Better education is key to reduce ‘frightening’ levels of drug wastage. A study of UK doctors carried out by the PCSG (Primary Care Society for Gastroenterology) to coincide with European Antibiotic Awareness Day (18 November 2013) suggests that patients who are given information about the impact of antibiotics on the gut and the option of... Read More

Below are some of the articles, which, over the past six months, have caught my eye either due to their general gastroenterological interest and/or their applicability in primary care. – Dr Jamie Dalrymple Dysphagia in older adults A recent article in Gut suggesting that capsaicinoids may improve the swallowing response in older adults is welcome... Read More

A new survey by the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) Cancer Group has revealed great variation in the management of patients at increased risk of hereditary colorectal cancer (CRC) in the UK. Click here to view the article

Group hypnotherapy provides long-term benefits to patients with irritable bowel syndrome: meet the expert who conducted the study Only 30 days until UEG Week 2013 in Berlin, Europe’s largest gastroenterology congress (Berlin, September 11, 2013) Gut-directed hypnotherapy in individual sessions has been shown in many studies to be an effective treatment for irritable bowel syndrome... Read More

Over half of patients saw an improvement after being treated with biological therapies for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Data from the first national report of biological therapies shows that 62% of adult patients and 73% of paediatric patients saw the severity of their disease decrease after 12 weeks of treatment with biological therapy. IBD affects... Read More

One of the PCSG Digest’s distinguished cover artists, Dr Aruna Mene, Consultant Histopathologist at the Royal Blackburn Hospital, has a solo exhibition of her vibrant fabric collages in Central London this September.The exhibition, which runs from the September 24th to September 27th (10am-6pm) will be at the Nehru Centre, High Commission of India, in South... Read More

The Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding quality standard has now been published. You can view the quality standard by following this link: Click here

Hyderabad: Scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology(AIG) here, in collaboration with a group of scientists from abroad, have found a new `gene-association` with the onset of…. Click here

Patients with Crohn’s disease in remission did not experience fewer episodes of relapse when treated with probiotic yeast Saccharomyces boulardii compared with placebo recipients in a recent study. In the double blind, multicenter, prospective … Click here

Despite previous data showing beneficial effects, the probiotic Saccharomuces boulardii (S. boulardii) does not prevent clinical relapse in patients with Crohn’s disease, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the … Click here