27/02/2020 Jacquie Eales, Janet Fast & Andrew Magnaye

Much of the work of caring for the growing population of older adults is done by family members who often find themselves in the proverbial “club sandwich” generation, struggling to juggle the competing demands of employment, raising a family, and providing unpaid care. Caregiving is often stressful and burdensome, in part due to the lack of support for family carers. In this blog post, the authors of a new qualitative study in BMC Geriatrics discuss what they learned about carers’ goals and how technology could help them.

26/02/2020 Nicole Prior, Nikitas Georgakopoulos & Meritxell Huch

Authors of this recent paper published in BMC Developmental Biology, present a new way of studying what goes on within the pancreas by generating “human pancreas organoids”. Using cells taken from a human pancreas, the authors create self-assembled tissue-like structures that mimic the human pancreas at a much simpler level, helping us understand the development, form and function of the organ.

In this study, they are not only able to generate these “mini” pancreas organoids, but go further in being able to propagate them over long periods of time with sustained genetic stability. They hope that this cell-derived technology will help breakdown the cellular and tissue-level processes that occur over time, to deepen our understanding towards better therapeutic interventions, tackling problems at grassroots of pancreas-driven disease like diabetes, pancreatic cancer and much more. These and similar cell-derived technologies will take us towards a deeper understanding and better treatments of disease.

25/02/2020 Megan Elliott

Men tend not to take part in weight loss programs but few studies explore why this may be. In this blog post, the lead author of a new qualitative study published today in BMC Public Health discusses her team’s research which seeks to answer this question.

20/02/2020 Alexandra Pitman

A study published today in BMC Public Health describes the experiences of people bereaved by suicide regarding media reporting of the suicide of their friend or relative. Author Alexandra Pitman talks to Samaritans, Support After Suicide Partnership, and Emma Bird – a journalist who was bereaved by suicide and has both perspectives.

17/02/2020 Anna Melidoni

With another month of cutting edge, high impact research, we look back on just a few highlights from articles published across the BMC Series in January.
Men’s grief following pregnancy loss and neonatal loss • Spontaneous embryo resorption in the mouse • Post-traumatic stress disorder among US military • How people living with dementia achieve and maintain independence at home • Impacts of a novel integrated extracorporeal-CPR workflow.

14/02/2020 Olujoke Fakoya

The individuality of experiences of loneliness and social isolation makes it difficult to deliver standardized interventions. A study published today in BMC Public Health looks at the need to tailor interventions to suit the needs of individuals. Author Olujoke Fakoya tells us more about the study in this blog.

10/02/2020 Michael Green

A study just published in BMC Public Health analyses socioeconomic patterning of vaping in the UK by smoking status, which may offer insights into potential impacts of vaping on socioeconomic inequalities in health.

07/02/2020 Rae Thomas & Paul Glasziou

While the harms of gestational diabetes are well-known, along with the physical benefits of diagnosing and treating it early, the psychosocial harms of a diagnosis are less well-understood. In light of controversial changes to the diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes, the authors of a new systematic review of qualitative studies, published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, discuss balancing these benefits and harms and how their research should be used to inform future updates to the criteria.

04/02/2020 Linda Gummlich

BMC Cancer recently attended the 4th Meeting on ‘Cancer control in low and middle income countries’ as part of the London Global Cancer Week at the Royal Society of Medicine on 25th November 2019. This year’s meeting aimed to increase awareness of successful global cancer collaborations and provide an inspiring forum to discuss future strategies to jointly improve cancer control worldwide. Here we touch upon some highlights of the meeting.

04/02/2020 Bin Yu

A study published today in BMC Public Health investigates the historical trend of marijuana use among adolescents and young adults in the US and links the effects with specific legalization events. Author Bin Yu, University of Florida, tells us more about the research findings.