Phyllis Wise has spent more than 30 years trying to understand the role of estrogen in animal models, and found that the hormone protected the body from injury following stroke. So, in 2002, when the Women's Health Initiative announced that hormone therapy appeared to cause more harm than good, Wise, based at the University of Washington, and her colleagues were shocked. Wise and her colleagues returned to their animal models, and discovered that the clinical trial failed to tell the whole story (see "Clearing Estrogen's Bad Name"). Basic and clinical scientists "need to talk with each other," she says, "so that clinical work is based upon what we know from animal models and clinical studies are carried back to [basic scientist] investigators."
In this month's Opinion, on "Disease Prevention in Islamic Countries", Ali Ardalan, an epidemiologist and assistant professor in Tehran, Iran, and coauthors representing several Islamic countries, argue that ...
