Essential organs tasked with keeping us alive and reproducing – such as the heart, brain or uterus – may have evolved better protection against cancer than larger and paired organs, we have proposed.
The most common question I get asked is “Will my child get Alzheimer’s disease?” In my experience, this concern is one of the biggest worries for sufferers, and given the devastating effects of the disease, it is not hard to see why it is a difficult thought to contemplate.
Specific aspects of the Amish environment are associated with changes to immune cells that appear to protect children from developing asthma, report researchers.
Most Eastern styles of medicine pay just as much attention to the patient’s state of mind as to the state of his or her tissues and organs. This insight and acknowledgment of the whole person rather than reducing us to our individual body parts is based on healing methods centuries old that survive because they work.
In late July, an international team of researchers announced that they had identified evidence of cancer in the fossilized remains of a biological relative of human beings who lived about 1.7 million years ago.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 and revolutionised the treatment of bacterial infections. Ever since then we have been searching for new antibiotics to address the myriad of infections humans encounter and the growing risk of resistance to them.
A new breast cancer study shows that tumors can mutate in response to treatments that reduce estrogen levels in the body.
Recent calls for the introduction of a vaccine against chickenpox (varicella-zoster virus infection) following a severe case of the disease in Cambridge, England may surprise many parents who consider the disease to be a mild illness that “everyone gets”.
Type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic proportions, with an estimated 29 million people in the U.S. having the disease and another 86 million considered prediabetic. With an estimated cost of US$245 billion, prevention becomes critically important to stem the tide of increasing diabetes prevalence.
A recent report by the Mental Health Network, found that 19% of adults had been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives, while as many as one in four people experience a mental health problem in any given year.
Anger can be very quick, powerful, reactive, and can make us do things we typically wouldn’t do. There is nothing inherently wrong with anger as an emotion, but nowhere is anger less helpful, more common, and potentially more dangerous than when we are behind the wheel of a car.
Antiretroviral therapy has revolutionised the lives of people living with HIV. In many countries, the life expectancy for someone living with the virus is now almost the same as someone who isn’t infected.
A new analysis of the medical records of more than 5.5 million older adults admitted to nursing homes between 2011 and 2014 shows that those with delirium face an increased risk of death. They’re also more likely to be readmitted to the hospital.
Raising a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be difficult. Some days feel long and the respite of a peaceful night, so rejuvenating for many, may not come at all
The prevalence of gout is increasing worldwide. It has become the most common cause of inflammatory arthritis in men, and its prevalence in postmenopausal women continues to rise. This increase is due to changes in diet and lifestyle, increased use of certain diuretics and increasing obesity.
Admitting a loved one to a nursing home is a difficult decision and is usually only arrived at once the person’s care needs cannot be met by the family and community-based services. Dementia has profound consequences for the quality of life for those with the condition, their family and friends.
Researchers are testing a non-drug pain treatment for people who are trying to overcome addiction.
Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition with no known cure. It impacts people of all ages through episodic constrictions of the airways, which may be even worse than it sounds.
Scientists have identified an inner ear deficiency in children with autism that may affect their ability to recognize speech. The finding suggests that a hearing test could one day be used identify children at risk for the disorder at an early age.
The United States Preventive Services Task Force has released a report saying there isn’t enough evidence to recommend that clinicians perform visual screening for melanomas for patients with no known risk for the skin cancer.
Manipulating the brain has been a tool used in the treatment of mental illness for centuries, and treatments have often been controversial.
When a child is diagnosed with asthma, parents usually have a number of questions. How serious is asthma? Will the child grow out of it?
The number of new cases of metastatic prostate cancer climbed 72 percent from 2004 to 2013, but it’s unclear whether the rise is due to a recent trend of fewer screenings, the disease becoming more aggressive, or both.