Carrying identical twins always brings special feelings and wonder, but our bodies sometimes hide very strange medical secrets. In extremely rare cases, a baby can develop malignant tumours while still in the womb. Such tragedies have puzzled doctors: does each baby develop the disease on its own, or can it cross from one twin to […]
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We notice that older people find it hard to climb stairs or carry heavy shopping, and we may assume that muscle weakness is only a problem of old age. But what we blame on daily stress and family life may be a silent ageing inside our cells. So when does muscle weakness really begin? An […]
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A doctor in Colombia came across a very strange case: cancer cells that came from a tapeworm. The case is unique and had never been seen before. The 41-year-old patient came to his doctor in Colombia with fever, cough and weight loss lasting several months. He had previously been diagnosed with HIV but was not […]
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In 2014 we spoke to Dr Mohammad Maher Kutlan, a specialist in preventive medicine and epidemiology, about the new coronavirus disease spreading from the Arabian Peninsula. What is the disease? It is an acute respiratory illness, also called Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), caused by a virus from the coronavirus family. Coronaviruses usually cause a […]
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Patients have lately been asking a lot about laser teeth whitening. We asked dentist and oral surgeon Dr Zeinallah Talal al-Qari to explain. Laser whitening uses high-energy light, from a halogen or plasma arc lamp, to release hydrogen peroxide molecules without irritating the tooth's nerve, she says. First a wax-like layer is applied to protect […]
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February 2014: a new study from Nagoya University in Japan has used blue-coloured compounds to starve hospital bacteria of iron. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most common type of bacteria in hospitals. These bacteria live naturally on and in the human body without causing disease, but when a person's immunity drops because of another illness, they […]
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An American study at the Kessler Foundation in New Jersey suggests that warmer temperatures may reduce the ability of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) to carry out mental tasks and process information. The researchers found a link between outdoor temperature and levels of brain activity. Patients showed an unusual increase in brain activity that was […]
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Ninth-grade students at a school in Denmark carried out an experiment that caught the attention of scientists around the world, and its results may make you think twice about filling your home with wireless devices. Five schoolgirls ran the experiment after noticing that sleeping with their mobile phones next to their heads made them less […]
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Researchers have found that footballers who head the ball often have brain abnormalities similar to those of people with concussion (mild traumatic brain injury). The study was published online in the journal Radiology. The researchers studied players of the world's most popular sport using advanced MRI. Heading is one of football's best-known moves, done by […]
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A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that heavy use of social media may be a sign of strong self-love, or narcissism. The researchers say that college students in their early twenties who score high on narcissism post frequently on Twitter, while narcissistic middle-aged adults, in their thirties, post more on Facebook. The […]
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A new study at Duke University says that people who play video games are not just training themselves to press controller buttons fast: they learn to react faster to what they see. The researchers add that gamers see the world differently, with the ability to pick up more information from their surroundings. One difficulty the […]
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A new study explains why humans are obsessed with forbidden pleasures, comparing it to Adam and Eve's fixation on the apple in paradise. The study, due to be published in the journal Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, says that people pay more attention when something is socially forbidden, and that this extra attention works at […]
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