GP phone consultations carry definite risks, warns an article in the current edition of Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS) magazine Summons today (Thursday, 2 July). Latest data suggests that between a tenth and a fifth of all daytime contacts between patients and GP surgeries are by phone, says the article, by GP and GP trainer Dr Malcolm Thomas.
LITTLE FALLS, N.J. (MedPage Today) — The risk of tuberculosis is higher for patients receiving anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) monoclonal antibody therapy than for those receiving soluble TNF receptor therapy for any indication, French researchers found.
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Anti-TNF Therapies Carry Varying Levels of TB Risk (CME/CE)
Between the 1932 and 2008 Olympic Games, world record times of the men’s 100m sprint improved by 0.6 seconds. Scientists have shown that an equivalent improvement can be achieved in mice by feeding them a diet high in a certain type of polyunsaturated fatty acid.
Women who get less than the recommended eight hours sleep a night are at higher risk of heart disease and heart-related problems than men with the same sleeping patterns.
People who suffer from Peutz-Jeghers syndrome, a rare inherited cancer syndrome, develop gastrointestinal polyps and are predisposed to colon cancer and other tumor types. Carefully tracing the cellular chain-of-command that links nutrient intake to cell growth (and which is interrupted in Peutz-Jeghers syndrome), allowed researchers to exploit the tumors’ weak spot.
For the first time, scientists have shown that chromosomal abnormalities are present in more than 90 percent of IVF embryos, even those produced by young, fertile couples.
Previously, only a few genes had been associated with the formation of metastases in colorectal cancer. Now, researchers have identified 115 genes that are disregulated both in the primary tumor and in its metastases. In the future, their findings may help identify patients with aggressive tumors at an earlier stage.
A low dose of oral interferon alpha shows promise in preserving beta cell function for patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes, or juvenile diabetes, according to the results of a Phase II trial.
RIDGEWOOD, N.J. (MedPage Today) — An increase in spending on prescription drugs after implementation of Medicare Part D in January 2006 was partly offset by a decrease in nondrug medical spending, researchers found.
LITTLE FALLS, N.J. (MedPage Today) — An injection of propofol (Diprivan) could have led to respiratory depression — and subsequently cardiac arrest — if Michael Jackson indeed used the powerful anesthetic to battle insomnia, emergency physicians say.
Physicists and astronomers have developed a new synthesis method, which has led them to the discovery of fluorescent silicon nanoparticles, and may ultimately help track the uptake of drugs by the body’s cells.
One-step screening for both genetic and chromosomal abnormalities has come a stage closer as scientists announced that an embryo test they have been developing has successfully screened cells taken from spare embryos that were known to have cystic fibrosis. The technique, known as genomewide karyomapping, was capable of not only detecting diseases caused by a specific gene mutation, in this case cystic fibrosis, but that it was also capable of detecting aneuploidy (an abnormal number of any of the 23 pairs of chromosomes) at the same time.