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...
July 11th, 2018A study at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Johannesburg documents the common clinical and echocardiographic characteristics of patients with infective endocarditis related to a striking increase in intravenous nyaope (a mixture of heroin, cocaine...
July 4th, 2018The likelihood that a woman in sub-Saharan Africa has HIV today is linked to whether her country was once colonised by Britain or a continental European country, a study has found. Siwan Anderson, a professor at the Vancouver School of Economics,...
The withdrawal of lay counsellors from primary health clinics in KwaZulu-Natal led to a sharp fall in the number of people taking an HIV test in 2015, a study by researchers at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, the Harvard TH Chan School of...Research Africa
More than half of medical students at Stellenbosch University feel the practices of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) should be legalised in South Africa, and if a patient had a terminal disease with intractable suffering, 41.9% of...
May 23rd, 2018The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a safety alert warning patients and providers about a potential risk for neural tube birth defects in babies born to women with HIV who received dolutegravir during early pregnancy.
Healio...
Two recent studies conducted by the University of Cape Town have found significant contamination of hair clippers with blood and blood-borne viruses, especially hepatitis B. The study has warned clients of the risks of inadequately sterilised barber...
April 25th, 2018The University of Cape Town (UCT) and international researchers are hopeful that infants born to HIV-positive parents could in future not be dependent on the traditional TB vaccine that puts them at risk of contracting the deadly disease – should...
April 18th, 2018Rats are able to detect whether a child has tuberculosis (TB) and are much more successful at doing this than a commonly used basic microscopy test. These are the results of research led by Georgies Mgode of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in...
Clinics are ignoring guidelines on prescribing antibiotics more than half of the time‚ a study has found. And almost one in five people who were given the medication at eight Cape Town clinics did not need it. Others were given incorrect doses or...Research Africa
Stellenbosch University (SU) researchers are part of an international consortium that developed a simple blood test that can predict the development of tuberculosis (TB) up to two years before its onset in people at high risk of developing...
April 4th, 2018The impact of a combined TB and HIV intervention in tackling tuberculosis when delivered to the entire population of 14 urban, high prevalence communities in South Africa and Zambia, is to be measured in a new £10.5m multi-partner project.
The...
March 28th, 2018A new family of 'very promising' silver-based anti-cancer drugs has been discovered by researchers in South Africa.
The most promising silver thiocyanate phosphine complex among these, called UJ3 for short, has been successfully tested in rats...
