Despite high quality systematic reviews reporting ineffectiveness, many guideline groups continue to recommend vitamin D supplementation (with or without calcium) for fall or fracture prevention. Recently Public Health England recommended that everyone needs vitamin D equivalent to an average daily intake of 10 μg (400 IU) to protect bone and...

In an ideal world, policies would be evidence based - but governments are made of humans, who have positions and ideologies and moral bases. In this podcast Anthony Painter, from the RSA will be talking about why universal basic income may work, but who’s proponents cross ideological barriers, and writer and philosopher AC Grayling explains how...

The UK government published its report Childhood Obesity: a Plan for Action, in August 2016. A new analysis article takes them to task for the inadequacy of that response to a growing problem. Neena Modi is a professor of neonatal medicine, at Imperial College London, and president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and joins...

Scott Murray, professor of primary palliative care at the University of Edinburgh, has written, and talked in this podcast before, about the benefits of early palliative care - and today he’s back to explain how illness trajectory, and the pattern of decline at the end of life, affects 4 main areas of wellness - physical, social, psychological and...

As the NHS strains under pressure from rising patient activity, an ageing population, and financial constraints, The BMJ hosted a discussion on how clinicians should be helping to manage demand at last week’s Nuffield Trust health policy summit. Taking part are: - Eileen Burns, president of the British Geriatrics Society - Andrew Fernando, GP...

Viral exanthema can cause rash in a pregnant woman and should be considered even in countries that have comprehensive vaccination programmes. Measles and rubella can cause intrauterine death. Intrauterine infection with rubella can lead to congenital rubella syndrome in the liveborn baby. In this podcast, Jack Carruthers, honorary clinical...

We're creating a manifesto for better evidence. The centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, and the BMJ, are asking what are the problem with medical evidence, and how can we fix them? In this second discussion we went to Nottingham​ University, to find out what the people who create the bread and butter of EBM -...

Adoption of shared decision making into routine practice has been remarkably slow, despite 40 years of research and considerable policy support. In 2010, the Health Foundation in the UK commissioned the MAGIC (Making Good Decisions in Collaboration) programme to design, test, and identify the best ways to embed shared decision making into...

We're creating a manifesto for better evidence. The centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, and the BMJ, are asking what are the problem with medical evidence, and how can we fix them? In this third discussion we went to Scotland, to find out what the people who create policy think about the issues with evidence synthesis,...

"Too many research studies are poorly designed or executed. Too much of the resulting research evidence is withheld or disseminated piecemeal. As the volume of clinical research activity has grown the quality of evidence has often worsened, which has compromised the ability of all health professionals to provide affordable, effective, high value...

Findings from a range of prospective cohort studies based around the world indicate that higher intelligence in children is related to a lower risk of all cause mortality in adulthood - and now a new study, published on bmj.com, is trying to dig into that association further, with a whole population cohort and data on cause specific...

The Alzheimer’s society, in the UK, predicts that if the rates of dementia remain constant there’ll be 1.7 million people in the country living with the condition by 2050. We also know that things like improvements in cardiovascular health are changing those rates. New research published on bmj.com attempts to model what the outcomes of those...

There's a crisis in old age care - not just in the UK, around the world, as population demographics shift, and the proportion of older people increase - there's a worry about who's going to look after them, and how much is it going to cost? However, a new analysis on bmj.com says this picture need not be so gloomy - they say that encouraging...

The Three Talk Model of shared decision is a framework to help clinicians to think about how to structure their consultation to ensure that shared decision making can most usefully take place. The model is based around 3 concepts - option talk, decision talk, and team talk - with active listening at the centre. Three Talk was first proposed in...

Assessing young people with possible eating disorders can be complex for a variety of reasons. Building a therapeutic relationship with a young person with a possible eating disorder and their family is key to enabling a thorough assessment and ongoing management, but it introduces difficult issues regarding confidentiality and risk. In this...

Bobbie Farsides is professor of clinical and biomedical ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She’s been described as one of the few people that is acceptable to “both sides” of the assisted dying debate. This week she joins us to talk about the way in which the debate on euthanasia has played out in the UK - and hear why she thinks it’s...

In 2016, from an estimated pre-war population of 22 million, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance, of which more than 6 million are internally displaced within Syria, and around 5 million are refugees outside of Syria. In this podcast, Aula Abarra, consultant in infectious disease from London,...

