The great mystery of the French paradox is how they come to eat animal fat in such delicious quantity and yet suffer so little cardiovascular disease. […]
Richard Lehman’s weekly review of medical journals
NEJM 19 Apr 2007 Vol 356
A study of blood transfusion for very sick children in paediatric intensive care units inspires an editorial to ask “When Is More Really Less? […]
BMJ 21 Apr 2007 Vol 334
I’m constantly surprised how slowly epidemiological information about fetal outcomes continues to trickle out, despite the existence of huge databases covering several decades. This analysis shows that the risk of […]
Lancet 21 Apr 2007 Vol 369
The clinical updates which now follow the editorials in The Lancet provide very useful summaries of current knowledge: here is a concise Australian account of stroke management. […]
Ann Intern Med 17 Apr 2007 Vol 146
A big group of Canadians make a valiant attempt to determine which inhalers really benefit patients with chronic obstructive airways disease. The idea was to start with tiotropium and randomise […]
Plant of the Week: Fritillaria pallida
The fritillaries are a wonderful group of bulbous plants, mostly of very discreet charm, quite unlike their blowsy cousins, the tulips. […]
JAMA 11 Apr 2007
When I said last week that the true scientist rejoices when her/his hypothesis is refuted, I wasn’t trying to restate Popperian orthodoxy but making the point that those who wish […]
NEJM 12 Apr 2007
A big prospective North American trial – COURAGE – confirms the message of the BMJ a fortnight ago: for chronic stable angina, percutaneous coronary intervention offers no advantage over optimal […]
BMJ 14 Apr 2007
786 Several years ago, Philip Poole-Wilson issued a warning that too many cardiovascular trials use composite end-points and that this can seriously distort their conclusions. […]
Lancet 14 Apr 2007
Another very promising new drug for HIV has arrived – the HIV-1 integrase inhibitor raltegravir. It produced good results in this phase II trial in multi-drug resistant patients and “the […]