Well, I think for a long time we’ve not really had many effective therapies to choose from in IgA [immunoglobulin A] nephropathy [IgAN]. We’ve had ACE [angiotensin-converting enzyme] inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, but not much else. But suddenly we have 2 newly approved therapies for IgA nephropathy specifically, that’s targeted-release budesonide and sparsentan. And suddenly we also have 20 other new therapies that are in clinical development and hopefully will be able to have…some of these that can be used in the near future. I think working out exactly which treatment would be suitable for an individual patient about the specific time in that disease course will be the next challenge. And it could mean that a combination of therapies would be most effective, and I think there will need to be studies to look into that.… There’s more exciting translational work to be done in IgA nephropathy as well. And the good news is that all the phase 2 and phase 3 trials are conducting by repository sample collections as well, so we may be able to get clues from this about which patients are more likely to respond to a particular therapy or not. And we may be able to look at samples in order to develop biomarkers that can assess the degree of responsiveness to treatment or indeed to disease prognosis.

I think you have to bear in mind that while in most patients with IgA nephropathy these things happen quite gradually over a number of years, IgA nephropathy is a progressive disease that will progress to kidney failure in the majority unless we can slow the rate of kidney function loss significantly. I think, fortunately, we have new and exciting therapies that are coming and [we are] continuing to enroll [patients] into ongoing clinical trials that will ensure…we can deliver these therapies to our patients in the future.

Transcripts are AI-generated and edited for clarity and readability.

Cheung comments on new and future IgAN treatment, and shares clinical pearls with other providers.

Future of IgAN Treatment and Clinical Pearls for Disease Management

Chee Kay Cheung, MBCHB, MRCP, PhD

Can Allergen-Free Food Subscriptions Help Families? | Interview with Christopher Warren, PhD

The food-as-medicine intervention, offering $155 monthly benefits for allergen-free groceries, benefited food-insecure families with 

 children. However, despite the observed benefit, the intervention failed to reach statistical significance.

The intervention, assessed in a small pilot study, provided a monthly subscription to allergen-free foods through the Food Equality Initiative’s online marketplace where parents could select foods. A different variation of the intervention with identical outcomes was studied in clinics affiliated with Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, University of Kansas, Baylor/Texas Children’s Hospital, Stanford University, and Northwestern University, which provided a monthly subscription to allergen-free foods through the Food Equality Initiative’s online marketplace where parents could select foods.

The intervention lasted anywhere from 6 to 9 months, depending on the center. Families qualified for the intervention if they struggled to feed their families during the COVID-19 pandemic and had a child with a food allergy. Participants completed surveys at baseline and the 6-month follow-up.

Investigators hoped this program could improve allergy management outcomes, recognizing the psychological and social burden of allergies.

“It’s challenging to navigate daily life [with a severe food allergy], even if you have tons of resources… just because food is everywhere, and it's not always clear where your allergen might lurk,” Christopher Warren, PhD, told HCPLive at the 

2025 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunotherapy (AAAAI) annual meeting 

in San Diego. “If you are on a very tight budget and don't often have access to all the latest and greatest supports, you can imagine how that would be even more challenging.”

The sample included 89% of non-White participants, and children had a median age of 8.1 years. The most common food allergies were peanut (n = 12), milk (n = 10), egg (n = 10), and shellfish (n = 10).

This pilot study observed high rates of dropout, with 66 participants initially enrolled and only 26 who retained through the uncontrolled study period which ended in October 2024.

“It wasn't easy to recruit participants into this study, surprisingly enough,” Warren said, “and it wasn't easy to retain participants to this study, even when you might imagine it would be very attractive to be presented with the option of, ‘Here, get $155 worth of free food every week, get a CSA basket of fresh food… shipped to your door. All you need to do is fill out some surveys.’ But it was challenging to successfully communicate that really was the expectation and that that was the nature of the study.”

Food allergy-related healthcare utilization (0.7 to 0.2) and missed school or workdays (0.8 to 0.5) declined over the 6-month intervention. Additionally, caregivers reported a greater composite food security (2.4 to 2.7) and more confidence in their ability to prepare allergy-free meals. The analysis also reported fewer food-related socio-behavioral limitations on the Food Allergy Independent Measure (3.2 to 2.6).

