The World Health Organization (WHO) has published its first global guideline on managing sickle cell disease (SCD) during pregnancy—marking a critical step in addressing the serious health risks this condition poses for both mothers and babies. SCD, a group of inherited blood disorders, causes red blood cells to become abnormally shaped, leading to complications such as severe anemia, pain crises, infections, and life-threatening events like strokes and organ failure.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Yeztugo (lenacapavir), a powerful new HIV-prevention drug developed by Gilead Sciences. Given via injection just twice a year, Yeztugo has shown remarkable success in clinical trials, virtually eliminating HIV transmission among recipients. It significantly outperformed existing daily oral PrEP drugs like Truvada, cutting infection rates by 89% among gay and bisexual men and transgender individuals. In a separate trial among cisgender women in sub-Saharan Africa, none of the participants who received Yeztugo contracted HIV.
On June 12, 2025, the FDA approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a new treatment option for adults with resectable, locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) that shows PD-L1 expression with a combined positive score (CPS) of 1 or higher. This approval introduces a new approach to treating head and neck cancer that begins before surgery and continues afterward.
Dapagliflozin, a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, has shown potential in improving metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) without worsening liver fibrosis, according to findings published on June 4 in The BMJ. The multicenter, double-blind, randomized trial conducted across six tertiary hospitals in China involved 154 adults with biopsy-confirmed MASH. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 10 mg of dapagliflozin or a placebo once daily for 48 weeks. The primary endpoint was improvement in MASH — defined as a reduction of ≥2 points in the nonalcoholic fatty liver disease activity score (NAS) or achieving a NAS ≤3 — without worsening fibrosis.
The study by Kim et al. investigates how excessive dietary phosphate intake contributes to hypertension through mechanisms involving the central nervous system. It highlights a novel brain-mediated pathway where high phosphate levels increase the hormone fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23), which subsequently crosses the blood-brain and blood–cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) barriers and activates fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (FGFR4) in the brainstem.
