NEJM 30 Mar 2017 Vol 376 Rivaroxaban vs aspirin long after VTE The longer you give anticoagulants to people following venous thromboembolism, the fewer subsequent thromboembolic events they will have. At some point you have to decide whether to go on or to stop, and this Bayer-funded trial has recruited participants who “had completed 6 to […]
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the leading medical journals […]
NEJM 16 Mar 2017 Vol 376 Stem cells for AMD For sufferers of age-related macular degeneration who were hoping for a stem cell cure, this week’s New England Journal brings bad news and shocking news. The bad news comes in a case report showing zero improvement after transplanting a sheet of retinal pigment epithelial cells differentiated […]
NEJM 9 Mar 2017 Vol 376 Impressive imatinib In my childhood, somebody behaving self-importantly was referred to as “his nibs.” Today, the nibs of medicine are very proud of themselves. Small wonder, when the New England Journal of Medicine runs an editorial with the title “Imatinib Changed Everything.” This refers to the astonishing success of imatinib […]
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the leading medical journals. […]
NEJM 23 Feb 2017 Vol 376 Kallikrein rises from the footnotes The curious word “kallikrein” first appeared in 1934, when Eugen Werle discovered an inflammatory chemical in plasma which he thought came from the pancreas. It is supposed to be derived from the Greek word for pancreas. Anyway, the human disease most closely associated with […]
NEJM 16 Feb 2017 Vol 376 Periviable infant outcomes “Periviable” is a new word to me. I think I shall start using it for pieces of cheese that have been slightly forgotten in the back of the fridge. For neonatologists, it has a more serious meaning: it refers to infants born on the borderline of […]
NEJM 9 Feb 2017 Vol 376 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Remember MERS? It was the talk of the town five years ago when it was first identified in Saudi Arabia. There were a number of deaths and some evidence of human to human spread, causing widespread concern. But although it can be a nasty and […]
NEJM 2 Feb 2017 Vol 376 Adding bicalutamide to RT for recurrent prostate cancer So far, this year is proving a good one for urology studies. Here are the follow-up results of a trial which was designed in the 1990s to compare two treatments for locally recurrent prostate cancer following radical prostatectomy. The signal to […]
NEJM 26 Jan 2017 Vol 376 Bezlotoxumab Bezlotoxumab is an antibody that offers passive protection against Clostridium difficile toxin. This trial shows that if you give it with anti-clostridial antibiotics, it somewhat lowers the rate of recurrence. It is already on sale in the US, though in that strange country, drug prices are commercial secrets. […]