Medical research is vital to the advancement of health care, but many medical research studies have too few people who participate. A new study from the University of Michigan takes an in-depth look at public participation in medical research across the United States.

New data suggests the erectile dysfunction (ED) drug Cialis may also be beneficial in helping men who have problems with ejaculation and orgasm, report researchers from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in the February issue of the British Journal of Urology International. Cialis is currently approved for the treatment of ED, benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH) and for treatment of men with both conditions.

Internal pharmaceutical company documents detailing the planned and completed analyses for clinical trials do not always match the publically available report of the completed trial, highlighting a concerning lack of transparency, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

A new study of randomized clinical trials found significant observer bias toward a more beneficial treatment effect in nonblinded trials when the researcher knew the treatment being given to the participant. The study is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

A drug developed at Linköping University in Sweden protects against the side effects of cancer treatments while strengthening the effects on the tumour. An international drug evaluation is now starting up on a larger group of patients. The results of the studies with the compound, known as calmangafodipir, were published in the latest issue of the cancer journal Translational Oncology with Professor Rolf G. G. Andersson as the main author.

Researchers have identified a complex of proteins that promotes the growth of some types of colon and gastric cancers, and shown that medications that block the function of this complex have the potential to be developed into a new treatment for these diseases.

University of Rochester Medical Center scientists have proposed a new reason why acute myeloid leukemia, one of the most aggressive cancers, is so difficult to cure: a subset of cells that drive the disease appear to have a much slower metabolism than most other tumors cells.