Late last year, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) published joint guidance, which recommended lowering the risk threshold at which statins are offered for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) later issued similar guidance in the UK. In October 2013, The BMJ […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: Essential medicines, evidence, and influence
Today an Analysis article questions the quality of applications to the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list. The WHO essential medicines list is a skeletal formulary of medicines that all countries should consider making available. Although the list just covers the basics, the medicines included such as amoxicillin and haloperidol are taken seriously—to be a […]
The BMJ Today: Dabigatran and other new oral anticoagulants—demand the data
Last week, The BMJ published a series of articles that investigated how the safety and effectiveness of the new oral anticoagulant, dabigatran, had been studied, licensed, and subsequently marketed. An investigation found that the drug company Boehringer Ingelheim withheld important analyses from the regulators, which showed that monitoring drug plasma concentrations and adjusting the dose could […]
The BMJ Today: Improving vaccination rates
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a press conference to discuss a recent survey, which found that rates of HPV vaccine coverage did not reach the 80% target. This in itself is not a surprise given the vaccination levels of previous years. But at the press conference, The […]
The BMJ Today: Bleeding anticoagulants and guerrilla warfare
Can we better quantify the risk of upper gastrointestinal and intracranial bleeding among patients who are taking long term oral anticoagulants for venous thromboembolism, systemic embolism, or stroke prevention? This information would help inform treatment, further investigation, or monitoring. A research paper published yesterday on thebmj.com describes the newly devised “QBleed algorithms.” The researchers, from […]
The BMJ Today: Dabigatran—the impact of The BMJ’s investigation
“The results of this investigation are somewhat shocking to me, but, reviewing the information, not entirely surprising.” That was the verdict of David Haines, section head of the Heart Rhythm Center at Beaumont Health System in the United States, on The BMJ’s investigation into dabigatran, the first of the new oral anticoagulants licensed to prevent […]
The BMJ Today: Feet and fudge
A calcaneal fracture can mean a two year recovery, with a stiff, painful, deformed foot that will not fit into a normal shoe. How does operative and non-operative treatment for intra-articular fractures compare? A research team led by Damian Griffin, professor of trauma and orthopaedic surgery at Warwick University Medical School, conclude in their randomised […]
The BMJ Today: More on transparency
In recent years, The BMJ has campaigned on transparency—the focus of our Open Data campaign, and an issue of vital importance if modern medicine is to retain the trust of doctors and the public, writes Trevor Jackson in this week’s Editor’s Choice. Dabigatran was the first of the new oral anticoagulants licensed to prevent stroke in […]
The BMJ Today: Time to rethink your assumptions about sepsis, Minerva
When I first arrived at the University of Bath, to study history and philosophy of science, our first lecture was about Sulis-Minerva: the combination of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, and Sulis, the Celtic goddess who lived in the hot springs that gave the city its name. Sulis-Minerva became the goddess of health in Roman Britain, […]
The BMJ Today: A good idea gone wrong?
At the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Bill Gates highlighted a new US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) law that rewarded sponsors of drugs for tropical diseases with a voucher that entitles the bearer to a “priority review” of another new drug application. It was intended to encourage for-profit companies to invest in treating […]