March 27th, 2019Tuberculosis treatment programmes in Cape Town, South Africa, do not currently distinguish between adolescent and adult TB patients, and in so doing, may miss opportunities for improving the treatment outcomes of young people with TB. According to a...
March 13th, 2019Part of the research at the University of Cape Town's new new Aerobiology TB Research Facility involves measuring the amount of air individuals exchange, which may range from about 300 litres per day between children and adolescents, to...
March 6th, 2019Treating hospitalised, severely malnourished children with a lactose-free, reduced-carbohydrate milk formula does not improve clinical outcomes, according to a multi-centre, double-blind trial in Kenya and Malawi.
The study by Robert Bandsma of...
January 23rd, 2019Testing and treatment programmes for HIV and schistosomiasis (also known as snail fever or bilharzia) could be profitably combined in settings with a high prevalence of both infections, results of a study led by Kristin M Wall at the Rwanda Zambia...
January 9th, 2019A French study found that some 85% of questionnaire respondents in Cameroon had eaten primate meat, with the exposure risk to zoonotic disease in any given village directly related to the relative density of non-human primates and their proximity to...
November 21st, 2018
A novel SA technique not only improves the accuracy of ultrasound in assessing hydrocephalus, by analysing the dynamic properties of the back of the eye as a marker of pressure in the brain, but simplifies the process so it can be performed at a...
November 14th, 2018Less than a quarter of children diagnosed with bacterial meningitis at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital over an 18-month period were referred to audiology, possibly indicating a lack of awareness on the part of doctors.
The Times...
October 31st, 2018Organochlorine pesticides (OCP) residues in catfish along the Klip River in Gauteng pose an extremely high risk to human health when consumed, with a cancer risk as high as 1 in 10, according to a study by researchers at North-West University,...
October 10th, 2018A study has determined the official death toll of the Life Esidimeni scandal is 131. The mortality rate among 1,442 mentally ill patients transferred out of hospitals in Gauteng in a cost-saving move was eight times the national average in...
September 26th, 2018A candidate tuberculosis vaccine significantly reduced the incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis in HIV-negative adults who were already infected with latent TB at the time of vaccination, according to results from an ongoing clinical trial in in...
September 5th, 2018The HAVEN 3 study, led by a University of the Witwatersrand researcher, found that emicizumab prophylaxis (trade name: Hemlibra) administered subcutaneously once weekly or every two weeks led to a significantly lower bleeding rate.
People with...
August 29th, 2018Higher levels of natural killer cells in blood are associated with tuberculosis (TB) latency, reports a University of Cape Town study in collaboration with Stanford University, published in Nature.
The findings raise the question as to whether...
Close to half of injecting drug users surveyed in South Africa are living with the potentially deadly hepatitis C virus, a study has found. But, says a Bhekisisa report, a drug that could cure them, and that is used in several countries, remains...
August 15th, 2018Continuous mass distribution of azithromycin in northern Ethiopia, where the childhood eye infection trachoma is a major cause of blindness, is effective in preventing recurrence of trachoma but does not eliminate the infection entirely, according...
August 1st, 2018A University of the Witwatersrand study of sex workers in Soweto shows two-thirds of suffer depression, 6% showed symptoms for post-traumatic distress disorder (PTSD), and only 14% said they had never been a victim of violence.
For a long time,...
An innovative clinical trial conducted by the University of Cape Town-based SA Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation provides encouraging new evidence that TB vaccines could prevent sustained infections in high-risk...