However, despite this, the intervention did not reach statistical significance, which Warren said could have been influenced by the dropout rate.

“Challenges we hadn't anticipated [was] digital literacy with the ordering platform—the idea of checking out a virtual shopping cart was not…something that that many of these families had any prior experience with and that led to more barriers to participation,” he said.

Warren, C, Bilaver, L, Davis, C. Implementation and Impacts of a Multi-site, Online Food-as-Medicine Intervention for Pediatric Food Allergy Patients at Risk of Food Insecurity. Presented at AAAAI 2025 in San Diego from February 28 – March 3.

A food-as-medicine intervention aimed at food-insecure families with allergic children provided $155 monthly benefits for allergen-free groceries. Despite observed benefits, such as reduced healthcare utilization and improved food security, the intervention did not achieve statistical significance, potentially due to high dropout rates. Conducted across multiple sites, the study faced challenges in participant recruitment and retention, partly due to digital literacy barriers. The intervention showed promise in reducing food allergy-related socio-behavioral limitations and increasing caregiver confidence in preparing allergy-free meals, but further research is needed to confirm its efficacy.

HCPLive spoke with Warren at AAAAI 2025 about a pilot study showing allergen-free food subscriptions reduced healthcare use but lacked significance.

Allergen-Free Food Subscriptions May Aid Families Manage Allergies, with Christopher Warren, PhD

Christopher Warren, PhD

Prashant D. Tailor, MD, is a retina fellow at the Jules Stein Eye Institute and Department of Ophthalmology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

AI Ophthalmologic Interdisciplinary Communication with Dr. Prashant Tailor, MD

Advancements in AI technology have led to bridges being built between specialists in countless industries. By quickly and efficiently translating technical jargon, large language models (LLMs) can efficiently decode even the most scientific writing for transfer between different medical fields. Recently, an LLM was tested by having it transcribe notes from several 

, Prashant D. Tailor, MD, a retina fellow at the Jules Stein Eye Institute and Department of Ophthalmology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, explained the potential applications for and impediments to the widespread use of AI summaries to transcribe ophthalmology notes.

"These new protocols could be applied to any niche field, especially subspecialty medicine, in the retina clinics or the glaucoma clinics or the cornea subspecialty clinics...you're diving down not just into ophthalmology, you're diving down into a niche field," Tailor told 

The results of Tailor’s study showed a significant level of acceptance, with attending physicians reporting significantly higher overall satisfaction (82.8% vs 72.7). Additionally, while errors were noted in 26% of PLSs, the vast majority took less than 1 minute to correct. Most of these errors occurred in the planning section of the summary. The majority (83.9%) of all errors were considered low risk.

However, attending physicians did report longer correction times and greater perceived burden (26.9% vs 2.5%) than with trainees. Tailor and colleagues noted that, with a 15% overread error rate, the influence of both AI and human error are compounded. The team therefore sees multilayered human oversight as the next method of filtering out the LLM’s mistakes.

“Patients look and refer to [our notes] asking ‘what do I need to look at or know about?’ And if there’s a summary that’s wrong, or an AI generated thing is incorrect, that can cause a lot of confusion,” Tailor told 

. “I think it needs to be vetted by multiple steps.”

Overall, however, the results of the study showed that LLM-generated summaries were associated with greater satisfaction and comprehension among non-ophthalmology clinicians and professionals, while simultaneously reducing time burden for ophthalmologists. PLSs, the team therefore indicates, have the potential to bridge additional disciplines outside of ophthalmology alone.

“I think the team based approach in healthcare is the most important thing about taking care of patients, especially as they get more complex. I think AI is just a supplement there, a tool," Tailor told 

 "If we can help communicate better in different ways so everyone’s on the same page, then we can better take care of our patients, too.”

Tailor PD, D’Souza HS, Castillejo Becerra CM, et al. Evaluation of AI Summaries on Interdisciplinary Understanding of Ophthalmology Notes. 

 Published online April 03, 2025. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2025.0351

Tailor discusses the future of AI in ophthalmology and beyond, and some of the challenges it may bring.

AI Use in Ophthalmic Interdisciplinary Communication, with Prashant Tailor, MD

Dr. Prashant Tailor, MD

Neal, what are some of the unmet needs that we see with these patients with psoriatic disease?

