Category: Health News

Doctors are calling for heroin, cocaine and cannabis to be made LEGAL: Experts argue users should be able to seek help without the threat of jail Royal College of Physicians, which represents 26,000 medics, supports the call It believes drug addiction ‘must be considered a health issue first and foremost’ The body claims illegal-drug users

A sepsis awareness and management programme has demonstrated overall success in terms of improved sepsis detection, but has led to an increase in the number of E. coli blood stream infection cases presented, calling into question the targets used by Health Boards and set by the Welsh Government. Sepsis is a serious complication of an

London: International scientists have identified 44 genetic variants that can increase the risk of developing major depression and found that all humans carry at least some of them. Scientists have found that the genetic basis for depression is shared with other psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. The new findings could help explain why not everyone

It has been estimated that there are more than 10^100 possible materials that can be synthesised, grown, and optimised. Materials design can be a slow and laborious process and investigating the full parameter space is a formidable challenge. Machine learning and other advanced statistical techniques will almost certainly help accelerate materials discovery, design, and optimisation,

Twin girls born in 2016 conjoined at the chest and abdomen have been discharged from a Houston hospital more than three months after separation surgery. Texas Children’s Hospital on Thursday announced the latest step in recovery for Hope Elizabeth Richards and Anna Grace Richards. The girls were born Dec. 29, 2016, at the hospital’s Texas

Plague of toxic caterpillars hits the UK: Oak moths that cause deadly asthma attacks and vomiting have been spotted in parks – here’s how to spot them and what to do if you find a nest Larval stage of oak processionary moths spotted in the south-east of England Hairs on the caterpillars cause severe dizziness, fever

The meaningful use EHR incentive program served its purpose of getting hospitals to implement electronic health records platforms. Now, renamed as promoting interoperability, the next phase is to advance the federal government’s approach to enabling those organizations to actually share health data more effectively.  “The job of meaningful use is done, now it’s a rebranding

The cerebral neocortex is responsible for higher brain functions, such as conscious thought and language, in humans. In the neocortex, neurons are precisely arranged in an ordered 6-layered structure. This neocortical structure is formed by the sequential generation of billions of neurons and their migration toward the brain surface in the fetal period. “Subplate neurons”

Geisinger doctors and researchers have trained computers to read CT scans of patients’ heads to detect a life-threatening form of internal bleeding called intracranial hemorrhage. Because early and accurate diagnosis is critical, leading hospitals are moving forward with precision medicine tactics built on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Last week, for instance, Intermountain-owned Navican

Doctors at the University of Illinois Hospital have cured seven adult patients of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder primarily affecting the black community, using stem cells from donors previously thought to be incompatible, thanks to a new transplant treatment protocol. The doctors report on the new technique in the journal Biology of Blood

NHS set to offer cancer patients a ‘game changer’ treatment that could save THOUSANDS of lives CAR-T therapy is a new treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) The immunotherapy treatment could benefit 30,000 Britons a year  Trials in the US showed it eradicated CLL in 94 per cent of patients The NHS is preparing to

To the beat of electronic dance music, men and women inside a slate-gray building harvested marijuana plants festooned with radio-frequency identification tags. In another room, an employee entered the tag numbers into a government database. The cannabis tracking system used by Avitas, a marijuana company with a production facility in Salem, is the backbone of

A study performed by an international team led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, reports a link between exposure to blue light at night and higher risk of developing breast and prostate cancer. Blue light is a range of the visible light spectrum emitted by

Although cannabis, also known as marijuana, has been shown to impair memory, reaction time and attention, it is difficult to assess this impairment in a natural setting. Researchers have developed a prototype app called ‘Am I Stoned’ that could help cannabis users understand how the drug is affecting them through a series of phone-based tasks.

A new study showing significantly improved survival rates for patients with stage IV Wilms tumors with lung metastases was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The outcomes of the study, “Treatment of Stage IV Favorable Histology Wilms Tumor With Lung Metastases: A Report From the Children’s Oncology Group AREN0533 Study,” will be a

Call it the Millennial workplace makeover.The Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. on Wednesday unveiled a significant broadening of its family-related benefits program. The policies, which are effective beginning May 1, include an increase of paid paternal leave to 20 weeks for all parents regardless of gender, including those who are adopting or fostering a child, with

Preterm labor, a common pregnancy complication, has long been a mystery to scientists. But a new study from UC San Francisco shows it may sometimes happen when the fetal immune system “wakes up” too early and begins to reject the mother, causing the uterus to start contracting. The researchers think the fetal immune system becomes

It’s DNA, but not as we know it. In a world first, Australian researchers have identified a new DNA structure — called the i-motif — inside cells. A twisted ‘knot’ of DNA, the i-motif has never before been directly seen inside living cells. The new findings, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, are published

Blades made from human thigh bones were far superior to cassowary daggers, study finds. Some people just have the best job. Anthropologists at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire got to play around with awesome daggers as part of a new study they’ve just published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The team was researching

Mobile health applications (apps) for improving diagnostic decision-making often lack clinical evaluation, but one app that has undergone testing by researchers is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PTT Advisor. In a recently published study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the CDC evaluated