The fashion for chocolate-drinking in England faded more than two hundred years ago, to be replaced largely by tea […]
Arch Intern Med 9 Apr 2007
Fungus of the Week: Morchella esculenta
These vernal delicacies tend to grow where you can least easily spot them – on burnt ground, in grass around old apple trees, or amongst bark and wood chips used to mulch flower beds. […]
Remedy UK to pursue legal action
Remedy UK, the organisation behind the protest marches against MTAS, has decided it will continue its legal action — despite the latest compromise proposals aimed at ensuring appointments can be made in time for August, when posts become vacant. […]
JAMA 4 Apr 2007
This Japanese study breaks new ground in attempting to establish the prevalence of neuraminidase resistance in influenza B viruses. At present it is low, but of course selection pressure could change all that if these drugs were widely used in an epidemic. […]
NEJM 5 Apr 2007
If, as Michael Baum states, you have to screen 1,000 women with mammography for ten years to save one death from breast cancer, is computer-aided detection going to transform the scene? […]
BMJ 7 Apr 2007
In England, we are lucky to have our screening programmes presided over by a sceptical Scot (Muir Gray) who is alert to the dangers of screening. Nevertheless, argues Nicola Law here, we are in the process of adopting a policy for opportunistic Chlamydia screening in young women based on evidence that is contradictory and frequently […]
Lancet 7 Apr 2007
Just after the editorials comes a short clinical update on essential tremor which usefully summarises the clinical features and how to distinguish this from other tremulous disorders. When it comes to treatment, however, the evidence is generally shaky. […]
Ann Intern Med 3 Apr 2007
It seems to me that the two most important goals in treating type 2 diabetes are to preserve the remaining beta cells and to reduce cardiovascular risk. And it seems to me that the main message of the UKPDS trial is that HbA1c is a useless surrogate marker for either of these. […]
The Plague That Made England
John Morris’s magisterial history, The Age of Arthur, is full of astonishing insights into the transition between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England, none more so than his description of the role played by the great plague of Justinian in the middle of the sixth century. […]
Surgery to be a special case
The MTAS review group has agreed to recommend a special case should be made for junior doctors wishing to pursue a career in surgery. There will be special transitional arrangements to cope with the large number of Senior House Officers and others in non-training grades wanting to enter year 3 specialist training posts, said Bernard Ribeiro, President of […]