Methods

Sources. PubMed (E-utilities) for the peer-reviewed literature, ClinicalTrials.gov (API v2) for trial facts, the society and journal sites for guidelines, company releases for regulatory and timing news, the video publishers for video.

Selection. The landmark canon (about 120 papers) was chosen by hand for the site's launch in August 2026: the discovery and genetics papers, the Mendelian randomisation studies, the consensus documents, every phase 1 to 3 trial of an Lp(a)-specific agent, the trial biobank analyses of PCSK9 inhibitors and statins, and the population studies that set thresholds. New publications are added continuously from a PubMed watch on lipoprotein(a) and the agents by name; only papers whose full source is public are included.

Summaries. Written from the abstract and, where available, the paper; numbers are quoted as published (hazard ratios, percent reductions, sample sizes) and never rounded into claims the paper does not make. Each summary links to the original DOI, which remains the source of truth.

How new studies arrive (since 20 August 2026). The PubMed watch runs nightly and is automated. A language model running on our own hardware reads each new abstract, decides whether the paper belongs here against a written editorial brief, and drafts the headline and the summary. Every draft then passes an automated gate that rejects it unless the tags are from this site's vocabulary, the headline carries the journal and year, the summary is the right length, and every number in it appears in the abstract. Spelling is checked against both American and British English dictionaries plus a medical word list. A paper is scheduled days ahead, in plain sight, and one is published each morning. Nothing is edited or removed by the automation, and no paper is marked landmark by it: the canon stays a human judgement. Where a summary is wrong, the abstract and the DOI remain the source of truth, and Corrections below applies exactly as before.

Significance (1 to 10). 10 = a paper that changed the field's direction (Clarke and Kamstrup 2009, Thanassoulis 2013, the EAS 2022 consensus, OCEAN(a)-DOSE, the pelacarsen phase 2). 8 to 9 = practice-relevant trials and cohorts. 6 to 7 = useful confirmation, mechanism or sub-analysis. 5 = reviews and orientation.

Units. We quote the units the paper used and add the other where the paper gives both. Conversion between mg/dL and nmol/L is only approximate (see Testing).

Corrections. Every page shows its last-updated date. If a fact is wrong, mail mail@willem.com and it will be fixed with a note.