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 and personality: an interview with Dr Amy Brown

In the UK we've got quite a problem with breastfeeding. The government recommends that all women should breastfeed for six months, exclusively just breast milk, and then for up to a year and beyond. But quite a few women struggle in the UK. About 80% initiate breastfeeding but that drops off really quickly.

24 Sep 2013

Clean water and growth of children: an interview with Dr Alan Dangour

Growth in children is known to be directly affected by two critical factors: food intake and incidence of disease. It is known that access to good quality water, improved sanitation and enhanced hygiene (WASH) practices lead to decreased levels of infectious disease in children. We were interested to know whether this decline in disease would lead to improvements in child growth.

23 Sep 2013

Postpartum sexuality: an interview with Dr Sari van Anders, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Research on postpartum seems to have focused on birth mothers for good reason: women (and, of course, some transmen) are the ones who carry a pregnancy and give birth, and the postpartum is conceptualized as “following birth”.

19 Sep 2013

Gout: An Interview with Dr. Lawrence Edwards, Chairman and CEO of GUAES

Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis that affects adults. It's a disease caused by the presence of uric acid crystals in and around the joints. It's a disease that's becoming more and more common. It probably has doubled in its prevalence worldwide over the past twenty to thirty years.

18 Sep 2013

Smoking-cessation in HIV-positive individuals: an interview with Dr Ellen R. Gritz, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

In the general population, current smoking prevalence is 18%. Persons living with HIV/AIDS smoke at a rate 2 to 3 times higher, up to almost 70% in some studies.

16 Sep 2013

Hepatitis C services in the UK: an interview with Louise Campbell, senior liver nurse at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

Within the UK there are several centres whose nurse specialists work to a best practice model, delivering care and achieving outcomes which are extremely high in areas of patient retention, adherence to medication and completion of the treatment regimen. With this they achieve cure rates which are some of the highest in the World.

9 Sep 2013

Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) research: an interview with Dr. Griffin Rodgers, NIDDK director

Chronic granulomatous disease, or CGD, is a diverse group of inherited diseases in which certain cells of the immune system have difficulty forming reactive oxygen compounds, most importantly superoxide radicals. These are used by these white blood cells to kill certain bacteria.

3 Sep 2013

Argininosuccinic aciduria (ASA) and gene therapy: an interview with Dr Julien Baruteau, UCL Institute for Women's Health, London

This rare genetic condition can theoretically affect patients at any age but symptoms are more often observed in childhood and even uncommonly during the first days of life.

2 Sep 2013

Childhood obesity: an interview with Dr. Kevin Hall, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA

Our research uses mathematical modelling to quantify calorie intake as children grow at a healthy rate as well as when they develop obesity. We showed that the development of childhood obesity required a much greater increase in calories than previously thought since prior estimates did not properly account for metabolic changes as children grow.

21 Aug 2013

Acne and diet: an interview with Dr Katerina Steventon, Research Fellow, HONEI, University of Hull

The typical Western diet tends to have a high glycemic index. High glycemic index foods are e.g. white bread, processed cereals, snacks, cakes and deserts, sweets and also instant foods like burgers and fried chicken.

20 Aug 2013

Publication of death rates: an interview with Dr Kate Walker, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

The death rates of individual heart surgeons have been published in England and several US states for some years. A high profile investigation into high death rates at a certain cardiac centre motivated this in England. For other surgery types, death rates have been reported only at the hospital or trust level. NHS England’s “Everyone Counts” policy, introduced this Summer, means that outcomes of ten types of surgery will be reported at the individual surgeon level.

15 Aug 2013

Osteoarthritis research: an interview with Dr Deborah Mason, Cardiff University

Osteoarthritis is an extremely common condition affecting about 8 million people in the UK. The elderly are particularly susceptible, with up to 45% of people over 65 years, having the disease.

14 Aug 2013

Stillbirth research: an interview with Dr Lucy Higgins, University of Manchester

Stillbirth, the birth of a baby who shows no sign of life after 24 completed weeks of pregnancy, occurs in 1 in every 200 pregnancies in the United Kingdom. That’s roughly 10 bereaved families a day.

From The University of Manchester 12 Aug 2013

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and emotional memories: an interview with Dr. Fiona Kumfor and Assoc. Prof. Olivier Piguet, NeuRA

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder, which affects the frontal and temporal lobes. Unlike other types of dementia, it more commonly occurs in individuals in their 50s and 60s, and is therefore referred to as a “younger-onset dementia”.

9 Aug 2013

High mobility group (HMG) genes and cancer: an interview with Dr. Linda Resar, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

High mobility group A genes are highly expressed in all aggressive cancers studied to date. These genes encode the high mobility group A (HMGA) proteins. In other words, these genes provide the genetic “code” necessary to produce HMGA proteins.

8 Aug 2013

Cancer-linked mitosis: an interview with Professor Scott Kern, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Mitosis is the process by which a cell gives rise to two daughter cells. It’s the basis behind the growth of the human body, the renewal of the human body as it ages, and unfortunately, the growth of cancers.

7 Aug 2013

Health benefits of sufficient sleep: an interview with Dr Monique Verschuren, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the Netherlands

We used 6 hours or less per 24 hours as the definition of insufficient sleep, with 7 hours or more as sufficient sleep. In general, this is considered the amount of sleep that is sufficient for adults, although there can be differences between persons with respect to the amount of sleep needed.

6 Aug 2013

Prospective health of the Hispanic/Latino population in the US: an interview with Dr. Martha Daviglus, University of Illinois at Chicago

Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death among Hispanic/ Latino adults living in the US and this population is known to have high rates of obesity and diabetes.

5 Aug 2013

Using the immune system to control cancer: an interview with Dr. Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD, Ludwig Center at MSKCC

Cancer immunotherapy aims to recruit a patient’s immune system to recognize cancer as foreign and dangerous and to remove it from the body, as it would an infection.

1 Aug 2013

Severe arthritis pain treatments: an interview with Professor Walsh, University of Nottingham and Professor Wood, UCL

Pain is defined by the sufferer’s experience. Pain may be severe because it is intense, frequent or sustained, and because it is distressing. The severity of pain is not simply due to what is going on in the joint, but is also affected by how the body processes the pain signals, and the context in which it is experienced.

31 Jul 2013