 We talked about this before a little, and I’ll still divide it between the unmet needs of the patients and the unmet needs of the dermatologist. Because in the patients, we’re learning more about that in pediatrics now that a lot of pivotal trials are done, and we’re hearing about patients of color. Obviously, there are comorbidities that go along with skin and joints. We’re collaborating with rheumatologists. That’s still on the rise, and the unfortunate part of that is we’re heavily reliant on pharma dollars to bring us those data, which require our support, for not only participating but also supporting them in some of their endeavors and bringing that education to us. The bigger equation is that there are a lot of dermatologists who don’t feel as if they’re part of the biologics conversation. They feel like the immunology is above their head. They don’t write enough, nor do they want to. Their access to information is often limited to promotional programs from the industry or meetings that they don’t feel as if they’re a part of because they hear the same voices and see the same faces talking about biologics. They think there’s some club of which they are not a part. Something is going on with dermatologists, because these are some of the smartest people around, yet they’re the first ones putting their hands up and saying, “I don’t want to write these voices.”

I don’t understand what it’s going to take to open some eyes and say, “I understand what’s going on. We’re treating the big picture for these patients.” One of the biggest unmet needs is for dermatologists to drop their guard, get involved a little more, and understand. George and I were part of an initiative that took on the question and reversed the script that said, why are dermatologists not writing biologics? What are the fears? What are the misconceptions? What are the obstacles? We hear so much about why you should you write X biologic for whatever reason. We don’t have enough conversations about why you’re not writing biologics. If you see what it’s doing to the patients who don’t get access to the drugs because we’re not putting pen to paper—not because insurance companies aren’t paying for them but for whatever reason—that’s probably the biggest unmet need: getting dermatologists out of their own way and starting to understand the process of what’s best for the patients in the long run.

Erin, do you see other unmet needs in the setting of psoriatic disease?

Yes, there are a few, 1 of which is something that I’d like to see explored: what do we do with our patients who have a malignancy or who have had a malignancy? All the studies that we have that get these drugs to market involve excluding patients with a history of any malignancy for 5 years. They’re over it, but you have a patient on a biologic, and they’re going to get a malignancy—maybe it’s age related, or maybe it’s gender related, like prostate or breast cancer, or maybe it’s not related to the fact that they are on a biologic. What do we do with those patients? Nobody will do those studies because they don’t want to go there. I don’t know how we would obtain those data, but it would be interesting to find out what we can use in terms of patients who’ve had a malignancy and if it gets treated. Can you put them back on a biologic?

The other unmet need is similar but not malignant: pregnancy. Patients get pregnant and have terrible arthritis along with their psoriasis. Heretofore, we’re supposed to stop the biologic for the whole time that they’re pregnant. Well, untreated psoriasis is a much worse comorbidity for a pregnant woman than being on a biologic because that degree of systemic inflammation causes small birth-size babies and other problems with pregnancy, but we don’t have good data on that. We have 1 anti–TNF [tumor necrosis factor] that looks at it in vitro for the most part. We rely on registry data, mainly from GI [gastrointestinal] medicine and other fields like rheumatology, to say what may or may not be safe. Those are areas where I’d like to have answers to questions because I don’t know what to do. I’m winging it, and it’s a big area because people are older and people get this disease and malignancies in particular. What can we say about them?

 Our oncology partners don’t necessarily have a lot to say either, and they’re pretty much in the dark as well.

They don’t even know the name of the drug, let alone what the adverse-effect profiles are.

If you’ve enjoyed the content, please subscribe to our e-newsletters to receive upcoming 

and other great content right in your in-box. Thank you, everyone.

A group of specialists discusses unmet needs in psoriatic disease including physician education about biologics and research about treatment options for pediatric patients, patients with malignancies, and patients who are pregnant.

Unmet Needs in the Treatment of Psoriatic Disease

Erin Boh, MD, PhD, FAAD

I've said this many times, we're in the golden age of studies in glomerular disease. And we are making great strides in an ultra-rare disease like C3G. I know our center's certainly recruiting and there's a global network of GN centers now recruiting to these studies, which we'll hopefully deliver, but we are spoiled for choice Jerry, and we have lots of studies. I will you just first run us through your approach to managing patients in 2023 and the kind of opportunities that might be available with all the clinical trials that are happening at the moment?

