Medical Thought Leaders

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News Medical's "Thought Leaders" series is a selection of articles written by national and international experts and trusted advisers in health and medicine. All the articles are written by experts who have been invited as recognised leaders in their fields to provide a "state of the art" contribution.

Zika threat to Olympics attendees? An interview with Prof. Eskild Petersen

The risk in terms of the Olympics, especially for travelling populations remains low – with the notable exception of pregnant women.

31 Mar 2016

The human aspect of simulations through role playing

I think role playing plays an important role, it's a really interesting question because role playing is somewhere on that spectrum of simulation. There is the potential for patients to play a role to relive an experience or an actor can be used.

29 Mar 2016

NHS: a health service or an illness service? An interview with Dr Paula Crick

I've been a nurse for almost 32 years and one of the things that has always been difficult for me to comprehend is that all too often we treat people who are sick, having missed opportunities to prevent, screen or intervene.

From University of Derby Online Learning 22 Mar 2016

Preventing blindness through portable eye examinations: an interview with Dr Mario Ettore Giardini

The number of blind people is high. In 2010, the World Health Organisation estimated that, throughout the world, approximately 39 million people are blind.

21 Mar 2016

Molecular basis for tongue cancer progression: an interview with Dr Simona Principe

Head and neck cancers (HNC) are the sixth most common cancers worldwide, with approximately 600,000 new cases diagnosed every year.

From Beckman Coulter Life Sciences - Centrifugation 17 Mar 2016

Could prebiotics benefit early life brain development? An interview with Dr Phil Burnet

Galacto-oligosaccharides are essentially sugar or saccharide molecules that have been joined together into short polymer chains.

16 Mar 2016

Could environmental toxins trigger amyloid plaques in the brain? An interview with Dr Paul Alan Cox

Many Chamorro villagers on the island of Guam perished from a puzzling paralytic disease that combines aspects of ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease.

From Huron Digital Pathology 14 Mar 2016

Delivering microRNAs in cancer treatment: an interview with Dr Conde and Prof Artzi

microRNAs (miRs) are small endogenous noncoding RNA molecules (20–23 nucleotides) derived from imperfectly paired hairpin RNA structures naturally encoded in the genome that act specifically as triggering molecules to control translational repression or mRNA degradation.

11 Mar 2016

Is the global diet getting sweeter? An interview with Professor Barry Popkin

In the past, caloric sweeteners simply referred to cane sugar or beet sugar. However, over time we've created hundreds of different sugars that are all providing calories of the same amount, about four calories for every gram of the sugar. Some examples include corn syrups and more processed sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup.

10 Mar 2016

Systemic sclerosis: an interview with Dr Kristin Highland

Systemic sclerosis, also known as scleroderma, is a rare disease characterized by the thickening and scarring of connective tissue of multiple organs in the body

7 Mar 2016

Psychological difficulties of ovarian cancer: an interview with Katherine Taylor

Ovarian cancer affects around 7000 thousand women in the UK every year and very sadly the outcomes are not great. A women dies every 2 hours of ovarian cancer. If I am diagnosed today, I’ve only got a 40% chance of being alive in 5 years’ time.

4 Mar 2016

Unlocking H5N1 virus replication: an interview with Martin Blackledge

We were able to show that one small domain of the polymerase, the part that is essential for entry of a piece of the polymerase into the cell nucleus, changes its conformation to allow it to interact with the transporter protein than takes it into the nucleus.

3 Mar 2016

Preventing the spread of Zika: an interview with Professor John Oxford

The link between the Zika virus and Guillain-Barré on the one hand, and pregnancy and the virus affecting the fetus in terms of microcephaly on the other, is still not confirmed conclusively.

1 Mar 2016

Advances in the field of MPI: an interview with Professor Kannan Krishnan

In around 2004, there was a Phillips paper that discussed a new imaging technique called MPI. At that time, I had an eager, promising graduate student named Matt Ferguson who wanted a project, so I asked him to take a look.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 1 Mar 2016

Are we ageing healthily? An interview with Professor Carol Jagger

This is the million dollar question but it is hard to give a definite answer. Most data on trends in life and healthy life expectancy use surveys that do not include people in care homes which can skew results at older ages.

29 Feb 2016

MOOCs: the future of healthcare training? An interview with David Robertshaw

MOOCs are short, free courses run by major learning providers to share their knowledge of a particular academic topic or to help students develop a specific skill.

From University of Derby Online Learning 25 Feb 2016

Does simulated based training bring better value healthcare? An interview with Prof Sir Muir Gray, Former Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS

We have to think of the world that we are leaving, the world we are moving into. The last fifty years in healthcare, have seen the advent of hip replacement, cardiac bypass, systematic reviews. But at the end of fifty years, every country is facing five problems.

24 Feb 2016

How to avoid breast damage when exercising: an interview with Professor Joanna Scurr

The breast itself doesn't contain any muscles and the only 2 supporting structures are the skin and the Cooper’s ligaments. Both of those structures are quite weak mechanically so they're not able to hold the breast in place firmly.

23 Feb 2016

Is breast density really linked to breast cancer risk? An interview with Dr Wenlian Zhu

Breast is composed of fatty and dense glandular and fibrous tissues. Breast density is expressed as the fraction of a mammogram occupied by dense tissues.

19 Feb 2016

Revealing dynamic protein complexes with NMR: an interview with Elisar Barbar

Most proteins are involved in interactions with one or a few functional ligands, but some proteins, like light chain 8 (LC8), have numerous binding partners. LC8 interacts with more than 100 functionally different proteins, from viral proteins to motor proteins to proteins involved in cell division.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 18 Feb 2016