News/Commentary
This full free text article from The New England Journal of Medicine, by Ethan Basch, M.D., explains that clinicians’ assess patients’ responses in clinical trials.
Nobody’s asking the patients what they think they are feeling or experiencing.
This article says that getting information from patients could add valuable information. “Self-reports are more sensitive to underlying changes in [...]

Topics: News

News/Commentary
This is another angle from a study just out which says healthier people have longer-lasting sex lives.
Here, the story focuses on male versus female interest in sexual activity as people get older.
A doctor friend of mine always has said, “Men will be interested in sex until the day they die. That is just how we [...]

Topics: How To Speak Doctor

This report reminds us all that children are a source of labor in countries such as India and China.
Girls can be seen as an expense with the investment returns going to the families into which they marry.
Ultrasound scans can tell parents a baby’s gender. This story says that millions of couples have aborted a daughter, [...]

Topics: Friends & Families

The new age of genetic coding to be used in clinical care is almost here, say various experts.
Even one leading critic, a Duke University geneticist, who has disagreed with current approaches in the field, agrees that over the next few years human genetics finally can be used to “systematically deliver clinically meaningful findings.”
The hope has [...]

Topics: News

News/Commentary
Cancer is many diseases but, in general, is associated with aging. Risks go up with time.
In a study of cancer deaths, taking age into account, cancer deaths declined among men by 21% since 1990. For women, cancer deaths are down 12% since 1991.
That is significant progress but there remains significantly more work to do. The [...]

Topics: News

Healthier people are more likely to be sexually active as they get older, says this examination of two American studies on aging.
However, almost half of older, sexually active adults have at least one “bothersome” sexual problem and one-third report two problems. Physicians rarely address sexual concerns in older adults—particularly in women.
The reason physicians talk to [...]

Topics: Focus

Reuters
“The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said the H1N1 swine flu virus would probably spread at low levels during 2010’s spring and summer, and be the dominant and threatening strain in the winter flu season.
“It seems unlikely that there will be another spring/summer pandemic wave in Europe unless there are significant unrecognized [...]

Topics: In Brief

Does drinking lead to weight gain for women, free of major diseases and at normal weight, at 40 and the years afterward?
This study of close to 20,000 women aged 38.9 and older tracked women for eight years, using surveys the participants completed (self-report) about their body weights and alcoholic consumptions.
Archives of Internal Medicine
“The obesity epidemic [...]

Topics: News

At the risk of sounding like America’s mom, you have got to get a good night’s sleep.
This is a health issue of no small consequence. Sleep quality is important to health in too many ways to list here .
The right answer to sleep problems is not, “It’s just stress.” There is no “just” in stress. [...]

Topics: Focus

There was no change in influenza levels for this report for the week ending February 27, 2010.
CDC
“No states reported widespread influenza activity, four states reported regional influenza activity, Puerto Rico and eight states reported local influenza activity, the District of Columbia, Guam, and 34 states reported sporadic influenza activity, four states reported no influenza [...]

Topics: In Brief