Worldmapper: The Human Anatomy of a Small Planet

PLoS Medicine -
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Worldmapper: The Human Anatomy of a Small Planet: "The science of the make up of world human anatomy—cartography—has a similar history to that of anatomical drawing. Gerardus Mercator's wall maps of 1569 were produced just 14 years after the second edition of Andreas Vesalius' humani corporis fabrica. And just as Vesalius' images helped guide the scalpel through flesh, Mercator's maps helped guide ships across the oceans. But these products of the enlightenment were not just simple guides. The images they produced helped change the way we thought about the world. In the long run they helped us learn to be less superstitious, but also presented a very mechanical, inhuman image of both person and planet.

Mercator's projection is the one you still see when the weather is described on television and it, or a near equivalent, is the one used in most medical mapping (for an example depicting the world geography of malaria see [7]). The Mercator projection is a useful projection to carry with you if you wish to sail around the planet. It is not, however, that useful for showing how a disease such as malaria is spread amongst the population. To show such spread, a world population cartogram is a far better base map—an example is shown in [8].

The Mercator projection is the worst of all the well known global map "

One-Quarter of Vaginal Births Cause Tiny Brain Hemorrhages

One-Quarter of Vaginal Births Cause Tiny Brain Hemorrhages - Forbes.com: "'This study demonstrates that intracranial hemorrhages are much more common in newborns than expected,' said one of the study's authors, Dr. Honor Wolfe, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. 'For parents and obstetricians, hearing that 26 percent of babies have bleeds in the head is frightening, and it may lead some to conclude that C-section is safer. But, we have no evidence that these bleeds are problems later in life, and women have delivered vaginally for centuries.'

Plus, she noted, C-sections have risks as well, especially for the mother. 'I don't think patients should change plans for delivery based on the findings in this study.'"

Prediction of Clinical Cardiovascular Events With Carotid Intima-Media Thickness. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis -- Lorenz et al., 10.1161/CIRC

Prediction of Clinical Cardiovascular Events With Carotid Intima-Media Thickness. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis -- Lorenz et al., 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.628875 -- Circulation: "Background--Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) is increasingly used as a surrogate marker for atherosclerosis. Its use relies on its ability to predict future clinical cardiovascular end points. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of data to examine this association.

Methods and Results--Using a prespecified search strategy, we identified 8 relevant studies and compared study design, measurement protocols, and reported data. We identified sources of heterogeneity between studies. The assumption of a linear relationship between IMT and risk was challenged by use of a graphical technique. To obtain a pooled estimate of the relative risk per IMT difference, we performed a meta-analysis based on random effects models. The age- and sex-adjusted overall estimates of the relative risk of myocardial infarction were 1.26 (95% CI, 1.21 to 1.30) per 1-standard deviation common carotid artery IMT difference and 1.15 (95% CI, 1.12 to 1.17) per 0.10-mm common carotid artery IMT difference. The age- and sex-adjusted relative risks of stroke were 1.32 (95% CI, 1.27 to 1.38) per 1-standard deviation common carotid artery IMT difference and 1.18 (95% CI, 1.16 to 1.21) per 0.10-mm common carotid artery IMT difference. Major sources of heterogeneity were age distribution, carotid segment definition, and IMT measurement protocol. The relationship between IMT and risk was nonlinear, but the linear models fitted relatively well for moderate to high IMT values.

Conclusions--Carotid IMT is a strong predictor of future vascular events. The relative risk per IMT difference is slightly higher for the end point stroke than for myocardial infarction. In future IMT studies, ultrasound protocols should be aligned with published studies. Data for younger individuals are limited and m

Obesity and Diabetes in the Developing World - AGrowing Challenge

De: procor-bounces@healthnet.org [mailto:procor-bounces@healthnet.org] Em nome de Coleman, Catherine
Enviada em: quinta-feira, 18 de janeiro de 2007 13:17
Para: procor@healthnet.org
Assunto: [ProCOR] NEJM: Obesity and Diabetes in the Developing World - AGrowing Challenge

"Obesity and Diabetes in the Developing World - A Growing Challenge" appears (free full text) in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 356, Issue 3: January 18, 2007) Link to the article at THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE or, for those who cannot access the article online, excerpts are provided below of "Obesity and Diabetes in the Developing World - A Growing Challenge" by Parvez Hossain, M.D., Bisher Kawar, M.D., and Meguid El Nahas, M.D., Ph.D.

