The World Health Organization estimates that global levels of obesity have doubled since 1980. In 2012, more than 40 million children under the age of 5 were estimated to be overweight or obese, which is an issue of serious concern as excess body weight is believed to be the driver of many non-communicable diseases, namely… Read more »
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In this guest post, Dr Andrew Teschendorff of University College London and the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai, examines a new Genome Medicine study. In an exciting research article published today in Genome Medicine, Rafa Irizzary and colleagues provide evidence for a gradual systems-level deregulation of the epigenome in stages prior to the… Read more »
The past two decades have shown an increase in the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), affecting high-income as well as low- and middle-income countries. In fact, 63% of all deaths worldwide were due at least in part to NCDs, and around three quarters of the world’s chronic disease-related deaths that year occurred in low- and… Read more »
Breast cancer – the most common type of cancer affecting women – is often thought of as a single disease. However, mounting evidence suggests that there are multiple subtypes, all of which occur at different rates, have varying levels of aggressiveness, and respond to different types of treatment. One of the better understood subtypes is… Read more »
Earlier this week, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) released a draft policy update on access to the data from the EudraVigilance database, which seems to imply they want the right to censor scientific work that uses the data. Managed by the EMA, EudraVigilance is the European database that holds all information on suspected side effects… Read more »
The field of imaging and diagnostics is constantly advancing, with new technologies and innovations regularly being introduced. In this changing environment, how do clinicians ensure they keep up, and that their patients are receiving the right services? In this guest post, Rosa Sicari, co-Editor-in-Chief of Cardiovascular Ultrasound introduces a new ‘How I do it’ article… Read more »
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a group of 17 infectious diseases caused by pathogenic viruses, protozoa, helminths and bacteria. As a group, the socio-economic impact of NTDs on countries where they are endemic is comparable to malaria, AIDS or tuberculosis but, as you might guess from the term ‘neglected’, research into them doesn’t receive as much… Read more »