BACKGROUND Chronic migraine is a common, highly disabling, underdiagnosed and undertreated entity of migraine. It affects 0.9%-2.2% of the general adult population. The present paper overviews the preclinical and clinical data regarding the therapeutic effect of onabotulinumtoxinA in chronic migraineurs. METHODS A literature search was conducted in the database of PubMed up to 20 May 2015 for...

Antibiotics are the medical wonder of our age, but an increasing frequency of resistance among key pathogens is rendering them less effective. If this trend continues the consequences for cancer patients, organ transplant patients, and indeed the general community could be disastrous. The problem is complex, involving abuse and overuse of antibiotics (selecting for an increasing frequency of re...

BACKGROUND We assessed the persistence of hemagglutinin inhibition (HAI) antibodies and the vaccine efficacy (VE) of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV3) following vaccination of a cohort of pregnant South African women during a second influenza season. METHODS A cohort of women who participated in a randomized placebo-controlled trial on the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of I...

All societies face the need to make judgments about what interventions (both public health and personal medical) to provide to their populations under reasonable resource constraints. Their decisions should be informed by good evidence and arguments from health technology assessment (HTA). But if HTA restricts itself to evaluations of safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness, it risks being vie...

Maternal depression was recently conceptualized as a network of interacting symptoms. Prior studies have shown that low self-efficacy, as an index of maternal functioning, is one important source of stress that worsens depression. We have limited information, however, on the specific relationships between depression symptoms and self-efficacy. In this study, we used regularized partial correlat...

Generic drugs should be interchangeable with originators in terms of quality and efficacy. With relative lower prices, generic drugs are playing an important role in controlling health expenditures and ensuring access. However, the widespread understanding of "cheap price equals low quality" has a negative impact on the acceptance of generic drugs. In China, medical doctors doubt the efficacy a...

OBJECTIVES We assessed the feasibility of delivering the Otago Exercise Programme (OEP) via an interactive DVD (ie, OEP-DVD) in combination with monthly physical therapist phone calls to older adults. DESIGN This pre-post (baseline and 6-month follow-up) study included an intervention group (n=61) based in a rural location and a control group (n=21) based in a city. SETTING Sechelt and Vanc...

HIV-infected patients are at increased risk for both vaccine-preventable diseases and their complications, with mortality rates higher than in non-HIV-infected individuals. Consequently, international guidelines generally recommend inactivated vaccines in HIV-patients, even if HIV-related immunodeficiency may impair efficacy; live vaccines are usually not recommended in these patients because o...

BACKGROUND Recent data have called into question the reliability and predictive validity of standard admission procedures to medical schools. Eliciting non-cognitive attributes of medical school applicants using qualitative tools and methods has thus become a major challenge. METHODS 299 applicants aged 18-25 formed the research group. A set of six research tools was developed in addition to ...

Husband's/partner's support for family planning may influence a women's modern contraceptive use. Socio-demographic factors, couple communication about family planning, and fertility preferences are known to play a role in contraceptive use. We conducted logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between perceived husband's/partner's approval and husband's/partner's encouragem...