-----------
"Obesity and Diabetes in the Developing World - A Growing Challenge"
Parvez Hossain, M.D., Bisher Kawar, M.D., and Meguid El Nahas, M.D., Ph.D.
New England Journal of Medicine Volume 356:209-211 January 18, 2007 Number 3

"Globally, the prevalence of chronic, noncommunicable diseases is increasing at an alarming rate. About 18 million people die every year from cardiovascular disease, for which diabetes and hypertension are major predisposing factors.
Propelling the upsurge in cases of diabetes and hypertension is the growing prevalence of overweight and obesity - which have, during the past decade, joined underweight, malnutrition, and infectious diseases as major health problems threatening the developing world.1 Today, more than 1.1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and 312 million of them are obese. In addition, at least 155 million children worldwide are overweight or obese, according to the International Obesity Task Force. This task force and the World Health Organization (WHO) have revised the definition of obesity to adjust for ethnic differences, and this broader definition may reflect an even higher prevalence - with 1.7 billion people classified as overweight worldwide.1

In the past 20 years, the rates of obesity have tripled in developing countries that have been adopting a Western lifestyle involving decreased physical activity and overconsumption of cheap, energy-dense food. Such lifestyle changes are also affecting children in these countries; the prevalence of overweight among them ranges from 10 to 25%, and the prevalence of obesity ranges from 2 to 10%. The Middle East, Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and China face the greatest threat. The relationship between obesity and poverty is complex: being poor in one of the world's poorest countries (i.e., in countries with a per capita gross national product [GNP] of less than $800 per year) is associated with underweight and malnutrition, whereas being poor in a middle-income country (with a per capita GNP of about $3,000 per year) is associated with an increased risk of obesity. Some developing countries face the paradox of families in which the children are underweight and the adults are overweight. This combination has been attributed by some people to intrauterine growth retardation and resulting low birth weight, which apparently confer a predisposition to obesity later in life through the acquisition of a "thrifty" phenotype that, when accompanied by rapid childhood weight gain, is conducive to the development of insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome.

The human and financial costs of obesity are also mounting: a higher body-mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters) has been shown to account for up to 16% of the global burden of disease, expressed as a percentage of disability-adjusted life-years. In the developed world, 2 to 7% of total health care costs are attributable to obesity. In the United States alone, the combined direct and indirect costs of obesity were estimated to be
$123 billion in 2001. In 2004 in the Pacific Islands, the economic consequences of noncommunicable diseases, mainly obesity and diabetes, amounted to $1.95 million - almost 60% of the health care budget of Tonga.2

The growing prevalence of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers is tied to excess weight. The burden of these diseases is particularly high in the middle-income countries of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia, where obesity is the fifth-most-common cause of the disease burden - ranking just below underweight. The high risk of both diabetes and cardiovascular disease associated with obesity in Asians may be due to a predisposition to abdominal obesity, which can lead to the metabolic syndrome and impaired glucose tolerance.

The increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is closely linked to the upsurge in obesity. About 90% of type 2 diabetes is attributable to excess weight. Furthermore, approximately 197 million people worldwide have impaired glucose tolerance, most commonly because of obesity and the associated metabolic syndrome. This number is expected to increase to 420 million by 2025.

Population-based surveys of 75 communities in 32 countries show that diabetes is rare in communities in developing countries where a traditional lifestyle has been preserved. By contrast, some Arab, migrant Asian Indian, Chinese, and U.S.
Hispanic communities that have undergone westernization and urbanization are at higher risk; in these populations, the prevalence of diabetes ranges from 14 to 20%. In addition, most of the population growth in the developing world is taking place in urban areas.

Consequently, diabetes is rapidly emerging as a global health care problem that threatens to reach pandemic levels by 2030; the number of people with diabetes worldwide is projected to increase from 171 million in 2000 to 366 million by 2030 (see map).3 This increase will be most noticeable in developing countries, where the number of people with diabetes is expected to increase from 84 million to 228 million.1 According to the WHO, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region are at the forefront of the current diabetes epidemic, with India and China facing the greatest challenges. In these countries, the incidence and prevalence of type 2 diabetes among children are also increasing at an alarming rate, with potentially devastating consequences.

...

