Monthly Archives: February 2009

BMC Medicine publishes first commissioned minireview

“Recent developments in Alzheimer’s disease therapeutics”, written by Michael Rafii and Paul Aisen, reviews current strategies for tackling a disease that affects more than 37 million people worldwide. By assessing recent clinical trials that have tested drug therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, the authors discuss the most promising potential future treatments of this debilitating disease.  This… Read more »

Medicine

Scientific uncertainty not mirrored in clinical practice

A pilot study of the contraindicated use of metformin in diabetic patients with heart failure published last week in Trials has highlighted a potential discordance between the scientific community and practicing clinicians. Research    Metformin treatment in diabetes and heart failure: when academic equipoise meets clinical realityDean T Eurich, Ross T Tsuyuki, Sumit R Majumdar, Finlay… Read more »

Medicine

The challenge of conducting surgical trials

The randomised controlled trial (RCT) has been described as the ‘gold standard’ study design for assessing new healthcare interventions. But randomised trials of surgical evaluations are rare, meaning some interventions have been adopted without rigorous evaluation. Surgical trials are difficult to undertake due to inherent practical and methodological challenges in conducting them, as Dr Jonathan… Read more »

Medicine

BMC Medical Genomics – the genomic revolution continues

BMC Medical Genomics is celebrating its first anniversary with the publication of its 70th paper. This is a great achievement for a new open access journal in such an emerging field of research. BMC Medical Genomics focuses on functional genomics, genome structure, genome-scale population genetics, epigenomics, proteomics, systems analysis and pharmacogenomics in relation to human… Read more »

Medicine