The Quest Continues

Bacterial vaginosis: the quest continues.

Money continues to be spent on observational studies attempting to link bacterial vaginosis (BV) to preterm delivery. Despite considerable financial investment, the results are at best confusing. Two recent studies address whether using oral metronidazole to treat pregnant women with BV reduces the incidence of preterm delivery. A well-conceived study by McDonald et al. examined treatment not o...

Biomarkers for lupus nephritis: the quest continues.

Current treatment of severe lupus nephritis is unsatisfactory in terms of both outcome and toxicity. To improve the efficacy and decrease the adverse effects of immunosuppression, it would be ideal to be able to predict the course and pathology of lupus nephritis and adjust therapy appropriately. This will require biomarkers that reflect disease activity. Recently, significant effort has been p...

The quest for the perfect prostate biopsy continues.

UNTIL well into the 1980s, biopsy of the prostate often relied on a few cores using a device such as the Vim-Silverman needle digitally guided transperineally or transrectally into a palpably abnormal prostate. In this pre-prostate specific antigen (PSA) era prostate cancers were often detected at an advanced clinical stage. The modern era of prostate biopsy was ushered in during the late 1980s...

Mouse model of the metabolic syndrome: the quest continues.

WESTERN LIFESTYLE, with its unlimited consumption of highenergy food, has resulted in a pandemic of obesity and increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease. The first observations that overeating and obesity lead to poor metabolic outcomes, including diabetes mellitus, were made in the 1920s (5). In the 1950s, Vague (13) described that abdominal obesity predisposes not only to diabetes but a...

The quest for the ideal reperfusion strategy continues.