UK air critical care is growing—yet still patchy
A 2024 survey of all 21 UK Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) organizations found a marked increase in physician-led prehospital teams since 2009. Across the UK, potentially available physician-based teams rose to 30, and services providing consistent 24/7 physician staffing increased from 1 in 2009 to 11 in 2024. Access remains uneven by region, and there is notable variation in advanced capabilities: most services reported carrying blood for transfusion, while highly specialized interventions (such as resuscitative balloon occlusion of the aorta) were rare. Funding is also heterogeneous, with nearly all services reliant on charity either alone or combined with government support.
Why it might matter to you:
If you work anywhere near prehospital care, these data help set realistic expectations about what a helicopter team may be able to deliver on scene—and when. The regional gaps and intervention variability also point to where protocols, dispatch criteria, and inter-service coordination may need tightening to reduce “postcode” differences in critical care access.
The first job offer many researchers never haggle over
In a national qualitative study, researchers interviewed 17 emergency medicine research fellowship graduates (2019–2023) about their first post-fellowship academic job offers and negotiation experiences. Most participants reported receiving one to two offers, with wide variation in start-up packages, clinical hours, and protected non-clinical time. A majority (59%) said they did not negotiate at all, often citing poor transparency around compensation norms and institutional expectations. When negotiation happened, it more frequently targeted research effort/protected time rather than salary, and mentorship from senior researchers emerged as a key factor shaping both job choice and early-career productivity.
Why it might matter to you:
If you’re building a research track in emergency care, this highlights how easily “protected time” and support structures can be left on the table—often because basic benchmarks are hard to find. It also suggests a practical fix: stronger mentoring and clearer, more standardized offers could improve retention and scientific output in early-career EM research.
Microbial chemistry, not microbe names, may predict immunotherapy outcomes
Using pan-cancer metagenomics data from patients treated with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), this study argues that microbiome “function” (community metabolic pathways) is more consistent across people than individual bacterial species—and therefore may be a better predictor of treatment response. The authors identified microbial metabolic pathways linked to ICB outcomes, including the methylerythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway, associated with response and shown to stimulate Vδ2 T cell–mediated antitumor effects in patient-derived tumor organoids. In contrast, riboflavin synthesis pathways were associated with ICB resistance; pathway intermediates promoted mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cell–mediated immune suppression. Supporting this, gut metabolomics connected higher riboflavin levels with worse survival in patients with abundant intratumoral MAIT cells.
Why it might matter to you:
Microbiome science is moving from “which bug is present” to “what the community can do,” which could make future biomarkers and interventions more robust across populations. Mechanistically tying specific microbial metabolites to distinct immune cell programs (Vδ2 T cells vs MAIT cells) also sharpens the logic for targeted dietary, probiotic, or metabolite-focused strategies alongside immunotherapy.
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