March 15th, 2016
Podcast 199: Rethinking what medical journals do
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There’s change in the air about science publishing, and Harlan Krumholz, the founding editor of the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, thinks it’s time to reimagine the whole concept of what a journal is and what it does.
He poured his ideas into an editorial, “The End of Journals,” which he published as he approached the end of his editorship. We finally caught up with him weeks later (he’s elusive) and talked about those ideas.
(As this podcast was being readied for posting, the New York Times published an account of Nobel laureate Carol Greider’s posting of work on bioRxiv. She celebrated by tweeting under #ASAPbio.)
March 10th, 2016
Podcast 198: Three laws that could reduce U.S. firearm mortality
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M-16 and candle, 1968
Implementing universal background checks for gun purchases, for ammunition purchases, and mandating firearm identification could dramatically lower U.S. mortality attributable to firearms, our guest says.
In the Lancet, Dr. Bindu Kalesan and her colleagues examined state gun laws associated with the lowest mortality rates and concluded that if three of those laws were implemented at the national level, rates would drop by over 90%.
Lancet article (free abstract)
March 4th, 2016
Podcast 197: A dissent on sepsis
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The authors of the new sepsis definitions encouraged “debate and discussion,” and an editorial in Chest was quick to provide it.
The editorialist, Dr. Steven Simpson, is worried about missing some cases if consideration of SIRS (the systemic inflammatory response syndrome) is tossed out of the definition.
Chest editorial (free PDF available if you scroll down that landing page)
Last week’s interview on the new defintions (free)
February 27th, 2016
Podcast 196: Sepsis redefined
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We have Edward Abraham, Dean of Wake Forest School of Medicine, with us to talk about the new definitions of sepsis and septic shock. He wrote an editorial in JAMA that puts the changed definitions into perspective for clinicians. Listen in.
Editorial in JAMA (free)
JAMA paper with new definitions (free)
NEJM Journal Watch coverage (free)
February 18th, 2016
Podcast 195: Pioglitazone for secondary prevention?
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Pioglitazone, long known to increase insulin sensitivity, has been “mostly relegated to use in unusual conditions such as lipodystrophies” after its drug class, the thiazolidinediones, “fell from grace” in the words of our guest.
Dr. Clay Semenkovich has just written an editorial comment on a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. That study showed a benefit from pioglitazone use in the secondary prevention of vascular events among patients with insulin resistance (but not diabetes) who’d had a recent ischemic stroke or TIA.
He discusses the implications of those findings and, given the drug’s side effects, cautions against a rush to prescribing pioglitazone without first discussing the trade-offs with patients.
NEJM editorial (free)
NEJM study (free)
February 3rd, 2016
Podcast 194: Rising middle-age mortality rates are worrying
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Ever since Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last November there has been a spate of commentary over their major finding: mortality rates among middle-aged whites in the U.S. are rising while everyone else’s are improving.
The Commonwealth Fund has just published an “issue brief” on the topic, and we’ve got the authors — senior researcher David Squires and Fund president David Blumenthal — to talk things over with us.
Commonwealth Fund issue brief (free)
PNAS study (free)
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