NHS Evidence - Eyes on Evidence May 2013

. . . providing easy access to a comprehensive evidence base for everyone in health and social care who takes decisions about treatments or the use of resources. A monthly bulletin is produced, Eyes on Evidence; the issue for April includes:

Premature death after self-harm. A cohort study reports that rates of death from both natural and external causes are higher in people who self-harm than would be expected in the general population.
Probiotics in antibiotic-associated diarrhoea. A systematic review suggests that probiotics can reduce antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.
'Anti-fat' bias among doctors. Results of a web-based survey, designed to assess attitudes towards weight, reveal implicit and explicit 'anti-fat' bias among doctors.
Domestic violence presenting in primary care. A survey examines knowledge, attitudes and clinical skills related to domestic violence in selected UK general practices.
Small benefits of Z drugs over placebo for insomnia. A meta-analysis has found that Z drugs reduce the time taken to fall asleep by 22 minutes compared with placebo. However, this result may not be clinically significant and any benefit of Z drugs must be balanced against their well-documented risks.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT): cardiovascular outcomes after recent menopause. Data from long-term follow-up of an open-label randomised controlled trial suggest that HRT reduces cardiovascular endpoints in women if started early after menopause. However, limitations of the analysis make interpretation of the results difficult.
Case studies from the Quality, Improvement, Productivity, and Prevention collection. Highlighting 2 new examples from the QIPP collection, these are: simple behavioural interventions that can reduce non-attendance; and reducing hospital admission rates for people with type 2 diabetes.