Helen Jaques

The BMJ has just published a whole slew of papers about Tamiflu (oseltamivir) – a key drug in the public health response against swine flu (influenza A/H1N1). The linchpin is a Cochrane review on the efficacy of neuraminidase inhibitors – namely zanamivir (Relenza; Glaxo Wellcome) and oseltamivir (Tamiflu; Roche) – for preventing and treating influenza [...]

You might remember all the hullabaloo last month about the HIV vaccine developed by the US military and tested on 16,000 people in Thailand.  Hailed as an “HIV breakthrough” and a “historic milestone“, the initial press release of the study certainly had the media convinced that a prevention for AIDs was just around the corner. [...]

Junior doctors are undergoing HIV tests as part of pre-employment occupational health checks without being made aware that such testing is not mandatory, according to research published in the Journal of Medical Ethics.  Many junior doctors interviewed by Lee Salkeld and colleagues held the misperception that HIV testing was compulsory and felt unable to decline the test.  In [...]

An ingenious new system has been developed to make sure that patients with tuberculosis (TB) complete their entire course of treatment, thus preventing the emergence and spread of drug-resistant forms of the disease. XoutTB involves a paper strips embedded with chemicals that detect metabolites of the TB drug isoniazid in a patient’s urine. The strips [...]