This month a fascinating report was published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. It was a collaborative study between Tufts University (Boston) and the University of Manchester. Dai et al looked into the link between dietary fibre and knee osteoarthritis (OA). They used data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (4796 participants) and the Framingham Offspring Osteoarthritis…
google-site-verification: googleec220f26f2a6a6de.html Earlier this year Billington et al. from the University of Liverpool published the results of their study looking at the effects of shared reading (SR) on people with chronic pain. The shared reading model they used was the one employed by the charity “The Reader“. “The Reader is an award-winning charitable social enterprise…
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition where a person has minor problems with things like memory, thinking, attention, language or visual depth perception. The problems are usually not severe enough to affect activities of daily living. But some people with MCI go on to develop dementia – Alzheimer’s in particular. A new study published…
New research by Romani et al. from The John Hopkins University in Baltimore has been published in The Knee and has shown that testosterone levels can have an impact on the strength of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Romani’s previous research has shown that estrogen could reduce ACL strength. The most recent study was performed on male rats….
It’s been known for a while that smoking decreases blood flow and hence reduces the transport of oxygen and other nutrients to tissues. But recent research by Ava Hosseinzadeh et al from the University of Umea in Sweden has looked into its effects on inflammation. Their findings were published in the Journal of Leucocyte Biology. They…
A group of researchers led by Per Ladenvall (University of Gothenburg in Sweden) have looked into the relationship between physical capacity and health. They studied 800 middle-aged men over a period of 45 years. Physical fitness was measured by VO2 max. The results showed that low physical fitness is a greater risk of death than high…
Vilma Aho et al from the University of Helsinki conducted 2 studies looking into the effects of sleep deprivation. The first study was experimental and consisted of partial sleep restriction to a small group of subjects. The second was an epidemiological study with over 2700 individuals. Blood samples were analysed in both cases. The analyses…
There are a couple of shoulder conditions that can be extremely painful. One is adhesive capsulitis, better known as frozen shoulder, and the other is calcific tendinitis. Calcific tendinitis is characterised by the formation of calcium deposits in the rotator cuff tendons of the shoulder. A few months ago Hackett et al from the University…
Renaud Massart et al from McGill University have recently published an article in Scientific Reports on the effects of chronic pain on the body. “Chronic pain” is pain that has lasted for 6 months or more. The study was performed on rats with induced nerve injuries. The results showed epigenetic changes in the DNA of the…
The use of bright light therapy to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is well documented and evidence based but I had never heard of using light therapy to treat nonseasonal major depressive disorder (MDD). Raymond Lam et al, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, designed an elegant study comparing the effects…