If your inbox was buried over the festive period, you may have missed the end-of-year series. Here’s a quick guide.
Between 20 Dec and 3 Jan I published a cluster of posts: one personal piece, then a four-part year-end review and look-ahead. If you were off-grid (or your NHS inbox was in holiday triage mode), these probably landed straight in the backlog.
This is the catch-up post.
Pick your route
If you’re mainly in clinic: Part 1 → Part 3
If you’re mainly in research: Part 2 → Part 4
If you run services / pathways: Part 1 → Part 4 → Part 3
The posts
0) The Life I’m Living (Dec 21)
A personal reflection written in the days after my inaugural lecture. Not IBD content. On the lives we don’t choose and the one we’re actually living.
1) The Great Remodelling of IBD Care
The therapeutic hierarchy shifted. IL-23 p19 moved up. Comparative data finally arrived. Sequencing became the story.
2) The Papers That Changed Practice
Fistula biology, strictures, TL1A crowding, global epidemiology, paediatric trials, appendicectomy, and the work that made 2025 feel like a hinge year.
3) What to Look Forward to in 2026
ABTECT maintenance, DUET combination therapy, VERDICT treat-to-target. The readouts that will define the year.
4) Predict • Personalise • Prevent
The Edinburgh IBD Research Group year in review. SENTINEL launching this month. PREdiCCt outputs. The team, the methods, and what we’re building next.
The through-line
Sequencing is now the clinical question.
Not “does it work?” but “what works first, for whom, for how long; and what do we do when it doesn’t?”
One request
If you catch up on any of these, I’d genuinely like one thing: what did you disagree with?
That’s the fastest way Atomic IBD stays sharp.
Any trial timelines and endpoints are worth verifying with primary sources before you put them in a slide deck.
For now, I’m switching off
Currently somewhere on the Mekong with Holly, travelling from Cambodia into Vietnam. Later this trip: a talk on diet and IBD at Hanoi University Medical Centre, time in their endoscopy unit and IBD clinic, and a stop in Singapore to meet colleagues before flying home.
Reflections to come. But not yet.