Health and Medicine

The widely held parental belief that asthma inhalers cause hyperactivity in children is not confirmed by research published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The researchers studied 19 asthmatic children between the ages of 2 and 5, all of whom were treated with fast acting reliever inhalers/nebulisers containing salbutamol. The children were being seen at the children’s respiratory clinic at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

Before being tested, the children’s hyperacti

In the edition of Nature dated Thursday 21 February 2002, an international team of scientists report their analysis of the genome of fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). The project, largely funded through a €6.9 million from the European Commission, is likely to have major implications for the future of cancer and other bio-medical research. Fifty of the yeast genes were found to have significant similarity with genes involved in human diseases, including cystic fibrosis, hereditary deafness a

Scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research have developed an experimental therapy which enables rats with a spinal cord lesion to partially recover from their paralysis. Up until now not even the slightest degree of recovery was possible. PhD student Bas Blits was part of this team.

The method uses a combination of transplantation and gene therapy. For the transplantation, the researchers implanted nerve cells cultured in vitro. The cells originated from the nerves between th

A global mass killer could be tamed with the aid of satellite technology. Scientists are using data from Meteosat to help model and predict outbreaks of malaria. “Satellite sensor data hold out hope for the development of early-warning systems for diseases such as malaria, which kills between 1 and 2 million people each year,” says David Rogers, of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology.

Rogers is part of a team based in Oxford, Nairobi and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Marylan

Obesity epidemic sweeps into developing world

Obesity is spreading to all corners of the globe, researchers warned the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. Sedentary lifestyles and fast food are causing previously unaffected populations to fall foul of fat.

“Obesity is no longer confined to Western, industrialized societies,” said anthropologist Marquisa LaVelle of the University of Rhode Island, Providence. Guatemalans in the United S

Yellow fever has been written off in the past as a global threat. Yet the failure to eradicate this disease has left the door open for new, large, outbreaks as vaccination of travellers and tropical populations declines, according to an article in the February issue of Microbiology Today magazine from the Society for General Microbiology.

“Yellow fever virus attracts less public attention than, for instance, lassa and ebola, but it remains the greater threat. Containment through effective m