Immunotherapeutic strategies have been successfully utilized recently in the treatment of various malignancies. Increasing understanding of the interactions between the tumor and the host organism over the last few years has led to proposals of various promising therapeutic approaches. This overview briefly summarizes the basic principles of immunotherapy for cancer diseases.

What efficacy and safety do insulin, metformin, or the sulfonylurea derivative glibenclamide (glyburide) offer in lowering glucose levels in women with gestational diabetes? The authors of a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials used a probabilistic model –⁠ a Bayesian network –⁠ to answer this question.

The possibilities for treating immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) are quite broad today, with a major advancement for many patients being the advent of thrombopoietin receptor agonists. However, for some patients, optimal treatment is still not available, and their hope lies in further research.

The KATHERINE clinical trial demonstrated that adjuvant therapy with trastuzumab emtansine compared to trastuzumab significantly improves invasive disease-free survival in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer and residual invasive disease after prior treatment. A post hoc analysis of this study was published in the journal Cancer, focusing on patient-reported outcomes related to quality of life during and after treatment.

As recent research shows, one of the modern groups of antidiabetic drugs -⁠ SGLT2 inhibitors, also known as gliflozins -⁠ brings benefits not only in diabetology but also in cardiology and nephrology. It has been confirmed that representatives of this class of drugs prolong patients' lives, reduce the incidence of major cardiovascular (CV) events and the risk of heart failure (HF), and improve renal function. A recently published study additionally indicates that the CV benefit of empagliflozin is independent of the number of compensated CV risk factors and manifests within the first 3 months of treatment.

Lorlatinib is currently mainly used in the 2nd and later lines of treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ALK gene rearrangement. Clinical research is now focusing on the question of how to proceed with patients who experience disease progression during lorlatinib treatment in later lines of therapy. It seems that one of the options might actually be to do nothing –⁠ to continue with lorlatinib.

The effect of idarucizumab as a reversal agent in patients treated with dabigatran in situations requiring urgent surgery or other invasive procedures was evaluated in a subanalysis from the RE-VERSE AD study published in 2021.

Along with the results of a subanalysis of the RE-VERSE AD study, which demonstrated the efficacy of idarucizumab in reversing the anticoagulant effect of dabigatran regardless of the level of renal function impairment, the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology also featured an editorial commentary by Californian cardiologists on its conclusions.

Both oral and intravenous administration of a combination of netupitant (a neurokinin 1 receptor antagonist −⁠ NK1RA) with palonosetron (a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist) offer prevention of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) for up to 5 days after its administration. Although the i.v. form of netupitant (fosnetupitant) + palonosetron (NEPA) did not lead to injection site reactions or anaphylactic reactions in a Phase III study, hypersensitivity and anaphylactic reactions have been described with other i.v. administered NK1RAs. Thus, the aim of the study recently published in the journal The Oncologist was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of i.v. NEPA in women with breast cancer treated with anthracycline and cyclophosphamide-containing chemotherapy.

Children aged 6-12 with severe atopic dermatitis (AD) have very limited treatment options. The studies presented below demonstrate how effective and safe dupilumab, a monoclonal antibody targeting interleukins 4 and 13, is in their case. Since October, this medication is newly covered even for children from 6 years of age.

Dual bronchodilator therapy, which combines long-acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMA) and long-acting β-agonists (LABA), has become an integral part of the treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Growing evidence of the efficacy and safety of the fixed combination of aclidinium-bromide/formoterol-fumarate demonstrates that this treatment meets patient needs and the current GOLD recommendations from 2019.

A literature review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials published in the journal Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine demonstrates the high efficacy and good tolerability of 6 non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) including etoricoxib, celecoxib, meloxicam, diclofenac, naproxen, and ß-D-mannuronic acid in the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis (AS).

A recently published study by authors from South Korea focused on examining the efficacy of brentuximab vedotin in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) that highly express CD30 (i.e., > 30% CD30-positive tumor cells based on immunohistochemistry), where the disease had relapsed or was refractory to previous treatments.

Infections caused by carbapenemase-producing enterobacteria are associated with high mortality, and their incidence continues to rise. The study presented below investigated the efficacy of therapy with the combination of ceftazidime/avibactam (a third-generation cephalosporin and a beta-lactamase inhibitor) in treating these infections compared to the 'best available antibiotic therapy' (BAT).

What is the role of thrombopoietin receptor agonists (TPO-RA) in the second line treatment of patients with immune thrombocytopenia (ITP)? Italian authors conducted a survey using the Delphi method among selected experts to gather answers to this question and recommendations for clinical practice. Here, we briefly summarize the key points of their consensus published last year.