Monthly Archives: December 2016

Why a global action plan on dementia is so important

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As we approach a new year, Marc Wortmann, Executive Director of Alzheimer’s Disease International, outlines the World Health Organization’s comprehensive Global Action Plan for tackling dementia, and explains why this plan is so important for the future of dementia care and research.

Adapting and adopting microbiome data into clinical practice

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A recent article collection in BMC Medicine titled ‘Clinical insights into the human microbiome’ explores the most recent and exciting findings on how the microbiome shapes physiological responses and affects treatment. Here, Omry Koren, Guest Editor of the collection and Silvio Pitlik take a look at the history of clinical microbiology as well as the delay in the adoption of microbiome data into the mainstream of clinical practice.

The curious case of an internal pilot in a multicentre randomized trial

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Multicentre randomized trials are complex projects and the need for a formal check to ensure its progressing how you would hope, generally known as an ‘internal pilot’, is becoming more common. However, an article published today in Pilot and Feasibility Studies questions this terminology and here, lead author Jonathan Cook answers questions on why they raised these concerns and how they hope the community might respond.