January 2026 Dispatch for the CV Team

Every month, Section Editor L.A. McKeown curates a roundup of recent news beyond our regular TCTMD coverage, with tidbits from journals and medical meetings around the globe that are of special interest to heart teams and allied cardiovascular professionals.

In a ‘call to action,’ investigators say there is urgent need to improve the standard of care in early screening and management of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in order to both promote kidney health and reduce the risk that patients will develop CVD. While the success of a national CKD screening program will require multidisciplinary commitment, the authors of the commentary published in the American Journal of Preventive Cardiology say cardiology can lead the way. “Since patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and/or heart failure have a high prevalence of CKD, and since CVD is the leading cause of death among patients with CKD, cardiologists should play a pivotal role in screening for CKD and implementing these pillars of therapy that reduce the risk of both CKD progression and CVD events,” they write.

When the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology guideline for the prevention, detection, evaluation, and management of hypertension in adults was published last year, it recommended against the use of cuffless BP devices, citing issues of precision and reliability. Now a separate writing committee, via a scientific statement published in Hypertension, has reviewed the existing literature and summed up the gaps in knowledge about currently available cuffless devices that may make them inappropriate for use in clinical settings.

Establishing more cardiovascular centers on aging to integrate cardiology and geriatrics would be a step forward in shifting care from a disease- to person-centric perspective, a group of researchers argue in a viewpoint published in JACC: Advances. They note that older adults have multicomplex disease while also being underrepresented in trials, which means many guideline recommendations don’t address age-mediated response or the outcomes that matter most to them, including function, independence, cognition, and quality of life.

A survey of more than 2,200 young adults ages 11 to 21 has found that while more than half were able to correctly identify CVD as the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in industrialized countries, 45% thought classic CV risk factors only impact health after age 40. Reporting the results in the International Journal of Cardiology, the researchers say urgent educational efforts are needed in schools to improve awareness and prevention in young people.

The first daily oral formulation of semaglutide (Wegovy, Novo Nordisk) is hitting pharmacies following its approval by the US Food and Drug Administration last month. It is available in the 1.5-mg starter dose as well as 4 mg, 9 mg, and 25 mg. The approval was based on results of the OASIS 4 trial, which showed an average weight loss at 64 weeks of 14% with the pill versus 2% in a placebo group among patients without diabetes who had overweight or obesity.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) improve sleep testing? In a paper published in Nature Medicine, investigators describe how they deep-mined sleep test data from 65,000 patients to create a model that is risk predictive for 130 health conditions, including hypertensive heart disease, MI, and stroke. The integration of the model, known as SleepFM, into polysonography allows for the capture and synthesis of data from a single night of sleep. The researchers say the use of AI in this way to complement existing CV risk assessment tools should be more widely studied.

Proactive approaches are needed to improve the diagnosis and treatment of CVD in women and prevent missed or delayed diagnoses and inadequate early intervention. A paper published in the European Heart Journal reviews ways to reenvision prevention, detection, and personalized risk-based treatment pathways across life trajectories, accounting for the reproductive years, midlife, and postmenopause.

An article in BMJ Case Reports details a stroke in an otherwise healthy man in his 50s who had been consuming up to eight high-caffeine energy drinks per day. The investigators say the man presented with a blood pressure of 254/150 mm Hg, left-sided weakness, numbness, and ataxia. Although he recovered and his BP returned to normal after giving up his energy drink habit, he did not regain full function of his left side.

Substantial socioeconomic inequities linked to long-term survival in patients with atrial fibrillation have remained virtually unchanged and unchallenged for the last two decades, according to a large Danish registry study published in The Lancet Public Health. Being in a low-income group shaved 2.5 years off survival, with lower educational attainment and living alone also having significant impacts. “The persistent socioeconomic gap underscores the urgent need for interventions to address the barriers causing inequity in survival after atrial fibrillation,” the authors write.

Routine mammograms may yield important clues about a woman’s cardiovascular risk. In a presentation last month at the Radiological Society of North America, researchers showed that progression of breast arterial calcification (BAC) over time on mammograms, compared with no or stable BAC, predicted an elevated risk of developing CVD. The investigators urge reporting, grading, and tracking of BAC changes to identify early subclinical disease.

News Highlights From TCTMD:

Residential Segregation Adversely Affects Black CVD Health: REGARDS

New Dietary Guidelines for Americans Get Mixed Review From Cardiology Community

Lp(a) Linked to 30-Year CVD Risk in Healthy Women

Cardiologists Lack Resources to Help Hospitalized Patients Quit Smoking

Statins Work for Primary Prevention Even in Low-risk Patients With Type 2 Diabetes