Thymosin promotes cardiomyocyte migration, survival and repair
Read an abstract of this Nature paper (25th November 2004, 432(7016): 466-72). The University has access online to Nature through Ovid, but this issue is not there yet.
Writing informative abstracts
Advice in an editorial in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Follow this link for an extract of the editorial. You will need a password for full access - I have it.
Asthma and lung function 20 years after wheezing in infancy
A study in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that followed people who were hospitalised for bronchiolitis or pneumonia up to age 2 up to age 19. Article is available free online.
NHS "University"
Last week's Higher section in the Education supplement of the Guardian has an article on the future of NHSU. Meant to mention it before, but lost the clipping at the bottom of a bag...
Robots
There is a useful-looking overview of robotic surgery in urology in the supplement to November's issue of BJU International. (The link takes you to the abstract - if you are on campus or have University of Leicester Athens login, you will be able to see the full article). The supplement is European Urology Update Series no. 6.
Can antibiotics reduce the incidence of UTI subsequent to the removal of a urinary catheter?
This is the subject of a RCT in November's BJU International. The link takes you to the abstract. If you are on a CFS machine or have University of Leicester Athens, you will be able to see the full text.
Google Scholar
A search engine that indexes academic material. Read about it in Nature (25th November 2004) and, probably, on a discussion list near you.
My first impressions are that it could be useful, although I am not sure it will always link to the University's full text. Google Scholar is currently in beta test.
More here when I have had the chance to give it a proper test. It's at http://scholar.google.com
ER
Read the article by Simon Crouch, who spent his elective at Warner Studios. (I knew I was in the wrong job...) The article, in the Student BMJ, looks at the impact of the programme on public health.
World AIDS Day
Support World AIDS Day and find out more by clicking on this image.
British Thoracic Society
The programme and abstracts of the 2004 winter meeting, being held 1-3 December, is available as a supplement to Thorax. Supplements to Thorax are available online but I can't see this one there yet.
The Clinical Sciences Library has it.
Doctors in the movies
December's issue of Archives of Disease in Childhood (vol. 89, no. 12) has papers on:
Hindu birth customs
Doctors in the movies
Nursery rhymes: could they cause violent behaviour?
The journal is available online to the University (a University Athens username may be needed if you are off campus).
Approval books
There is a new selection of approval books available for inspection at the Clinical Sciences Library. A list of books is available and I will be sending an email with highlights.
Please let me have any comments about any of the items on the list.
Sir John Vane
An obituary of the pharmacologist John Vane appears in today's Guardian.
What happens to patients with respiratory disease when they fly?
A question considered in November's Thorax, in an article that refers to another study in the same issue, as well as to guidelines.
Nature Publishing Group in China
NPG is holding two public forums in China, to coincide with a Chinese language supplement to be published with the journal on 18th November. Read the details in the UK Serials Group e-news.
Ovid AutoAlerts
If you have autoalerts running in Ovid Medline you may like to know that no autoalerts will be sent until Medline has been reloaded. The reload is an annual event, and is necessary to update the MeSH thesaurus.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
The autoalert feature will run a search automatically for you every time the database is updated. You can run autoalerts in any Ovid database, and many other databases have a similar feature. Please ask me for more details.
SARS
The latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (guess what I have been reading today!) includes three papers on SARS:
SARS outbreak in the Greater Toronto Area: the emergency department experience
Initial viral load and the outcomes of SARS (authors are based in Hong Kong)
The impact of SARS on a tertiary care pediatric emergency department (authors based in Toronto)
Tips for learners of evidence based medicine
The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is running a series of articles on this. The latest covers measures of observer variability. There is additional information online for teachers of EBM.
Sports dermatology
Is the subject of two papers in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The papers cover common dermatoses and swimming and other aquatic sports. CMAJ is freely available.
Embase
Embase is a European database of reference to biomedical articles, especially strong on pharmacology and biochemistry, and very up to date. Find out more by coming to a Resource of the Month session in December. If you cannot make the session but want to find out more, contact your information librarian.
In today's British Medical Journal (dated 20th November 2004)
- Community pulmonary rehabilitation after hospitalisation for acute exacerbations of COPD
- An editorial on legislation smacking
- News items on smoking bans in England and Scotland
- A news item on International Health Partners UK, a charity which will distribute drugs from pharmaceutical companies to the developing world
- Two letters about the Children's NSF
Access the BMJ through Leicester Elink
Today's Lancet (dated 20-26 November)
Contains articles on:
Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
Co-trimoxazole as prophylaxis against opportunistic infections in HIV-infected Zambian children - this has been reported in the media today, for example in the Guardian.
There is also comment on the implications of defibrillation (including out of hospital defibrillation).
Access the University's subscriptions to the Lancet via Leicester Elink.
The pharmacology of cough
Find out about this in:
Sandra M. Reynolds, Auralyn J. Mackenzie, Domenico Spina and Clive P. Page, The pharmacology of cough, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Volume 25, Issue 11, November 2004, Pages 569-576. (You may need a University Athens username to access the full text).
(Found through the Elsevier Life Science Review Magazine)
Public Health White Paper
"Choosing health: making healthy choices easier" is available on the Department of Health website, in full, or in summary.
ISI Web of Science
Is back operating normally again.
National Prevention Research Initiative
A major multi-disciplinary initiative sponsored by a range of bodies. There is a call for proposals.
National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services
Available online: includes a version for children, and an exemplar showing how the NSF applies to asthma.
Academic stress
Guardian article reporting a survey of stress among academics. The full report, called Working to the Limit, is available on the Guardian website although I could not get it to work...
Research Assessment Exercise
Guardian article on pressure from academics to axe the RAE after the one in 2008.
PLoS Medicine
This new open access medical journal is reviewed in the BMJ of 13th November.
Learning from low income countries
Is the theme of the British Medical Journal issue dated 13th November.
Scotland will ban smoking in public places
The Scottish Executive wants to introduce legislation to ban smoking in enclosed public places. Report in the Guardian.
Rate of first recorded diagnosis of autism
A study of this in the UK, 1988-2001, has appeared in BMC Medicine. Provisional abstract available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/2/39/abstract. The article has been accepted for publication: the final version may differ in formatting. BMC Medicine is an open access journal, so no subscription needed.
Can guideline-defined asthma control be achieved? (the GOAL study)
See
Bateman ED, Boushey HA, Bousquet J, Busse WW, Clark TJ, Pauwels RA, Pedersen SE; GOAL Investigators Group.
Can guideline-defined asthma control be achieved? The Gaining Optimal Asthma ControL study.Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2004 Oct 15;170(8):836-44
Click on the link for the PubMed abstract and follow the link for full text (on campus only)
Stem cells
JAMA, 292(18): 2202-4 (10th November 2004), reports studies that show that stem cells can prevent vision loss in mice with a blinding eye disorder, and that they can restore heart rhythm in pigs with abnormally low heart rate. The original reports are in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2004, 114: 765-74 (eye) and Nature Biotechnology (heart rate). Check Leicester elink for availability of these journals online.
