Medicine and Science from The BMJ

Are you having a dry January? In this podcast Ian Gilmore, honorary professor at Liverpool University, and Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences at York University, debate whether campaigns such as this have any public health benefit. Read the full head to head article: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i143

James Smoliga, from High Point University, North Carolina, and Ken Rundell, from The Commonwealth Medical College, Pennsylvania, join us to discuss how to test for, and manage, exercise induced bronchoconstriction, and particularly how to distinguish it from other respiratory conditions. Read the full review at http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6951

Around half of people aged over 75 meet the diagnostic criteria for chronic kidney disease (CKD), but there is debate about what this means for patients as only a proportion of elderly people with CKD will have clinically important outcomes as a result. In this podcast, Dr Arif Khwaja argues that for CKD in the elderly, we should focus on patient centered outcomes rather than applying population risks. Read the full Analysis article: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6559

The claim that cancer screening saves lives is based on fewer deaths due to the target cancer. Vinay Prasad, assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, joins us to argue that reductions in overall mortality should be the benchmark and call for higher standards of evidence for cancer screening. Read the full analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080

General practice is similar in the Netherlands and the UK yet it appeals far more to young Dutch doctors than to their British counterparts. In collaboration with the Dutch medical journal Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, Roger Damoiseaux, professor of general practice, and Margaret McCartney, Glasgow GP and The BMJ columnist, met to try to work out why. Sophie Arie reports Read the feature: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6870

Is the Christmas sprit divinely inspired, or does it reside within the body? Researchers from Denmark have tried to answer that age-old philosophical question with fMRI. Bryan Haddock, medical physicist at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen joins us to explain what they found. Read the full research: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.h6266

Despite what hollywood says, science has proven that British teeth are actually better than American. Richard Watt, head of the Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL explains how they came to that conclusion. Read the full research: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.h6543

A lot of attention has been paid to Russian president Vladimir Putin recently, but a group of researchers from The Netherlands are more interested in his walk than his intervention in Syria. Bastiaan Bloem, medical director of the Parkinson's Centre in Nijmegen, joins us to explain more. http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6141

Francesca Conway, from the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London is co-author of an article on diagnosis of COPD. She joins us to discuss the major guideline recommendations, and highlights where they concur and where they differ. Read the full article: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6171

Larger portions of food increase consumption. Theresa Marteau, director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, joins us to discuss how government action to tackle portion size and packaging could help reset our appetites and make us thinner. Read the full analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h5863