News of GFC Diagnostics and related topics

 02 March 2010 - A new report by the WHO highlights the increasing problem of drug-resitant starians of tuberculosis. One factor contributing to mdr-TB is non-adherence to treatment, whereby the course of combination antituberculous drugs, including isoniazid is not completed. Reinfections ocures sometime later with a drug resistant strain. IsoScreen is one tool which can identify patients who are not adhering to their treatment.

04 January 2010 - A BBC broadcast of Dr Cope and the new Saliva SmokeScreen test will be aired by BBC Oxford as part of their Year of Science feature. The broadcast can be viewed at BBC.

02 January 2010 - the response by Dr Cope to the BMJ paper of the 05 November has been chosen to be included into the print copy of the journal. More detals can be found at BMJ

05 November 2009 - A response  by Dr Cope to an article in the British Medical Journal entitled 'Reliability of self reported smoking status by pregnant women for estimating smoking prevalence: a retrospective, cross sectional study' has been posted on the BMJ website

30th October 2009 - publication of the second article in the series about smoking and periodontal disease by a director of GFC Diagnostics in Preventive Dentistry. More details

30th September 2009 -  Plan aims to cut smoking rate 10% As part of an anti-tobacco initiative agreed to last week by countries in the Western Pacific region, the Korean government has set a target of reducing the nation's smoking rate by 10 percent over the coming five years. Tobacco products will see steep tax increases - up to 60 percent - as this has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to combat smoking. GFC Diagnostics supplies SmokeScreen to the Smoking Cessation Programme in South Korea.  More details

05th September 2009 - An article published in the Saturday magazine of the Daily Telegraph detailing the personal journey to arrange and undertake plastic surgery for breast reduction. Mentioned the need to stop smoking prior to surgery. More details Daily Telegraph

17th August 2009 - New published data estimates that the number of deaths attributable to smoking in 2005 was 109 164 (19% of all deaths, 27% deaths in men and 11% of deaths in women) compared to estimates of 100,000 in 1991. Smoking was directly responsible for 12% of disability adjusted life years lost in 2002 (15.4% in men; 8.5% in women) and the direct cost to the NHS was 5.2 pound billion in 2005-6. More information can be found in Tobacco Control

30 July 2009 - publication of an article about smoking and periodontal disease by a director of GFC Diagnostics in Preventive Dentistry

29 July 2009 - Intensive smoking intervention significantly reduced postoperative complications and mortality  - A meta-analysis of 11 randomized trials to determine whether smoking cessation prior to surgery reduced postoperative complications. Complications included wound infections, any event requiring additional medical or surgical treatment, or death during a 30-day period. Types of elective surgical procedures included hernias, cholecystectomies, and orthopaedic and cardiac operations. Intensive smoking intervention significantly reduced postoperative complications and/or mortality: risk ratio = 0.56 (P ≤ .001). Medscape today

09 June 2009 - Smoking costs the NHS five times as much as previously thought, researchers have calculated. Treating disease directly caused by smoking produces medical bills of more than £5bn a year in the UK. This equates to equates to 5.5% of the entire NHS budget (Data from 2005-6). Study leader Dr Steven Allender, said the increased costs were largely due to increasing expense of treatment on the NHS with better treatment and technologies. BBC News

13 April 2009 - WHO calls for five year plan to tackle multidrug resistant tuberculosis - Health ministers and delegations from more than 30 countries have issued a call to action to fight multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDRTB). Unless drug resistant cases are more effectively diagnosed, controlled, and treated, they will impose a huge economic burden and eventually replace drug susceptible strains of the disease, warned delegates at the ministerial meeting of high M/XDR TB burden countries in Beijing, China, from 1 to 3April. BMJ 2009;338:b1414

3 April 2009 - More news from the world of tuberculosis. Publication of details of the WHO's 13th annual report on Global Tuberculosis Control.

2 April 2009 - News from the world of tuberculosis that China is to test out a new weapon in the fight against the rising menace of a deadly, drug-resistant form of tuberculosis - offering free mobile phone credits to patients who take their medicines on time. The scheme offers free top-ups to sufferers who send text messages to health care centres with a unique code proving they have taken their drugs. More details

27 March 2009 - News from the World Health Organization which said this week that more than 450 000 of the people who died from tuberculosis in 2007 were infected with HIV, more than double the estimated global total of 200 000 in 2006 BMJ 2009; 338: 1253 

13 February 2009 - Publication of a study relating exposure to secondhand smoke to dementia.Exposure to secondhand smoke and cognitive impairment in non-smokers: national cross sectional study with cotinine measurement. BMJ 2009;338:b462  

11 February 2009 - Publication of the latest study to utilise the urine SmokeScreen test to verify smoking habit. The Birmingham rehabilitation uptake maximisation study (BRUM): a randomised controlled trial comparing home-based with centre-based cardiac rehabilitation.  K Jolly, GYH Lip, RS Taylor, J Raftery, J Mant, D Lane, S Greenfield, A Stevens.  Heart 2009;95:36-42

02 February 2009 - We are pleased to announce that we have become a member of the Global Partnership to Stop Tuberculosis. Our Directory listing can be found at STOP TB.
 

27 January 2009 - results have been published which examines the reliability of self-reported cigarette smoking in pregnancy to produce corrected estimates of the effect of maternal smoking on children's risk of clefts. The results strengthen the hypothesis that periconceptional maternal smoking increases the risk of a child being born with Cleft lip with or without cleft palate. EPIDEMIOLOGY 2009; 20: 27-35.

22 January 2009 - Several dental periodicals published articles from our press release in November. They were were from Private Dentistry (Jan 2009 page 12), Preventive Dentistry (Volume 4 Issue 1 2009 page 17), Dentistry (4th December 2008) and Dental Practice (January 2009).