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.

Gastric bypass and cardiovascular disease risk: an interview with Dr. Brethauer, Cleveland Clinic

Gastric bypass surgery is a type of bariatric operation that results in weight loss and stimulates metabolic effects that treat diabetes and other cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and hypertension.

9 Jan 2014

C. parvum and cryptosporidiosis: an interview with Dr. Momar Ndao, McGill University

Cryptosporidium parvum is one of the most common enteropathogens to affect humans in the world. The protozoan parasite causes a gut infection referred to as cryptosporidiosis.

8 Jan 2014

Crowdsourcing fungal metabolites with antitumor activity: an interview with Dr. Robert H. Cichewicz, University of Oklahoma

Fungi have played a large role in the development of many important drugs that are in wide use today. The most well-known of these are the penicillins.

7 Jan 2014

The fight against HIV/AIDS: an interview with Dr. Mit Philips, HIV/AIDS Policy Analyst, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

People mainly speak about the progress in HIV/AIDS. We at MSF know and are very conscious of the fact that there has been enormous progress, but the progress is very uneven.

6 Jan 2014

Chronic pain amongst different ethnic groups: an interview with Professor Martin Underwood, Warwick Medical School

Conventionally chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts beyond the expected period of healing. Most experts consider a pain to be chronic after three months.

18 Dec 2013

HIV self-test screening strategy: an interview with Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, McGill University

Conventional health facility based HIV testing is plagued with poor rates of testing and has been around for the past 15+ years. Further, about 40-60% of individuals tested in facilities are lost to follow up.

17 Dec 2013

HIV stigma: an interview with Dr. Vargas-Jackson, M.D. Howard University Hospital

Stigma has been defined as a social opportunistic disease that attaches to many illnesses and increases morbidity and mortality rates. Stigma is the shame or disgrace attached to illnesses and diseases regarded as socially unacceptable.

11 Dec 2013

Auditory processing disorder diagnosis: an interview with Dr Doris-Eva Bamiou, UCL Ear Institute

It is a listening or hearing disorder, which is due to the brain’s defective analysis of sounds, so that individuals who are affected with this disorder cannot make sense of what they hear.

26 Nov 2013

Anti-epileptic drugs, bone loss and supplements

Antiepileptic drugs are medications used to prevent and control seizure disorders. These medications are also frequently used for other diagnoses other than seizures, however this current study concentrated on patients with a seizure disorder.

25 Nov 2013

Brain signals in fibromyalgia patients: an interview with Dr. Marco Loggia from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston

Fibromyalgia patients suffer from a variety of symptoms, including widespread body pain and myofascial tenderness. They are ‘hyperalgesic’, which means that if you give them a stimulus that in healthy subjects is just mildly painful (or even completely innocuous), they may perceive it as excruciatingly painful.

19 Nov 2013

Sunscreen application and skin cancer: an interview with Dr Michelle Hunt, Inner Sydney Dermatology

Unfortunately the incidence of skin cancer has risen in Australia over the past decades. From 1982 to 2007, melanoma diagnosis increased by around 50%, and in 2011, 1544 people died due to melanoma.

13 Nov 2013

Generating an alternative to IVIG therapy: an interview with Professor Richard Pleass, LSTM

IVIG is a hugely successful biological with FDA approval for treating idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), Kawasaki disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Graves ophthalmopathy and numerous polyneuropathies.

11 Nov 2013

Diets and the famine reaction: an interview with Associate Professor Amanda Salis, University of Sydney

The statistic that you often hear is that 95% of diets fail, but in actual fact, emerging research is now showing that it’s around 70% of diets that fail. That means that around 30% of people who are losing weight are actually keeping it off. So we’re doing better now than we were doing in the past, but there’s still work to be done.

7 Nov 2013

Health anxiety therapies: an interview with Professor Peter Tyrer, Imperial College, London

Health anxiety is a relatively new diagnosis and has not been adopted fully. The nearest approximation and formal classification systems is ‘illness anxiety’ as diagnosed in DSM-5, published in May 2013 (DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association, p.315).

5 Nov 2013

Malaria elimination and insecticide resistance: an interview with Professor Hilary Ranson, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

The first malaria elimination programme was in the 1950s and 1960s. Malaria was eliminated from many countries in Asia and the Americas, largely by indoor spraying with insecticide. But the campaign had very little impact in Africa and eventually resources were moved away from malaria control.

30 Oct 2013

Motor neurone disease neck collars: an interview with Dr Christopher J McDermott, Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield

The majority of the current neck support collars for MND patients were designed for a different purpose. So, if you think about when people are involved in a road traffic accident, the paramedics arrive and put a collar on to immobilize the neck and protect the spine. A lot of the collars that we give to our patients with MND were actually designed for that purpose - to immobilize the necks of people involved in trauma… and patients don't want that.

18 Oct 2013

Severe allergies in young people: an interview with Lynne Regent, CEO of Anaphylaxis Campaign

Around one third of the UK population – approximately 19 million people – will develop an allergy at some time in their lives. A significant proportion of these – around a million people – suffer severe symptoms.

17 Oct 2013

A window to the brain: an interview with Professor Guillermo Aguilar, UC Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE)

It is literally a transparent window made of yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), which we envision to become a suitable cranial implant that allows physicians for optical access to the tissue brain. It would serve the same mechanical function of current cranial implants made of other materials, such as titanium, except that it would enable optical access too, which could be very beneficial for post-operatory diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.

8 Oct 2013

Osteoarthritis and exercise: an interview with Dr Nicola Walsh, Associate Professor at the University of the West of England

Exercise helps to keep the surrounding muscles strong to protect the joint, and also reduces stiffness that people frequently experience in the morning or after periods of inactivity. Joints are meant to move, so keeping them mobile will assist with joint health, maintain range of movement and enhance stability.

7 Oct 2013

Overactive bladder treatments: an interview with Professor Chris Chapple, Consultant Urological Surgeon at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Overactive bladder symptom complex is a symptom complex, the pivotal symptom of which is urgency, which is a compelling desire to pass urine, which is difficult to defer.

1 Oct 2013