Today’s big health news story is a new Cochrane review that looked at zinc as a treatment for the common cold. The conclusion of the review is that taking zinc supplements within 24 hours of the onset of a cold can reduce the duration and severity of symptoms. However, I’m not convinced. The finding is based on a relatively small number of studies. Only 6 studies were used in the meta-analysis of the duration of symptoms. 4 of those studies were … Continue reading →

The lead item on the news on Radio 4 when I woke up this morning was a paper that has just been published in the Lancet on the effects of daily aspirin use on cancer deaths. This was presented as a major new piece of research that might mean we should all be taking aspirin every day. Does it? Well, it was certainly an excellent piece of research, which tells as a great deal about the effect of daily aspirin … Continue reading →

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I have just found out (via @bengoldacre and @DrEvanHarris) that one of our esteemed elected representatives, David Tredinnick MP, has tabled 3 Early Day Motions singing the praises of homoeopathy. Oh dear. These EDMs are based on 3 published papers in the peer reviewed literature, which claim to show homoeopathy is effective. As anyone who has taken the workshop that I run for EMWA on critical reading of medical literature will know, just because … Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking some more about the paper on breast cancer screening that I blogged about last week. Just to recap, a paper was published last week claiming that the benefits of breast cancer screening comfortably outweigh the harms. This paper was picked up by the media, who reported its conclusions almost entirely without any critical evaluation, simply taking the authors conclusions as established fact. However, as I previously pointed out, the conclusions are based on some extremely precarious calculations … Continue reading →