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 Clinicle—a daily dose of word play from The BMJ  |
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| Test your clinical knowledge with The BMJ?s new word game, Clinicle. Move the horizontal word clues to spell the answer vertically, then share your times on social media with friends and colleagues.The story of ClinicleA welcome relief from the 2022 permacrisis has been the chance to spend a couple of minutes each day trying to guess a five letter word. Wordle became a phenomenon, reported to have over 2 million daily users in January 20221 and was soon snapped up for a reported seven figure sum by the New York Times.2As the Wordle craze crested, an Education article in The BMJ by Hardeep Singh, Denise Connor, and Gurpreet Dhaliwal offered readers five strategies for diagnostic excellence.34 Strategy number two is byte sized learning to ?integrate brief diagnostic challenges from apps, social media, and medical journals into your daily routine.? As the Wordle clones proliferated, from the supercharged Quordle (https://www.quordle.com/#/), to... |
| First hepatitis D medicine is given restricted approval in Scotland after US rejection |
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| Scotland has become the first country in the UK to approve a specific treatment for the hepatitis delta virus (HDV), after it granted bulevirtide (Hepcludex) ?restricted use? approval for patients with chronic infection and compensated liver disease.1The drug (2 mg powder for injection) will be made available for patients with evidence of significant fibrosis who have not responded to or cannot take interferon based treatment.Hepatitis D is found only in people with chronic hepatitis B and infects about 5% of such patients. It is considered the most severe form of chronic viral hepatitis and is known to progress rapidly towards liver cancer and liver related death.2The approval by the Scottish Medicines Consortium comes after the drug was rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration last year. Its manufacturer, Gilead, said that the US agency had raised ?concerns regarding the manufacture and delivery? but did not request any new studies... |
| US state legislators propose death penalty for women who have an abortion |
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| Republican legislators in South Carolina have proposed a bill to change the state?s laws, making a fertilised egg or embryo a person and charging a woman who has an abortion with murder, which carries a 30 year prison sentence or the death penalty.1 Henry McMaster, the state?s Republican governor, has said that he would sign anti-abortion regulations.Laws restricting or banning abortion have become frequent since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on 24 June 2022 and sent the issue back to the states.2 Abortion is currently banned in 13 states and prohibited after six weeks? gestation in Georgia. Some of these states have exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother.3 Abortion bans are blocked in the courts in eight states. Abortion is legal in 26 states and the District of Columbia (Washington, DC).3The South Carolina bill was proposed by state representative Robert Harris, introduced in... |
| Junior doctor strike led to 175 000 postponements, data show |
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| More than 175 000 planned hospital appointments and procedures were postponed during last week?s 72 hour strike by junior doctors, show official data from NHS England.1The release of the figures came as BMA leaders agreed to meet England?s health and social care secretary, Steve Barclay, this week to try to resolve the dispute over pay and conditions that prompted the three day walkout.Responding to the data on cancelled appointments, the co-chairs of the BMA?s Junior Doctors Committee, Vivek Trivedi and Robert Laurenson, said, ?Every day junior doctors despair as they see operations cancelled and treatment postponed for the millions on the waiting lists because our health services are in crisis. But rescheduling appointments as a result of the strike action could have been avoided if the health secretary had come to the table and negotiated an agreed settlement with us before any strike action was taken.?Junior doctors are keen to... |
| Covid-19: US maternal mortality rose during pandemic |
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| Two studies show that maternal mortality in the US dramatically increased during the covid-19 pandemic and was especially severe among racial and ethnic minorities and in rural areas and small cities.12The US already has the worst maternal mortality rate among industrialised countries. The World Health Organization defines maternal mortality as a death during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy from any cause related to or aggravated by pregnancy or its management.Before the pandemic the US ranked last of 10 industrial countries, with 17.4 deaths per 100 000 live births, which compares with 1.7 in New Zealand, 3.2 in Germany, 4.8 in Australia, and 6.5 in the UK.3The new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that, in 2021, there were 1205 deaths from maternal causes in the US, up from 861 in 2020?a 40% increase?and 754 in 2019.1 The maternal mortality rate... |
| Gene editing: China’s new regulations contain concerning loopholes, experts warn |
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| China?s new ethics regulations are a step in the right direction in terms of overseeing gene editing research, but there are concerns that private ventures may not be covered.Joy Zhang, founding director of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice at the University of Kent, said that the regulations apply to traditional medical, scientific, and educational establishments but ?fail to tackle directly how privately funded research and other social ventures will be monitored.? She was speaking at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing in London on 6 March.The updated regulations come after researcher He Jiankui?on the eve of the last summit in 2018?announced the birth of the world?s first gene edited babies. After the announcement, He was placed under house arrest and later sentenced to three years? imprisonment for ?illegal medical practice? and given a 3m yuan (£329 000; ?386 000; $430 000) fine by a Chinese... |
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British Medical Journal 