Health and Medicine

New drug could soon thwart smallpox outbreaks

An anti-smallpox pill could be on the way if a new compound that shows promise in animal tests proves safe and effective in humans. Such a pill could provide the best method for controlling an unforeseen smallpox outbreak, its developers claim.

The need for new ways to treat smallpox has only become an issue in recent years as the threat of a deliberate release of the virus intensifies. Smallpox – a highly contagious and often let

Tooth decay could soon be detected without resorting to potentially harmful X-rays – by using a novel electrical technique developed by dental researchers at the University of Dundee in an unusual partnership with textile experts at Heriot Watt University.

Laboratory tests show the device, which measures the electrical resistance of teeth, is twice as accurate as current examination techniques and detects decay in its earliest stages when preventive treatment is still possible.

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Grant Supports Young Researchers in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland Heidelberg, Germany – The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) announces that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has joined the organization in supporting young scientists from Central Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The HHMI provides $ 2 Mio for the next four years to the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. Each year six scientists can be supported with Euro 30 000 per year for a durat

Action to prevent non-insulin dependent diabetes and heart disease in South Asian people may need to begin during childhood, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers in London identified 3,415 white and 227 South Asian children aged 8 to 11 years from primary schools in 10 British towns. Blood samples were taken from 1,287 white and 73 South Asian children.

An early stage in the development of diabetes and heart disease risk is insulin resistance, when insulin levels are increased.

Weakened polio borrows genes to gain strength for outbreak

Genetic sleuthing has revealed how a dose of oral polio vaccine (OPV) can revert to the deadly poliovirus and cause an outbreak. The research highlights problems that global health organizations face completing their eradication of polio, and the urgency of that effort 1 .

“It reminds us that we need to be very careful in our development of a post-eradication policy,” says Bruce Aylward, leader of the

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, largely because of the location of the pancreas close to major arteries and vital organs, and the effects of a poorly functioning pancreas on the rest of the body. It is one of the top 10 leading causes of death from cancer worldwide, and in the UK kills around 6500 people every year.

Doctors gave intravenous photosensitising agent (meso-tetrahydroxyphenyl chlorin) to 16 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Three days later they ins