Around 300 people are admitted to hospital on Christmas Day every year having suffered a severe asthma attack, experts said CHRISTMAS trees could trigger deadly asthma attacks, doctors have warned. The festive fir in the corner of your living room harbours mould, which can aggravate the lungs. Experts warn your Christmas tree could trigger a [...]
Abstract Indoor air pollution has caused increasing concern in recent years. As we spend most of our lives indoors, it is crucial to understand the health effects caused by indoor air pollution. Household dust serve as good proxy for accessing indoor air pollution, especially smaller dust particles that can pass into the lungs are of [...]
This week we’re visiting Cambridge-based spin out, Microbiotica, which is working to bring the exciting science of the microbiome into the clinic. Mission: Microbiotica was launched out of Cambridge’s prestigious Sanger Institute to focus on how our microbiomes could be used to combat disease. We know that the microbiome, the trillions of microbes in our bodies, is incredibly important to [...]
Abstract Although new antimicrobial stewardship programmes (ASPs) often begin by targeting the reduction of antimicrobial use, an increasing focus of ASPs is to improve the management of specific infectious diseases. Disease-based antimicrobial stewardship emphasizes improving patient outcomes by optimizing antimicrobial use and increasing compliance with performance measures. Directing efforts towards the comprehensive management of specific [...]
More than 20% of patients with cancer had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) a month after diagnosis, and the symptoms persisted long-term a third of the time, a prospective study showed. Overall, 44 of 203 patients met diagnostic criteria for PTSD (including subsyndromal PTSD) 6 months after diagnosis of cancer. At 4 years, 15 [...]
In a shared lab on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Bangalore, a biotech start-up is fighting back against India's looming drug-resistance crisis, writes Edd Gent. "We want to design a novel class of antibiotics with very low propensity for resistance that will treat a wide variety of superbugs," says Anand Anandkumar, the [...]
Abstract Research in the health sciences has been highly successful in revealing the aetiologies of many morbidities, particularly those involving the microbiology of communicable disease. This success has helped form a narrative to be found in numerous public health documents, about interventions to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases (e.g., obesity or alcohol related pathologies). [...]
Seth Rakoff-Nahoum, MD, PhD, a Boston Children’s Hospital physician-scientist who does infectious disease research and is taking an evolutionary approach to understanding the human microbiome and its effect on health, offers us some insight into what’s happening to the bugs in our gut as a result of the Thanksgiving meal. Q: Does the traditional American [...]
Many Americans have become obsessed with avoiding gluten, despite the dearth of scientific evidence proving this protein (found in wheat, rye, and barley) actually makes people who haven’t been diagnosed with celiac disease, a serious autoimmune disease, or wheat allergy sick. Creative Commons License sugar cookies by freefoodphotos.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported [...]
Introduction Common, preventable risk factors, such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diet and the harmful use of alcohol and tobacco consumption, have long been recognized risks to health. What is less well known is that environmental factors are also main causes of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs); ambient (outdoor) and household air pollution together caused more than 6 million deaths from cardiovascular [...]
