Editorial ||FREE PAPER||

Garry Walsh

Asthmatic and Allergic Inflammation Group, School of Medicine, University of Aberdeen, UK

This fourth issue of Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management is important as it marks the completion of volume one of the Journal. This issue contains some excellent and diverse original research papers and comprehensive review articles from leading authors around the world. The first review focuses on the use of oxaliplatin, an effective and widely used treatment for colorectal cancer, one of the most common and serious malignant diseases world-wide. However, oxaliplatin use is associated with peripheral neuropathy. It is timely, therefore, that this review considers the options for the management and treatment of neurotoxicity caused by oxaliplatin treatment. In the second review, Jost and Marsalek assess the current evidence on the benefits of duloxetine, a new drug for the management of stress urinary incontinence (SUI), a potentially distressing condition that affects a significant proportion of predominantly older women. Although conservative treatment can be effective for some patients, adjunct pharmacological therapy may be required for others and, as the authors point out, is advocated by the International Consultation on Incontinence. In this respect, their review suggests that duloxetine may prove a useful additional therapy for the management of SUI.