Last week, Uganda celebrated 50 years of independence from British rule. However, Uganda’s Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa, missed the nationwide celebration so that she could travel to New York City to spread the word about malaria. Read more
Drug development has become such a daunting process that the world’s largest and most competitive pharmaceutical companies are banding together to streamline the pathway. Read more
People who live with clinical depression must also suffer the ‘trial and error’ approach that psychiatrists take when prescribing antidepressants. A new study signifies the beginning of the end of guess-work. In it, a blood test predicts who responds well to a novel treatment for depression, and who might even fair worse. Read more
With a market worth more than US$20.1 billion, drug companies have long competed in a race to develop cholesterol medicines that work better than statins. Today, researchers report on a little-known alternative – an epigenetic therapy that fights plaque-hardened arteries in a novel manner. Read more
Bacteria living naturally within the gut provide a gateway to flab, according to a few reports this week. These bacteria may explain how antibiotics fatten farm animals and perhaps people too, and how certain genes predispose organisms to obesity. Read more
Gene patents prevail in a landmark case over two genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Read more
Digestible microchips embedded in drugs may soon tell doctors whether a patient is taking their medications as prescribed. These sensors are the first ingestible devices approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). To some, they signify the beginning of an era in digital medicine. Read more
US$7.6 billion last year – unfair given various other health crises in the developing world. For example, in low-income countries in 2011, HIV/AIDS killed 72,000 people and ‘diarrheal diseases’ caused in part by unsanitary drinking water, led to 76,000 deaths. Yet more than half of US bilateral foreign assistance in health went to fighting the virus, compared with roughly an eighth to improvements in water and sanitation. Read more
After 22 years, the International AIDS Conference returns the US after a ban in 1992, intended to prevent HIV-infected people from entering the country, was lifted in 2010. This fact suits the optimistic tagline for the meeting, Turning the tide on the HIV epidemic, and Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) appeared jovial as he discussed the strides made since he attended the first meeting held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1985. Read more
Investigators who linked DNA from Occupy Wall Street protesters to a murder scene in New York City recently admitted that they’d made a mistake. No one was locked behind bars, but all too often they are. A piece of legislation proposed yesterday seeks to end wrongful convictions through better forensic science. Read more
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