Are serotonin reuptake-inhibiting antidepressants safe in pregnancy? We want the answer to be yes, because a lot of young women take these drugs, and some would be lost without them; […]
NEJM 28 Jun 2007 Vol 356
Category: Richard Lehman’s weekly review of medical journals
BMJ 30 Jun 2007 Vol 334
For me, the best thing in this week’s ultra-lite BMJ is this beautifully clear and logical editorial from New Delhi about lactose intolerance, […]
Lancet 30 Jun 2007 Vol 369
A Scandinavian editorial on the (mainly German) trials of cell therapy in myocardial infarction makes uncomfortable reading. […]
Arch Intern Med 25 Jun 2007 Vol 167
Here is a cohort study suggesting that older women who take serotonin reuptake inhibitors show double the rate of hip bone loss compared with those who take tricyclic antidepressants. […]
Plant of the Week: Lilium regale
Oscar Wilde adored lilies. He gave them away extravagantly, and he would wear a gilded lily in preference even to a green carnation. His contemporaries picture him as a vast, sensual creature, swaying about with a purple complexion and replete with heavy, decadent perfume. Such is the regal lily. […]
JAMA 20 Jun 2007 Vol 297
Fans of The Rational Clinical Examination, once the best series in any medical journal, are having their patience tested a bit of late. Does This Patient Have Erythema Migrans? is a question of prior probability and pattern recognition, with no gold standard that allows us to answer with a tick. […]
NEJM 21 Jun 2007 Vol 356
Dracunculiasis is a most ornamental word, but the little dragon to which it refers – the guinea worm – is a horrible parasite which, thanks to a lot of humble effort in remote communities, is on the verge of extinction. […]
BMJ 23 Jun 2007 Vol 334
Sciatica is a clinical diagnosis which is usually easy to make but hard to manage. This worthy Dutch review can find no evidence that any form of analgesia works, and claims that CT is as good as MRI at detecting disc herniation […]
Lancet 23 Jun 2007 Vol 369
Diastolic dysfunction is a diabolically dysfunctional subject: scarcely any two accounts agree, and the very mention of it can cause British cardiologists to foam at the mouth. […]
Ann Intern Med 19 Jun 2007 Vol 146
Even before the virtual demise of hormone replacement therapy, soy was promoted as a “natural” alternative on the basis that Japanese women eat a lot of it and allegedly don’t get menopausal symptoms. […]