There’s been a lot of attention given to the new antirviral drugs which target Hepatitis C - partly because of the burden of infection of the disease, and the lack of a treatment that can be made easily accessible to around the world, and partly because of the incredible cost of a course of treatment. But a new article on BMJ talks about the...

Patients who are depressed and prescribed antidepressants may report weight gain, but there has been limited research into the association between the two. However new observational research published on bmj.com aims to identify that association. Rafael Gafoor, a psychiatrist and researcher at Kings College London, and one of the authors of that...

At evidence live this year, one of the sessions was about the work of Evidence Aid - and their attempt to bring high quality evidence to the frontline of a humanitarian crisis. In that situation, it’s very difficult to know what will work - a conflict, or even immediately post-conflict situation is characterised by chaos - and merely doing...

Ray Moynihan is a senior research assistant at Bond University, a journalist, champion of rolling back too much medicine, and host of a new series “The Recommended Dose” from Cochrane Australia. In the series, Ray has talked to some of the people who shape the medical evidence that underpin healthcare around the world - the series aim is to...

Mendelian randomisation - it’s a technique that uses the chance distribution of genes in a population, combined with big data sets, to investigate causative relationships. But there are a lot of questions we have in The BMJ about how the technique works - the association between genes and apparently non-biologically mediated behaviours, how much...

The number of people estimated to be latently infected with TB - that is infected with TB, which has not yet manifested symptoms - is around 2 billion. That is 1 in 3 people on the planet are infected by the bacteria. The World Health Organization’s website notes that on average 5-10% of those infected with TB will develop active TB. That number...

If you’re of a scientific persuasion, watching policy debates around Brexit, or climate change, or drug prohibition are likely to cause feelings of intense frustration about the dearth of evidence in those discussions. In this podcast we're joined by Chris Bonell, professor of public health sociology - in this podcast he airs those frustrations,...

Brits have a reputation as Europe’s boozers - and for good reason, with alcohol consumption higher than much of the rest of the continent. That reputation is extended to our young people too - but is it still deserved? Joanna Inchley, senior research fellow at the University of St Andrews, explains new research on decreasing drinking -...

Welcome to this, trial run, of a new kind of BMJ podcast - here we’re going to be focusing on all things EBM. Duncan Jarvies, Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan - and occasional guests- will be back every month to discuss what's been happening in the world of evidence. We'll bring you our Verdict on what you should start or stop doing, geek out...

In the second of our EBM round-ups, Carl Heneghan, Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are joined by Deborah Cohen, investigative journalist and scourge of device manufacturers. We're giving our verdict on the sensitivity and specificity of ketone testing for hyperemesis, and the advice to drinking more water to prevent recurrent UTIs in...

In this EBM round-up, Carl Heneghan, Helen Macdonald and Duncan Jarvies are back to give you an update Dual vs single therapy for prevention of TIA or minor stroke - how does the advice that dual work better translate in the UK? Carl explains why Japan can teach us to get active and, how GPs can use that information to "drop a decade" in...

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. They start by talking about how difficult a task it is to find evidence that's definitely practice changing, what GPs can learn from Malawian children with nonsevere fast-breathing pneumonia, how radiation dosage varies...

Diabetes is synonymous with sugar, but diabetes insipidus, "water diabetes", can't be forgotten. Between 2009 and 2016, 4 people died in hospital in England, when lifesaving treatment for the condition was not given. In this podcast, we hear some practical tips for non-specialists to aid diagnosis, and how patients should be managed during...

More doctors are choosing to retire early, doctors who take career breaks find it hard to return to practice, and doctors at all stages of their careers are frustrated by the lack of support given to training and development in today’s NHS. Each year the BMJ holds a roundtable discussion at the Nuffield Summit - where health leaders come...

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. They start by talking about shoulders - what does the evidence say about treating subacromial pain, and why the potential for a subgroup effect shouldn't change our views about stop surgery (for now, more research needed). (16.00)...

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. (1.20) Carl grinds his gears over general health checks, with an update in the Cochrane Library. (9.15) Helen is surprised by new research which looks at over prescription of antibiotics - but this time because the courses...

An “author pays” publishing model is the only fair way to make biomedical research findings accessible to all, say David Sanders, professor of gastroenterology at Sheffield University, but James Ashton and worries that it can lead to bias in the evidence base towards commercially driven results - as those are the researchers who can pay for open...

