Review Article
2023 guidelines on the management of psoriasis by the Dermatological Society of Singapore
Psoriasis is a chronic multisystem, autoimmune and inflammatory dermatological condition. It usually persists throughout one’s lifetime, and spontaneous remission is rarely seen. As per the World Health Organization (WHO), the global prevalence of psoriasis is about 0.09%–11.4%.1
Psoriasis may be linked to other serious diseases, such as depression, psoriatic arthritis...
Review Article
Demographic diversity of participants in clinical trials conducted in Singapore
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews are the most reliable ways of relaying information on the most effective treatments for our patients in clinical practice. The careful design of trials to minimise the possibility of bias ensures that findings are internally valid, but this may threaten their clinical...
Editorial
Different strokes for different folks
Atrial fibrillation (AF) remains the most common arrhythmia since William Harvey’s observation of fibrillating auricles in open chest animal models in 1628. Willem Einthoven first documented ECG tracing of AF in 1906. Fast forward several hundred years since its first observation, AF remains a mystery from its pathogenesis and...
Letter to the Editor
BNT162B2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccination did not promote substantial anti-syncytin-1 antibody production nor mRNA transfer to breast milk in an exploratory pilot study
Dear Editor,
Vaccine hesitancy still threatens global efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 and its emerging variants. Social media-driven “conspiracy theories” cast doubts on vaccine safety for reproductive health,1 including concerns that vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2-neutralising antibodies (NAb) cross-react with human syncytin-1—a protein involved in gamete fertilisation and...
Original Article
Incidence of Ischaemic Heart Disease and Stroke in Chinese, Malays and Indians in Singapore: Singapore Cardiovascular Cohort Study
Comparisons of disease frequency in different ethnic groups help to unravel the contributions of nature and nurture in their aetiology and to identify environmental or lifestyle factors that may be involved. This is aided when the ethnic groups live in the same country, so that differences in completeness and...
Others
Locally Advanced and Metastatic Breast Cancer in a Tertiary Hospital
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Singapore and accounts for 22.8% of all female cancers.1 The incidence of breast cancer in Singapore has doubled between 1968 to 1972 and 1993 to 19972 and is now the highest in Asia, with an age-adjusted incidence of 53.1...
Others
Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency: Correlation between the Genotype, Biochemistry and Phenotype
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Original Article
Identifying Risk of Neonatal Hyperbilirubinaemia and Early Discharge for Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficient Newborns in Singapore
Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency was discovered half a century ago, at the end of World War II.1 It is probably the most common sex-linked Mendelian disease and inherited enzyme defect recorded worldwide and is estimated to affect hundreds of millions of people.2-4 G6PD deficiency is a major cause of...
Original Article
Where the Elderly Die: The Influence of Socio-Demographic Factors and Cause of Death on People Dying at Home
The subject of place of death was brought to the forefront of the medical community in July 2004 when 2 important publications were released; one by the World Health Organization1 and another from the House of Commons Select Committee on Health.2 Both reports highlighted that the proportion of deaths...
Original Article
The Influence of Maternal Ethnic Group and Diet on Breast Milk Fatty Acid Composition
Human milk is the ideal food which provides the complete nutritional requirements for infants during the first 6 months of life. The lipids accumulated in an infant represent the majority of all energy retained in the growing tissues during this crucial period of rapid growth and development.
This article is...
Original Article
Demographic Determinants of Survival in Osteosarcoma
The treatment of osteosarcoma has seen tremendous improvements over the last 3 decades of the twentieth century. Over the last decade it appears that results of treatment have stagnated.
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Original Article
Smoking and Nicotine Dependence in Singapore: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Epidemiological Study
Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death and is the fourth most common risk factor for disease. Nearly 6 million deaths occur worldwide every year, which equates to one death every 6 seconds or one in 10 adult deaths. Cigarette smoke contains over 7000 chemicals and compounds, of...
Original Article
Prevalence and Impact of Mental and Physical Comorbidity in the Adult Singapore Population
The co-occurrence of mental and medical disorders in the same person, regardless of the chronological order in which they occurred or their causal relationship—commonly referred to as comorbidity—is not uncommon. The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), which was a nationally representative epidemiological survey in the US, found that at...
Original Article
Accuracy of self-reported height, weight and BMI in a multiethnic Asian population
Overweight and obesity continue to be one of the most critical public health issues worldwide. Body mass index (BMI) derived from height and weight has been directly linked to a number of debilitating diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and has gained increased popularity as a measure of...
Letter to the Editor
Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae carriage in polyclinic attendees and national servicemen presenting with diarrhoea
Klebsiella pneumoniae liver abscess is an invasive syndrome that mainly affects people living in East Asia. It especially affects adults with diabetes and is caused by hypervirulent strains that possess the rmpA gene (regulator of mucoid phenotype A), iron sequestering genes, and usually belong to capsule types K1 and...
Original Article
Long-term outcomes of ischaemic stroke patients with diabetes in a multi-ethnic cohort in Singapore
Asia faces an epidemic of diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes in Asia is projected to grow from 114 million in 2007 to 180 million by 2025, driven in part by marked economic and epidemiologic transition in recent decades.1 In China, the prevalence of diabetes rose from 1% in 1980...