Global public reason: too thick or too thin

Public hospital bed crisis: too few or too misused?

* Increasing demand on public hospital beds has led to what many see as a hospital bed crisis requiring substantial increases in bed numbers. By 2050, if current bed use trends persist and as the numbers of frail older patients rise exponentially, a 62% increase in hospital beds will be required to meet expected demand, at a cost almost equal to the entire current Australian healthcare budget. ...

Too much or too little

The global effort to understand the molecular drivers of cancer onset and progression is now coming to fruition with the identification of specific genomic and epigenomic events that influence signaling through key oncogenic pathways. Genetic studies using inducible expression of the critical growth controlling oncogenes MYC, RAS, PI3K and AKT have shown unequivocally that, in conjunction with ...

Born too small or too soon.

In The Lancet Global Health, Anne Lee and colleagues from the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) make an important contribution to our understanding of the global burden of intrauterine growth restriction. What is new in this work is the evidence that the majority of growth-restricted neonates (assessed with the proxy of small-forgestational-age birth) weigh 2500 g or more at bir...

Postprandial dysmetabolism: Too early or too late?

Postprandial dysmetabolism is a postprandial state characterized by abnormal metabolism of glucose and lipids and, more specifically, of elevated levels of glucose and triglyceride (TG) containing lipoproteins. Since there is evidence that postprandial dysmetabolism is associated with increased cardiovascular mortality and morbidity, due to macro- and microvascular complications, as well as wit...

Too few physicians, or too many?