It’s now been a full year since we began our pandemic-enforced working from home experience. We left the office with a rather optimistic note that “this might last several weeks or more, so remember to take all your gear home with you!”. But apart from a couple of weeks before the UK’s second wave in October, we’ve been at home ever since.
Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynaecologic cancer and the fifth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women (1, 2). Commonly known as “The Whispering Disease” (3, 4), the symptoms of ovarian cancer are often difficult to detect in its early stages; symptoms can be very subtle, completely absent or misinterpreted as other benign conditions (5).
It’s exactly one year since AS&K closed its offices and we were all asked to work from home ‘for a few weeks’. That has stretched out far longer than we could ever have imagined. And while we have regular catch-ups – weekly all-company Zooms, quarterly Townhalls, frequent online social events, and daily team meetings and one-to-ones – we are all still logging on from our kitchens/bedrooms/spare rooms/home offices.
Today is International Women’s Day, and this year’s theme is ‘Choose to Challenge’. The IWD website states, ‘A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change’.
I wanted to write about this challenge, of achieving gender parity, calling out bias, and finally reaching equality.
Coagulation and COVID-19 – Part 1
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has caused immense human and economic suffering. It has also inspired some remarkable scientific and medical achievements. We have seen the development and rollout of an effective vaccine in record time, and the RECOVERY trial, with its adaptive design and simplified procedures, is an innovative approach to rapid yet rigorous testing of potential COVID-19 treatments.
Migraine, whether episodic or chronic, is a complex condition characterised by a wide spectrum of symptoms – from hypersensitivity, nausea and sickness to visual disturbances, loss of concentration and vertigo.
The pandemic has meant that we, as a company, haven’t flown anywhere for a year. The result has been a substantial reduction of our carbon footprint, one that we hope to use as a “kick start” to keep further reducing our carbon impact post-pandemic.
The damage caused to neurons during Multiple Sclerosis (MS) relapses makes the disease difficult to manage. Inflammatory stages of MS are treated using corticosteroids and disease modifying therapies (DMTs) (1). This relapsing remitting stage of MS also extends to the beginning stages of progressive MS which ultimately results in neurodegenerative symptoms caused by the deterioration of neurons (2,3).
Half the UK population are unable to name one famous woman scientist, according to a report from education charity Teach First. How many can you name? Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace – that’s my lot. My teenage daughters weren’t much better: ‘Marie Curie and the woman who worked on DNA that no one remembers’ (Rosalind Franklin!).