Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), commonly known as “lupus”, is an autoimmune disease that can affect any of the body’s organs or tissues. The symptoms of SLE are very diverse, ranging from skin rashes to kidney failure, and patients experience flares followed by periods of remission. Steroids are commonly used to treat SLE flares, but as long-term use leads to serious side effects, newer treatments aim to reduce or stop steroid use altogether. In a review article published in BMC Medicine, David D’Cruz and colleagues from St Thomas’ Lupus Trust review the novel therapies in clinical development for SLE treatment. The authors discuss how conventional treatments are not appropriate for all patients due …

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Recent times have seen important advances in open access publishing. Earlier this month, the Research Councils UK (RCUK) announced their revised open access policy, which comes into effect from April 1st 2013, and states that all RCUK-funded research must be published open access. While the RCUK support both green and gold open access options, they strongly encourage the gold model, as recommended by the Finch Report on expanding access to research findings.

Last week BMC Medicine attended a panel discussion on open access as part of the Cambridge Science Festival, chaired by Prof John Naughton, which discussed this significant development. Cameron Neylon, Advocacy Director at PLOS, kicked off discussions by describing the …

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The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges called for action this week to tackle the obesity epidemic in the UK, which remains a very serious problem despite various awareness campaigns and proposed interventions. A quarter of adults and a third of primary school children are now overweight, and this figure is expected to double by 2050 if urgent measures are not taken. An enquiry by the academy found that public health interventions to curb obesity are “piecemeal and disappointingly ineffective” in adults and children, and UK doctors recommend that new approaches should be taken to resolve the crisis.

In an opinion article published this week in BMC Medicine, Stephen R Zubrick and colleagues from the …

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Around 150 million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), and around a quarter of those infected develop liver cirrhosis. Treatment for HCV is only effective in some patients, and it is important to take a patient’s genotype into consideration to decide which treatment should be given.

A meta-analysis by Maria A Jimenez-Sousa and colleagues from Health Institute Carlos III published this week in BMC Medicine investigated how treatment outcome in HCV patients is affected by polymorphisms in the gene coding for interleukin-28 (IL28B). The authors found that these polymorphisms affect both interferon treatment efficacy and natural clearance of HCV infection, and that the most appropriate genetic marker depends on a patient’s …

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Although rare, pandemic flu is highly infectious and people have little or no immunity because they have not previously been exposed to the virus. Unlike seasonal flu, where only high-risk groups are at risk of serious complications, healthy people can be affected during a pandemic and the symptoms are often more severe. It is therefore important to prepare for a flu pandemic in advance to ensure that adequate supplies of vaccines and antivirals are available. Mathematical and computational modeling strategies are increasingly being used to predict the spread of flu in order to be more prepared in case of a pandemic.

Research published in BMC Medicine this week has been centered around flu modeling. As …

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Whether breast cancer screening saves lives or leads to harm has been the topic of intense debate in recent years, and this controversy has been highlighted in a collection of articles published recently in BMC Medicine. As outlined in our previous blog, in an opinion article, Donella Puliti and Marco Zappa advocate case-control and incidence-based mortality (IBM) study designs to assess whether screening is effective. The authors conclude, based on the results of these studies, that screening does reduce breast cancer-related deaths and therefore the benefits outweigh the risks.

However, Philippe Autier and Mathieu Boniol from The International Prevention Research Institute present an alternative view. In their opinion article, the authors describe the limitations …

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Clinical guidelines are widely used by physicians to advise on appropriate patient care, and smart phone apps are increasingly being adopted by the general public to provide guidance on self-management for long-term conditions. It is therefore important that such tools provide clear, safe and correct recommendations. Research articles published in BMC Medicine this week have assessed the quality of hereditary breast cancer screening guidelines for physicians and asthma self-management apps for patients.

Stefania Boccia and colleagues from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore carried out an evaluation of hereditary breast screening guidelines using the AGREE instrument. Around 1 in 20 women carry a gene conferring increased susceptibility to breast cancer, and can undergo screening to …

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Recent years have seen tremendous progress in cancer genome sequencing. Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 many mutations have been identified that are associated with cancer, and targeted therapies have been developed as a result. On 2nd–3rd November 2012, BMC Medicine attended the Unanswered Questions in Cancer Sequencing symposium hosted by the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute. The meeting focused on recent progress in sequencing various cancer types, and each session concluded with a panel discussion on the questions that are yet to be addressed.

The first session, Cancer genome sequencing, opened with a discussion on exome sequencing of breast cancer by Mike Stratton, director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger …

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Personalized medicine is gaining prominence in many areas of clinical research. In particular, recent advances in whole genome sequencing have led to the characterization of genes conferring disease risk or likelihood of response to treatment, allowing the development of individualized risk assessment and therapy. In light of the progress in patient-tailored medicine across many therapeutic areas, BMC Medicine has launched a new article collection: “Personalized medicine: genes, biomarkers and tailored treatment”.

Oncology has paved the way for personalized medicine. Since the discovery of HER2 over-expression in certain subtypes of breast and ovarian cancer, HER2-targeted therapy such as trastuzumab has been developed and used successfully to treat patients with HER2-positive cancer. Targeted therapies are increasingly …

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Mammography screening programs are widely employed in Europe and the United States. In the UK, all women over the age of 50 are invited for screening every three years as part of the NHS breast screening programme. Screening is carried out in order to detect breast cancer at an early stage, so that treatment can be started sooner when it is more likely to be effective. While early detection of breast cancer is beneficial, there are risks associated with screening that must be taken into account.

In an Opinion article published in BMC Medicine, Donella Puliti and Marco Zappa from the ISPO Cancer Prevention and Research Institute discuss whether breast cancer screening is effective based …

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