Category: Health Problems

These days we can get from most remote villages anywhere to home in 36 hours. And migrating humans can certainly carry microbial “passengers”. This means the increasing globalisation of our world can give infectious diseases a good opportunity to spread. In the age of exploration, introduced infections played a major role in shaping human history.

(HealthDay)—Can’t quite spit out the right, uh, word at times? A new study helps explain why. European researchers analyzed thousands of recordings of spontaneous speech in different languages from around the world. They included English and Dutch speakers as well as conversation from people in the Amazon rainforest, Siberia, the Himalayas and the Kalahari desert.

Among homeless individuals cardiovascular disease remains one of the major causes of death due to challenges in predicting initial risk, limited access to health care and difficulties in long-term management, according to a review published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In the U.S., roughly 550,000 people are homeless on any

The informal settlement of Khayelitsha in Cape Town is the latest site of a multi country trial that aims to transform the treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB). The endTB clinic was officially opened by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the City of Cape Town and will test five new drug regimens in Peru, Lesotho, Kazakhstan,

DNA is the warehouse of genetic information in each living cell, and its integrity and stability are essential to life. This stability and integrity is maintained by DNA damage repair machinery. In a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a research team at Baylor College of Medicine found that defects in selective DNA damage repair

(HealthDay)—Outbreaks associated with treated recreational water with confirmed infectious etiology are usually caused by Cryptosporidium, Legionella, or Pseudomonas, according to research published in the May 18 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Michele C. Hlavsa, M.P.H., from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues describe 493 outbreaks

(HealthDay)—For patients with very severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), 60-day mortality is not significantly lower with venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) than with continued conventional treatment, according to a study published online in the May 24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Alain Combes, M.D., Ph.D., from the Sorbonne Université in Paris,

Heart doctors from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Council on Stroke are calling on national health authorities for permission to provide stroke patients with mechanical thrombectomy, a life-saving treatment for acute ischaemic stroke, in regions where there is a lack of trained specialists. Details of the proposal are presented today at EuroPCR 2018. “We

Although kidney problems related to type 2 diabetes disproportionately affect blacks, when black and white individuals received comparable diabetes care within the context of a clinical trial, black race was not associated with faster development or progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD). The findings, which appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of

In response to antibiotics, a gene regulation network found in the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii acts to boost both virulence and antibiotic resistance. Edward Geisinger of Tufts University School of Medicine and colleagues present new insights into this system in a study published in PLOS Pathogens. A. baumannii is a multi-drug resistant bacterium that spreads in

A heart failure patient who often feels lonely or left out is more likely to require hospitalization than one who rarely feels socially isolated, a new study shows. The assessment, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, also found a higher risk of death among those who feel very socially isolated. But

The urgent threat from Zika virus, which dominated news headlines in the spring and summer of 2016, has passed for now. But research into how Zika and other mosquito-borne infections spread and cause epidemics is still very active. In a paper published May 24 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, an international team of

The case for permethrin-treated clothing to prevent tick bites keeps getting stronger. In a series of experiments conducted by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, clothing treated with an insecticide known as permethrin had strong toxic effects on three primary species of ticks known to spread disease-causing pathogens in the United

Some 15,000 new cancer cases are diagnosed in Brazil each year, and researchers have found that approximately 4 percent of these cases could be avoided by reducing overweight and obesity. The epidemiological study was conducted by scientists at the Preventive Medicine Department of the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP) in Brazil in collaboration

South Asians are more likely to die of heart disease, such as heart attacks and strokes caused by atherosclerosis—the disease process that narrows arteries—than East Asians and non-Hispanic whites living in the United States, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association published in its journal Circulation. The statement provides an overview

Combining data from electronic health records with results from standardized depression questionnaires better predicts suicide risk in the 90 days following either mental health specialty or primary care outpatient visits, reports a team from the Mental Health Research Network, led by Kaiser Permanente research scientists. The study, “Predicting Suicide Attempts and Suicide Death Following Outpatient

Mutations to the protein tau, commonly associated with neurodegenerative disorders, may serve as a novel risk factor for cancer, according to results published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. “Our study revealed that the presence of tau mutations raises the risk of developing cancer,” said Fabrizio Tagliavini, MD, scientific

A collaborative study between the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute finds rates of lung cancer, historically higher among men than women, have flipped among whites and Hispanics born since the mid-1960s. The authors of the study, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, say future research is needed to identify

Using an original mathematical and statistical analysis method, a team of scientists from the Institut Pasteur partnered with researchers from the United States and Thailand to analyze a Thai cohort that has long been a focus of study for dengue specialists, and obtained new information that should help identify individuals at risk of infection. By

Recovery after severe spinal cord injury is notoriously fraught, with permanent paralysis often the result. In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned to stem cell-based therapies as a potential method for repairing and replacing damaged nerve cells. They have struggled, however, to overcome numerous innate barriers, including myelin, a mixture of insulating proteins and lipids