Is alpha-lipoic acid (a natural antioxidant) better than no treatment or dummy treatment for nerve damage in people with diabetes?

In February 2024, we published the first update of the Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol review of psychosocial treatments for people with stimulant use disorder. Here's lead author, Silvia Minozzi from the Lazio Regional Health Service in Rome Italy to tell us about the latest findings.

The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group produced more than 650 Cochrane Reviews after its establishment as the first Cochrane Review Group, 30 years ago. Several relate to postpartum haemorrhage, and these were added to in November 2023, with a new review of qualitative research, which was also supported by the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group. In this podcast, Martha Vazquez Corona, talks with corresponding author Meghan Bohren, head of the Gender and Women’s Health Unit at the University of Melbourne in Australia, about this qualitative evidence synthesis and its findings.

Pregnant women are sometimes given vaccines to help protect the health of their babies after birth, with Cochrane reviews examining the evidence on this for, for example, pneumococcal disease and hepatitis B. In May 2024, we published a new addition, looking at RSV vaccination. In this podcast, review authors, Emily Phijffer and Odette de Bruin, medical doctors and PhD students in respectively, Pediatrics and Obstetrics at the Wilhelmina Childrens Hospital, University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands, talk about their findings.

Patient understanding can be key to the successful use of many of the interventions for which there are Cochrane Reviews and, in November 2023, we published a review that might help with this. Here are two of the authors, Angela Aldin from Cochrane Haematology and Annika Baumeister from the University of Bonn, both in Germany, to talk about the findings of that review looking at interventions for improving health literacy in migrants.

Alongside its many reviews of possible treatments for dementia, the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group produced reviews relevant to other aspects of the care of people with dementia. In this podcast, Tanja Richter talks with Julia Lühnen (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Institute of Clinical Nursing Science, Berlin, Germany) about the August 2023 update of the 2012 review of psychosocial interventions for reducing the use of antipsychotic medicines for people with dementia living in care homes.

The question of whether and how to treat preterm infants with postnatal corticosteroids for the management of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, which is a chronic lung problem due to prematurity, has been a neonatologist's quandary for decades. In August 2023, Cochrane Neonatal published a network meta-analysis on the use of postnatal corticosteroids for its prevention. In this podcast, Roger Soll of Cochrane Neonatal, talks with the lead author Susanne Hay, an attending neonatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the US, about her team's work.

Two of the Cochrane Reviews that investigate different ways to deliver health and social care services look at the qualitative and quantitative research into a strategy called hospital at home. In this podcast, Roses Parker, Cochrane’s Commissioning Editor talks with lead author of the March 2024 qualitative evidence synthesis of implementing hospital at home, Jason Wallis, a physiotherapist and researcher at Monash University in Australia, and Sasha Shepperd, researcher at Oxford Population Health, University of Oxford in the UK who led the Cochrane review of the quantitative effects of admission avoidance hospital at home, which was updated in March 2024.

Immunisation is a key component in the prevention of illness and the Cochrane review of interventions to improve coverage of childhood immunisation in low- and middle-income countries was updated for the second time in December 2023. We asked lead author, Angela Oyo-Ita from University of Calabar Teaching Hospital in Nigeria, to tell us about the latest findings in this podcast.

Among the Cochrane Reviews of treatments to help patients with kidney stones, our review comparing shock wave treatment with surgery was updated for the second time in August 2023. Here's lead author, Vasun Setthawong from Rangsit University in Bangkok, Thailand to tell us about the latest findings.

Alpha-lipoic acid is sometimes used for the treatment of diabetic peripheral neuropathy. In this podcast, one of the authors, Caterina Delcea, talks with lead author Cristian Baicus, consultant in internal medicine from Colentina University Hospital Bucharest in Romania, about the January 2024 Cochrane review of this treatment.