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The 4th edition of Don’t Rush to Crush is now available in MIMS Online

US scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have identified a promising drug candidate, first developed for coeliac disease, for the treatment of multi-inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), they report in Clinical Care Explorations. MIS-C is a rare but severe and potentially life-threatening condition that usually develops in children weeks to months after they have experienced a mild or even asymptomatic case of COVID-19. The new study shows a rapid improvement in children with MIS-C when treated with the drug.

Immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, with features that often mimic each other, commonly present clinical challenges. But according to a new review key characteristics can help distinguish the most common, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), from other serious IMIDs such as coeliac disease, allowing for proper diagnosis and treatment.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterial infection that has become resistant to most of the antibiotics used to treat regular staph infections. US computer scientist Bruce Donald from Duke University, and collaborators at the University of Connecticut are working to develop new enzyme inhibitors to fight MRSA. In research published in PLOS Computational Biology, the team discovered how a single small mutation makes a big difference in drug efficacy.

Patients presenting to hospital emergency departments are at a higher risk of death, from any cause within the next 30 days, if it takes more than 5 hours to admit them, according to a British study published in the BMJ’s Emergency Medicine Journal. While the UK and Australia aim to keep ED wait times below 4 hours, this target is not always met.

Australian and international researchers may have uncovered a key to making existing frontline antibiotics work again, against the deadly bacteria that cause pneumonia. The researchers found how to repurpose a molecule called PBT2 - originally developed as a potential treatment for disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases - to break bacterial resistance to commonly used frontline antibiotics. This discovery may see the comeback of readily available and cheap antibiotics, such as penicillin and ampicillin, as effective weapons in the fight against the rapidly rising threat of antibiotic resistance.

New research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, on intravenous fluids used in intensive care shows that commonly used saline is as effective at keeping people alive and their organs functioning as more expensive balanced solutions. The results not only provide doctors with greater certainty about the safety and benefits of saline solution, but also have broader implications for treatment availability and costs around the world.

BMJ Best Practice has added a carefully curated selection of over 5,000 case reports integrated into BMJ Best Practice. 

High pressure (hyperbaric) oxygen resolves severe breathing difficulties in COVID-19 patients much more quickly than standard therapy, taking an average of 3 rather than 9 days, reveal the results of a small comparative clinical trial published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.

A new “study” in the BMJ Christmas issue explores whether the phrases “It’s not rocket science” or “It’s not brain surgery” are actually justified. To help settle the argument of which phrase is most deserved, researchers compared the intelligence of 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons with 18,257 members of the general population. And the conclusion?