The distribution and uptake of antivirals and vaccination was in the news quite a bit before Christmas. H1N1 swine flu didn’t turn out to be the Armageddon some commentators were forecasting, but I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that we dodged a bullet there. In cases like this we might expect the…
CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine. While scientific evidence exists regarding some CAM therapies, for most there are key questions that are yet to be answered through well-designed scientific studies—questions such as whether these therapies are…
The necessary length of time from an initial scientific breakthrough to a tried and tested application, clinical or otherwise, can often tarnish the initial thrill of that first result, or even make you forget about it altogether. I have a photograph of my then three year old daughter sitting on the breakfast bar in the…
An interesting evaluation winged its way into Editorial over the Christmas break, and got waved under my nose ahead of publication. According to a paper published in J Clin Psychopharmacol last August, a double-blind placebo-controlled trial of oral chamomile extract showed a modest anxiolytic activity in patients with mild to moderate generalized anxiety disorder. Despite…
“Hippocampal mossy fibers” may sound like abnormal skin growths on a rare African mammal (to me at least) but they are actually axons of granule cells in the hippocampus which deal with different types of bevaviour such as spatial learning. The region is also where scientists have discovered the brain’s ability to be energy efficient,…
It’s all in the mind, you know. Blame it on my lack of a classical education, but it was only a couple of years ago I realized that the word ‘hysteria’ is a feminist issue. It comes via the Greek for ‘uterus’, hence υστερία. The ancients believed that psychological-based problems (as opposed to physical ailments) only…
