Obesity causes an increase in the stiffness of the heart, making it hard for the heart muscle to relax and fill with blood in between heartbeats. This abnormal stiffness can lead to congestive heart failure and other problems as it becomes more severe.
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There are two regions in the brain that continue to produce new neurons well into adulthood. One of these regions is the hippocampus and as we converse this region is actively involved in memory formation, mood regulation and cognition.
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Inflammation can be thought of as taking two major forms: acute or chronic. Acute inflammation, which can be painful, usually arises quickly and resolves quickly. It accompanies bacterial infections, traumatic injury and is useful to fight infections and promote healing.
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Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. Despite many advances in diagnosis and treatment over the past two decades, it remains the second most common cause of cancer related death in men.
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I have been working on this topic for 13 years. Our research programme centres around generating research evidence which can be used in public policy to promote health. This is a broad topic and investigates the potential for investment in socio-economic determinants of health, like housing, transport, welfare, employment etc, to have an impact on health.
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Patient-centred care, that is partnering ‘with’ patients, rather than providing services ‘to’ them, is advocated as a way to improve patient safety.
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Fibromyalgia is a common disorder that is diagnosed in people who have pain in many areas of their body together with important symptoms such as...
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30 years into the HIV epidemic, there is no vaccine in sight. Yet, even though there are fantastic and effective cheap and universally available drugs, and a treatment as prevention strategy is known to work, people do not wish to get tested for HIV! If everyone got tested, and treated, we could have brought the infection under control a long time ago!
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In our study population, which was drawn from NSW Australia only, the proportion of working aged men who were fully retired due to ill-health in cities is five percent, eight percent for inner regional areas and nine for outer regional areas.
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Saline is just salty water, whereas colloids are solutions that have large molecules in them. In this case, the molecules are starch. The idea is that because these molecules are big they don’t leak out of the circulation as much.
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This is a new research centre led by the University of Limerick that supports the pharmaceutical sector in Ireland. The centre will carry out research on the key aspects of what it takes to synthesise the pharmaceutically active molecule to isolate a pure material and to formulate this into a medicine.
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade deal currently being negotiated between eleven countries of the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United States, Singapore and Vietnam.
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Influenza or flu for short is caused by a family of viruses, which can be called influenza A or influenza B. Influenza A viruses are found in humans, animals – like swine and horses- and mostly aquatic birds. Influenza B is only found in humans.
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COPD is defined as a preventable and treatable disease associated with significant extrapulmonary consequences that may contribute to severity. The pulmonary component of COPD is characterised by airflow limitation that is not fully reversible. The airflow limitation is usually progressive with an abnormal inflammatory response of the lungs to noxious particles (GOLD Strategy Document). Airflow obstruction in COPD is not highly variable and largely irreversible.
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While lower back pain is a common condition around the world, in only a very small proportion of people – less than 5% - will this be caused by a serious problem such as fracture, infection, or tumour.
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Air is polluted when it contains any extraneous entity in sufficient quantities to adversely affect the environment or the health of people exposed to it.
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Well it hasn’t varied at all over the last 15 years, which I find pretty amazing because we’ve been through a lot of changes in general practice. Yet, the average length of consultation, as measured from a start to finish time, in a sample of 40,000 consultations in Australia in a year, shows that the average is 15 minutes and the median is 13 minutes.
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Amoxicillin is a broad spectrum penicillin, and in the UK is one of the most frequently used antibiotics. It is commonly used either on its own or, where there are particular concerns about resistance, in combination as Co-amoxiclav (as Amoxicillin-clavulanic acid) which extends its anti-bacterial spectrum.
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There are more than 94 million former and current smokers in the United States, and more than 21 million in Mexico, according to the 2009 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) Fact Sheet.
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Complementary medicines include products containing herbs, vitamins, minerals, nutritional supplements, homoeopathic medicines, certain aromatherapy products and traditional Chinese medicines. For this reason they are also called herbal, natural or alternative medicines.
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