermolysis, popularly known as “crystal skin .”

According to an admission document from the aforementioned medical center, the little girl was admitted this Friday due to severe anemia.

Reducing supplementary oxygen given to intensive care patients does not deliver any clear and obvious health benefits or harm their chances of survival, according to new research.

Each year, around 184,000 patients are admitted to NHS intensive care units (ICUs) and over 30% need breathing support in the form of oxygen provided through mechanical ventilators.

However, there is insufficient evidence to guide the use of oxygen, with the possibility that administering too much, or too little, oxygen may not deliver the intended benefits and actually end up causing patients additional harm.

That prompted researchers to establish UK-ROX, the largest ever clinical trial of oxygen use in UK ICUs, and they recruited 16,500 patients across almost 100 intensive care units at UK hospitals.

They then sought to establish whether a strategy of conservative oxygen therapy – delivering less oxygen to maintain a person’s oxygen saturation at around 90% – would reduce mortality rates among ICU patients.

The results-published in the JAMA journal-showed there was no statistically significant difference in patient outcomes with 35.4% of patients receiving conservative oxygen therapy having died within 90 days of their admission compared with 34.9% of patients receiving usual oxygen therapy.

As a result, they believe it is safe to allow oxygen levels to be lower in ICU patients but that it may not necessarily be better for them in terms of survival, with the need to develop and evaluate more personalised therapies based on a person’s specific medical conditions.

The UK-ROX trial, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), was led by researchers at the University of Plymouth’s Peninsula Medical School and the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC).

Professor Daniel Martin OBE, Professor of Perioperative and Intensive Care Medicine at the University of Plymouth and a Consultant at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Foundation Trust, is co-chief investigator of the UK-ROX trial. He said: “Administering supplemental oxygen through mechanical ventilation is a standard course of treatment for many of those admitted to intensive care. However, there is insufficient evidence to guide us on what oxygen levels deliver the greatest benefits or have the potential to cause harm. The results of this study show that reducing supplementary oxygen results in no overall benefit or harm to the patients, but that doesn’t mean it is not important for intensive care patients. On the contrary, it means that we will have to come up with ways of determining how much oxygen an individual patient needs and deliver it to them in a precise way if we are to improve patient outcomes.”

Paul Mouncey, Co-Director of the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC) and the other co-chief investigator of the UK-ROX trial, said: “UK-ROX is the largest individually randomised trial conducted in intensive care in the UK. The study has provided much needed robust evidence to inform clinicians in their day-to-day management of patients. A study of this size was only possible by using routinely collected data held within NHS England and within the Case Mix Programme, the national clinical audit of adult critical care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We would like to thank the 97 NHS hospitals and 16,500 patients and their families for taking part in the clinical trial.”

Co-investigator Professor Mike Grocott, Director of the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, added: “This landmark study clarifies the safety of administering lower levels of oxygen to critically ill patients. Understanding how to individualise oxygen therapy will be the next step in improving patient care.”

In addition to being published in JAMA, Professor Martin and Mr Mouncey have today presented the results of the UK-ROX trial to delegates at the Critical Care Reviews Meeting 2025 in Belfast.

The study and presentation also include details of how they were able to deliver UK-ROX at a fraction of the usual cost (around £100 per patient) of a randomised control trial, showing that clinical trials can be conducted differently and cost-effectively in an increasingly challenging financial climate.

Reference:

Martin DS, Gould DW, Shahid T, et al. Conservative Oxygen Therapy in Mechanically Ventilated Critically Ill Adult Patients: The UK-ROX Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. Published online June 12, 2025. doi:10.1001/jama.2025.9663