Posts tagged: Medicine

Fibromyalgia Awareness Day

Abigail Jones on May 10, 2013 at 4:54 pm - 0 Comments

Fibromyalgia is a chronic widespread pain disorder, estimated to affect one in 20 people worldwide. It causes pain throughout the body, and often patients experience simultaneous conditions including fatigue and sleep problems, headaches and irritable bowel and bladder problems. After osteoarthritis, it is the second most common disorder observed by rheumatologists, yet there is no known cause or cure. The persistent and debilitating nature of the disorder can have a devastating effect on peoples’ lives.

This Sunday, May 12th, marks Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, which aims to increase public awareness of the disease, and educate patients and the medical community. This year, Fibromyalgia Awareness Day coincides with the publication of Canadian guidelines for the diagnosis and management of …

World Asthma Day 2013

Lisa Phelps on May 7, 2013 at 8:44 am - 0 Comments

World Asthma Day is organized annually by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA), in support of the estimated 300 million people with asthma across the globe. The ongoing theme for events taking place is “You can control your asthma”. This year, GINA has introduced a sub-theme, “It’s time to control asthma”.

In recognition of this, we have collated 10 articles related to asthma control, published across some of BioMed Central’s journals in the last year. This collection includes articles such as Exploring factors influencing asthma control and asthma-specific health-related quality of life among children published in Respiratory Research, an article from BMC Medicine looking at the appropriateness of

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: key updates on guidelines and therapeutics

Lisa Phelps on April 18, 2013 at 4:36 pm - 0 Comments

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive lung condition typically affecting adults over 50 years old. There are limited approved treatment options and several complications associated with the condition, which can make treating patients with the condition a challenge.

A review supplement presenting 7 reviews on IPF from the 2011 Advancing IPF Research symposium in Berlin has recently been published in Respiratory Research, the leading open access journal in the field of respiratory medicine. As Professor Ulrich Costabel concludes in his introduction to the supplement “A key take-home message from this meeting is that each patient should be viewed as an individual case when considering the diagnostic and disease management approaches.”

The supplement, supported by …

Camus enters the clinic: Genome Biology at Genomic Disorders 2013

Naomi Attar on April 17, 2013 at 11:19 am - 1 Comment

It is not unusual per se for Nobel laureates to be quoted at genomics conferences, but it is perhaps a little out of the ordinary when the Nobel Prize in question is for Literature. But, then again, the Wellcome Trust's 'Genomic Disorders 2013: From 60 years of DNA to human genomes in the clinic' was not your run-of-the-mill conference; instead, a mesh of current research and historical (and futuristic) perspective paid tribute to the 60th anniversary of Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix.

So it was not entirely out of keeping with expectations when philosopher (and former candidate for Slovene of the year) Renata Salecl stepped onto the podium and asked:

'Should I kill myself, or have …

Critical Care publishes two new supplements – free to access

Kathryn Smith on March 25, 2013 at 4:23 pm - 0 Comments

Critical Care has just published two new collections to coincide with the 33rd International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (ISICEM). All articles in both collections are free to access.

The first collection features poster abstracts from the 33rd ISICEM, published as a supplement to the journal. View a full list of the 545 abstracts presented at the conference. ISICEM also provides its delegates with a one year free subscription to Critical Care as part of their registration. All you need to do is register on the Critical Care website using the email address you used to register for ISICEM.

The second, a selection of 10 articles from Springer’s Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2012 have …

Chronic cough hypersensitivity syndrome: reviews from the 2012 London Cough Symposium

Lisa Phelps on March 15, 2013 at 2:11 pm - 0 Comments

When a cough has persisted for more than eight weeks it can be defined as a ‘chronic cough’ whether or not it has an obvious underlying cause. It can affect quality of life in many ways, for example by disturbing sleep of the patient, a partner or parents of children who are affected.

Most clinicians will come across patients with chronic cough at some point in their career, and it can be difficult to treat, especially if the underlying cause is not known. The emerging idea of considering chronic cough as cough hypersensitivity syndrome could go a long way to help the understanding of the mechanisms and treatment of the condition.

Many aspects of cough hypersensitivity syndrome were considered at …

E unus pluribum (out of one person, many genomes): Genome Biology at the CSH Single Cell Analyses meeting

Naomi Attar on March 14, 2013 at 3:53 pm - 2 Comments

You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
Eminem, 'Lose Yourself'

Hip hop has-been Marshall Mathers III may or may not have been musing on the technical challenges of single-cell sequencing when he uttered these words, but he might as well have been. Because each cell only gives up its contents one time, and any material lost during your sequencing protocol is gone forever. No pressure.

So if single-cell sequencing is such a torment, why bother? Genome Biology sent an intrepid explorer, or editor if you will, to Cold Spring Harbor's Single Cell Analyses meeting in order to find out.

Mind-boggling mosaics
It turns out that sequencing individual genomes in a population reveals a rich tapestry …

Not a mixed bag: redefining syndromes associated with ASXL gene mutations

Andreia Cunha on February 26, 2013 at 1:59 pm - 0 Comments

Bohring-Opitz syndrome is a clinically heterogeneous developmental condition characterized by feeding difficulties, severe developmental delays, a smaller than average head circumference, and distinctive facial features and posture. It is estimated that around half of the individuals affected have de novo truncating mutations in the additional sex combs like 1 (ASXL1) gene. The ASXL gene family is composed of three evolutionarily conserved transcriptional regulators, ASXL1, ASXL2 and ASXL3 that are known to play key roles in development.

In a study recently published in Genome Medicine, and highlighted in a Nature News piece, Matthew Bainbridge and colleagues report de novo truncating mutations in the ASXL3 gene that are associated with a clinical syndrome with features partially overlapping with Bohring-Opitz. …

Understanding HPV-positive carcinoma for better outcomes

Maria Hodges on February 21, 2013 at 5:04 pm - 0 Comments

Head and neck cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the most frequent form. Certain subtypes of HNSCC, such as oropharyngeal carcinoma, are infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), and patients with these HPV-positive tumors have a better prognosis than patients without and respond better to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

To understand why the HPV-positive patients do better, a team from University College London led by Stephan Beck examined the differences in methylation patterns by sequencing HPV-positive and HPV-negative samples, and the results were recently published in Genome Medicine.

As frozen HNSCC samples are hard to get hold of, the UCL team instead developed a method that …

From neuroscience to neuro-rehabilitation

Alice Ridgway on February 8, 2013 at 11:08 am - 0 Comments

Over the last few decades, our understanding of the pathophysiology of Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders has increased. This has paved the way for research into possible therapeutic approaches for treating CNS disorders, such as spinal cord injury and hemiparesis following stroke, in order to improve the quality of patients’ lives. Yet whilst research in a laboratory setting is ongoing, a gap remains in our knowledge of how such treatments can be transferred to daily, clinical use.

A new thematic series recently published in Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation focuses on rehabilitation treatment strategies for CNS disorders and showcases some of the cutting-edge research aimed at bridging the gap between basic science and clinical application. ‘From neuroscience to …