From Dr Richrd Lehman’s bmj blog..
Eat meat, eat fruit, eat salt, drink wine! Try stopping me. But is this the dietary advice that your practice nurse gives to your patients with high-risk type 2 diabetes patients with microalbuminuria? It jolly well should be, according to this follow-up study of the ONTARGET trial, which focussed on chronic kidney disease progression. “Sodium intake was not associated with CKD. Moderate alcohol intake reduced the risk of CKD
I loved this book it grabbed me right from the first words and I couldn’t put it down. The characters are so interesting you need to know what happens to them but at the same time are so familiar you feel you have lived next door to them. I understand this is the first part of a trilogy and I can wait to see what happens to Lynda and her family next.
The world’s big pharmaceutical companies are cutting back their research into treatment for Alzheimer’s, after being hit by the failure of a number of high profile, and expensive, drugs trials. Sir John Bell, Life Sciences Champion for the government, and Stephen Whitehead, head of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry discuss why it is proving so hard to find something that works.
Statins for all? (BMJ Extract)
An epidemiologist’s call for all healthy adults over 50 to take statins was uncritically reinforced by the media without proper discussion of side effects. A problem for primary care doctors is that even rare side effects become common when millions of low risk patients are treated with statins……………………….As for evidence that high risk patients are deciding not to take statins because of a perceived risk of side e ects, this seems to be based on anecdote, and my own anecdote is also that many patients decline to take statins, saying that the side effects are unacceptable.
The arguments for giving statins to a whole population need to be made equally in forms of absolute risk; we must be fair about potential side effects, including the association with diabetes; and crucially we must also be clear that improving population health should not simply
be made the work of drug companies.
Liz & Glyn Wainwright 