The serious cardiovascular complications of obesity and diabetes could overwhelm developing countries that are already straining under the burden of communicable diseases. The risk of cardiovascular disease is considerably greater among obese people, and this group has an incidence of hypertension that is five times the incidence among people of normal weight. Hence, overweight and obesity are contributing to a global increase in hypertension: 1 billion people had hypertension in 2000, and 1.56 billion people are expected to have this condition by 2025.4 This increase will have a disproportionate effect on developing countries, where the prevalence of hypertension is already higher than that in developed countries and where cardiovascular disease tends to develop earlier in affected persons. The effect of diabetes on complications of cardiovascular disease is also more severe among members of most ethnic minority groups in Western countries as well as among the populations of developing countries, where an increased waist-to-hip ratio is a strong predictor of ischemic heart disease and stroke. The estimated risk of cardiovascular disease is higher among South Asians than among white Westerners or persons of African origin; this difference is attributable to earlier onset and later detection of diabetes and to higher blood pressure.

In addition, in 2000, in developing countries, 2.41 million premature deaths, primarily from cardiovascular causes, were attributed to smoking. This emerging epidemic of tobacco-related illnesses is exacerbating mortality related to obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

Obesity, diabetes, and hypertension also affect the kidneys. Diabetic nephropathy develops in about one third of patients with diabetes, and its incidence is sharply increasing in the developing world, with the Asia-Pacific region being the most severely affected. According to a survey published in
2003,5 diabetic nephropathy was the most common cause of end-stage renal disease in 9 of 10 Asian countries, with an incidence that had increased from 1.2% of the overall population with end-stage renal disease in 1998 to 14.1% in 2000. In China, the proportion of cases of end-stage renal disease that were caused by diabetic nephropathy increased from 17% in the 1990s to 30% in 2000. In India, diabetic nephropathy is expected to develop in 6.6 million of the 30 million patients with diabetes. These statistics raise the daunting prospect of an epidemic of diabetic nephropathy in a developing world unable to cope with its repercussions - a world where end-stage renal disease is a death sentence.

Furthermore, renal involvement has a major "multiplier" effect on the rates of diabetes-related complications of cardiovascular disease and related deaths. The WHO Multinational Study of Vascular Disease in Diabetes showed that proteinuria was associated with an increased risk of death from chronic kidney disease or cardiovascular disease, as well as of death from any cause.

Changes in lifestyle that lead to weight loss reduce the incidence of diabetes and hypertension. But preventing obesity, diabetes, and hypertension will require fundamental social and political changes. Public health initiatives will be required to make affordable, healthful foods available, and initiatives in education and community planning will be needed to encourage and facilitate exercise. In 2003, the World Health Assembly adopted the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health, which targets lifestyle modifications that can combat the increase in noncommunicable diseases. The WHO issued objectives for developing countries regarding school meals and healthy living. Some countries, including Brazil, India, and China, have initiated monitoring programs related to obesity and nutrition. Since these programs are still in their infancy, few data are available on the cost of their implementation, and many such initiatives will encounter fierce opposition from food manufacturers and rights-oriented consumer groups who resent their effects on civil liberties.
The challenge will be to overcome these obstacles and implement acceptable strategies to curb the rising tides of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.



Source Information
Dr. Hossain and Dr. Kawar are research fellows and Dr. El Nahas is a professor of nephrology and head of the academic nephrology unit at the Sheffield Kidney Institute, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.

References
1. Haslam DW, James WP. Obesity. Lancet 2005;366:1197-1209.
[CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
2. The world health report 2006: working together for health. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2006.
3. Wild S, Roglic G, Green A, Sicree R, King H. Global prevalence of diabetes:
estimates for the year 2000 and projections for 2030. Diabetes Care 2004;27:1047-1053. [Free Full Text] 4. Kearney PM, Whelton M, Reynolds K, Muntner P, Whelton PK, He J. Global burden of hypertension: analysis of worldwide data. Lancet 2005;365:217-223.
[ISI][Medline]
5. Lee G. End-stage renal disease in the Asian-Pacific region. Semin Nephrol 2003;23:107-114. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]

Catherine Coleman
Editor in Chief
ProCOR
Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation
21 Longwood Avenue, Brookline, MA 02446 USA
617 732 1318 x3332
www.procor.org
ccoleman5@partners.org

Pesadelo

(Artigo publicado no jornal ZH no dia de hoje)
Pesadelo
ALOYZIO ACHUTTI. Membro da Academia Sul-Rio-Grandense de Medicina

O crime organizado será real ou um pesadelo? Mudança de ano e reinício de governo são momentos muito mais propícios para desejar felicidade e alimentar esperanças e ilusões, mas podem servir também para refletir e acordar.