I was hoping you'd come back to IgA nephropathy, because we've lacked a good biomarker. People have said, level of galactose deficient IgA or antibodies to galactose deficient IgA. But so far, we have not had a good biomarker. And the best correlation we've had is with proteinuria. Now, the good news is that the FDA realizes that some of these patients will only slowly progress. They're using the surrogate marker, which has been mentioned, a proteinuria reduction. The bad news is they're using a surrogate marker. We don't necessarily know what's going to happen to the GFR in all these cases. We've recently had 2 drugs approved in terms of treating patients with IgA nephropathy, first of all, without the final publication of the manuscript initially, and then without the final data in terms of what's happening to the GFR. And certainly, in terms of we've got the shorter terms data, not the longer term data that we might need. I'm not against the fact that the FDA is approving these, it's just making it more challenging in terms of following these patients without a good biomarker in terms of this. My view in terms of treating the patient is that given anybody with risk factors, I would put them on maximal supportive care. Now, if you look at KDIGO guidelines, they say that high risk is over 0.75 to one grams of proteinuria that persists for more than X amount of time. That which is 3 months is what they're talking about there. But in some of the studies, the stop trial that was done in Germany, they said you had to be on it 6 months. Before you had standard of care. The other thing is, none of the studies yet have included SGLT2 inhibitors, which are rapidly becoming standard of care. We already have data in IgA nephropathy that it makes a significant difference in terms of time and proteinuria and course of the patient too, in terms of GFR. Given that the standard of care has changed, we've upped the level blockade of the renal angiotensin system, strong consideration to SGLT2 inhibition, then the role of steroids, which we've certainly confused a lot of nephrologists by starting out by saying they worked because we had 3 or 4 trials, small, but they seem to work, then we all of a sudden have a big trial that looks like it's done very well, but it had unique features that made it a little different from some of the others. But the stop trial that said they didn't work long term, then we get to the testing trial that doesn't work at first, but then does work after they do it at a lower dose. Everybody has been changing what they're doing, and we're going back and forth. I feel sorry for a patient if they heard this, that the steroids you tried 3 years ago that we stopped, well now we're going to try them again. And whether those steroids or a non-absorbable steroid that works predominantly on the gut should be used, is just not clear. What we're left at least in IgA now in terms of standard of care. For anybody who's high risk, and I think high risk is probably going to be more than 0.5 grams not 0.75. It's very clear that there is data from Vega and other studies that show that, so at lower levels of proteinase should get standard of care. And then if they're not at the point that keeps them at high risk, and that's going to be different for different people, we should be doing something. And whether it's steroids, straightforward, old-fashioned steroids at a lower dose for still about a 6 month course, or whether you want to say, look a non-absorbable one because this person has high risk factors for steroids, they're they also have diabetes and where they don't want cosmetic changes that person might benefit from a non-absorbable steroid, which we don't have good proof that they're entirely non-absorbable but again, there's going to be individualization of therapy at the current time until we get more clear data or until we get a good biomarker. They are looking at new CD markers, CD8 I think it is, but they're looking at new markers trying to say that this is going to make a difference. And in some diseases it looks better than others in terms of lupus. Some people feel using urinary biomarkers is making a difference already now. But still for IgA we're left with getting what we wished for, we wished for the FDA to finally approve something, and now they're approving it faster than we know the data. And we can't make decisions based on it.

: It is a real challenge. You're right. I go to my therapeutic cupboard for my IgA patients and it's empty, and we're going to move from zero. We've had nothing for 50 years. Two new drugs in the last 18 months. Three phase 3 studies are likely to be reporting over the next 12 to 18 months. We are going to need to educate our nephrologists, our colleagues, how to use these with the right patients. What are the safety concerns? How might we potentially combine them?

Gerald B. Appel, MD, discusses the changing treatment landscape of IgAN.

