Health and Medicine

Salmonella, E. coli, shigellosis, hepatitis A, and Norwalk — these food-borne diseases can produce symptoms that run from the mild to life-threatening. The young and old are particularly vulnerable and while consumption of beef and poultry have been the most common sources of such infections, fresh fruits and vegetables are being increasingly implicated in such outbreaks. So much so, that plant disease scientists are now taking a closer look at this issue.

“Historically, human pathogens l

A joint research project by scientists in Cardiff, UK, has developed a new protein, which could end the suffering of thousands.

The research, by scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Wales College of Medicine (UWCM), and funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, is designed to tackle the problem of chronic inflammation – which can lead to serious disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and bacterial peritonitis.

Now a two-year development programme is getting un

By solving a long-standing puzzle about how the influenza virus assembles its genetic contents into infectious particles that enable the virus to spread from cell to cell, scientists have opened a new gateway to a better understanding of one of the world’s most virulent diseases.

This insight into the genetic workings that underpin infection by flu, reported today (January 27, 2003) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides not only a better basic understa

While about 80 percent of people with epilepsy gain significant relief from drug therapy, the remaining 20 percent have seizures that cannot be controlled by medications. Many of these people have a particular type of epilepsy called partial epilepsy. A new study shows that people with partial epilepsy often have seizures controlled by medications for years before their seizures become drug-resistant. The study also found that periods when seizures stopped for a year or more are common in these patie

Fear of the dark is a common complaint in children and is often attributed to attention seeking behaviour. Yet researchers in this week’s BMJ suggest that it may be due to night blindness – a diagnosis which can be easily missed.

They describe two children with an inherited form of stationary night blindness. Both were very frightened of the dark, had a history of bumping into things at night, and insisted that curtains were drawn much earlier than others would choose. One child had fear of

Authors of a fast-track study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET propose an alternative to antibiotics to treat infection associated with the use of chemotherapy for patients with blood cancer.

The toxic effects of chemotherapy cause organisms in the gut to migrate to the bloodstream, frequently resulting in bacterial infection. Michael Ellis and colleagues from the United Arab Emirates investigated whether interleukin 11 (IL-11)-an agent involved in the immune response and thought to prote