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Quick diagnoses
Skin from stem cells
Skin grown in the laboratory can replace animals in drug and cosmetics testing. A team from King’s College London has grown a layer of...
Jacket for infant jaundice
Around 60% of infants are born jaundiced and many spend their first days of life isolated underneath special lights that help them eliminate the...
UK publishes a health atlas
A health atlas has been published in the UK drawing on 25 years of data matching environmental hazards and diseases to geographical location. The...
Oxytocin beats V iagra
Oxytocin, a hormone traditionally used to induce labour, is as sexually arousing to men as V iagra. Scientists at the University of California believe...
Saudi health minister sacked
The Saudi health minister has been sacked without explanation, as the Mers coronavirus death toll there climbed to 81. Abdullah al-Rabiah was dismissed just...
New cases of MERS
Saudi Arabia confirmed 20 new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), adding up to 49 infections in six days, a sudden increase of...
UK melanoma uptick
The incidence of the most serious skin cancer in the UK is now five times higher than it was in the 1970s, reports BBC...
Enzyme from modified goat
Scientists in Brazil have genetically modified a goat to produce milk with an enzyme to treat a rare genetic disorder. The goat, named Gluca,...
How memory works
Scientists at the Salk Institute have created a new model of memory that explains how neurons retain select memories a few hours after an...
Transplanted windpipes
Doctors in Belgium say they’ve successfully transplanted windpipes in six patients by first placing donor tissue in the patients’ arms. ‘This discovery expands the...
New strain of Ebola
The Ebola virus that has killed scores of people in Guinea this year is a new strain, scientists report. ‘The source of the virus...
UK okays HIV home-tests
Kits allowing people to test themselves for HIV at home can be bought over the counter in the UK for the first time. Previously,...
More Scot organ donors
The number of people who donated their organs after death in Scotland has almost doubled over a six-year period. More than 2.1m Scots have...
Injectable sponges for battlefield
A simple new method could revolutionise battlefield medicine. This consists of a syringe filled with injectable sponges, shot directly into a wound to stop...
‘Lab grown’ organs
US scientists have completed the first successful implants of ‘lab-grown’ v aginal organs, in four women with a rare condition who were born without...
Millions sign up for Obamacare
More than 7.5m people are expected to sign up for private health coverage this year under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. This includes 400,000...
UK GPs to be on call
Patients will be able to see their family doctors in the evenings and at weekends and e-mail them for advice, under plans for a...
Breast cancer drug
Pfizer's experimental breast cancer drug in a clinical trial nearly doubled the amount of time patients lived without their disease getting worse, but overall...
Antibiotics changing soil
German scientists of Helmholtz Zentrum in a joint study with researchers of Julius Kühn Institute have found that the repeated application of manure contaminated...
Pool peeing a 'health risk'
It goes without saying that 'peeing in the pool' is not exactly the most hygienic habit, but according to new research, it may pose...
Sharp brains
People with mentally challenging jobs, like air traffic controllers, doctors and financial analysts, tend to stay mentally sharper. Study lead author Gwenith Fisher at...
Party drug for depression
The illegal party drug ketamine is an 'exciting' and 'dramatic' new treatment for depression, say doctors who have conducted the first trial in the...
Ancient heart disease
Much to their surprise, when scientists did full-body CT scans of 4,000-year-old mummies they discovered evidence of hardening of the arteries. 'Atherosclerosis is supposed...
Hypertension deaths rise
US deaths from pulmonary hypertension have increased over the past decade, according to a study from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)....
Meningitis B vaccine
US health regulators have granted Novartis' meningitis B vaccine Bexsero breakthrough therapy status. The company said it plans to file for US approval of...
Poison by the barrel
US toxicologists warn that e-liquids, used to refill e-cigarettes, pose ‘a significant risk to public health’, particularly to children, who may be drawn to...
Cat-to-human TB documented
Two people in England have developed tuberculosis after contact with a domestic cat, Public Health England (PHE) has announced. Both were responding to treatment....
UK hospitals ‘fiddle' death rates
British hospitals have been accused of fiddling their death rates by recording vast numbers of patients as being terminally ill. In attempting to improve...
Towards a cancer vaccine
Scientists are moving towards creating a vaccine to treat cancer, reports The Conversation. Few attempts to develop a cancer vaccine have been made, but...
Getting the best start
Fans of porridge have long claimed that it gives them the best start to the day. Now scientists say there is growing evidence that...
Stools' smells to diagnose
UK scientists say they have found a way of diagnosing different types of bowel disease by testing the smells given off by patients’ stools....
Guidance on gut infection
A treatment using faecal matter is a safe and effective procedure for people with a recurring gut infection. The UK’s National Institute for Health...
Morning-after pill criticism
Nick Clegg, UK deputy prime minister has criticised Jeremy Hunt, UK Health secretary for adopting a ‘medieval attitude’ to women over his oppositon to...
Guinea bans bat eating
Guinea has banned the sale and consumption of bats to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, its health minister has said. Bats,...
‘White coat’ effect quantified
Nurses may take more accurate blood pressure readings than physicians. Patients may feel more anxious around physicians than nurses and are therefore more likely...
EHR training at med schools
Some medical schools are incorporating training on electronic health records (EHR) into their curricula because exposure to the IT systems is increasingly considered a...
MRC gets first women president
The Medical Research Council will get its first woman president next month when Professor Glenda Gray succeeds Professor Abdool Karim. Gray is a world-renowned...
Blood lab bled dry
The SA National Health Laboratory Service is owed so much money by provincial governments in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng that it has stopped courier services...
Fewer eggs, more miscarriages
Women who produce fewer eggs during IVF treatment are more likely to miscarry, research suggests. Scientists analysed 124,351 IVF pregnancies between 1991 and 2008....
Oldest complete metastatic cancer
British archaeologists have found what they say is the world’s oldest complete example of a human being with metastatic cancer and hope it will...