Health

The third week of March may be a time for celebration for many reasons. Those not enjoying a relatively extensive festival of national culture may instead feel the need to mark the results of certain marquee sporting events. If you chose to celebrate “St. Patrick’s” weekend with a few drinks, we here at ES hope you enjoyed the use of moderation as well.

One of the biggest challenges faced by cancer patients today is diagnosis of their condition early enough to get suitable treatment options. Cancer results in more than 8 million deaths worldwide, each year, and the National Cancer Institute has predicted the numbers to rise to 22 million in the next few decades. Among years of innovation and research, a new way to tackle the detection of this disease has been developed — an improved and faster screening test.

Motor neurone disease (MND), also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a condition in which patients lose motor independence. This is followed by systematic muscle wastage, which may leave affected people immobile for life. The mechanism and progression of MND has been studied in detail over the last few decades. This body of research has offered a great deal of insight into how cellular energetics, growth and activity contribute to the loss of motor function.

Conditions such as heart disease are strongly associated with arterial damage and obstruction with cholesterol plaques and the biochemical factors that may contribute to them. These factors are in turn related to certain genes that may determine the overall susceptibility to heart disease in some patients. Conversely, other people appear to be more resistant to cholesterol plaque formation due to specific genetic mutations.

Using neuroscience to assess the perceptions of others in more and more direct ways may seem possible, but only in the realms of science fiction. But now, a team of Canadian researchers have brought such technology closer to reality through the conversion of visual data from human participants into corresponding images on a screen.

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a common mental disorder that is the leading cause of disability, globally. This condition, often leading to suicide among ages between 15 and 29, is known to affect more than 350 million people worldwide.

Contributing to less than 200,000 cases per year in the US, retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a type of retinal dystrophy that results in blindness from a loss of function in the retina. There is no cure for this condition yet, just the treatment of its symptoms. Like RP, there are several other inherited retinal diseases like Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), which requires the attention of researchers and drug manufacturers.

For war veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), navigating through life after returning home from active combat can be a difficult and challenging process. PTSD can manifest itself in any number of ways: disturbing flashbacks, feeling on edge and difficulty sleeping are all common symptoms of this invisible disorder.

With the plentitude of allergens in the air we breathe, the things we touch and the food we eat, it comes as no surprise that allergies are the 6th leading cause of chronic illness in the United States. Though it can range from mild to severe in individuals, there is no cure for this condition, only the management of its symptoms by medications.

If someone were to ask you where the hope for the future of antibiotic drugs was going to come from, your answer probably would be anything besides ‘soil’. On the other hand, you may also have known that some extremely dangerous bacteria (such as those associated with the disease tetanus) are also found in this substance; therefore, it may be reasonable to assume that some soil-living micro-organisms may have evolved chemical defences against others.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most prominent and well-known progressive neurodegenerative conditions that affect humanity. It is a form of dementia related to excessive levels of proteins such as tau and amyloid-beta in certain brain regions. Treatment for AD is gradually becoming more and more effective; with many more patients capable of living more or less normal lives while managing their conditions over time.

The risk of developing many different forms of cancer may be strongly associated with age. Some scientists even agree that there may be a “power law” that connects increasing age to increasing susceptibilities to cancer. However, a new study, conducted at Dundee University, disrupts this theory with evidence of a new statistical link between thymic functions and the age-related risk of cancer.