Herd immunity requires that the majority of people are vaccinated to stop proliferation of disease. Measles, for example, is so contagious that about 90 per cent of people who are not immune will become infected if they come close to an infected person. However, childhood vaccination rates have been falling as anti-vaccine sentiment grows, particularly […]
There are no drugs for chronic pain that are really effective. Opioids are helpful for treating acute pain and for those suffering pain at the end stages of their life, but there is no data at all to support their use for long-term pain. Patients who take these medicines often find that the effect seems […]
The majority of vaccinations use an adjuvant to boost their effectiveness and in most cases, the adjuvant is an aluminium salt including aluminium phosphate and aluminium hydroxide. The simplest explanation of how an aluminium adjuvant works is that its injection into the muscle or under the skin produces toxicity, thus providing greater immunity to a […]
Glucosamine is a popular supplement taken by many people to ease the pain of joint complaints including arthritis. However, the evidence that it actually works has always been a little flimsy, although a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine did suggest that 80 per cent of osteoarthritis sufferers with moderate or worse knee pain, showed […]
Popping a vitamin pill is something we do to try and stay healthy. It is no surprise that the over-65s are around twice as likely as the under-24s to take supplements. But do they actually work? In the case of antioxidants, including Vitamin C, A, and E, there is conflicting evidence about their health benefits. A number of […]
The Olympic Games in Rio officially open later today yet already we have been embroiled in degrees of controversy. At the forefront is the controversy surrounding doping. We are playing a cat and mouse game with the doping cheat – we develop new and more sensitive tests for the latest doping agents, and in response, they try to […]
“The fight against polio has been one of the great success stories of modern medicine with the disease already eliminated in much of the world. However, current immunisation programmes use attenuated ‘live’ or ‘killed’ virus vaccines, both of which carry a risk of live virus escaping back into the wild. A research consortium, led by […]
New Orleans, US, 11 June 2016 – New findings from the two phase 3b SWITCH trials showed that treatment with long-acting basal insulin Tresiba® (insulin degludec injection U-100) resulted in significantly lower rates of overall, nocturnal and severe hypoglycaemia compared with insulin glargine U-100. 1,2 Results from the SWITCH 1 and 2 trials, the first […]
TJ: In a recent article titled ‘’The future of neonatal BCG’’ (1), you suggest that, from bacteriological and immunological perspectives, there is no substitute for home birth. Can you clarify this point of view? MO: We must first realize that, from such scientific perspectives, the period surrounding birth has been radically altered during the past […]
The first treatment for all types of leukaemia is usually chemotherapy, a powerful drug treatment that kills the cancerous cells in the blood. Treatment can also involve a transplant of new blood-forming stem cells, which are produced in the bone marrow, the spongy tissue that forms the centre of the bone. Stem cells are immature […]