Category: Health

With each breath, four out of every five molecules we inhale are nitrogen. This colourless, odourless gas makes up nearly 80% of the air that sustains us – yet it plays no direct role in keeping us alive. This same inert gas is now being used to take life. In the past year, several US […]

Published in the journal Biomaterials, this represents an important step forward in being able to carry out medical research without the use of animals. This crucial research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Novel bioengineering The study details the efficacy of chimeric […]

You may not give much thought to your armpits, apart from checking whether they need another swipe of deodorant. But this small, often overlooked patch of skin is one of the body’s busiest crossroads. Beneath those folds lies a complex network of glands, nerves and lymph nodes that keep you cool, fight infection and even […]

It seems contradictory: the pills you’re taking for headaches might actually be perpetuating them. Medication-overuse headache is a well-documented medical phenomenon, but the good news is it’s often reversible once identified. Over 10 million people in the UK regularly get headaches, making up about one in every 25 visits to a GP. Most headaches are […]

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine. A close friend of mine escaped her home in the British Virgin Islands during Hurricane Irma in September 2017. She and her young family had to grab their passports and not much else when they fled 200mph […]

A new study suggests that even low levels of physical activity could protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease – but not in the way scientists expected. The researchers tracked almost 300 older adults with early brain signs of Alzheimer’s for nine to 11 years using pedometers. They found that physical activity didn’t reduce the toxic […]

Frankenstein’s creature is coming back to life – again. As Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece airs on Netflix, we provide an anatomist’s perspective of her tale of reanimation. Could an assembled body ever breathe, bleed or think? When Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, anatomy was a science on the edge […]

An international trial found that patients with early-stage breast cancer who underwent a mastectomy, removal of the breast, had similar 10-year survival rates whether or not they received radiotherapy. The trial was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). Guiding treatment discussions Experts say the findings should help guide treatment discussions, as many patients who […]

You may have heard that vaping is the “safer” choice than smoking. But what if the very thing designed to protect your health also puts your heart at risk? Vaping does not exist in isolation. It is part of a wider story about smoking, inequality and the growing burden of heart disease in the UK. […]

Estimates indicate one in five children under three are either zero-dose or have missed vaccinations because of the war, putting them at risk of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. The catch-up campaign aims to inoculate these children against measles, mumps, and rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, polio, rotavirus and pneumonia. It will be carried out by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, the World Health […]