A busca da segurança parece ter sido sempre um objetivo da humanidade, se não o é também de todo o ser vivo, que se reveste de acessórios (espinhos, secreções cáusticas, carapaças etc.) para se defender de potenciais agressões.

Não é sonho não! O mal é real e antigo. Muda de forma e intensidade, exigindo constante adaptação nas estratégias de defesa. Já foram bandoleiros nas estradas, hordas de bárbaros, bucaneiros e piratas, cangaceiros, esquadrões da morte, máfias de várias nacionalidades, guerrilheiros, juventude transviada, gangues urbanas, os sem-isso ou sem-aquilo, os hackers, as milícias, agora são os traficantes atrapalhados em seus negócios e presidiários muito bem articulados com seus sócios extramuros.

Enquanto der resultado, enquanto o negócio for rentável e houver clientela interessada na mercadoria ou nos resultados políticos da contravenção, o comportamento anti-social do momento continuará crescendo.

E não é só por eficiência mercadológica escusa, sabe-se que chamar atenção para os rejeitados, vingança por desprezo e maus-tratos, a busca de uma identidade ou notoriedade - mesmo que por caminhos escabrosos, servem também como objetivo na vida para muita gente.

As prisões têm hoje a eficiência das muralhas e fortalezas depois da descoberta da pólvora e da dinamite: são símbolos ultrapassados de segregação social, onde a elite da contravenção encontra condições ideais de trabalho para estudar, planejar, discutir, comandar e controlar seus projetos, utilizando recursos sofisticados e - por que não - alguns agentes duplos que, mal pagos como funcionários públicos, encontram formas de complementar sua renda.

A simples reclusão restringe um bem muito importante que é a liberdade de ir e vir, mas em compensação, com tempo disponível e criatividade, abre novas oportunidades de organização. Algum tipo de trabalho, mesmo que forçado, faria muito bem para a saúde dos presos, pode ser uma forma de reeducação, competiria com o ócio protegido, e daria uma oportunidade para pagar dívidas com a sociedade, se alguma pontinha de culpa ainda existir.

Enquanto muitos dormiam em berço esplêndido, deixou-se construir uma sociedade paralela, espontânea, anárquica, deseducada, com a função de fazer o serviço sujo, mais rentável do que os empregos formais que lhes são oferecidos.

Ao se acordar para um novo ano e novo ciclo de governo, uma facção significativa da sociedade está acionando o despertador para a necessidade de um novo "Ministério da Defesa Social" que não busque apenas jogar uma elite contra a outra, encerrando uns em masmorras protegidos por agentes penitenciários e outros atrás de grades residenciais com segurança privada.

Este é o pesadelo, e deve ser possível acordar com uma solução científica, racional, lúcida, política, comprometida e de boa vontade para se conseguir mais do que o simples crescimento do produto interno bruto.

Global Trade's Precarious Balance

Global Trade's Precarious Balance -- Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007 -- Printout -- TIME: "When a country or a company depends to an important degree on the U.S. for its livelihood, you might think that recent financial events there would amount to very bad news indeed. America's economy flagged in the second half of last year and the dollar has dropped sharply against the euro and other currencies, making exports to the U.S. less competitive. Yet Nicola Leibinger-Kammller, for one, is still smiling.

She's the chief executive of Trumpf, a German family-owned machine-tool firm. It has enjoyed a surge in worldwide orders over the past three years, with sales jumping 35% since 2004. Demand from the U.S., the firm's second-largest market after Germany, has accounted for a significant part of this growth. But even though the pace of American orders is now slowing, Trumpf's sales elsewhere—from Saudi Arabia to Singapore, and especially back home in Germany—continue to rack up double-digit growth rates. 'We can feel the U.S. slowdown, but it's not unsettling. There's no crash,' Leibinger-Kammller says. The continuing buoyancy of global trade 'is amazing. We have to keep telling ourselves: Careful, this can't last.'

