Strapping both feet to a board and launching down a precipitous slope covered in snow and ice sounds, and often looks, like suicide to the casual observer. The popularity of snowboarding continues to rise, however, and so does the incidence of injury. A review in Western Journal of Medicine (2001;174:128-30) comments that injuries are more frequent and more serious in snowboarders than in skiers of the same ability and advises people to take a buddy with them who is trained in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Beginners are particularly vulnerable; they can easily lose teeth when a trip over the edge of the board turns them into a “human fly swatter.”

A team of researchers from Argentina has isolated Helicobacter pylori from atherosclerotic plaques in carotid arteries removed during endarterectomy (Stroke 2001;32:385-91). They found the pathogen in 20 out of 38 plaques from diseased arteries, but found none in seven normal arteries removed during postmortem examination. The find is interesting, says a commentator, but doesn't answer the questions researchers have been asking for years—namely, does chronic infection cause atherosclerosis, and if it does, can we treat it with antibiotics?

Hormone replacement therapy has also been implicated in the aetiology of stroke, mostly by observational studies. Results of …