Clinical trial data on IgAN for therapies

Gerald B. Appel, MD

Irene Kazmers, MD 

 As we come to a close on this discussion, I sincerely appreciate all 3 of you taking your time to talk about atopic dermatitis; you’re all seasoned, work in well-known clinics, and are definitely leaders among your peers. Do you have any pearls, hints, words of encouragement, or topics that you’d say make sure you discuss with your patients and teach colleagues without your wealth of experience? Whether you’re talking about triggers, hints for adherence, or talking about all the features and facts associated with the disease. Everybody pick something and tell me the one thing that you must say, to make sure that these youngsters who don’t know everything, I know that I could pass along to them. Matthew, what would be your thing that you would tell new PAs [physician assistants] or colleagues who haven’t seen as much atopic dermatitis as you have?

 I go back to the thing we learned when we were in our training: listen to your patient, they will tell you what’s wrong with them. Part of that is taking a good history, talk to them about their family, their personal history, things like asthma, hay fever, and sinus allergies. I always ask patients if pollen bothers them when the pollen season is bad. We have a terrible pollen season here in Georgia. I think those things help you. “Have other family members had rashes like you?” Talk to them about their experience. Sometimes the elderly patients have forgotten their history of childhood, but they’ll say, “I had a brother who had asthma.” Talking through those things and getting that history up front, that’s been the most valuable thing for me in terms of differentiating between a patient with atopic dermatitis and a patient who may just be having a single episode of eczema.

 My big thing is, we just talked about the future of 2023 and all these exciting things, to not be afraid to have a low threshold for topical therapy. Because we just spent an hour talking about how eczema is a systemic disease, so you wouldn’t treat diabetes with a topical, you would treat diabetes with an oral therapy. That’s how we look at psoriasis, and that’s how we’re going to start looking at eczema. If somebody is not responding well with topical therapy, we need to discuss and educate our patients and their parents on what else is out there because we don’t want these patients to suffer, and they truly do suffer. Itch and infection are horrible, and constant antibiotics, oral steroids, and topical steroids are not good for our patients, and long term we know that’s not good as well. We have many safe options in the biologic space and potentially in the oral space such that we are OK to have a low threshold on when it’s time to get to that next level.

 My pearl, first, for NP [nurse practitioner] or PA colleagues who are novices, is to get excited about treating atopic dermatitis. It may not be the new sexy disease on the page right now, but it is a very rewarding career to treat these patients and become the expert in your clinic for managing atopic dermatitis. Your ability to transform patients’ lives, treat these patients, and see them grow and thrive is extraordinary. Feel comfortable with this disease, become involved in your national societies, go to meetings where there are atopic dermatitis experts lecturing, and become comfortable in your algorithm and in your treatment plan. There are many resources available for you with up-to-date information so that you can become comfortable and an expert in managing atopic dermatitis.

My pearl for [working with] patients is to teach them that you are excited about treating them. When I walk in the room with a new patient with eczema or even psoriasis, I tell them how excited I am that they’re here and that I’m going to be their partner through this entire disease. Then I ask them this pivotal question, “What is it about this disease that is keeping you from finding joy in your life or living your best life? If you give me time and your trust, I’m going to help you find that joy. I’m in this with you and partnering with you to help you live the best life that you can.” I think those are 2 important things that patients want to hear from us as dermatology providers and for us to recognize within our patients, that this disease can be consequential for them and their happiness, and their ability to thrive in their lives.

 One thing I always think about that’s really important is to help them understand that it’s not their fault. There are triggers, we know it can be pollens, it can be animal dander. There are certain things that can trigger patients with atopic dermatitis that you might have some control over, but this is a disease. It’s a disease that involves a lot of components, a poorly functioning barrier, and an inappropriate cytokine response to triggers, but it is a disease. It’s not their fault, so they must understand that they’re not doing anything wrong.

For my colleagues, I would say practice evidence-based medicine, don’t get caught up in people saying, “But if I don’t eat this, or I use this CBD [cannabidiol] oil, or I use whatever, I’m a little better, or this helps.” They’re searching, and you have to say, “Look, here’s the deal, I know a little about that, but I can tell you what the science and the evidence say.” We’ve got excellent data now that explain what this disease is, what’s going wrong, and how these medicines are specific to try to treat it. So know your medicine. If you’re going to prescribe it, and diagnose and treat these patients, medicine is a wonderful thing, so make sure you really understand that.

