This study looked at a cohort of 782 elderly men and women in the Netherlands with raised homocysteine and, amongst many outcomes, looked for an effect of folic acid on age-related hearing loss. To be sure, fewer of those given folate found Dutch beginning to sound like double-dutch.

10 Now then, male health professional with high blood pressure, how much alcohol is good for you? None, because alcohol raises BP? – or a fair bit, because alcohol lowers cardiovascular risk? Well, in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, alcohol protected men with treated hypertension from myocardial infarction in dose-related fashion, i.e. with the greatest protection in those drinking more than 50g/day. There is a less marked effect on stroke, but still a trend towards protection. All-cause mortality was the same in all groups.

Immigrants and refugees arriving in Canada often have not had childhood vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella, and 36% of them are susceptible to infection with one or more of these viruses.

34 We know on the one hand that subarachnoid haemorrhage is often missed at first presentation; on the other hand, we’re aware that many of the younger patients we send in with thunderclap headache turn out not to have SAH and leave without a clear diagnosis, sometimes suffering further similar alarming attacks with or without neurological deficits. This is the grey area populated by the reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndromes. This is an interesting review, well worth reading, but it would be a foolhardy GP who made a positive diagnosis of RCVS in an uninvestigated patient.