International Archives of Medicine Blog
Saying good by to 2008, facing 2009.
Dear friends,
Please, allow me some words now that the year is ending.
In 2008 we have successed in launching the journal thanks to the fantastic work done by authors, reviewers and board members. Particulary I want to thank from here all editors who have served as members of the Editorial Board during 2008 and agreed to step down to let other members join. I appreciate very much their service. I also want to thank BMC for their continous support.
Now we face time of consolidation and growing. Our main objective for this year is getting indexed in Medline and Thomson Scientific. To reach this goal we need to increase both the quality and the number of articles published.
I´m sure the new Editorial Board is ready for this challenge.
Best wishes and Merry Christmas,
Dr. Manuel Menéndez
Editor in Chief
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 18:48 Comments (0)
Renewing the editorial board of International Archives of Medicine (Closed)
[Read More]
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 20:44 Comments (0)
Assessing papers on educational interventions
We have just published an article on a health educational intervention (Utilizing video on myocardial infarction).
Most doctors are increasingly involved in education, and they should benefit from being exposed to research in medical education. Nevertheless general medical journals have published little educational research and the methods used in educational research are often different from those most familiar to readers of general medical journals.
On the other hand US government requirements state that federally funded grants and school programs must prove that they are based on scientifically proved improvements in teaching and learning. All new grants must show they are based on scientifically sound research to be funded, and budgets to schools must likewise show that they are based on scientifically sound research. However, the movement in education over the past several years has been toward qualitative rather than quantitative measures. The new legislation comes at a time when researchers are ill trained to measure results or even to frame questions in an empirical way, and when school administrators and teachers are no longer remember or were never trained to prove statistically that their programs are effective.
BMJ published a useful guidelines for evaluating papers on educational interventions View
Do you have any idea to improve the assessment of papers or projects on educational interventions?
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 21:50 Comments (0)
Seeking accesible biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases
We have read with interest the article "Plasmatic level of neurosin predicts outcome of mild cognitive impairment", by Manuel Menendez et al. Distinguishing between age related cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's or other dementing disorders at early stages is really troublesome. MCI represents a transitional stage from health to dementia and biomakers useful to reveal whether a disorder is behind this syndromic diagnosis would be a great step forward in managing these patients. Late-onset AD is largely idiopathic, and has 2 distinct pathological features – extracellular amyloid plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles. Encouragingly, recent studies have also indicated that both Ab42 and tau have significant predictive powers in cases of MCI progressing to AD. In particular, simultaneous measurement of CSF levels of Ab peptides and tau, and expressing these levels as various ratios, help to increase the sensitivity and specificity of prediction. There are also studies with findings that indicate the ability of these markers to tell AD apart from other forms of dementia. CSF Ab and tau could also be promising antecedent biomarkers that could predict the future development of dementia in cognitively normal older adults. But obtaining CSF requires a lumbar punction which migh be a traumatic procedure and a more accesible sample is highly desired.You can find a database with biomarkers of AD at Telemakus AD. In this manuscript, Menendez-Gonzalez et al. reported that measuring plasmatic neurosin concentration is useful to predict conversion of patients diagnosed with MCI and we established the relative risks of developing AD and Dementia with vascular component according with the plasmatic level of neurosin. The prospect of seeing how plasma biomarkers correlate with the clinical findings is an exciting one and we need keep walking through this way. Article in full text.
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 08:42 Comments (0)
Recombinant proteins in therapeutics
The discovery, development, production and clinical application of recombinant proteins for therapeutic administration has been an area of intensive scientific and medical effort. Today, many recombinant proteins are part of standard therapy while others still remain in a preliminary study phase.
We feature this debate article which discuss this topic at the time that makes an historical review of the treatment of hemophilia.
Recombinant proteins in therapeutics: haemophilia treatment as an example
Antonio Liras
International Archives of Medicine 2008, 1:4 (28 April 2008)
[Abstract] [Provisional PDF]
There is an universal consensus in recommending the use of recombinant proteins in therapeutics, but why are not more widely used? What is your experience and opinion?
All articles published in International Archives of Medicine are open access.
Posted by Diego Camps at 17:18 Comments (2)