Top stories
HIV/AIDS
Study of relationship characteristics, motivations behind agreements among gay male couples finds that most enter into 'sexual agreements'.
Read more >>AIDS is the world's most important health-care issue according to people all over the world who were polled for their perceptions of the AIDS epidemic in a new survey commissioned by UNAIDS.
Read more >>Chronic diseases
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system characterised by a large number of motor and non-motor features that can impact on function to a variable degree. [1] Symptoms include tremors, stiffness and slow movement due to the loss of dopamine deep in the brain. [2] And though depression, apathy and anxiety are well known features of this condition [1] beyond the shakes of Parkinson's disease, lies a person that once had a purpose, which often goes unfulfilled due to the symptoms of their condition.
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Thanks to the pioneering work that Dr Christiaan Barnard and his team performed on Louis Washkansky in Cape Town's Groote Schuur hospital in December 1967, the world now knows that it is possible to "trade an old heart in for a new one".
Read more >>CSI
The Shoprite Checkers Women of the Year announces finalists in the Health Care-Givers category and three exceptional and visionary women have been selected as finalists in the Health Care-Givers category of the Shoprite Checkers Women of the Year Award.
Read more >>Exercise science
Athletes have long known about the natural "high" exercise can induce. Now, for the first time, medical researchers have demonstrated that exercise can reverse the effects in the brain of psychological trauma experienced early in life. Exercise can ameliorate anxiety and depression-like behaviours induced by an adverse early-life environment by altering the chemical composition in the hippocampus - the part of the brain that regulates stress response, researchers from the University of New South Wales, Australia, have found.
Read more >>Medical Research
Physicians that have to decide whether an illness is terminal think that "there are not valid and adequate criteria for certifying that an illness is terminal". This is the conclusion drawn from a pioneer study conducted at the University of Granada, and recently published in the
International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology (
IJCHP).
Read more >>New research finds that obese men are less good at tasting fat and less responsive to the effects of fat in the gut than lean men.
Read more >>New research shows that people with Alzheimer's disease who have large heads have better memory and thinking skills than those with the disease who have smaller heads, even when they have the same amount of brain cell death due to the disease. The research is published in the 13 July 2010, issue of
Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Read more >>[Dr Ananya Mandal, MD] According to a new study published in the 12th July issue of the journal
Pediatrics, one third of kids have blood cholesterol on the higher side and these levels might be overlooked with the current screening recommendations.
Read more >> Mental health
Contrary to Leo Tolstoy's famous observation that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," a new psychology study confirms that unhappy families, in fact, are unhappy in two distinct ways. And these dual patterns of unhealthy family relationships lead to a host of specific difficulties for children during their early school years.
Read more >>Two South Africans are among 10 recipients of the 14th annual Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, named last week by the Mental Health Programme of The Carter Centre in Atlanta, Georgia.
Read more >>Nutrition
New research being presented this week is giving scientists new insight into why a restricted diet can lead to a longer lifespan and reduced incidence of age-related diseases for a wide variety of animals. Scientists have known for some time that a restricted diet can extend the lifespan of certain animals but this work shows how it affects ageing mechanisms - and significantly has also shown that the effects occur even if the restricted diet is adopted later in life.
Read more >>Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Research shows that stress may affect a woman's feminine hygiene, making her more prone to vaginal infections [i], including bacterial vaginosis (BV), an infection that affects as many as 25% of all women 1.
Read more >>Oncology
Researchers funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) have discovered for the first time that two proteins called Mahjong and Lgl could be star players in helping to identify how the body's own cells fight cancer cells. This discovery, publishing today in the online, open-access journal
PLoS Biology, could lead to future treatments to make our healthy cells better-equipped to attack cancer cells, an entirely new concept for cancer research.
Read more >>Paediatrics
A recent study revealed that a child is raped every three minutes in South Africa, many of them by someone they know. RamsayMedia staff took that cause to heart for their Mandela Day initiative, supporting the NGO Matla A Bana: A Voice against Child Abuse by contributing to items and assembling "comfort packs" for young girls experiencing the trauma of reporting the rape and undergoing medical examination.
Read more >>Tips for first-time moms to enjoy feeding moments with their baby.
Read more >>Researchers find that proper management of asthma during pregnancy reduces risk of harmful effects on babies.
Read more >>Public health
Bringing together global research and findings in the fields of health and information technology, the 13th World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics (Medinfo2010) will be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 12 to 15 September 2010.
Read more >>Women's health
Healthcare professionals need to develop greater understanding of the specific needs of lesbian patients and adopt a more sensitive approach to the advice they give them, according to research in the July issue of the
Journal of Clinical Nursing.
Read more >>Researchers have found that diet and exercise can reduce severity of hot flashes in overweight, obese women.
Read more >>Stronger evidence base needed for researchers, program implementers, policymakers and advocates.
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