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.

Breastfeeding duration and intelligence: an interview with Dr Bernardo Lessa Horta

Our research shows a benefit of breastfeeding on performance in IQ tests that was similar to the benefit reported in previous tests among children and adolescents, suggesting that the benefits of breastfeeding are still observed in adulthood...

26 May 2015

Raising lupus awareness: an interview with Professor Ramsey-Goldman, MD

Lupus is a chronic, autoimmune disease, with many different symptoms so it is hard to diagnose. It affects each person differently and it has an unpredictable disease course with flare ups and quiet time. Some patients describe lupus as if they are riding a roller coaster with blinders on because they cannot always tell when they will feel well or sick...

11 May 2015

T cell expansion technology: an interview with Alexander Malykhin, CVPF, University of Pennsylvania

T cells are taken from the patient’s blood and then modified using lentivirus, adenovirus or RNA electroporation.

From Beckman Coulter Life Sciences - Flow Cytometry 5 May 2015

Supporting people with macular degeneration: an interview with Dennis Lewis, AMD Alliance International

Once depression sets in, it's very hard to combat. Combinations of medication and talking therapy can help deal with that, but it can be tough when people reach rock bottom and that certainly does happen with macular degeneration...

28 Apr 2015

Will new hepatitis C treatments strain payers’ budgets? An interview with Dr Chhatwal

Our analysis shows that these drugs would not save overall healthcare money, but would add to the budget. When something is cost effective, it does not necessarily mean it is going to save money. It essentially implies that we're willing to spend additional money to gain additional benefits...

28 Apr 2015

Current challenges in tackling macular degeneration: an interview with Mark Ackermann, AMD Alliance International

There are two forms of macular degeneration: the wet form and the dry form. The dry form is less challenging as it affects a smaller number of people and the disease progression is far slower...

21 Apr 2015

Women in science: an interview with Professor Dame Carol Robinson, University of Oxford

Professor Dame Carol Robinson has just been announced as the “L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science” European Laureate for 2015...

14 Apr 2015

Managing autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease: an interview with Dr Richard Sandford, University of Cambridge

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is one of the most common inherited kidney diseases. It's also one of the most common reasons that people require dialysis or transplantation...

13 Apr 2015

Juvenile arthritis care in NSW, Australia: an interview with Jannine Jackson

Juvenile arthritis is a disease that, by definition, affects children under the age of sixteen. It's an autoimmune inflammatory condition that affects children's joints. Several different forms of the condition are diagnosed based on how many joints are affected and whether or not other parts of the body are also affected...

8 Apr 2015

Contraception access: an interview with Pamela Weir, Chief Operating Officer, Medicines360

One of the key barriers for women to receiving highly effective and safe contraception is access, because of cost. With LILETTA™ women will have expanded access to an available IUD that is safe and effective when they need or want it...

From Medicines 360 7 Apr 2015

Compact MRI and multimodality: an interview with Bernard Siow, UCL

CABI is a preclinical imaging laboratory where we have about ten modalities. We started off with MRI and we have a 9.4T high-field system.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 30 Mar 2015

Mitochondrial DNA movement: an interview with Professor Jiri Neuzil, Griffith University

According to our understanding, mitochondria undergo cycles of fusion-fission, i.e. they divide within the constraints of a cell and, upon cell division, each of the two daughter cells gets its ‘share’ of mitochondria.

29 Mar 2015

Multimodality at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging: an interview with Professor Mark Lythgoe, UCL

Imaging techniques used to live in medical physics departments, where physicists worked on them, but now we're seeing biologists, cell biologists and developmental biologists looking at cellular processes and it's those advances that are really enabling imaging to move forward in a way that it hasn't previously been able to...

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 25 Mar 2015

Exercise and chronic fatigue syndrome: an interview with Professor Trudie Chalder

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterised primarily by fatigue but people often report muscle pain and sleep problems as well as concentration and memory problems. The symptoms affect people’s ability to carry out normal activities that healthy people take for granted. CFS can affect relationships, work and leisure activities.

24 Mar 2015

Using the butterfly effect to predict heart disease: an interview with Dr George and Dr Parthimos, Cardiff University

The emergence of the butterfly effect in many physical events reveals two fundamental laws that underpin all nonlinear systems. The first principle is known as determinism, which means that the evolution of an event can be followed accurately in the future, as long as we know its precise starting point and the rules of how a situation can change with time.

23 Mar 2015

Oxygen wristbands: an interview with Dr Gillian Lowrey

Oxygen is delivered with variable flows that administer different concentrations. National guidelines were published in 2009 that provide recommendations about prescribing the oxygen and titrating it to certain target ranges.

18 Mar 2015

Preventing falls in care homes: an interview with Professor Pip Logan

Older people living in care homes fall three times more frequently than individuals who still live in their own homes. There is often debate over the idea of people going into care homes as a solution to the fact they are falling at home but they can still fall in the care home.

16 Mar 2015

Weak spots in ebola’s defenses: an interview with Dr. Andrew Ward

There are hundreds of other antibodies against Ebola that we are in the process of imaging using the electron microscope. We are looking for new sites of vulnerability as well as subtle differences in the way the known sites are attacked. In particular we are looking for antibodies that the virus is unlikely to escape from when it mutates.

11 Mar 2015

Reducing premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases: an interview with Dr Shanthi Mendis, WHO

The main types of NCD are cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. These have been identified as the principal conditions for three main reasons. One is that, collectively, they contribute the most to the total disease burden.

4 Mar 2015

Anxiety and déjà vu: an interview with Dr Christine Wells, Sheffield Hallam University

It’s thought that the neural basis of déjà vu is located in the temporal lobes, a region of the brain strongly associated with the storage and retrieval of memories. One source of support for this is evidence from individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy, some of whom experience déjà vu episodes as part of seizure-related auras...

3 Mar 2015