Here's a taster for our new student podcast - Sharp Scratch. We're talking about the hidden curriculum, things you need to know to function as a doctor, but are rarely formally taught. This is a taster - if you enjoy, subscribe! https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/student-bmj-podcast/id331561304 Sharp Scratch episode 1: Surviving the night...

Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan are back again talking about what's happened in the world of evidence this month. (1.05) Carl rants about bacon causing cancer (7.10) Helen talks about prostate cancer, and we hear from the author of the research paper which won Research Paper Of The Year at the BMJ awards. We also cover disease definition and...

As Syria enters its ninth year of conflict, doctors are struggling to provide health care to a badly damaged country. While dealing with medicine shortages, mass casualties and everything that comes with working in a warzone, healthcare facilities and their staff are also facing an unprecedented number of targeted and often repeated attacks....

This week on the podcast, (2.02) a listener asks, when we suggest something to stop, should we suggest an alternative instead? (8.24) Helen tells us to stop putting people on treatment for subclinical hypothyroidism, but what does that mean for people who are already receiving thyroxine? (20.55) Carl has a black box warning about z drugs, and...

This month we have some more feedback from our listeners (2.20) Carl says it's time to start smoking cessation (or stop the reduction in funding for smoking reduction) (11.40) and marvels at how pretty Richard Doll's seminal smoking paper is. It's gloves off for infection control (22.20) Andrew George, a non-executive director of the Health...

In 2001, Gottfried Hirnschall joined the WHO to work on the global response to HIV/AIDs, 18 years later he just retired as the director of WHO’s department for HIV and Hepatitis. The intervening period, almost half the time we’ve been aware of the disease the fight against the infection has been characterised by scientific breakthroughs, and...

Welcome back to Talk Evidence - where Helen Macdonald and Carl Heneghan take you through what's happening in the world of Evidence. This month we'll be discussing tramadol being prescripted postoperatively, and a new EBM verdict says that should change(1.36). How much preventable harm does healthcare causes (11.20. A canadian project to help...

Brexit. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, months, years - the uncertainty is high. In the face of that, you’d hope that the government was doing all it could to plan for any eventuality - let alone for a massive, country altering one like suddenly crashing out without a deal - but Martin McKee, professor of public health at...

This week the Trump administration has banned the sale of flavoured vapes in the USA. The reason for that is the sudden rash of cases of pulmonary disease, including deaths, linked to vaping. The mechanism by which vaping may be causing damage to the lungs is as yet unclear, and our understanding is hampered by the heterogeneous nature of the...

Helen talks about new research on prevention of recurrent VTE - and Carl things the evidence goes further, and we can extend prophylaxis for a year. 13.00 - CRP testing for antibiotic prescription in COPD exacerbations, should we start doing it in primary care settings - and what will that mean. We also hear from Chris Butler, one of the...

Talk Evidence is back, with your monthly take on the world of EBM with Duncan Jarvies and GPs Carl Heneghan (also director for the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford) and Helen Macdonald (also The BMJ's UK research Editor). This month Carl talks about evidence that restricting your diet might improve health at a...

Direct-to-consumer genetic tests are sold online and in shops as a way to “find out what your DNA says". They insights into ancestry or disease risks; others claim to provide information on personality, athletic ability, and child talent. However, interpretation of genetic data is complex and context dependent, and DTC genetic tests may produce...

Statins are now the most commonly used drug in the UK and one of the most commonly used medicines in the world, but debate remains about their use for primary prevention for people without cardiovascular disease. Paula Byrne from the National University of Ireland Galway, joins us to talk about the evidence of benefit for low risk individuals,...

A TB infection can take two forms, active and latent. Active disease is transmissible, and causes the damage to the lungs which makes TB one of the biggest killers in the world. In the latent form, the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis is quiescent and can stay that way for years until it becomes active and causes those clinical signs. Testing...

There has been a lot of noise made about calorie counts on labels - the idea being it’s one of those things that might nudge people to make healthier choices. So much so that in 2018, in the USA, it became mandatory for food chains with more than 20 outlets to label the calories in their food. But the effectiveness of that is hard to gauge -...

Talk Evidence is back, with your monthly take on the world of EBM with Duncan Jarvies and GPs Carl Heneghan (also director for the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford) and Helen Macdonald (also The BMJ's UK research Editor). This month Helen talks about the messy business of colon cancer screening - which modality is...