Cochrane Library Podcasts

Alongside learning about mathematics, history, languages and many other things, schools are a recommended setting for interventions to improve health. However, it can be difficult to implement these interventions and, in November 2017, Luke Wolfenden of the University of Newcastle in Callaghan, Australia and colleagues published their new Cochrane Review looking into how this might be done. Luke tells us what they found in this podcast.

Rotavirus infection is a common cause of diarrhea and a variety of vaccines are used to try to prevent it. The evidence for these is examined in the fourth update of a Cochrane Review, published in March 2019 and we asked Hanna Bergman one of the authors based in the Cochrane Response team in London UK to tell us about the problem and the latest findings.

Systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE, is an autoimmune disease that can affect any part of the body. About half the people with it develop lupus nephritis. In the June 2018 update of their Cochrane Review, David Tunnicliffe from the Centre for Kidney Research in the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health in Australia and colleagues brought together the studies that have tested a range of treatments.

The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group has produced several hundred reviews on the effects of interventions for women who are pregnant, giving birth or with a newborn baby. They also assess the evidence on how to help after pregnancy loss, and one of their new reviews from December 2018 looks at care during pregnancies following a stillbirth. Lead author, Aleena Wojcieszek from the Mater Research Institute in the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, tells us what they found.

Allergic rhinitis, or hayfever, is a common condition affecting both adults and children. One suggestion for treating it is to rinse the inside of the nose with salt water and the Cochrane Review of the effects of this was published in June 2018. We asked Carl Philpott from the Norwich Medical School in the UK to tell us what he and his co-authors found.

Many people experience the "winter blues", but some suffer from something more serious, seasonal affective disorder, which has a major impact on their quality of life. Light therapy is one of the interventions that is used to try to prevent it and a team of researchers from Austria and the USA published the update of their Cochrane Review in March 2019. Lead author, Barbara Nussbaumer, from the Danube University Krems in Austria, summarises the findings in this podcast.

The Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol Group studies interventions to help people who have problems with alcohol or who use illicit drugs. In December 2018, these came together in an updated review on psychosocial interventions for people who use drugs and also have alcohol problems. Jan Klimas, from the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use in Vancouver, Canada tells us about the latest evidence in this podcast.

Many adults in high-income countries will have had a ‘scale and polish’ when they go to the dentist, and some will be offered this routinely. But, is it worthwhile? The latest evidence is in the third update of the Cochrane Review, published in December 2018 and lead author, Thomas Lamont from the University of Dundee in Scotland tells us more.

The care of critically ill patients is highly complex, requiring treatments for their underlying conditions and for the consequences of those conditions, such as the loss of bodily fluids. A wide range of these treatments are assessed in Cochrane Reviews and one of these was updated in August 2018, looking at the effects of giving patients extra fluids. Lead author, Sharon Lewis from the Royal Lancaster Infirmary in the UK, tells us about the latest findings in this podcast.

Fear associated with going to the dentist is common and, among children especially it can make it difficult to deliver the treatment they need. Therefore, among their many reviews of the effects of dental treatments, the Cochrane Oral Health Group maintains a review of the effects of sedation on children undergoing such treatment. The review’s third update was published in December 2018 and lead author, Paul Ashley, from the UCL Eastman Dental Institute in London England tells us where things now stand in this podcast.