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.

New born neurons as a therapeutic strategy: an interview with Mi-Hyeon Jang, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota

There are two regions in the brain that continue to produce new neurons well into adulthood. One of these regions is the hippocampus and as we converse this region is actively involved in memory formation, mood regulation and cognition.

2 Apr 2013

Inflammation and epigenetics: an interview with Dr Belkina and Dr Denis, Boston University School of Medicine

Inflammation can be thought of as taking two major forms: acute or chronic. Acute inflammation, which can be painful, usually arises quickly and resolves quickly. It accompanies bacterial infections, traumatic injury and is useful to fight infections and promote healing.

28 Mar 2013

Prostate cancer prognosis tables: an interview with Dr John B. Eifler, Brady Urological Institute of Johns Hopkins

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. Despite many advances in diagnosis and treatment over the past two decades, it remains the second most common cause of cancer related death in men.

28 Mar 2013

Housing and health: an interview with Hilary Thomson, Senior Investigator Scientist at the UK Medical Research Council

I have been working on this topic for 13 years. Our research programme centres around generating research evidence which can be used in public policy to promote health. This is a broad topic and investigates the potential for investment in socio-economic determinants of health, like housing, transport, welfare, employment etc, to have an impact on health.

26 Mar 2013

Patient participation in care (PPC): an interview with Professor Wendy Chaboyer, NHMRC

Patient-centred care, that is partnering ‘with’ patients, rather than providing services ‘to’ them, is advocated as a way to improve patient safety.

25 Mar 2013

Fibromyalgia: an interview with Dr Frederick Wolfe, University of Kansas School of Medicine

Fibromyalgia is a common disorder that is diagnosed in people who have pain in many areas of their body together with important symptoms such as...

22 Mar 2013

HIV home tests: an interview with Dr Nitika Pant Pai, McGill University

30 years into the HIV epidemic, there is no vaccine in sight. Yet, even though there are fantastic and effective cheap and universally available drugs, and a treatment as prevention strategy is known to work, people do not wish to get tested for HIV! If everyone got tested, and treated, we could have brought the infection under control a long time ago!

21 Mar 2013

Ill health and retirement: an interview with Dr Sabrina Pit, University Centre for Rural Health, University of Sydney

In our study population, which was drawn from NSW Australia only, the proportion of working aged men who were fully retired due to ill-health in cities is five percent, eight percent for inner regional areas and nine for outer regional areas.

20 Mar 2013

NHS intravenous (IV) fluids: an interview with Dr Ian Roberts, LSHTM

Saline is just salty water, whereas colloids are solutions that have large molecules in them. In this case, the molecules are starch. The idea is that because these molecules are big they don’t leak out of the circulation as much.

18 Mar 2013

Synthesis & Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre: an interview with Dr Mary Shire, University of Limerick

This is a new research centre led by the University of Limerick that supports the pharmaceutical sector in Ireland. The centre will carry out research on the key aspects of what it takes to synthesise the pharmaceutically active molecule to isolate a pure material and to formulate this into a medicine.

14 Mar 2013

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement: an interview with Judit Rius, Médecins Sans Frontières

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade deal currently being negotiated between eleven countries of the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United States, Singapore and Vietnam.

12 Mar 2013

Influenza drug: an interview with Dr Jenny McKimm-Breschkin, CSIRO

Influenza or flu for short is caused by a family of viruses, which can be called influenza A or influenza B. Influenza A viruses are found in humans, animals – like swine and horses- and mostly aquatic birds. Influenza B is only found in humans.

11 Mar 2013

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) inflammatory subtypes: an interview with Dr Vanessa McDonald, University of Newcastle, Australia

COPD is defined as a preventable and treatable disease associated with significant extrapulmonary consequences that may contribute to severity. The pulmonary component of COPD is characterised by airflow limitation that is not fully reversible. The airflow limitation is usually progressive with an abnormal inflammatory response of the lungs to noxious particles (GOLD Strategy Document). Airflow obstruction in COPD is not highly variable and largely irreversible.

8 Mar 2013

Lower back pain and spinal cancer: an interview with Dr Nicholas Henschke, University of Heidelberg

While lower back pain is a common condition around the world, in only a very small proportion of people – less than 5% - will this be caused by a serious problem such as fracture, infection, or tumour.

7 Mar 2013

Air pollution and heart attacks: an interview with Dr Cathryn Tonne, LSHTM

Air is polluted when it contains any extraneous entity in sufficient quantities to adversely affect the environment or the health of people exposed to it.

6 Mar 2013

GP consultations: an interview with Associate Professor Helena Britt, University of Sydney

Well it hasn’t varied at all over the last 15 years, which I find pretty amazing because we’ve been through a lot of changes in general practice. Yet, the average length of consultation, as measured from a start to finish time, in a sample of 40,000 consultations in Australia in a year, shows that the average is 15 minutes and the median is 13 minutes.

4 Mar 2013

Amoxicillin effectiveness: an interview with Prof Paul Little, University of Southampton

Amoxicillin is a broad spectrum penicillin, and in the UK is one of the most frequently used antibiotics. It is commonly used either on its own or, where there are particular concerns about resistance, in combination as Co-amoxiclav (as Amoxicillin-clavulanic acid) which extends its anti-bacterial spectrum.

1 Mar 2013

Smoking prevention and cessation campaigns: an interview with Dr DePinho, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Dr Mohar, National Cancer Institute of Mexico

There are more than 94 million former and current smokers in the United States, and more than 21 million in Mexico, according to the 2009 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) Fact Sheet.

27 Feb 2013

Complementary medicine risks: an interview with Dr Andrew Boyden, NPS MedicineWise

Complementary medicines include products containing herbs, vitamins, minerals, nutritional supplements, homoeopathic medicines, certain aromatherapy products and traditional Chinese medicines. For this reason they are also called herbal, natural or alternative medicines.

26 Feb 2013

HIV epidemics and extra-couple relationships: an interview with Steve Bellan, University of Texas

The epicentre of the HIV pandemic is in sub-Saharan Africa, though prevalence of infection varies dramatically between countries for reasons not completely understood.

25 Feb 2013