Health news round-up: immunotherapy for depression, PCOS to PMOS, and clopidogrel for East Asian patients

This week, The Pharmaceutical Journal has reported on the latest community pharmacy workforce survey, calls to add migraine to Pharmacy First, inequalities in PrEP access, and potential measures to restrict paracetamol sales.

Read on for more health news you might have missed this week.

Immunotherapy for difficult-to-treat depression

Immunotherapy could help patients with treatment-resistant depression, a pilot randomised controlled clinical trial, published in JAMA Psychiatry has suggested. Compared with placebo, the small-scale trial showed that tocilizumab may reduce depression symptoms, fatigue, anxiety and increase overall quality of life. One in three people with depression have signs of inflammation in their blood, and this was one of the first randomised controlled trials to test inflammation-lowering immunotherapy for depression.

Another study published this week in the American Journal of Psychiatry has suggested that low-dose buprenorphine may help sustain ketamine’s benefits for suicidal ideation.

However, researchers have called for urgent action to address rising poor mental health among children and young people, after a study published in BMJ Open found that total cost of emergency admissions for mental health among children and young people in England nearly quadrupled over a decade.

Study supports manipulation strategies for dose reduction and hyperbolic tapering

Results of a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry this week has revealed that all manipulation strategies for achieving progressively smaller doses and hyperbolic tapering (whole/split tablets, liquid dispensed via dropper/dose syringe, diluted solutions and tablet suspension) yielded mean doses within 90–110% expected values. The paper concluded that this supported these strategies “as a practical and reliable component of individualised dose reduction in psychiatric care”.

PCOS name change to PMOS

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been renamed to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), following a global consensus process that ran from September 2024 to February 2026. Announcing the change in The Lancet on 12 May 2026, researchers said: “The term ‘PCOS’ is inaccurate, implying pathological ovarian cysts, obscuring diverse endocrine and metabolic features, and contributing to delayed diagnosis, fragmented care, and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing.”

The new symptom-based name recognises the endocrine disturbances underpinning the condition, that can manifest with metabolic, reproductive, psychological and dermatological features.

Authors recommended “evolutionary rebranding — which supports some continuity with an existing name or acronym and is framed as an update — rather than revolutionary rebranding, which implies a new condition”.

Clopidogrel better than aspirin in East Asian patients

Compared to aspirin, clopidogrel is associated with significantly reduced major adverse cardiovascular events and net adverse clinical events, a study published in European Heart Journal has suggested. However, the authors suggested that a high level of confidence in these findings is currently limited to East Asian populations — who made up 75% of the study cohort — and additional evidence is needed to clarify their applicability to non-East Asian patients.

NICE approvals

Durvalumab (Imfinzi; AstraZeneca) in combination with fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin and docetaxel (FLOT) chemotherapy, has been approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) for NHS treatment of adults with stomach cancer that has not spread extensively and can be removed through surgery.

Also this week, NICE published final draft guidance recommending lisocabtagene maraleucel as an option for treating large B cell lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic treatment in adults. Osimertinib was also recommended as an option for treating epidermal growth factor receptor mutation-positive unresectable locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer after platinum-based chemoradiotherapy. And tisotumab vedotin (Tivdak; Genmab) was recommended for cervical cancer that has returned or spread after treatment.