Thank you for this insightful discussion and thank you to the audience for watching this 

 presentation with Alexa, Matthew, and Lakshi. I hope that you have learned something and that you will take this information to heart the next time you see a patient and you start thinking this child could have atopic dermatitis. As Alexa says, have a low threshold for moving along and getting them pediatric-approved therapies and get them going. You’re going to change some lives and be heroes to these patients, and really make a big difference. Thank you.

Alexa Hetzel, MA, PA-C; Lakshi Aldredge, MSN, ANP-BC, DCNP, and Matthew Brunner, PA, share practice pearls and clinical management tips for the care of pediatric patients with atopic dermatitis.

Practice Pearls for the Management of Atopic Dermatitis 

Matthew Brunner, PA

 Before we conclude, I’d like to get some final thoughts from each of you, if you have any. Let’s start with you, Dr Nordberg.

 From my perspective, treatment-resistant depression and other complex mental health challenges are systems challenges as much as they are clinical challenges. We haven’t moved the needle in treatment effectiveness in about 50 years, and in no small respect that may be because we haven’t changed our systems that provide care. I’m a big fan of looking at developing systems where we’re doing a lot more precision referral work, and to Martin’s earlier point, identifying different providers, clinics, and centers of strength, and referring to strengths. The only way to do that is to collect the data.

There are challenges around collecting the data. It creates vulnerability and a lot of visibility where there hasn’t been historically. One of the things that we’re working on at Reliant Medical Group is trying to be more precise about how and who we refer. A lot of that involves understanding the patient that we’re being presented with, and also understanding how that person matches up with what we believe is the most likely treatment to be effective for them based on data.

I’m pretty confident that if we can do that work in naturalistic settings, we’ll get past the archaic requirement of failing 2 bonafide medication interventions and get more rapidly to something that’s going to allow a care delivery organization to say, “This is a patient with treatment-resistant depression,” and a payer to say “No problem,” and then allows that care delivery organization to connect that patient with a reimbursed intervention that has a likely shot of helping them. That’s a lot of work to be done, but it starts with measurement and having the confidence to integrate that measurement into your clinical routine.

 Well said. To your original point, we haven’t moved the needle much in these past 50 years. You’re calling for improved systems, better measurement, and moving toward precision care. Hopefully that will be supported by the validation of some biomarkers that can lead to more precise and predictive treatments. Would you also agree that part of this as well is that we haven’t had very many new tools in the past 50 years, and potentially having some effective new tools in the toolbox may also help move that needle?

 It may. We also know that there’s a lot of variability between different providers and that there are different kinds of treatments that appeal more to different kinds of patients. The biomarker research is sexy and exciting because of that possibility of carving nature at its joints and being precise. It’s also a long way off. RDoC [Research Domain Criteria] didn’t deliver the promise of precision opportunities for understanding and deep learning about what drives mental health on a physiological level.

We still have a lot of opportunities with the systems and treatments that are already out there. This system still has a lot of room for optimization. It starts with having the courage to collect more data and letting those data start to tell us what kind of a patient this is and the best place for the patient to go based on what we’ve already learned about similar patients. That’s where my focus is, less so on developing novel interventions. It’s important to figure out where the patients that we’ve been discussing fit in that overall model, but we’re not going to be able to figure that out if we’re not collecting the right data.

 For those of us who deal with the fun stuff, the insurance and billing portion of things, like I’ve been saying this whole time, it’s important to make sure that you understand your payers and their guidelines and policies. You have to play that middleman role between the insurance carriers, providers, and patients. We need to make sure that we’re educating our providers so that they know if there are any changes to these policies so that they can find the right fit for patients.

It’s also important to educate the patients in regard to what qualifies them as having treatment-resistant depression and what’s available out there. Be an advocate for the patient with the payer and keep them involved in the process so that they’re not at home wondering, “What’s going on with my prior authorization? When is my treatment going to start?” Let them know everything along the way and be there for them.

 The theme that I’d leave with is the idea of “better together.” If you think about it, there are 3 participants in the goal here. Front and foremost is the patient because they want to get better. They’re suffering. There’s the provider who’s trying their best to figure out the appropriate care. There’s also the payer who wants to make sure that the patient gets access to the benefit that they deserve and that they’re able to go on and live a healthier and happier life. You have to see that triad.

