A stroke happens when blood cannot reach part of the brain, either because a vessel is blocked (a clot) or because a blood vessel in the brain bursts. Without quick treatment, the part of the brain starved of blood dies, which can cause disability or even death. Symptoms of a stroke include: Testing for a […]
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Drinking sweetened fizzy drinks a couple of times a week raises the risk of pancreatic disease. People who drink a lot of fizzy soft drinks have a higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an uncommon but deadly cancer, researchers have reported. People who drank juice instead of fizzy drinks did not have the same risk, according […]
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Reuters: scientists in the United States say they have found a new treatment for chronic diseases, using the eggs of a parasite that infects pigs to treat people with diseases such as Crohn's disease (a chronic inflammatory bowel disease) and rheumatism. Patients take the first medicine of its kind designed to treat autoimmune diseases. Each […]
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A great mimicker with many clinical faces: 12 years' experience from Aleppo. For a dermatologist in Aleppo, every skin lesion is leishmaniasis until proven otherwise. The study was carried out at the Specialised Centre for Skin Diseases in Hamdaniyeh, Aleppo, from 1997 to 2009. It covered 6,200 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis, an average of 500 […]
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A new study suggests that sleeping in front of a television or computer screen can cause depression, because of the light during sleep. Scientists split hamsters into two groups. One was exposed to natural cycles of light and darkness, the other to dim light at night, like city lights or the glow of a TV […]
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A new study suggests that women who sit for long periods are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Risk factors linked to diabetes, such as inflammation and insulin resistance, rose with long sitting in women, but no such link was found in men. Even women who did moderate or vigorous exercise were still at […]
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In the first study of its kind, researchers have identified the physical structure of intelligence and the set of brain areas responsible for tasks linked to it, such as language, spatial reasoning and memory. The study, published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology, is unusual in that it recruited 182 American veterans of the Vietnam […]
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If you suspect your child has signs of autism, you may no longer have to live with constant worry while waiting for a doctor to carry out the usual diagnostic assessment, which takes several hours. American scientists have announced a new way to diagnose autism in children accurately in just a few minutes, needing nothing […]
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There are many treatments for back pain, from painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills to massage, physiotherapy and surgery. But all of them ignore the real biological mechanisms that cause the pain. That is why a new study that has uncovered one of these mechanisms, and developed a drug to block it, matters. Italian researchers at the […]
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American women are getting heavier, and 35% of them are trying to lose weight, but most fail in the long run. Many go through repeated cycles of losing and regaining weight, which leads doctors to say that dieting can be more dangerous to health than not dieting. A growing number of doctors are warning about […]
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A group of scientists say they have found evidence that conditions involving hearing voices or hallucinations, such as schizophrenia, may improve when patients play specially designed computer games. The head of the research team, Dr Sophia Vinogradov of the University of California, says that current drugs for schizophrenia ease the symptoms but do not fix […]
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Back pain is one of the most common complaints, especially in adults. It is pain or discomfort in the upper, middle or lower back that may spread to the thighs and legs, though low back pain is the most common. There are two types: acute back pain, which comes on suddenly and lasts a short […]
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