Annals of Internal Medicine presents breaking scientific news at ACP’s Internal Medicine Meeting 2024

 Annals of Internal Medicine presents breaking scientific news at ACP’s Internal Medicine Meeting 2024

Authors discuss evidence-based research on obesity, antibiotic resistance, and type 2 diabetes

BOSTON April 19, 2024 – Today at ACP’s annual meeting, Internal Medicine Meeting 2024, Annals of Internal Medicine presented three breaking scientific research articles during a live scientific plenary session that featured the authors of those articles. The articles were published in ACP’s flagship journal concurrent with the live meeting presentation. During the session, New in Annals of Internal Medicine: Hear it First from the Authors, the authors of two research studies addressing the topics of obesity, antibiotic resistance, and an ACP clinical guideline on type 2 diabetes presented their work to meeting attendees.

Christine Laine, M.D., MPH, Annals of Internal Medicine Editor-in-Chief and ACP Senior Vice President, introduced the authors and facilitated a discussion to gain further insights into their work. The articles and presentations included:

• The Effect of Time-Restricted Eating on Body Weight: A Randomized Controlled Isocaloric Feeding Trial in Adults with Diabetes. Nisa Maruthur, M.D., MHS, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the General Internal Medicine Fellowship Program at Johns Hopkins discussed findings of a randomized controlled trial of adults with obesity and prediabetes comparing time-restricted eating and basic calorie control for weight loss. Dr. Maruthur explained that when calories were held constant in both groups, it did not seem to matter whether participants consumed most of their calories early in the day or in the evening. Her findings suggest that overall calories may be more important than meal timing when it comes to weight loss.

• Assessing Clinical Utilization of Next Generation Antibiotics Against Resistant Gram-negative Infections in US Hospitals: A Retrospective Cohort Study. Sameer Kadri, M.D., MS, Tenure Track Investigator in the National Institute of Health (NIH) Clinical Center’s Critical Care Medicine Department at the NIH Clinical Center, explained that despite approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for seven new gram-negative antibiotics between 2014 and 2019, clinicians in U.S. hospitals still treated more than 40 percent of patients battling highly resistant pathogens exclusively with older, generic agents, even when these older agents are already known to be highly toxic or sub-optimally effective. Dr. Kadri told attendees that this sluggish uptake is an important issue because it threatens future development and supply of new antibiotics for patients.

• Newer Pharmacological Treatments in Adults with Type 2 Diabetes: A Clinical Guideline from the American College of Physicians. Carolyn Crandall, M.D. Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Chair of ACP’s Clinical Guidelines Committee, provided context and rationale for the recommendations detailed in ACP’s new diabetes guideline. Dr. Crandall explained that ACP’s guidelines are based on a systematic review of the effectiveness and harms of newer pharmacological treatments. The ACP guidelines committee prioritized clinical benefit outcomes, such as reduced risk for mortality, stroke, and myocardial infarction, over glycemic control, as all eligible interventions, like sulfonylureas, GLP-1s, SGLT-2, DPP-4, and long-acting insulins, are known to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. This is a key difference between ACP guidelines and those of other organizations. With this goal in mind, ACP recommends adding a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitor or glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist to metformin and lifestyle interventions in adults with type 2 diabetes and inadequate glycemic control, she said. GLP-1 should be considered when weight loss is an important treatment goal for the patient. 

“While this scientific plenary session marks a ‘first’ for ACP’s annual meeting, the topics discussed today are central to our work as internal medicine physicians and on par with the high caliber of research ACP members and Annals of Internal Medicine readers have come to expect and anticipate every week,” said Dr. Laine.