Respiratory Medicine
Wednesday 20 May – BMA House, London

This one day masterclass will cover the wide range of respiratory disease encountered in general practice. You can catch up on the latest guidelines and protocols, get tips and learn tricks from the experts, find the answers to your clinical conundrums, and meet and network with your peers.

5 new topics for 2009:
o Latest asthma guidelines
o Management of COPD
o Respiratory infections
o Investigating haemoptysis
o Delivering respiratory services - the GP's role.

To view the full programme and speakers please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/GPs/respiratory-medicine

Register early to take advantage of our early bird rates and save up to £30. To register, please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/register-now

BMJ Masterclasses for GPs: General Update
Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 March – BMA House, London
Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 May – Royal York Hotel, York
Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 June – Holiday Inn, Birmingham
Thursday 17 and Friday 18 September – BMA House, London
Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October – Renaissance Hotel, Manchester
Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 November – Radisson SAS, Glasgow
Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 November – Marriott Hotel City Centre, Bristol
Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 December – BMA House, London

Our most popular course for GPs is back, featuring two brand new topics - interpreting lab results and polypharmacy. Expert speakers will guide you through the hot topics for 2009, and highlight the most recent evidence, guidelines and best practice.

Programme 1 topics include:
o Respiratory medicine
o Dermatology
o Diabetes
o Ophthalmology
o Interpreting lab results
o Paediatrics

Programme 2 topics include
o Cardiology
o ENT
o Neurology
o Musculoskeletal
o Polypharmacy
o Women’s health

To view the full programmes and speakers, please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/GPs/general-update

Register early to take advantage of our early bird rates and save up to £30. To register, please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/register-now

Cardiology, Diabetes and CKD
Thursday 30 April – Renaissance Hotel, Manchester
Tuesday 9 June – BMA House, London
Tuesday 22 September – Radisson SAS, Glasgow

This one day masterclass for GPs and advanced nurse practitioners will advance your knowledge in three of the most challenging areas of clinical practice.

6 new topics for 2009:
o Heart failure: focus on case studies
o Cardiac arrhythmias
o Cardiovascular prevention programme: the new challenge
o Diabetes: current treatments
o Managing co-morbidities in patients with diabetes
o Chronic kidney disease: hot topics.

To view the full programme and speakers please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/GPs/cardiology-diabetes-ckd

Register early to take advantage of our early bird rates and save up to £30. To register, please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/register-now

Musculoskeletal Medicine
Wednesday 10 June – BMA House, London
Monday 5 October – Holiday Inn, Birmingham

This popular one day course for GPs will provide useful tips on managing key musculoskeletal conditions in primary care. You will hear practical advice from our expert speakers, including live demonstration of examination techniques.

Learn about the essentials of diagnosis and management of:
o Back pain
o Ankle and foot problems
o Hip pain
o Chronic musculoskeletal pain
o Knee disorders
o Shoulder pain
o Elbow and hand disorders.

To view the full programme and speakers please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/GPs/musculoskeletal-medicine

Register early to take advantage of our early bird rates and save up to £30. To register, please visit: http://masterclasses.bmj.com/register-now

The present Committee [Lynda Campbell, Christine Harrison, David Ledbetter, Albert Schinzel, Lisa Shaffer, Niels Tommerup (Chair) and Angela Vianna Morgante] was elected in 2001 at the Tenth International Congress of Human Genetics in Vienna. A new Committee needs to be elected for the next five year period 2006-2011. David Ledbetter, Niels Tommerup and Angela Vianna Morgante have served for the allowed two periods and cannot be re-elected. The Committee has adopted changes to its membership structure for the future which includes expansion of the number of members from seven to eleven to reflect better representation of the geographic distribution of cytogeneticists. The number of members of the new Committee will be three from North America, three from Europe, two from Asia, and one each from South-America, Africa, and Australia/New Zealand/Oceania. To facilitate continuity, the chairman of the new Committee will be elected by the old Committee amongst those who can serve for a second period. Lisa Shaffer, USA, has been elected as the new chairman for the 2006-2011 Committee and does therefore not appear on the ballot.

To simplify the voting procedure, and facilitate voting also by those not attending the International Congress of Human Genetics, the voting shall be by email or fax, so that the new Committee will have been elected prior to the Eleventh International Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane, August 2006. Nominations for candidates including their name, affiliation, postal address and email address should be mailed to the secretary of the chairman at elin{at}imbg.ku.dk before February 15, 2006, after which the list of candidates will be published with the call for voting. Likewise, ballots for voting can be requested from the secretary at elin@imbg.ku.dk after February 15, 2006, by including your name, affiliation, postal address, email and fax. The ballots with voting procedures will then be emailed or faxed after April 1, 2006 to the requested address. All ballots must be received by the secretary on or before July 1, 2006 so that they can be counted before the August meeting. Instructions for returning the ballots will accompany the ballot requests.

Patients with apparently balanced chromosomal rearrangements and multiple congenital anomalies are being sought for participation in a gene discovery research project (http://dgap.harvard.edu). Goals of DGAP include rapid mapping of chromosomal breakpoints, positional cloning of genes interrupted or dysregulated at the breakpoints, and validation of genes identified in specific anomalies through creation of animal models.

Further description of DGAP, sample submission and patient consent forms, and contact information are all available on the website, or by contacting:
Azra Ligon
Email: aligon{at}rics.bwh.harvard.edu
Tel: +1 617-732-7671)

or Heather Ferguson
Email: hferguson1{at}partners.org
Tel: +1 617-525-4548).

Your assistance in this project is deeply appreciated.

We are setting up a resource of information and DNA from consanguineous families with autosomal recessive conditions funded by the Wellcome Trust. Our aim is to promote identification of autosomal recessive disease genes to ultimately improve genetic testing and counselling for families with these often rare conditions. Consanguineous families provide a highly efficient family structure for autosomal recessive disease gene mapping and to facilitate autozygosity gene mapping we have established a database containing clinical information and a linked DNA bank

We are accepting clinical information and DNA from any consanguineous families in which a condition appears, or is known, to be autosomal recessive. Further information (including patient information sheet and consent form) is available from the website (www.NAMR.org.uk). The resource is available to UK and on-UK clinicians. Further information from Professor Richard Trembath (rtrembat{at}hgmp.mrc.ac.uk) or Professor Eamonn Maher (E.R.Maher{at}bham.ac.uk)