Medical Thought Leaders

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News Medical's "Thought Leaders" series is a selection of articles written by national and international experts and trusted advisers in health and medicine. All the articles are written by experts who have been invited as recognised leaders in their fields to provide a "state of the art" contribution.

Flu vaccine: the facts. An interview with Dr Lisa Maragakis

There are different formulations of the flu vaccine but in general they all do the same thing, which is to stimulate our body's immune system to recognize and fight against the influenza virus.

21 Dec 2015

Wearable exoskeletons: what interactions are possible? An interview with Dr Juan C. Moreno

Wearable exoskeletons are coming to stay. Technological advancements in embedded computation and wearable mechatronics are enabling the production of new wearable exoskeletons that were not feasible a decade ago

17 Dec 2015

Can Nanostructured Microelectrodes be Used to Analyze Biomarkers? An Interview with Dr Shana Kelley

Electrochemical methods are appealing because simple and inexpensive instrumentation can be used to make highly sensitive measurements. However, it has been quite difficult to realize clinically-relevant levels of sensitivity using electrochemistry in highly complex, real-world samples.

From Pittcon 15 Dec 2015

Risk of dementia decreasing? An interview with Professor Carol Brayne, University of Cambridge

In this analysis we brought together the few European studies that have looked, within geographical areas, at the prevalence or incidence of dementia in the population aged 65 and over.

7 Dec 2015

Bacteriophage therapy: an alternative to antibiotics? An interview Professor Clokie

A phage is a virus that infects a bacterium. People often get very confused about what the difference is between a virus and a bacterium. A virus, like a bacterium, is also a microorganism, but unlike bacteria, it needs to have a host to be able to replicate and propagate.

2 Dec 2015

Could statins treat muscular dystrophy? An interview with Dr. Nick Whitehead and Dr Stan Froehner

In addition to their well established cholesterol lowering benefits, statins also have potent anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrotic and antioxidant effects, which continue to be identified in a wide range of diseases.

30 Nov 2015

Living with lung cancer: an interview with Aoife McNamara

Understanding how lung cancer affects patients from a social perspective is vital. People living with lung cancer, lung cancer survivors and carers are impacted by lung cancer in different ways.

18 Nov 2015

Combatting viral and bacterial lung infections with volatile anesthetics: an interview with Dr Chakravarthy

Inhaled anesthetics are fairly common all over the world for minor and extensive surgical procedures in patients of all age groups. In the olden days when anesthesia was first developed, ether was the first inhaled anesthetic. That has been replaced, with the more recent discoveries of sevoflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane.

9 Nov 2015

Addressing quality of life needs in prostate cancer: an interview with Professor Louis Denis

Modern patient-directed management is based on optimal, individual medical treatment and holistic personalised patient-centred care. This is certainly true in prostate cancer where most patients are over 60 years of age. They face a negative physical and functional impact from the diagnosis as well as from the treatment with emotional and social challenges.

4 Nov 2015

Deaths from avoidable risk factors: an interview with Dr Ali Mokdad, IHME

The study showed that about thirty percent to maybe half of the leading causes of death in the world are preventable. These are risk factors that you could manage and thus you could prevent a lot of premature deaths.

3 Nov 2015

Charles Bonnet syndrome: an interview with Dr. Dominic ffytche

Charles Bonnet syndrome is the name we give to the visual hallucinations associated with eye disease. There are lots of different causes of visual hallucinations. Many different medical problems and medications can cause them, but, when the cause is eye disease, it's referred to as Charles Bonnet Syndrome after Charles Bonnet, who was a natural philosopher in the 18th century.

2 Nov 2015

Liposomal sizing and the Coulter principle: an interview with Professor Melvin E. Klegerman

For about the last 25 years, the cardiology group here have been developing a platform technology for both the diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis.

From Beckman Coulter Life Sciences - Particle Counting and Characterization 28 Oct 2015

Cancer diagnosis improvements in England: an interview with Lucy Elliss-Brookes

The ‘two week wait’ referral was brought into England in 2000. If a patient goes to see their GP and they meet specific criteria that cause the GP to think they might have cancer, then they should be referred to see a specialist within two weeks.

28 Oct 2015

Melatonin and the circadian rhythm: an interview with Professor Kennaway, University of Adelaide

The production of melatonin is controlled by a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and its timing fine-tuned by our exposure to light during the morning.

20 Oct 2015

How important is a mother’s diet before pregnancy? An interview with Dr Matt Silver

In humans, much is already known about the impact of maternal undernutrition during pregnancy, and its impact on growth, development and disease throughout the life course. However, until recently little was known about the effects of the nutritional environment around the time of conception.

14 Oct 2015

Jumping genes: a marker for early cancer diagnosis? An interview with Dr Kazazian

In the genome of every human being, there are about 80-100 active LINE-1s that are capable of mobilizing by a copy and paste mechanism to a new location in the genome.

6 Oct 2015

Unlocking the genes behind antibiotic resistance: an interview with Professor Romesberg

Bacteria are very, very diverse. This is why their susceptibility to different antibiotics can be very different. It also makes the tools they have to evolve resistance in many cases different.

30 Sep 2015

Brain health: how can you reduce cognitive decline? An interview with Heather Snyder, Ph.D.

Reader’s Digest and the Alzheimer’s Association partnered to survey approximately 1,600 people in May 2015 about their brain health and their knowledge of how lifestyle habits affect cognitive decline and dementia.

22 Sep 2015

Pipetting Solutions for Sample Screening

Our research focuses on interleukin 1 and the inflammasome and their role in innate immunity and inflammation.

From INTEGRA Biosciences 16 Sep 2015

Using whole genomes data to improve bowel cancer diagnosis: an interview with Professor Ian Tomlinson

The project aims to sequence the specified 100,000 genomes from two types of patients: first, those who may have rare inherited diseases caused by unknown or unidentified genes; and second, people with one of several types of cancer, including colorectal cancer.

9 Sep 2015