As 2007 gets underway, that uneasy mixture of confidence and incredulity seems to be a global phenomenon. Economists, bankers and policymakers have long/.../"

the most important medical milestones

1 (application/pdf Object)
Seeking a way to mark the launch of the new BMJ, we hit on the idea of looking back at the most important medical milestones since the forerunner of the BMJ was first published in 1840. We asked readers to nominate milestones, which you did in good numbers. A panel of editors and advisers narrowed the field down from more than 70 to 15. We invited champions to write on each one; their contributions make up this commemorative supplement.
Medicine is about stories—the patient’s account, the doctor’s interpretation, the detective work of diagnosis, the research journey—and these 15 accounts are all good stories. They combine all the elements of good fiction: serendipity in the discovery of penicillin (p s6) and x rays (p s12); sheer determination in the development of tissue culture (p s18); raw personal ambition—the emergence of ether as an anaesthetic owed much to one dentist’s desire to advance his position (p s5); competition in the publication race over chlorpromazine (p s7); drama in turning off the Broad Street pump (p s17); and tragedy in the death of a friend, which led Semmelweis to his discovery (p s11).
Some of the 15 may surprise you. Does it make sense to give milestone status to evidence based medicine? Perhaps it says something about the culture of medicine that an effort to systematise our relation with science should have proved so controversial. As Kay Dickersin and colleagues say (p s10), how can something so intuitively obvious to lay people—the need to make decisions on the best available evidence—not be similarly viewed by clinicians? You’ll also no doubt find omissions. Jeffrey Koplan finds several when he compared our list with one he initiated for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eight years ago (p s20). I’ve found some too. Where are aspirin, Helicobacter pylori, and Medline?
But which of these 15—all extraordinary medical advances—will come out top? By the time this supplement is printed, a winner will have been chosen by BMJ readers in an online poll (see bmj.com). In terms of number of lives saved, vaccines (p s19) seem hard to beat; if it’s societal consequences, then the pill might be the winner. /.../

Folic acid boosts elderly brains

BBC NEWS | Health | Folic acid boosts elderly brains: "Men and women aged 50 to 70 who took daily supplements had similar mental abilities to contemporaries almost five years younger, The Lancet study found.

But experts said this benefit must be balanced against other risks - an increase in folic acid can mask a vitamin B12 deficiency in older people.

This type of anaemia can cause serious health problems, like nerve damage."

World Economic Forum - Gender Gap

World Economic Forum - Gender Gap: "The Nordic countries, Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4), top the latest Gender Gap Index. Germany (5), the Philippines (6), New Zealand (7), Denmark (8), the United Kingdom (9) and Ireland (10) complete the top 10 countries with the smallest 'gender gap'.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 covers all current and candidate European Union countries, 20 from Latin America and the Caribbean, over 20 from sub-Saharan Africa and 10 from the Arab world. Together, the 115 economies cover over 90% of the world’s population. The index mainly uses publicly available 'hard data' indicators drawn from international organizations and some qualitative information from the Forum’s own Executive Opinion Survey. The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 includes an innovative new methodology including detailed profiles of each economy that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap. The Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women:
1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival �"

De: Andreia Cristina Carmo [mailto:andreia.bc@epm.br]
Enviada em: quinta-feira, 18 de janeiro de 2007 10:18
Para: Andreia Cristina Carmo
Assunto: Curso On-line de Pesquisa nas bases de dados: Web of Science, Portal de Periódicos da CAPES e diretrizes para normalização de artigos científicos

Estão abertas as inscrições para o: Curso On-line de Pesquisa nas bases de dados: Web of Science, Portal de Periódicos da CAPES e diretrizes para normalização de artigos científicos

A Biblioteca Central da UNIFESP/EPM, juntamente com o Laboratório de Educação à distância elaborou o curso que objetiva dar subsídios à comunidade de profissionais da saúde para que compreendam os passos para a publicação. O curso possui três módulos distintos os quais o aluno aprenderá a realizar uma pesquisa bibliográfica usando a base de dados Web of Science; a recuperar documentos através do Portal CAPES e no último módulo aprender a estruturar artigos científicos utilizando o estilo de Vancouver.

Duração: 7 semanas

Início das inscrições: 10-01-2007

Fim das inscrições: 14-03-2007

Início do curso: 19-03-2007

Investimento: R$ 250,00

Para informações sobre o curso, acesse:

http://www.virtual.unifesp.br/home/card.php?obj=57&change_font=0 e leia Sinopse.

Público Alvo
Interessados em geral

Certificação
Todos os alunos que tiverem participado ativamente do curso e realizado todos os exercícios propostos em todos os módulos e com ao menos 75% de acessos receberão certificado de conclusão.

Maiores informações: contato.bc@virtual.epm.br

The State of the World's Children 2007-UNICEF

sowc07.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The State of the World's Children 2007: Women and Children - The double dividend of gender equality

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2006

Available online as PDF file [160p.] at: http://www.unicef.org/sowc07/docs/sowc07.pdf

“….The 2007 State of the World's Children report examines the discrimination and disempowerment women face throughout their lives, and outlines what must be done to eliminate gender discrimination and empower women and girls.

