Prescribing considerations in the use of oral medication in Parkinson's disease

People with Parkinson's (PwP) have depleted levels of dopamine in the brain. From the 1970s, levodopa, which is metabolised to dopamine, was utilised to treat the disabling motor symptoms. Initially...

Understanding the pharmacology of heart failure

HF is defined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) as a complex clinical syndrome that occurs from any structural or functional impairment of ventricular filling...

Changing the way type 2 diabetes is managed

The main complications of diabetes are microvascular disease affecting the eyes, nerves and kidneys, and macrovascular disease leading to cardiovascular disease (CVD), cerebrovascular disease and...

Anaemia in primary care: iron deficiency and anaemia of chronic disease

Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is the most common cause of anaemia and is a problem worldwide, with an estimated 500 million people affected, occurring both in low-income countries such as sub-Saharan...

Salt, blood pressure and cardiovascular disease

Overcoming vaccine hesitancy

I'm sure you have all read the more outlandish and outright illogical arguments for not having the COVID-19 vaccine, and these don't really warrant touching upon in a healthcare journal, but there are...

Drug Updates: September

Following new draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), midostaurin (Rydapt, Novartis) has been recommended for the treatment of advanced systemic mastocytosis...

Drug Breakdown: Dexamethasone

Day 1: After large-scale production of cortisone was enabled in the 1950s, more cortisol derivatives were discovered, such as #dexamethasone in 1957. Long acting and more potent, #dexamethasone has...

Multimorbidity, optimising treatment and preventing hospital admissions in older people

Recently published in the British Medical Journal, Blum et al's (2021) cluster randomised controlled trial looked at 110 clusters of inpatient wards within university-based hospitals across four...

Refugees, migrants and health

On 20 June 2017 – the United Nations World Refugee Day – Abbas et al (2018) convened a workshop during the 4th International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control in Geneva. The authors note...

Non-medical prescribing in primary care in the United Kingdom: an overview of the current literature

The primary focus of the research in NMP to date has been on its impact on patients, practitioners and organisations (Courtenay et al, 2018; Carey et al, 2020). Other studies have identified...

Living with long COVID

The new guideline for NICE (2021) recommends that patients presenting with new or ongoing symptoms 4 weeks or later after an initial COVID-19 infection should have the following investigations done; a...