Medicines watchdog to investigate UK peptide clinics over health claims

The medicines regulator is investigating whether UK clinics are breaking the law by making claims about the benefits of unregulated, experimental peptide therapies, the Guardian can reveal.Interest in experimental peptides has boomed in recent years. The substances are delivered by injection and are touted by sellers, influencers and even some medics as aiding everything from anti-ageing to recovery from injury.There is little scientific evidence to support such health and wellness claims in humans. Where studies have been carried out, most are in animals or cells

‘Young people want to come together’: experts respond to mass teen meet-ups in Clapham

It started with a flyer sent around on Snapchat. Teenagers were invited to gather at a south London basketball court to celebrate the start of the Easter holidays. They were told to bring their own weed and laughing gas because it was going to be a late one.What followed in the hours after was chaos. Hundreds of young people came to the “link-up” last Saturday, and then gathered on Clapham High Street

Dorothy Logie obituary

My sister, Dorothy Logie, who has died aged 83 of Alzheimer’s, was a Scottish GP whose commitment to global health extended to HIV/Aids care and advocacy in Africa.Dorothy was born in Aberdeen, the daughter of Adeline (nee Donald), a housewife, and William Caie, group secretary of Aberdeen General Hospitals who helped establish the NHS in Aberdeen, inspiring Dorothy to study medicine. She left St Margaret’s school aged 17, qualified as MBChB from Aberdeen University in 1966, and married Sandy Logie, a fellow doctor, two weeks later.She and Sandy travelled the following year to the Gambia to join the Medical Research Council; Sandy was a medical officer and Dorothy researched maternal malaria. When she became pregnant with their first child, she returned to Aberdeen, but the visit sparked a lifelong love of Africa

How we won a refund from a cash-grabbing care home firm | Letters

As witness to the cash-grabbing nature of these businesses (The great care home cash grab: how private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs, 28 March), I would like to draw your attention to a specific practice: that of trying to deny grieving families the balance of fees owed to them when a resident dies in the home with full weeks already paid for.I had already heard of this from someone else, so I was on the alert when the same thing happened to us. We were told that it was not their “policy to refund” when, policy or not, a careful reading of the contract showed that the money was owed. We appealed, and were successful.I imagine that many families in the grip of bereavement simply accept this “policy”, shrug their shoulders and say goodbye to the money owed to them

Calling us Auntie or Uncle is no insult | Letters

Re Lola Okolosie’s article (Is calling a woman ‘auntie’ ageist harassment – or a mark of respect? It’s a trickier question than you think, 31 March), I was interested to read uncle/auntie described as honorifics. Growing up (I’m 60-plus years old, Scottish), I think it operated as a familiar term. I was taught to call close friends of my parents Aunt Jane or Uncle John. Otherwise Mister/Miss.Clearly, there is an honorific element – if I am (as a child) calling you Aunt, you are close to my parents, but it was not related to age – I would never have dreamed of calling anyone Aunt/Uncle on an age basis

Young people ‘more likely to leave for health reasons when in low-paid, insecure jobs’

Young people in the UK are more likely to leave their job for health reasons and become economically inactive when they work in insecure, low-paid sectors, a study has found.Research carried out for the Trades Union Congress by the consultancy Timewise charts a connection between the jobs young people are most likely to do – in hospitality, retail and care, for example – and the proportion of people leaving because of ill health.“The occupations that young people are concentrated in are associated with high numbers of people moving into long-term sickness and worklessness,” the analysis said.The authors said that these sectors were also among those most likely to offer precarious or low-paid jobs.More than 40% of staff in accommodation and food services are in insecure working arrangements, for example