This is more a taunt than a proverb, and reminds us that throughout history, patients have taken comfort in the physical misfortunes of their doctors. Sayings of this kind are recorded in most civilisations and are especially well attested in ancient Greece. […]
While you are reading this, amoeba-like cells are crawling over your bones and eating them away. Unless, that is, you are taking a bisphosphonate to paralyze your osteoclasts and leave your osteoblasts to lay down new bone unhindered. […]
Your Christmas Day came to a blurry end with quantities of port wine and Stilton cheese. You don’t really remember going to bed, but soon afterwards you are aware that you have become a junior doctor working in an intensive care unit, trying to put in a central line. A sharp American voice from behind […]
What will your brain be like when you’re 73? Quite good, in all likelihood, and all the better if you keep it ACTIVE. The study with this name randomised elderly adults to no training or cognitive training consisting of sessions on reasoning, memory, and speed of thinking. […]
Now children, who can remember from last week’s lesson what is the best biomarker for death or cardiovascular events? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already. Well, never mind, in the general population you can tell just as much by working out the (expanded) Framingham score, according to this paper from the Framingham Offspring Study. […]
The Revd. Thomas Malthus no doubt used to celebrate Christmas by taking food off his starving parishioners’ tables, the quicker to help them die, and there is a school of economics which argues similarly – for depriving poor countries of life-saving medicines. […]
2195 How safe is paracetamol? This editorial highlights the study which showed that at therapeutic (4G/day) doses it can cause ALT elevation in some normal subjects (JAMA 2006;296:87), but I think we need to be a bit more worried about the evidence linking it with asthma exacerbations too. […]
When we suddenly started back-tracking about hormone replacement therapy a few years ago, ours were not the only red faces. Women continue to complain about hot flushes and the temptation is to send them in search of “phyto-oestrogens […]
The covers of two of this week’s journals feature works by Florentine artists who were patronised by the Medici family: Domenico Ghirlandaio and Michelangelo Buonarroti. Actually there are more artists at work on the BMJ cover, since the Sistine Chapel finger of God fell off the ceiling in the sixteenth century and was replaced by […]
This observational study takes a careful look at 44 630 men diagnosed with localised prostate cancer between the ages of 65 and 80. Over 30,000 of them had radical prostatectomy or radiotherapy, and in this group, mortality was 30% less than in those who were simply observed. […]