The State of the World’s Children 2007 reports on the lives of women around the world for a simple reason: Gender equality and the well-being of children go hand in hand. When women are empowered to live full and productive lives, children prosper. UNICEF’s experience also shows the opposite: When women are denied equal opportunity within a society, children suffer. Working within countries to achieve Millennium Development Goal 3 – promoting gender equality and empowering women – will reap the double dividend of bettering the lives of both women and children.

It will also contribute to achieving all the other goals, from reducing poverty and hunger to saving children’s lives, improving maternal health, ensuring universal education, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing new and innovative partnerships for development. Despite the international community’s commitment to gender equality, the lives of millions of women and girls throughout the world are plagued by discrimination, disempowerment and poverty.

This report illustrates the many challenges that remain. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by the AIDS pandemic. Many girls are forced into child marriages, some before they are 15 years old. Maternal mortality figures remain indefensibly high in many countries. In most places, women earn less than men for equal work. Around the world, millions of women and girls suffer from physical and sexual violence, with little recourse to justice and protection

The Costs of Carnivory

PLoS Biology - The Costs of Carnivory: "Carnivores fall into two dietary groups based on the energetic requirements of their feeding strategies: small-bodied species, which feed mostly on prey smaller than themselves, and large-bodied species, which prefer prey around their own size. While carnivores around the size of a lynx or larger can obtain higher net energy intake by switching to relatively large prey, the difficulty of catching and subduing these animals means that a large-prey specialist would expend twice as much energy as a small-prey specialist of equivalent body size. Analyzing the balance between energy intake and expenditure across a range of species, we predict that mammalian carnivores should have a maximum body mass of one ton. Thus, mammalian carnivores are relatively small compared with the largest extinct terrestrial herbivorous mammals, such as the Indricothere, which weighed around 15 tons. The largest existing carnivore, the polar bear, is only around half a ton, while the largest known extinct carnivores, such as the short-faced bear, weighed around one ton. This study suggests that those extremely large carnivores would have been heavily reliant on abundant large prey, helping to explain why the largest modern mammalian carnivores are rare and vulnerable to extinction."

Insulin pill is 'on the horizon'

BBC NEWS | Health | Insulin pill is 'on the horizon': "An insulin pill made from a chemical found in shrimp shells is being developed by Taiwanese scientists.

Researchers are looking for alternatives to the daily injections faced by people with diabetes.

The team from the National Tsing Hua University has found a 'nanoparticle' shell that can protect the drug from being destroyed by stomach acid.

However, the doses currently needed to work in rat experiments far exceed those normally given to diabetics.

Insulin is needed by the body to stop the levels of sugar in the bloodstream getting too high./.../"

Medicine & Criativity : The Lancet

De: The Lancet Marketing [mailto:lancetmkt@mail.elsevier-alerts.com]
Enviada em: segunda-feira, 8 de janeiro de 2007 13:33
Para: aloyzio.achutti@terra.com.br
Assunto: Medicine & Creativity


Every year, The Lancet publishes a 'bonus' themed issue.

This year our theme is 'Creativity and Medicine'.

If you click on the link below, you will be taken to a digital edition of our special issue. The digital edition is an exact facsimile of the print copy and is available for one month. You can turn pages just as you would with a print edition and even print off the pages for your own personal use.

http://www.cerosmedia.com/launcher.php?reference=wlr60u23cz8l06colcpwg0jp0qc3h3h4d

I do hope that you enjoy this collection of essays, features, reviews and profiles and would be very grateful to receive your feedback. Please write to me at g.gurnhill@lancet.com

Georgina Gurnhill

The Lancet

PS. Please feel free to forward this email to any of your colleagues who may also find our Creativity and Medicine issue of interest.

The Year in Gastroenterology -

The Year in Gastroenterology - CME Teaching Brief® - MedPage Today: "MONTREAL, Dec. 29 -- Early reports about promising investigational compounds and new insights into the effect of diet on the gut buoyed gastroenterology news during the year.

But overshadowing the positive news were reports about emerging risks associated with a class of drugs that have transformed the every day practice of gastroenterology -- proton pump inhibitors.

The following summary reviews some of the highlights of the year in gastroenterology research. For fuller accounts, links to the individual articles published in MedPage Today have been provided."