There’s a likelihood that you can blame the insurer or blame someone else, but at the end of the day, it’s about figuring out how to work better together, that triad, because we have a common interest in improving the life of that patient. That’s the part that I like to focus on. What are we doing this for? Who matters the most? The other stuff can be worked out.

 Thank you. Last but not least, Dr Ares-Romero.

 I love that. I love how you ended with that. Because as somebody who treats treatment-resistant depression regularly, I’m very passionate about having my patients improve their lives. Their quality of life is what’s important, and that they get passion and fulfillment from their lives. It’s beautiful to hear that, that we can work together. That’s key, getting the payer together with a provider. It’s not about you or me. It’s about the patient and how can we come together to work together. I love that.

Despite the hurdles and challenges and everything we’ve talked about, it’s an exciting time in psychiatry. This is a time when we have new modalities, new things, all the data collection, all the systems, and the artificial intelligence that we have now that we haven’t explored. There are so many wonderful things coming that I’m excited. I’m excited for our patients. I’m excited for everything that we’re doing.

 Thank you all again. To our viewing audience, we hope you found this 

® panel discussion to be useful and informative.

An expert panel shares insight on the future treatment landscape for treatment-resistant depression. 

Optimizing the Management of TRD

Samuel Nordberg, PhD

To watch the video series component of this episode, click here.

Diana Isaacs, PharmD, BCPS, BC-ADM, CDCES, and Natalie Bellini, DNP, FNP-BC, BC-ADM, CDCES, interview Scott Kahan, MD, MPH who serves on the committee that creates the ADA Standards of Care in Diabetes, to discuss the latest updates in weight management guidelines.

Updates in the Standards of Care in Diabetes in 2023 - Obesity and Weight Management

Scott Kahan, MD, MPH

 We’re going to bring our discussion to a close. Thank you all for this rich and informative discussion. Before we conclude, I’d like to hear final thoughts from each of you. Dr Amann?

 As Andy said, thank you, Mike, for sharing your personal story. Thank you too, Theresa, because you shared what it’s like being a parent of a child with ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder]. We’re appreciative of that as well. We change lives, and I’m ever grateful to all the resources I have to do that. It’s very rewarding to treat this disorder when it’s diagnosed and treated properly. Thank you to everybody for having me join this discussion. I’ve enjoyed it greatly.

 We’ve done a terrific job summarizing some of the issues. I feel so fortunate, like many of you, my colleagues. I’ve been working in this space for over 20 years, and [it’s so rewarding] to see the evolution of the technology and the different options, the understanding of the neuroscience of ADHD. It’s so rewarding to have all these different options.

I always joke that when you’ve seen 1 patient with ADHD, you’ve seen 1 patient with ADHD. We all know that. It’s so variable, the comorbidities and the daily activity. Having these tools and options allow us to do a much better job individualizing, personalizing, and getting better outcomes overall for our patients. I agree with Mike, it’s one of the more rewarding things that we treat in psychiatry. You can really make a difference. One thing that never gets old is helping a child and feeling like you can change the course of someone’s life and put them on a different track. That’s incredible. Mike used the railroad track analogy, which I love. That’s been very rewarding. We have a lot of challenges and a long way to go, but it’s been gratifying to see the progress we’ve made so far.

 For me, as a clinician in both settings, the most positive aspect is seeing self-confidence improve and children who are frequently getting in trouble and getting sent to the principal now getting merit reports saying that they’re the student of the day, and they aren’t getting in trouble anymore. With adults, like my patient who’s an attorney, the joy of watching somebody achieve their goals because they were willing to resume treatment is one of the most gratifying things about being a clinician.

Thank you so much for asking me to be here. It’s an honor to be here with many of my colleagues who are as old as I am, who have also treated folks with ADHD through their life span and have had the pleasure of seeing all the new developments in ADHD emerge and make a difference in people’s lives.

 Twenty years ago, I used to sit in the room with you for different meetings with all the teachers, moderators, and people I looked up to. You guys brought me into the world of validating this stuff and realizing how incredible this stuff was. I’m truly honored to be on the panel with you guys because I’ve always respected you. I might have been a little obnoxious in this [discussion], or a little restless.

 Maybe I interrupted a few times. But my biggest message is that this is a blast, but I hope people watch this and buy into what we’re saying.

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ADHD experts share their final thoughts on the treatment and management of ADHD.

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