The New Brunswick Medical Society has asked the provincial government to stop giving money to patients with multiple sclerosis who want to obtain liberation therapy outside Canada. Dr. Robert Desjardins, president of the New Brunswick Medical Society (NBMS), says the therapy, which involves using angioplasty to open constricted veins in the neck and chest, has not […]
medicine
Bacteria-killing dispute casts doubt on antibiotic development
Antibiotic drugs are one of the cornerstones of modern medicine, but, surprisingly, scientists still don’t understand all of the ways in which they work. So when biomedical engineer James Collins and his team at Boston University announced several years back that they had discovered a common mechanism of cell death underlying all major classes of […]
C. diff rates falling but still a concern
Ten years after an outbreak of Clostridium difficile killed as many as 2000 people in Quebec, the diarrhea-causing bacterium is infecting fewer people in Canadian hospitals, though it remains a major public health concern. Read more in CMAJ.
Drug could stop PTSD before it starts
Researchers investigating the genetic basis of post traumatic stress disorder have found a drug that could stop the condition from developing if given shortly after a traumatic experience. Read more in CMAJ.
Small charities bring opportunities to neglected fields of research
Twenty years ago, Nick Lemoine was the only researcher in the UK dedicated to pancreatic cancer. “I’m pretty sure Walter Bodmer, the head of the Imperial Cancer Reseach Fund, thought I was working on prostate cancer, because it started with a ‘P’,” he says. “I didn’t disabuse him of that, it was just easier that […]