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.

Ischemic stroke: an interview with Dr Gregory Ford

A stroke is a sudden interruption of blood flow to the brain which deprives the brain of oxygen and nutrients. Approximately two millions brain cells die each minute during a stroke. This can lead to brain damage, physical and mental disability and death.

1 Nov 2012

Vitamin D and multiple sclerosis: an interview with Ellen Mowry

Vitamin D is actually a hormone. For the most part, humans obtain vitamin D through sun exposure. Ultraviolet light from the sun promotes the conversion of a compound in the skin to pre-vitamin D.

31 Oct 2012

Intravenous catheter replacement: an interview with Claire Rickard

Peripheral intravenous catheters (“IV drips”) are small plastic tubes inserted into veins, most frequently in the hand or arm.

30 Oct 2012

Allergies and hygiene: an interview with Sally Bloomfield

Allergies occur when the body overreacts to substances in our environment, such as pollen, dust mites and so forth. What happens is that when we are exposed to these potential threats, the immune system should react, deal with it, and then shut down.

26 Oct 2012

Flu protection: an interview with Dr Gillian SteelFisher of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA

In 2009, a new strain of influenza, or flu, virus emerged and spread rapidly to many countries around the world. It was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June 2009.

24 Oct 2012

Thin ideal internalization: an interview with Jessica Suisman and Kelly Klump

Thin-ideal internalization is the extent to which a person identifies with the cultural ideal that thinness is equivalent to attractiveness.

23 Oct 2012

Mephedrone and memory loss: an interview with Craig Motbey

Mephedrone is a fairly new designer drug which has been around for a few years. It exploded in popularity in Europe (and particularly in the UK) before it started to spread in a major way elsewhere.

16 Oct 2012

Cannabis and the endocannabinoid system: an interview with Dr Leonora Long

Cannabis has both physical and behavioural effects. People using cannabis can experience feelings of euphoria (well-being), hunger, sleepiness, problems with motor coordination, and sometimes feelings of anxiety and paranoia.

15 Oct 2012

Type 2 diabetes screening: an interview with Dr Simon Griffin, MRC Epidemiology Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge

Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which the body does not make sufficient insulin or the insulin it makes doesn’t work sufficiently well to maintain a normal level of blood glucose and so the blood glucose rises.

12 Oct 2012

Sun protection: an interview with Jane Hanrahan

UV radiation is a form of energy being transmitted. Sunlight is main source of UV radiation, although manmade sources also exist, such as the lamps used in sunbeds. At the earth’s surface sunlight consists of approximately 2 percent UV light, 47 percent visible light and 51 percent IR light.

11 Oct 2012

Navigating the Labyrinth of Traumatic Brain Injury to Discover a Secondary Neurological Condition

Working with individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) every day, I see the debilitating effects and long-term struggles firsthand.

9 Oct 2012

Anesthetics and protein interactions: an interview with José A. Fernández

For a long time there was a controversy about how anesthetics work. The large number of molecules that have anesthetic properties (from benzodiazepines to nitrous oxide) and their very different structures...

8 Oct 2012

Haploidentical bone marrow transplants for sickle cell disease: an interview with Dr. Javier Bolaños Meade

Bone marrow transplant (also called stem cell transplant) is a medical intervention that allows a physician to deliver very high doses of chemotherapy (if needed) but more importantly, deliver a new immune system to the patient to fight a disease (such as cancer).

3 Oct 2012

Adolescent and young cancer cost barriers: an interview with Anne Kirchhoff

According to the National Cancer Institute, almost 70,000 people ages 15-39 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States. Cancers in this adolescent and young adult (AYA) population differ quite a bit across this age span.

3 Oct 2012

Self-harming and premature death: an interview with Prof Keith Hawton, University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research

“Self-harm” is the term used in the UK, much of Europe and elsewhere, to describe intentional self-poisoning or self-injury. Thus it includes overdoses, attempted hanging, self-cutting etc.

2 Oct 2012

Death rates after surgery: an interview with Dr Rupert Pearse

There are very few published estimates describing the number of deaths following surgery at a national level and none at an international level.

1 Oct 2012

New malaria-transmitting mosquitoes: an interview with Jennifer Stevenson, Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

In the area in which we carried out the study, which was in the western Kenyan highlands, the main mosquitoes that have been confirmed to transmit malaria are the females of Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto, Anopheles arabiensis and Anopheles funestus.

28 Sep 2012

Anxiety, depression and insomnia drugs and risk of driving accident: an interview with Hui-Ju Tsai

Anxiety, depression and insomnia drugs have been commonly used to treat mental and emotional disorders, or improve sleep-related problems.

27 Sep 2012

Marijuana and testicular cancer: an interview with Victoria Cortessis

This is a set of malignancies that arise in germ cells of the testicles, the specialized cells that produce sperm. Taken together, testicular cancers are the most common form of malignancy that occurs in young men (approximately 15 to 35 years of age).

24 Sep 2012

Sleep medicine and research: an interview with James K. Walsh

There are a variety of sleep medicines. I am going to refer to what are commonly described as hypnotics or sleeping pills. Sleeping pills have been around for a long time.

24 Sep 2012