JAMA 10 July 2013 Vol 310 149 Fifteen years ago, JAMA was my favourite journal. Its covers were always beautiful, thanks to M Therese Southgate’s choice of paintings and works of art, and her short essays on each were unpretentious and delightful. The contents then were more clinically relevant than those of the Lancet or […]
JAMA 3 July 2013 Vol 310 46 If you identify people with poorly controlled blood pressure in primary care and introduce a system of intensive telemonitoring run by pharmacists according to a strict protocol, you are bound to get better BP control than if you leave it to “usual care.” But for each individual, the […]
JAMA 26 June 2013 Vol 309 2557 Now that I’ve conceded column space to killer flu H7N9, let me put your minds at rest. Lots of people are working hard on an effective vaccine that will stop it killing people; and so far the mean age of victims is 60. But will the vaccine arrive […]
JAMA 19 June 2013 Vol 309 2449 If you give live attenuated measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis who are on immune suppressing treatment, are they going to make enough antibodies? Or might you risk a flare-up of their disease activity? A carefully conducted Dutch study finds that there is […]
JAMA 12 June 2013 Vol 309 2345 “Moral panic” is a term which dates back to the 1830s and describes “an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.” Just now the Chief Medical Officer for England is putting her weight behind a campaign of moral panic […]
JAMA 5 June 2013 Vol 309 2223 It’s nice to see some meaty stuff in JAMA this week: I was beginning to grow despondent. It’s true that we are expected to take an interest in the Association Between the MUC5B Promoter Polymorphism and Survival in Patients With Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis after this article, but first […]
NEJM 30 May 2013 Vol 368 2059 Don’t read this paper, but rejoice that it exists. It’s proof that cancer genomics is the best kind of science—incomplete, dynamic, complex, and full of hope. It is also open to all who can make use of it: “We identified at least one potential driver mutation in nearly […]
JAMA 22 May 2013 Vol 309 2105 Viewpoints carry with them an offer of agreement or disagreement, and everything I write in these columns is based on that. I hope you sometimes click on the links, and I often wish you would disagree with me more. I hope the same goes for the authors of […]
JAMA 15 May 2013 Vol 309 2016 I got into a bit of a muddle with this paper, but I blame JAMA. Let me test you out: the abstract says “Long-term follow-up of the randomized, masked 2-year Colpopexy and Urinary Reduction Efforts (CARE) trial of women with stress continence who underwent abdominal sacrocolpopexy between 2002 […]
JAMA 8 May 2013 Vol 309 1903 When an implanted cardioverter defibrillator goes off inside you, you are sure to feel deeply shocked: whereas, for others, watching you drop dead might be even more shocking. One needs to strike a balance. That was the purpose of the ADVANCE III (Avoid Delivering Therapies for Nonsustained Arrhythmias […]