April Cashin-Garbutt

Natural Sciences

April graduated with a first-class honours degree in Natural Sciences from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. During her time as Editor-in-Chief, News-Medical (2012-2017), she kickstarted the content production process and helped to grow the website readership to over 60 million visitors per year.

Through interviewing global thought leaders in medicine and life sciences, including Nobel laureates, April developed a passion for neuroscience and now works at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, located within UCL.

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Articles from April

Physical activity policies: an interview with Dr Nick Cavill

Our bodies were designed to be active. The human body is not meant to spend long periods of time sitting but that’s what our modern lives have led us to do. The result has been the increase in obesity seen across the world, and up to 20 other conditions including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

22 Jan 2013

Itch-specific nerve cells: an interview with Associate Professor Xinzhong Dong

Itch was actually defined by a German physician more than 350 years ago. His name was Samuel Hafenreffer. He defined itch as an unpleasant sensation that makes people want to scratch. You probably think this is a very simple definition but itch is really a very complex sensory modality.

21 Jan 2013

Macular pigment screening: an interview with Jaquie Finn, Product Line Manager at Elektron Technology

AMD is the leading cause of vision loss in anyone over 50 and globally in 2010 it was estimated to cost $340 billion to treat AMD. The costs are set to spiral over the next 20 years and really over burden the healthcare system unless people start to take preventative action.

18 Jan 2013

Miscarriage and molecular signals: an interview with Prof Brosens and Prof Quenby

Miscarriage is defined as the spontaneous loss of pregnancy before the baby reaches viability. Besides the physical trauma, miscarriage causes considerable anxiety, stress, and depression.

17 Jan 2013

Malaria control: an interview with Dr Jo Lines

Malaria is a tropical, mosquito-borne disease. It is found all over the tropics, in every continent but diminished now a great deal in most of Latin America, most of Asia. Still 90% of the world’s deaths due to malaria – are in Africa and most of them are in young children in Africa.

16 Jan 2013

Dementia care services: an interview with Sue McLean

The term 'dementia' is used to describe symptoms that occur when the brain is affected by specific diseases and conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Lewy Bodies or Korsakoff’s syndrome.

15 Jan 2013

Bionic devices: an interview with Dr Rylie Green

Bionic devices are implants which replace biological functions which have been lost due to nerve damage. They use electrical signals to stimulate the remaining nerve cells following disease or injury. Although the term bionic was only coined in the late 1950s, the earliest bionic devices were cardiac pacemakers, developed in the early 1900s. However the first commercial implantable units were not available until the 1950s.

14 Jan 2013

Flusurvey: an interview with Dr Alma Adler

Flusurvey is an online system of tracking influenza across the UK. We are linked to other flu surveys across Europe, so there are about 12 flu surveys across Europe in total.

9 Jan 2013

Dementia diagnosis: an interview with Dr Andrew Blackwell, Chief Scientific Officer, Cambridge Cognition

Dementia is a huge public health problem, affecting about 800,000 people in the UK and 36 million people around the world.

8 Jan 2013

Industry sponsored drug and device studies: an interview with Professor Lisa Bero

Our review included analyses of drug and device studies conducted in humans. The drugs or devices could be compared to placebo or sham treatments, or other effective treatments. The drugs and devices examined for this review are used for a wide variety of clinical conditions, including cardiovascular and psychiatric diseases.

7 Jan 2013