A seminar in this week’s issue of THE LANCET outlines the common but poorly understood condition of insomnia, concluding that awareness and assessment of insomnia by family doctors is a priority.
Estimates suggest that between 5 and 35% of people experience insomnia. Michael J Sateia (Dartmouth Medical School, USA) and colleagues outline how effective management of insomnia begins with recognition and adequate assessment. Family doctors and other health care providers such as
Results of a randomised trial from Uganda in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that the drug combination of amodiaquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine might offer the optimal treatment for malaria in terms of efficacy and cost-effectiveness in this region. The study also shows that the drug combination of chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine—the recommended first-line treatment in Uganda—is far less effective than other drug combinations.
Philip Rosenthal (University of
Authors of a public-health article in this week’s issue of THE LANCET are calling for urgent international action to address the chronic lack of investment in human resources which is limiting the chance of tackling diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB. The Lancet article is an executive summary of a fuller report about human resources investment and global health being published by Harvard University Press.
The key premise of the article and full report is that no amount o
Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, a series of commentaries in this week’s issue of THE LANCET outline the current and future priorities in the global effort to curb the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The first commentary is a call to action for a renewed public-health strategy to prevent sexually transmitted HIV. Against a background of twenty years of debate over the value of different behaviour-change approaches, authors Daniel Halperin (University of California San Francisco, USA) a
“Smart” drugs capable of targeting specific brain cells to control psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia may be ready for early clinical trials within three years, with the launch of a $1.5 million project to take place at the Brain Research Centre (BRC), a partnership of the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI).
The new drugs would be the first significant change in decades to medications used to treat psychiatric d
Researchers at the universities of Helsinki and Tampere (Finland) have developed a new virtual microscopy system, which allows users digitize entire microscope glass slide specimens, and then create a virtual slide with the quality and resolution similar to the original glass slide viewed on a microscope. The results are high-resolution digital images viewable through a standard web browser, independent of a microscope.
The slide scanning microscope and an image web server devel
The sterilization of Britain’s endoscopes is revealed as haphazard and lacking, in a survey unveiled today by the Patients Association to MPs and Peers in the House of Commons.
The poll, among healthcare professionals, reveals that five per cent of those questioned didn’t clean their instruments between patients; more than a half reuse the sterilising fluid; many endoscopes never make it to the Central Sterile Department at the end of each clinic; and there are no uniform gui
A multidisciplinary paediatrics research team has been awarded the “Amagoia” prize by the Sociedad Vasco-Navarra de Pediatría for its work, “Study of bone mass and its determinant factors in female children and adolescents affected by eating habit disorders”. The research was led by Dr. Cristina Azcona, responsible for the Paediatric Endocrinology Unit at the Department of paediatrics at the University Hospital in Navarre.
The patients affected by eating habit disorders are at g
Dieters have higher metabolism, feel less hungry
Preliminary data from Children’s Hospital Boston and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, published in the November 24 JAMA, suggest that weight-loss diets may be more effective when dieters seek to reduce glycemic load – the amount their blood glucose rises after a meal – rather than limit fat intake. The findings indicate that a low-glycemic diet may overcome the body’s natural tendency to slow metabolism and turn on hunger cues to “mak
Researchers at Purdue University have shown that artificial joints might be improved by making the implants out of tiny carbon tubes and filaments that are all aligned in the same direction, mimicking the alignment of collagen fibers and natural ceramic crystals in real bones.
The researchers already have shown in a series of experiments that bone cells in Petri dishes attach better to materials that possess smaller surface bumps than are found on conventional materials used t
You may not yet have heard of chylomicrons, but a nutritional scientist at the University of Alberta believes you will soon–especially if you care about preventing a stroke or heart attack.
Dr. Spencer Proctor says chylomicrons gather on arterial walls and may be as dangerous or more dangerous than low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in causing strokes and heart attacks. “We were the first in the world to label chylomicrons remnants with florescence and visually show tha
While scientists work to find the ’perfect’ solution to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, a reasonable option–the female condom–is not being promoted, especially in African and southeast Asian countries where the deadly virus is most prevalent, according to a new study. “While we’re waiting for perfection, people are dying,” said Dr. Amy Kaler, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta.
In a paper published in the November/December issue of Culture,
Patients with cancers previously next to untreatable may have new hope because of a license agreement between Isotron of Norcross, Ga., and UT-Battelle, which manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The license allows Isotron to market a treatment called neutron brachytherapy, which enables physicians to deliver a highly concentrated dose of californium-252 neutrons to the site of a tumor instead of having to treat the tumor with conventional gamma rays, which often are not as effec
Women with hereditary breast cancer treated with breast conserving therapy appear to have no increased risk for recurrence in the treated breast, according to results from a prospective study published in the January 1, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. However, the risk of breast cancer in the opposite breast is significantly increased.
Breast conserving therapy (BCT), consisting of lumpectomy and radiation, has been demonstrated to b
A team of Dartmouth researchers has developed a new computational tool to help authenticate works of art, specifically paintings, prints and drawings.
Using high resolution digital images of drawings by Bruegel and some of his imitators, as well as a painting by Perugino, the computer scientists captured data about pen or pencil stroke patterns and other elements that represent an artist’s style or aesthetic signature. This signature was then used to discover consistencies a
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are seeking people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) to help them better understand how mood– particularly depression– affects their symptoms. The study will investigate the way depression impacts on the thinking processes of those with PD, and look at how this mood disorder can be treated.
Research psychologist Anthoula Lioni said: ” Depression is very common in people with PD and we believe that their problems with elaborate thinking processes
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