annals of internal medicine

(McGill University) Researchers at McGill University and the affiliated Jewish General Hospital warn that in addition to the well-known risks of pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis patients also face postthrombotic syndrome, a poorly understood, long-term complication not addressed by traditional treatment approaches like blood thinners.

Their conclusions, derived from a large, multicenter Canadian study, were published in the November issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

(Mayo Clinic) Disturbing evidence of higher mortality and lower surgery rates in women versus men with mitral valve prolapse and severe leakage may be related to the complexity of evaluating the condition's severity in women, according to findings of a Mayo Clinic study published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

(American College of Physicians) The following are news release and two summaries of studies being published in the Nov. 18, 2008, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

(Imperial College London) A recently introduced blood test can reveal which patients may develop active tuberculosis much more precisely than the 100-year old TB skin test, according to a new study published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Around a third of the world's population is infected with the TB bacteria and approximately 9 million new cases of active TB are diagnosed around the world each year, according to World Health Organization estimates.

The majority of those infected live in the developing world.

(American College of Physicians) This release contains information about three studies being published in the Sept. 2, 2008, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

These highlights are not intended to substitute for articles as sources of information.

I find Merck Scientific Affairs executive Jonathan Edelman's op ed in today's Philadelphia Inquirer on the Vioxx "ADVANTAGE seeding trial" controversy to be mediocre spin control at best, if not deliberately misleading through selective omission of critical facts:

Taking Exception
Great value in clinical studies
Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 26, 2008

Roy Poses addresses many of the controversial issues raised by the Annals of Internal Medicine article "The ADVANTAGE seeding trial: a review of internal documents" in "Bad Seed: the ADVANTAGE Trial of Vioxx."

I wish to raise a few additional questions:

An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Hill et al(1), and the accompanying editorial by Sox and Rennie(2) have created quite a stir in the media and blogsphere.

Even so, it seems worth reviewing the main points, and adding some comments.

A perspectives article from the April 1 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine has provoked a slowly growing controversy.

(1) Let me summarize the main points of the article before getting to the controversy.

As the title, "the case for treating tobacco dependence as a chronic disease," suggests, the authors argue "for some smokers, long-term pharmacotherapy [which] is the difference between tobacco abstinence and lifelong smoking," based on the argument that smoking is like a chronic disease.

On the Bioethics Forum, Dr Adriane Fugh-Berman and Dr Douglas Melnick discuss what appears to be the latest example of disease-mongering.