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Research

Folic acid fortification and congenital heart disease

This time trend analysis from the Canadian province of Quebec shows that public health measures to increase folic acid intake were followed by a 6% fall in the birth prevalence of severe congenital heart defects in 1990-2005. The accompanying editorial says that, rather than considering fortification targeted at populations, we should find more effective interventions to target women of child bearing age.

Education

Polycystic kidney disease

Polycystic kidney disease is one of the most common causes of chronic kidney failure in adults. It is inherited, so most patients have seen how it has affected their relatives. Young adult patients have no symptoms and need no drugs, but kidney function will slowly deteriorate. In this patient's journey, a medical student from the Netherlands describes how her mother's illness prompted her to be tested for polycystic kidney disease at age 20 and how the resultant diagnosis has affected her life.

Blog

New acronyms

Can you distinguish between Important Sounding Surrogate End Points (ISSEPs) and Patient Important End Points (PIEPs)? In his weekly review of medical journals, Richard Lehman describes them as "fundamental enemies and friends respectively of evidence based patient care." Do you think these acronyms work? Or can you think of better ones? Have your say on his blog.

News

Hackers demand ransom for medical records they are holding "hostage"

Computer hackers have broken into a US state's prescription monitoring website and deleted more than eight million medical records, replacing the website's homepage with a $10m ransom note. In return for the ransom money the hackers said they would "gladly send along the password" to allow officials to restore the records.

Other news published on 12 May:

Podcast

Freedom of information

Tony Delamothe talks to Allyson Pollock, from the University of Edinburgh, about problems researchers have in prying information from the UK Department of Health. Helen Morant finds out from Geoff Watts about how the media are responding to the potential of pandemic swine flu, and we delve into the BMJ's archive to find an eye watering description of surgery. Trevor Jackson takes us through the news.

Video and £1000 competition

The new BMJ online archive

The new BMJ online archive is now available, which means that a single search can find any article published in the BMJ since 1840, writes Tony Delamothe in an editorial. For an introduction to the archive, we commissioned a series of videos, featuring the former head of Britain's Medical Research Council, Colin Blakemore. The videos focus on some of the important subjects and people that have appeared in the journal's pages, and the first one is now live (watch video).

£1000 reward: archive competition
To mark the online availability of every BMJ article published since 1840, we're offering a prize for the most interesting use of the archive. This should be actual, not hypothetical. (Find out more.)

Comment

Integrated care

Sixteen organisations have been chosen to pilot new models of integrated care in the English NHS. Seven will focus on long term conditions or chronic diseases, three on elderly people and end of life care, two on dementia, and one each on falls, mental health, delivery of rural health care, and substance misuse. Previous efforts to achieve integration have a mixed record.

Swine flu

Keeping up to date

Follow the latest developments on swine flu by following the links below to current and archived BMJ articles, blogs, and podcasts. You can also join the discussions taking place on doc2doc, BMJ Group's new professional networking site for doctors worldwide.
All BMJ articles on swine flu can be accessed for FREE

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