19/12/2018 Mohsin Fareed & Thomas G. Galloway

Time is precious, as is the human life. Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a fatal disease and if not managed promptly, can lead to disastrous outcomes. A contemporary review published in Cancers of the Head and Neck, discusses the importance of overall radiation treatment time in the management of head and neck cancers and addresses implications of delays in treatment outcomes, barriers to shorter treatment times and strategies to mitigate these problems.

18/12/2018 David Jenkins, Dr Glen Martin & Niels Peek

Data on healthcare outcomes, patient populations, and new treatment options are constantly changing over time. Shouldn’t the data used to create our clinical prediction models be changing too? The authors of a new Diagnostic and Prognostic Research article discuss dynamic prediction models and current challenges and limitations.

13/12/2018 Associate Professor Phaik Yeong Cheah and Adrienne Hunt

The Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR) was founded in 1999 as a global platform for debate on ethical issues pertaining to international health research. Each meeting centres on a contemporary theme of significance for global health research. The GFBR held its annual meeting on 13-14 November 2018 in South Africa on the theme “The ethics of data sharing and biobanking in health research”. 95 participants from 35 countries attended the meeting.

12/12/2018 Dr. Kamaldeep Bhui

A recently published BMC Medicine article investigates the inherent inequality in the mental health service care received by patients from minority ethnic groups. Here, Dr. Kamaldeep Bhui discusses his team’s findings.

11/12/2018 Jeremy Howick

Research published today in Trials explores the negative effects that can be caused by participants being administered placebos in clinical trials, finding that half of people taking placebos reported side effects from the trial intervention. Here talk about these findings is Dr. Jeremy Howick, lead author of the study.

10/12/2018 Leigh Charvet

An exciting therapy option for Parkinson’s disease is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a type of noninvasive brain stimulation. In a recently published study in Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, Dr. Leigh Charvet and colleagues trialed this stimulation method in home settings with remote supervision from technicians. They found compliance to be extremely high with patients appreciating the opportunity to access treatment from home. Further insights into tDCS application for motor rehabilitation are and will be published in Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation’s thematic series.

07/12/2018 Gary Hickey

Patient and public involvement in health research is now happening across the world^1,2,3. Not only do patients and the public have a right to be involved in decisions that impact upon them, but involving patients and public in research leads to better research and better outcomes. The time is right to bring this knowledge and expertise together to create a world where patient and public involvement in health research is the norm.

06/12/2018 Rob Hatch

A period in intensive care is known to negatively affect patients’ long term physical, cognitive and psychiatric health, in what’s known as post-intensive care syndrome. Researchers from the University of Oxford sought to reveal the impact of an ICU stay on patients’ mental health by surveying UK ICU survivors 3 and 12 months after discharge. Dr Rob Hatch, co-author of the study published in Critical Care, describes their findings.

05/12/2018 Jelle van Schooten & Mathieu Claireaux

December 1^st was World AIDS Day. To mark the occasion we invited a series of blogs by authors and editors from Retrovirology and AIDS Research and Therapy to talk about the latest research into the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Continuing the discussion, Jelle van Schooten and Mathieu Claireaux tell us about the work being done to better understand the role of the innate immune system in developing acquired immunity, paving the way for HIV-1 vaccines.