Lacunar strokes caused by widening of arteries in brain, study suggests

The cause of a type of stroke that affects about 35,000 people across the UK each year has been uncovered by researchers and may explain why some medications are ineffective as treatment.Lacunar strokes, which account for a quarter of all strokes in the UK, had been linked to the blockage of arteries in the brain by fatty deposits.However, a study published on Wednesday suggests they are not caused by blocked arteries but by the enlargement and widening of arteries in the brain.This would help to explain why aspirin and other blood thinners, commonly used to prevent ischaemic strokes, are not as effective in preventing lacunar stroke.The research by academics at the University of Edinburgh and the UK Dementia Research Institute analysed 229 patients who had experienced either a lacunar or mild non-lacunar stroke

Attempts to stop prison drone drug deliveries hampered by crumbling Victorian walls

Weak and crumbling walls in Victorian prisons are hampering attempts to halt drones from delivering drugs and weapons to inmates.Plans to install tougher netting and window grilles to stop drones from entering have been hampered because the walls have been unable to take the extra weight, prison governors said.Recent attempts to fix anti-drone netting at HMP Pentonville, the Victorian prison in north London, were stalled after they found that the bricks were too soft, sources have said.Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, said last month that the Prison Service had “ceded the airspace above many of our prisons to serious organised crime”, resulting in a “national security threat”.The number of incidents at prisons involving drones has risen by more than 1,000% over four years, with gang members able to fly packages carried by drones direct to cell windows

Prosecutors to ‘fast-track’ hate crime cases in England and Wales after spate of attacks

Prosecutors in England and Wales have been told to “fast-track” hate crime prosecutions after a spate of antisemitic attacks that the prime minister on Tuesday called a “crisis for all of us”.Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, issued guidance to his staff on Tuesday telling them to bring forward prosecutions against any sort of hate crime as quickly as they could, rather than waiting until they had gathered all possible evidence.Keir Starmer urged groups including universities, arts groups and charities to do more to tackle antisemitism during a summit in Downing Street.As well as imposing new reporting requirements on universities and the Arts Council, the prime minister threatened “consequences” against Iran if it was found to have been behind last week’s stabbing in Golders Green, north London.Parkinson said in a statement on Tuesday: “The acts of extreme violence and criminal damage that we have seen against the Jewish community in recent months have been deplorable

Ann Barrett obituary

In 1968, when Ann Barrett qualified in medicine, the fast-changing specialty of oncology was a magnet for young doctors as new drugs and technology were beginning to nudge up survival rates. In her distinguished 40-year oncology career, Barrett, who has died aged 83, played a key part in improving cancer outcomes, particularly for children, becoming a world authority on paediatric radiotherapy.As chair of radiation oncology first at the University of Glasgow and then at the University of East Anglia, she was highly influential in the profession with more than 150 published academic papers. She had a significant impact on student education and was a leading contributor to several textbooks that are still “go-to” classics, including Practical Radiotherapy Planning (1985, now in its fifth edition, 2023), and Cancer in Children: Clinical Management (1975, now in its seventh edition, as the Oxford Textbook of Cancer in Children, 2020).After training at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London and various junior doctor posts, in 1977 Barrett became a consultant at the Royal Marsden hospital, a world leader in cancer research; Barrett specialised in brain tumours in children and in irradiating the central nervous system (the brain and spine)

Slow Alzheimer’s diagnoses ‘mean UK patients missing out on experimental treatments’

People with Alzheimer’s disease are missing out on experimental treatments because they are not diagnosed early or accurately enough to be enrolled in clinical trials, a UK charity has said.Trials of Alzheimer’s drugs reached a record high this year, according to data published on Tuesday, but Alzheimer’s Research UK said too few UK patients were taking part because their diagnoses were delayed or were not specific enough.The warning suggests patients are being left behind as research gathers momentum and branches out to tackle the condition on multiple fronts, a strategy that scientists consider to be crucial for halting the disease.Dr Sheona Scales, the director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said the recent surge in clinical trials was driving demand for participants, but without a large and diverse range of patients to match to trials the UK risked missing out. “People won’t have access to the next generation of Alzheimer’s treatments,” she said

‘I am invoking Martha’s rule’: how a woman saved her father from near death in hospital

For six awful days last summer, as her father, David, got progressively sicker in the cardiac ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, Karen Osenton would read the poster above his bed telling patients about their right under Martha’s rule to ask for a second opinion.Her father, a retired engineer in his early 70s who was normally extremely fit, was by then thin, jaundiced and could barely lift his head from the pillow. But his bed was right beside the nurses’ station, surely they would notice if he needed more urgent treatment?David had first gone to his GP more than a month earlier complaining of extreme breathlessness, and over the following weeks he had become increasingly thin and weak with suspected heart failure. But it had taken repeated visits to the accident and emergency ward, being sent home each time, before he was finally given a bed in a specialist cardiac unit last July.“Every day we saw him he got worse,” says Karen, a teacher from Aynho, in West Northamptonshire