Anaesthesia
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Advances in the field of pharmacogenomics have resulted in the discovery of some important single-nucleotide polymorphisms which are found to be associated with opioid dose variability. This, to a large extent, explains genetic variability in the analgesic dose of opioids. ⋯ An in-depth knowledge of single-nucleotide polymorphisms can help clinicians to address interindividual variability in opioid dosing and requirements. In the era of precision medicine, these genetic markers can also help us to design prognostic tools to accurately predict the analgesic dose of opioids.
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More than 50% of medical students and 45% of practising doctors are female in the UK. In the specialty of anaesthesia, 32% of consultants are female. However, compared with males, females are under-represented as authors of articles published in high-impact journals. ⋯ The proportion of female first authors of accepted case reports was 42.1% and females were first authors of rejected case reports in 34.4%. We found that, compared with previous studies on female sex and gender bias in publishing, there was a relatively high proportion of female first authors publishing in Anaesthesia Cases and female first authors were more likely to be accepted than male first authors. Authorship is considered to reflect career success and there continues to be sex/gender inequity that must be tackled at all levels, from application to medical school, through research funding, journals and Editorial Boards.