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.

SGK1 enzyme, asthma and cancer therapies: an interview with Dr. Jonathan D. Powell, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center

SGK1 stands for serum/glucocorticoid-regulated kinase 1. SGK1 is a member of the AGC kinase family, which is a huge family of kinases.

13 May 2014

Molecular imaging and multimodality: an interview with Professor Silvio Aime, University of Turin

Molecular imaging aims at the visualization of molecules or molecular events that occur at the cellular level. Clearly it also allows the possibility of looking inside the biochemical pathway at the cellular level and therefore enables us to look at the onset of diseases well before they are resolved into structural change.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 12 May 2014

Mortality after cardiac surgery: an interview with Dr. Bryan G. Maxwell, Johns Hopkins Medicine

The last decade has seen a strong movement towards the use of various quality measurements to grade medical care. In surgery, 30-day mortality is one of the most common benchmarks. We wanted to determine if patterns of postoperative mortality showed any signs that the process of measuring medical care might actually alter how (and when) care is provided or withdrawn.

6 May 2014

Understanding GPCRs and controlling inflammation: an interview with Dr. Richard Proia, NIDDK, NIH

GPCRs are one of the largest families of cellular signalling proteins consisting of more than a thousand different types. They reside on the surface membranes of cells where they are poised to recognize molecules in the exterior environment and then transmit this information through the membrane allowing cells to respond accordingly.

16 Apr 2014

Managing pregnancy-related complications: an interview with Dr. Mark Zakowski

Pregnancy-related mortality has increased over the last 25 years. Ten years ago the top three pregnancy-related mortality diagnoses were hemorrhage, preeclampsia, and embolism (includes thrombotic and amniotic).

2 Apr 2014

Anxiety relief in children: an interview with Dr. Golda Ginsburg, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center

Anxiety is the most common psychiatric disorder among youth. Prevalence rates hover around 10%, although the actual percent varies depending on the specific anxiety disorder, sample, method of assessment, etc.

24 Mar 2014

Imaging cancer in children using MRI: an interview with Dr. Heike E. Daldrup-Link, Stanford University School of Medicine

There have been a number of scientific publications recently that suggest that the radiation exposure from imaging tests can induce secondary cancers later in life.

21 Mar 2014

Biostatistics provides clues to understanding autism: an interview with Dr Knut M. Wittkowski, The Rockefeller University

The incidence of autism spectrum disorders has increased sharply since it was first described 60 years ago. Today, ASD affects more than 1% of all children in the U.S. and about half of them develop a life-long disability.

3 Mar 2014

Protein M: an interview with Rajesh Grover, PhD, senior staff scientist, Lerner laboratory, TSRI

Protein M is a cell surface protein from Mycoplasma Genitalium that binds to all human antibodies.

26 Feb 2014

Understanding autism: an interview with Roberto Fernández Galán, PhD, Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine

Autism does not come in just one flavour. It is a spectrum of disorders that share several features: impaired social interactions; impaired verbal and non-verbal communication; and restricted, repetitive behaviours.

25 Feb 2014

How do people become depressed? An interview with Anna Watters and Professor Lea Williams, University of Sydney

A clinical diagnosis of depression (i.e. major depressive disorder) is currently defined on the basis of reported symptoms.

19 Feb 2014

Valproic acid metabolism and obesity: an interview with Dr. Namandjé Bumpus, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Valproic acid is one of the most widely prescribed drugs for the treatment of epilepsy. It has also been shown to be effective for the treatment of mood disorders and migraine headaches.

17 Feb 2014

Prions and their shadow proteins: an interview with Dr Jiri Safar, Co-Director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

The prion diseases were originally discovered by Dr Gajdusek and Dr Gibbs. The first disease discovered was Kuru, which was affecting native tribes in the Papua New Guinea highlands in the 1950s.

9 Feb 2014

Communication for people with impaired speech: an interview with Professor Mark Hawley, Professor of Health Services Research, Director of CATCH and lead researcher for VIVOCA

There are many different causes of speech impairment but the one we are particularly interested in is actually the most common cause of speech impediment, which is dysarthria.

5 Feb 2014

Psoriasis registry: an interview with Dr. Andrew D. Robertson, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer, National Psoriasis Foundation

Psoriasis is the most common autoimmune disease in the US, affecting 2 to 3% of all Americans. What causes psoriasis in any one individual will stem from a mixture of their genetic background and their environment.

4 Feb 2014

Addressing antibiotic resistance: an interview with Professor Otto Cars, Uppsala University, Sweden

Antibiotic resistance is a consequence of antibiotic use. Bacteria adapt to the threat of antibiotics using mechanisms to overcome the drug. These bacteria, which we call resistant bacteria, then survive.

3 Feb 2014

REM sleep, memory and depression: an interview with Dr Penny Lewis, University of Manchester

Usually you don’t go into REM until you’ve passed through all the other stages of sleep. The stage immediately before REM is slow-wave sleep.

From The University of Manchester 29 Jan 2014

Anxiety, depression and meditation: an interview with Dr Madhav Goyal, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

We wanted to be broadly inclusive of any kind of meditation program, so we defined a meditation program to be any kind of structured meditation program that involved at a minimum 4 hours of training, with instructions to practice outside the classroom.

28 Jan 2014

Childhood brain cancer (ETMR/ETANTR): an interview with Dr. Nada Jabado, Department of Pediatrics at McGill University

Embryonal tumours with multilayered rosettes (ETMR) are rare, deadly brain tumours that affect mainly children below the age of 4 years. There are 300 cases reported but probably there are many more as this tumour is often misdiagnosed.

21 Jan 2014

Smoking and cancer: an interview with Dr. Lewis Foxhall, VP of Health Policy, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

The report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General, identified tobacco as the predominant cause of lung cancer in men. This was the first widely disseminated report based on scientific studies showing the clear link between smoking tobacco and serious health conditions including cancer, chronic lung diseases and heart disease.

13 Jan 2014