Also in the press – OnMedica

GP CONTRACTS

Saturday’s The Guardian (p16) and Daily Telegraph (p18) both covered how family doctors are at loggerheads with ministers after the coalition government decided to impose changes to the way they work. The British Medical Association claimed the review will mean doctors have to do “more work for less pay” and called the contract “unworkable”, both newspapers wrote.

Ministers say the shakeup will reward earlier diagnoses of dementia, diabetes and other conditions, will lead to fewer deaths from Britain’s main killer diseases and takes the emphasis away from giving GPs financial incentives for office administration.

Meanwhile, The Independent on Sunday (p22, p42) looked at NHS cost cutting and reported that the Conservatives have been forced to admit that NHS spending has been cut.

The newspaper said late on Friday the Conservative party website amended the party’s totemic election pledge not to cut spending on the NHS after the UK Statistics Authority rebuked the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for claiming that NHS spending has risen since the party came into government in 2010.

The wording change signals the first concession by the government that spending was cut in real terms in 2010/11 after a bitter fight with the Labour Party, said the newspaper.

UK TO ANNOUNCE PACKAGE FOR LIFE SCIENCES

UK science minister David Willetts is to announce a 100 million pounds package for “life sciences” on Monday, reported The Times (p21) on Saturday. The sum is part of a 600 million pounds investment package announced last Wednesday in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.

According to the newspaper, 35 million pounds has been set aside for a new high-tech medicine production plant and comes amid fears that pharma groups are too readily heading offshore to mass-produce complex products designed and patented in the UK.

Willetts explained: “This tends to be vaccines and antibodies.” He added that some of the compounds were now “so sophisticated that the repatriation of drug manufacturing to the UK is a feasible objective if we provide the right environment.”

MENTALLY ILL KEPT ON ANTI-DEPRESSANTS UNNECESSARILY

The Times (p33) on Saturday said a report from the UK Council of Psychotherapy to be released on Monday will say waiting lists for therapy and counselling services for those with mental health problems are “unacceptably long” and, as a result, GPs are relying almost entirely on the use of anti-depressants to treat mental illness.

ANTIBIOTIC OVERUSE LED TO DEADLY SUPERBUG OUTBREAK

Widespread use of antibiotics triggered the emergence of two resistant strains of the Clostridium difficile hospital superbug that killed thousands of people over the past decade, The Independent reports (p10).

A genetic analysis of about 300 samples of C. diff collected from around the world found global outbreaks were caused by two different strains that had independently acquired resistance to an antibiotic widely used in hospitals.

Scientists traced the evolutionary trees of each strain and found that both originated within a couple of years of each other, one in a hospital in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and another in Montreal, Canada.

The study, published in Nature Genetics, said the evolution and persistence of fluoroquinolone-resistant C. diff strains was likely the result of widespread use of antibiotics in North America in the late 1990s and 2000s. The Guardian (p8) also has the story, taking the angle that “DNA sleuths” have tracked down the origin of the superbug.

DIAGNOSTICS COULD DETECT EARLY STAGE CANCER AND HIV

Researchers at Imperial College London have designed instrumentation to detect early-stage diseases such as prostate cancer and HIV infection with the naked eye, opening the way to cheaper and simpler diagnoses for patients, reported the FT (Magazine, p49) on Saturday.

According to a study published in Nature Biotechnology, the Imperial College team developed a sensor looking at “biomarkers” that is 10 times more sensitive than the best current methods of indicating the onset of the diseases, said the FT.

The scientists working on the project have advised that the sensor can be reconfigured for other viruses and diseases where a specific biomarker is known, the FT added. Project leader Molly Stevens told the FT: “It is vital that patients get periodically tested in order to assess the success of retroviral therapies and check for new cases of infection.”

BREAST CANCER

Doctors have begun treating women suffering from breast cancer with a technique that destroys tumours by freezing them, reported The Sunday Telegraph (p13), describing how doctors use a supercooled needle to repeatedly freeze then defrost tumours up to the size of a golf ball so that the harmful tissue is damaged and eventually dies.

The company behind the device, Israel-based IceCure Medical, said the technique had been approved in the U.S. and is hoping to receive EU approval in the next year.

Separately, the same newspaper also reported that screening for cervical cancer is to be drastically reformed, allowing women to undergo less intrusive tests less often.