The current fashion in Britain is to put every patient who is thought to need a statin on 40mg of simvastatin. Atorvastatin is a more powerful drug, weight for weight, with a wide dose range. This study compared a dose of 10mg with a dose of 80mg in patients aged 65 or over with stable […]
This week’s Lancet is devoted to HIV-1 and in particular to the effect of new anti-retroviral drugs in treatment-experienced patients. […]
Cervical cytology is a topic I find almost unendurably boring, and how some people can spend their lives looking at cervical smears passes all understanding. […]
The success rate of in-vitro fertilisation in women over the age of 35 is about 35% in this Dutch series, provided there is no tinkering with the embryo to remove a cell for preimplantation genetic screening. If this is done, the live birth rate drops to 24%. […]
As a substance both pleasurable and mildly addictive, chocolate is a natural cause of anxiety to health puritans. The fault lies with the British chocolate manufacturers (themselves of Puritan, or at least Quaker, descent) who market their cocoa solids mixed with sugar and milk fat. […]
I grew up a weedy kid, but at least that was better than being a fat kid. There were not many of those in the northern England of my early youth, and they suffered all the more for it. […]
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; […]
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, […]
A Scandinavian editorial on the (mainly German) trials of cell therapy in myocardial infarction makes uncomfortable reading. […]
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. […]