New England Journal Of Medicine

The editor of one of the world's most important scientific periodicals, the New England Journal of Medicine, is being ousted because of policy differences with the publisher of the journal, the Massachusetts Medical Society, it was announced this week. Dr. Jerome Kassirer, editor in chief for the last eight of the journal's 177 years, opposed the publisher using the venerable journal's good name to sell other magazines and materials, according to sources close to the publication.

It's never too late to quit smoking, and researchers have new data to prove it. Even at the age of 64, kicking the habit can add four years to a person's life, while quitting by age 34 can increase life expectancy by a decade, according to a study published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. After analyzing health data from more than 200,000 Americans, researchers calculated that current smokers were three times more likely to die during the course of the study compared with people who had never smoked.

The editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine apologized for not informing readers that it was a chemical company official who was the author of a review critical of a book that claims chemicals in the environment are responsible for an epidemic of cancers. The journal has drawn criticism on last month's review, which was written by Dr. Jerry H. Berke, the medical director of W.R. Grace--a company that has been accused of polluting.

Patients with heart disease or diabetes who suffer from depression as well are notoriously difficult to treat: They have more severe complications and a higher mortality rate than patients who aren't depressed. But help may be on the way. Research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that coordinating care to manage depression and chronic illness ? together, at the same time ? produces better outcomes for patients. "Up to this point, most care management has been focused on one condition at a time," said study coauthor Dr. Elizabeth Lin, a primary-care physician and researcher with Group Health Cooperative, a nonprofit healthcare organization based in Seattle.

The New England Journal of Medicine is relaxing its strict conflict-of-interest rules for authors of certain articles because it cannot find enough experts without financial ties to drug companies. The change, announced in today's issue, applies to experts who write either editorials or review articles, which are overviews of research on a particular drug or treatment, rather than original studies. Dr. Jeffrey M.

Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a kidney disease specialist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, has been selected as the new editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Massachusetts Medical Society announced Tuesday. Kassirer, 58, will assume his new position, one of the most influential in American medicine, in July. He succeeds Dr. Arnold S. Relman, who will retire after 14 years as the journal's editor.

Shares of Elan Corp. and Biogen Idec Inc. jumped Thursday after the New England Journal of Medicine published comments online that might suggest a way for Tysabri, the companies' troubled multiple sclerosis drug, to return to the market. Dublin, Ireland-based Elan's shares rose 77 cents to $7.37; Biogen closed up $1.78 at $35.13. Doctors at Biogen, based in Cambridge, Mass.

The New England Journal of Medicine, calling health care costs the "black hole of our economy," said the free market had created a non-system and threw its support behind global spending caps and an end to price competition. The journal proposed "a Canadian-style single-payer system to fund the delivery of health care," which it argued would be more efficient than the Administration goal of managed competition.

The New England Journal of Medicine retracted an article on a heart treatment Monday because one author had forged others' signatures on statements attesting that they had reviewed the data and the manuscript. "There was an egregious disregard of the principles of authorship," the journal's editor in chief, executive editor and managing editor wrote. The article, published in the journal Oct.

People with severely leaky heart valves that cause no symptoms -- a situation thought to be relatively harmless -- actually are in danger of dying and should consider surgery to get the problem fixed right away, a new study suggests. Such people are five times more likely to die of a heart problem or develop heart failure or an irregular heartbeat than those with mild leakage, researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Early detection of breast cancer improves the odds of survival; mammograms save lives, and annual exams are essential for women over 40. That has been accepted wisdom for the last 20 years, and until recently, results seemed to confirm its truth. Since regular screening became standard in the 1990s, the mortality rate for breast cancer has dropped 30% in the United States. That conventional wisdom was challenged last year when a federal task force suggested that women 50 and over should have mammograms only once every other year and that younger women need not bother at all. Now a Norwegian study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has set off another round of controversy by suggesting that the benefits of mammography are exceedingly modest.

Vaccines that protect against severe disease and death from rotavirus infections in the United States and other developed countries work nearly as well in developing countries and should be widely employed there, researchers report today in two papers in the New England Journal of Medicine. Health authorities now have "another powerful weapon" to combat the disease, Dr. Mathuram Santosham of Johns Hopkins University wrote in an editorial accompanying the studies. Widespread use of the vaccines could save more than 2 million lives over the next decade, he said.

Whether to screen men for prostate cancer has been a controversial topic for at least 20 years. Many clinicians have believed that finding a tumor early and cutting it out is the best possible way to treat prostate cancer, just as it is for most tumors. Critics of the screening have argued that many prostate tumors grow so slowly that the patient is likely to die of other causes before the tumor becomes a threat.

It's not the other guy. Americans are all in the same leaky boat when it comes to receiving the standard of care for basic health conditions, according to a study in the March 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. People of all colors, ages and incomes get only about 55% of the care that's recommended. "It doesn't matter where you live, if you're rich or poor, insured or uninsured, you get the right care only about half the time," says study author Dr. Steven M.

Jurors continued deliberating Friday in the latest Vioxx trial as some legal experts said Merck & Co.'s defense against thousands of similar lawsuits would be hurt by an accusation that company scientists had downplayed the pain reliever's heart attack risk. A rare "expression of concern" posted online Thursday by New England Journal of Medicine editors chastised Merck scientists for failing to report three nonfatal heart attacks among Vioxx users who were at low risk of cardiac problems.

The New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday accused researchers funded by Merck & Co. of understating the health risks of the painkiller Vioxx by withholding adverse data from a 2000 report on the drug. In a rare "Expression of Concern" published online, editors of the journal said the Merck scientists failed to report three nonfatal heart attacks among the Vioxx users. The total number of heart attacks among the drug users was 20, they said, not the 17 reported.

The newly appointed editor of the New England Journal of Medicine is pledging to divest any interest he has in pharmaceutical companies in an effort to avoid conflicts of interest. Dr. Jeffrey Drazen also said he might have made a mistake last year when he heaped praise on an asthma drug that was made by a company he was working for as a paid consultant. "We were probably a little overzealous," Drazen told the Boston Herald on Tuesday. "In the future, we'll be more careful."

The editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine accused three of the largest drug companies of "making a mockery" of efforts to create transparency in clinical trials, saying that could lead some important medical publications to avoid publishing their studies. Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, the editor, said Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co. and Glaxo-SmithKline were not providing enough useful information on clinical trials they registered with the government.

Shares of Elan Corp. and Biogen Idec Inc. jumped Thursday after the New England Journal of Medicine published comments online that might suggest a way for Tysabri, the companies' troubled multiple sclerosis drug, to return to the market. Dublin, Ireland-based Elan's shares rose 77 cents to $7.37; Biogen closed up $1.78 at $35.13. Doctors at Biogen, based in Cambridge, Mass.

The editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine accused three of the largest drug companies of "making a mockery" of efforts to create transparency in clinical trials, saying that could lead some important medical publications to avoid publishing their studies. Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, the editor, said Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co. and Glaxo-SmithKline were not providing enough useful information on clinical trials they registered with the government.