NEJM 21 July 2016 Vol 375 MenB vaccination for students 220 We’ve been waiting for decades to get a vaccine against Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B. But now that it’s arrived, it’s hardly the kind of thing that gets people looking for champagne bottles in the fridge. It’s an expensive way to prevent a rare disease, […]
NEJM 14 July 2016 Vol 375 Olanzapine stops chemo vomiting 134 For about five thousand years, doctors sought out plants that would make their patients vomit, believing that this would expel noxious humours. In this week’s NEJM there’s a good example of this in an interesting short piece about early clinical trials featuring Adrien Helvétius […]
NEJM 7 July 2016 Vol 375 Bayesian cancer trials I’m glad I haven’t got any cancer that I know of. I’m not unique in that, but I’m of an age when friends start getting cancer, and when they ask for advice it really brings home the current realities of oncology. This is the Wild West, […]
NEJM 30 Jun 2016 Vol 374 Cervical sense 2509 This week’s NEJM is an odd mix of the down-to-earth and the arcane. The down-to-earth comes first, ahead of midostaurin for advanced systemic mastocytosis, PD-1 blockade in Merkel-cell carcinoma and deficiency of sFRP4 as the cause of Pyle’s disease. If these conditions did not exist, it […]
NEJM 23 Jun 2016 Vol 374 Adolescent BMI: big data, little meaning 2430 “How might adolescent BMI affect adult cardiovascular mortality? In our study, we could not control for important risk factors (e.g., smoking, exercise, and physical fitness) or for adult BMI.” Ah, a slight problem then. This study tells you the exact correlation between […]
NEJM 16 Jun 2016 Vol 374 Data about parasites 2335 I love it when it’s parasite time in the NEJM. Tenaciously clinging to the wall of the large bowel, tapeworms suck up the digested food that North Peruvians have carefully gathered and prepared, just like people who reanalyse or meta-analyse data that others have gone […]
NEJM 9 Jun 2016 Vol 374 All sorts of AML 2209 Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), New Zealand’s greatest son, said that physics is the only science, and the rest is just stamp collecting. Nowadays physics seems largely about making stuff up, so I feel safer with the stamp collectors. And what wonderful stamps they are finding […]
NEJM 2 Jun 2016 Vol 374 Germs, catheters and hospitals 2111 Anyone who has an indwelling urinary catheter will get bacteriuria, sooner or later. I was taught this as a medical student, as a medical HO and urology SHO, and observed it through 35 years as a GP. This article begins by stating that up […]
NEJM 26 May 2016 Vol 374 An end to oncology drug madness? 2001 “Seamless Oncology-Drug Development” is a viewpoint piece about the research and regulatory changes that have allegedly been driven by a desire for “early access to transformative new anticancer drugs.” To my simple way of thinking, this would mean first showing that the […]
NEJM 19 May 2016 Vol 374 Danazol & the Norns 1922 In early European mythology, life was seen as a fragile string, which could be cut by an arbitrary force outside the power of the gods. In the Greek version, a child would be visited on the third day of life by the three Moirai. […]