The current fashion in Britain is to put every patient who is thought to need a statin on 40mg of simvastatin. Atorvastatin is a more powerful drug, weight for weight, […]
Richard Lehman’s weekly review of medical journals
Lancet 7 July 2007 Vol 370
This week’s Lancet is devoted to HIV-1 and in particular to the effect of new anti-retroviral drugs in treatment-experienced patients. […]
BMJ 7 July 2007 Vol 335
Cervical cytology is a topic I find almost unendurably boring, and how some people can spend their lives looking at cervical smears passes all understanding. […]
NEJM 5 July 2007 Vol 357
The success rate of in-vitro fertilisation in women over the age of 35 is about 35% in this Dutch series, provided there is no tinkering with the embryo to remove […]
JAMA 4 July 2007 Vol 298
As a substance both pleasurable and mildly addictive, chocolate is a natural cause of anxiety to health puritans. The fault lies with the British chocolate manufacturers (themselves of Puritan, or […]
JAMA 27 Jun 2007 Vol 297
I grew up a weedy kid, but at least that was better than being a fat kid. There were not many of those in the northern England of my early […]
NEJM 28 Jun 2007 Vol 356
Are serotonin reuptake-inhibiting antidepressants safe in pregnancy? We want the answer to be yes, because a lot of young women take these drugs, and some would be lost without them; […]
BMJ 30 Jun 2007 Vol 334
For me, the best thing in this week’s ultra-lite BMJ is this beautifully clear and logical editorial from New Delhi about lactose intolerance, […]
Lancet 30 Jun 2007 Vol 369
A Scandinavian editorial on the (mainly German) trials of cell therapy in myocardial infarction makes uncomfortable reading. […]
Arch Intern Med 25 Jun 2007 Vol 167
Here is a cohort study suggesting that older women who take serotonin reuptake inhibitors show double the rate of hip bone loss compared with those who take tricyclic antidepressants. […]