Experts who sit on national vaccine advisory panels are asked to disclose any industry ties and other conflicts of interest. But Paul D Thacker finds that disclosure standards differ widely, often leaving the public in the darkIn the wake of lightning fast authorisations of covid … | Continue reading
Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.Data sources: Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library databases; appropriate internet … | Continue reading
Leaders at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation Trust have been discussing making covid-19 vaccination a contractual requirement for all staff, in a leaked email published by the Independent newspaper.1The email, signed by the trust’s chief executive, Lesley Watts, was sen … | Continue reading
Journals risk being used in place of regulators when they publish studies of novel vaccines that have not yet been authorised by a major regulator. Chris van Tulleken argues that peer review is inadequate to decide the risk-benefit ratio of new drugsIn August 2020 President Vladi … | Continue reading
India’s infections set new pandemic records in April, with more than 300 000 positive tests each day for a week. Kamala Thiagarajan looks at the many unanswered questionsOn 26 April India saw the highest daily tally of new SARS-CoV-2 infections ever recorded in the world, 360 960 … | Continue reading
Covid-19 death rates are 10 times higher in countries where more than half of the adult population is classified as overweight, a comprehensive report from the World Obesity Federation has found.The report analysed mortality data from Johns Hopkins University and the WHO Global H … | Continue reading
The Moderna and Novavax covid-19 vaccines will be added to a trial that is investigating the effect of mixing vaccines.The Com-Cov study launched in February 2021 with participants receiving alternating doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines. An additional 1050 volun … | Continue reading
Consumption of sugar from soft drinks falls within a yearExcess consumption of free sugars is a major contributor to diet related diseases, including tooth decay, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.1 Sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) provide a substantial source … | Continue reading
Vaccination with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine reduces infections by 90%, while a single dose confers 80% protection, shows a study led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that followed essential workers through the worst months of the pandemic.1The study i … | Continue reading
The evidence is clear that obesity is a risk factor for severe covid-19 disease and death. Meera Senthilingam asks what this increased urgency has done to boost action against this other epidemicStudies in the United States have shown that having a BMI over 30—the threshold that … | Continue reading
Leaked documents show that some early commercial batches of Pfizer-BioNTech’s covid-19 vaccine had lower than expected levels of intact mRNA, prompting wider questions about how to assess this novel vaccine platform, writes Serena Tinari As it conducted its analysis of the Pfizer … | Continue reading
With most coronaviruses, recovery confers a degree of immunity to reinfection. But a small number of patients have caught covid-19 for a second time. Chris Stokel-Walker looks at what we know and how worried we should be“Other things being equal, we can expect to see—even without … | Continue reading
After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemicMurder is an emotive word. In law, it requires premeditation. Death must be deemed to be unlawful. How could “murder” apply to failures of a pandemic response? Perhaps it can’t, and never will, but it is w … | Continue reading
Objectives To study total, processed, and unprocessed red meat in relation to risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and to estimate the effects of substituting other protein sources for red meat with CHD risk.Design Prospective cohort study with repeated measures of diet and lifes … | Continue reading
Doctors in Norway have been told to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer BioNTec vaccine against covid-19, following the deaths of 23 patients shortly after receiving the vaccine.“It may be a coincidence, but we aren’t sur … | Continue reading
Objective To determine the efficacy and safety of low carbohydrate diets (LCDs) and very low carbohydrate diets (VLCDs) for people with type 2 diabetes.Design Systematic review and meta-analysis.Data sources Searches of CENTRAL, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, CAB, and grey literature s … | Continue reading
What we know, and what we don’tThe UK’s £100bn “Operation Moonshot” to roll out mass testing for covid-19 to cities and universities around the country raises two key questions. How infectious are people who test positive but have no symptoms? And, what is their contribution to t … | Continue reading
A mass screening programme of more than 10 million residents of Wuhan, China, performed after SARS-CoV-2 was brought under control, has identified 300 asymptomatic cases of covid-19, none of which was infectious.The findings cannot be extrapolated to countries where outbreaks hav … | Continue reading
England’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, has told parliament that a new variant of covid-19 has been identified and may be driving infections in the south east, leading to headlines about “mutant covid.” Jacqui Wise answers some common questionsIt’s been snappily named VUI-20201 … | Continue reading
Objective To investigate the association between popular football games played in Europe and the incidence of traffic accidents in Asia.Design Study based on 41 538 traffic accidents involving taxis in Singapore and 1 814 320 traffic accidents in Taiwan, combined with 12 788 Euro … | Continue reading