Health

Leprosy, caused by Mycobacterium leprae has been around since time immemorial, or in fact the Iron Age, to be exact. Although curable with MDT (multidrug therapy) in the early stages, the disease severely affects the lungs, skin and eyes, and in extreme cases, results in disability. There are more than 200,000 cases of leprosy reported, every year, in countries of South America and Asia.

The resistance to antibiotic medications is an ever-more prominent public health issue. This phenomenon is related to the acquisition of novel properties or adaptations that allow bacteria to avoid death caused by these drugs.

We all know that a diet containing a lot of salt can be bad for us, leading to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Despite this, an estimated 90 percent of Americans eat more than the recommended amount of 2300 mg per day. Now, new research suggests that the harmful effects of too much salt could be worse than we originally thought.

Postpartum depression, also known as postnatal depression, is estimated to affect around 600,000 women annually in the United States. Of course, this figure only relates to women who report their symptoms to their healthcare practitioner. If we include those mothers who either don’t recognize what they are suffering from, or do not feel like they can talk about it, then the figure is likely to be much higher.

Newly released research suggests that the memory loss and brain degeneration commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease might just be helped using a drug primarily developed for the treatment of diabetes.

Beta-lactams are a class of antibiotic medications that enjoyed an initial run of efficacy against their bacterial targets. They do so by disrupting the process by which bacteria form protective cellular walls around themselves, thus killing individual units and preventing their multiplication within a host’s tissues. Examples of beta-lactams include carbapenems, cephalosporins and the classic antibiotic penicillin.

Artificial intelligence (AI), in the forms of deep or machine learning, is apparently carving a niche for itself in the diagnosis of human cancer. More and more studies are demonstrating its potential in the detection of a number of tumour types.

As of 2017, more than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, and the numbers are predicted to rise to 16 million in the next 30 years or so. As this disease is a neurodegenerative form of dementia, including memory loss and behavioral changes, scientists around the world are trying to study components of the brain and different parts of the body in order to better understand its origin.

For around 65 percent of patients with schizophrenia, one of the effects can be verbal auditory hallucinations. These tend to involve a voice speaking to them in a demeaning and derogatory tone.

A new trial funded by Diabetes UK has found that dramatic changes in the diets of people suffering from type 2 diabetes can actually reverse their symptoms, even for patients who had been diagnosed with the disease up to six years previously.

It is accepted by many that a higher bodyweight (measured by body-mass index or BMI) increases the risk of disease and death. However, recent research trends have suggested that this relationship is not as simple as once thought. This may be related to observational associations between increasing BMI and mortality, which may lead to conclusions that a slightly higher BMI is actually protective against death.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a severe motor disorder that is associated with the inability to produce just one important cellular protein. It has four main subtypes, which determine the average length of time that symptoms start to appear post-birth, and how long the patient is likely to survive.