Critical Care has recently published a collection of nine reviews based on presentations from the ‘Future of critical care medicine (FCCM) 2012: Today’s practice and a look to the future’ symposium held in January this year. The collection covers a wide range of intensive care topics. Professor John J Marini, the Supplement Editor, provides a… Read more »
World Tuberculosis Day was on the 24th March and this year’s focus of the Stop TB Partnership, a collective force of 1000 partners in more than 100 countries including the WHO, is to prevent the deaths of the 4000 people who lose their lives to Tuberculosis (TB) every day. TB is an indiscriminate disease… Read more »
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) aims to assess the strength of proof behind medical interventions in terms of risks and benefits, and therefore can be used to inform clinical decision making on both an individual and a population basis. As such, EBM is crucial in maintaining quality medical care and ensuring good clinical outcomes. Many parties are… Read more »
The biotechnology company Myriad Genetics holds US and European patents on the breast cancer risk genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 and sells a diagnostic test based on these. The ethics, legality and scientific validity of these patents have been extensively debated, from the courts to the blogosphere, and on April 15th 2013, this topic is back… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
Common psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders are mainly treated using medications that modify the activity of monoamine neurotransmitter systems. New lines of pharmacological therapeutics for some of these disorders are emerging that target pathophysiological pathways, including inflammation, circadian and sleep patterns. Interestingly, sleep disorders are frequently associated with mental health particularly depression, whereas motor symptoms characterize… Read more »
Written by Lin Lee, Senior Editor, BMC Medicine BMC Medicine recently attended the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH 2013) conference on global health, which took place in Washington D.C. from the 14th-16th March. Around 1400 delegates participated, with a broad range of expertise, such as those involved in general medicine, surgery, policy making,… Read more »
BMC Medicine recently attended the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH 2013) conference on global health, which took place in Washington D.C. from the 14th-16th March. Around 1400 delegates participated, with a broad range of expertise, such as those involved in general medicine, surgery, policy making, and governance, reflecting the broad scope of this… Read more »
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… Read more »