Health & Medicine

Studio Romantic/Shutterstock Alessandro Siani, University of Portsmouth It’s been nearly two years since Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive an approved COVID vaccine at a clinic in Coventry on December 8, 2020. Since then, almost 13 billion doses of various COVID vaccines have been administered globally. And they are estimated to have prevented millions of …

Magic mine/Shutterstock Agnieszka Lemanska, University of Surrey Every year, more than 10,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, for most of those people, the disease is diagnosed too late to be cured. Less than 10% of people live five years following a diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer is a silent disease. For many people, it has no symptoms …

Siobhan Glavey, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences We know what we need to do to reduce our risk of getting cancer, right? Wear SPF, stop smoking, avoid processed foods, keep fit, lose weight and get enough sleep. But what if much of what causes cancer has already happened in our early years, or worse still, before we were …

James Rucker, King’s College London Research with psychedelic drugs has made a dramatic comeback amid a heady mix of softening societal attitudes, the lure of commercial opportunity, misgivings about the “war on drugs”, and the desire to develop new ways to treat mental health conditions. So you might have read in the media that there’s a new study which shows …

Early symptoms of gum disease include red, swollen gums, and bleeding when you brush or floss your teeth. Creative Cat Studio/ Shutterstock Christine Bryson, Anglia Ruskin University Gum diseases are among the most common chronic human diseases, affecting between 20 to 50% of people worldwide. They happen when plaque, a sticky film of bacteria, builds up on teeth. The earliest …

I Wei Huang/Shutterstock Lindsay Broadbent, Queen’s University Belfast We all know a few of those lucky people who, somehow, have managed to avoid ever catching COVID. Perhaps you’re one of them. Is this a Marvel-esque superpower? Is there any scientific reason why a person might be resistant to becoming infected, when the virus seems to be everywhere? Or is it …

James Brunton Badenoch, Queen Mary University of London Monkeypox’s effect on the skin – the disfiguring rashes – and the flu-like symptoms have been well described, but few have investigated the neurological and psychiatric problems the virus might cause. There are historic reports of neurological complications in people infected with the related smallpox virus and in people vaccinated against smallpox, …

Photo Oz/Shutterstock Matthew Ryan, King’s College London Every year, 60,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with heart failure, and many are treated with stents. In a large new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, my colleagues and I discovered that these procedures are unnecessary. Heart failure is where the heart muscle becomes weakened, leading to symptoms …

Unsplash/CDC Paul Griffin, The University of Queensland Regulators in Australia and the United States last week approved Omicron-specific boosters, following approval in the United Kingdom in mid-August. In Australia, a Moderna Omicron booster has been provisionally approved for use in adults aged 18 and over. Supplies are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, however the Australian Technical Advisory Group …

People could have caught the virus from wild shrews. Erhard Nerger/Getty Images Allen Cheng, Monash University A new virus, Langya henipavirus, is suspected to have caused infections in 35 people in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces over roughly a two-year period to 2021. It’s related to Hendra and Nipah viruses, which cause disease in humans. However, there’s much we don’t …