Time to take a step beyond the “high-risk features”

The Next Step Forward Is to Take a Step Back.

Understanding the causes of diabetes is at the heart of most diabetes research. The field of causal inference has made dramatic advances in methodology that allows for causal inference from observational and not experimental data (1). One such methodological advancement is the use of genetic markers as instrumental variables, or so-called Mendelian randomization (MR) (2). MR relies on the laws ...

Anesthetic depth is a predictor of mortality: it's time to take the next step.

“The recognition of the existence of a problem is the first step in its solution.” —Martin H. Fischer IN 2005, a study by Monk et al. 1 was the first to suggest that cumulative deep hypnotic time (cumulative duration of low bispectral index BIS ) was an independent predictor of 1-yr mortality after major noncardiac surgery. Not surprisingly, the “validity of the mortality–hypnosis finding” was ...

An Audit of Perioperative Antimicrobial Prophylaxis: Time to Take Action

Complex trait locus linkage mapping in atherosclerosis: time to take a step back before moving forward?

E ver since the initial proposal to use polymorphic DNA markers to map genetic diseases,1 linkage analysis (also called “positional cloning”) has been used successfully to find the gene defects for hundreds of monogenic Mendelian traits.2 Because monogenic diseases can serve as important models for understanding pathogenesis, especially if they point to novel biochemical and physiological pathw...

Hepatoprotective and Anti-fibrotic Agents: It's Time to Take the Next Step

Hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis cause strong human suffering and necessitate a monetary burden worldwide. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the development of therapies. Pre-clinical animal models are indispensable in the drug discovery and development of new anti-fibrotic compounds and are immensely valuable for understanding and proofing the mode of their proposed action. In fibrosis rese...