(AP) -- The House voted Thursday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone.
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Japanese duo, US scientist win Nobel for particle physics
Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan and Yoichiro Nambu of the United States won the 2008 Nobel Physics Prize Tuesday for groundbreaking theoretical work in fundamental particles.
Malaria Millennium Development Goal 'unlikely to be met'
The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria globally is unlikely to be met, according to Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow Professor Bob Snow. The statement comes in a report published today in the open access journal
PLoS Medicine.
Study finds 1 in 5 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from PTSD or major depression
Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan -- 300,000 in all -- report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slight more than half have sought treatment, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Researchers uncover new genetic links to psoriasis
In the first comprehensive study of the genetic basis of psoriasis, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered seven new sites of common DNA variation that increase the risk of the troublesome skin condition. They also found that variations in one genetic region link psoriasis and a related joint disorder, psoriatic arthritis, to four autoimmune diseases: type 1 diabetes, Grave's disease, celiac disease and rheumatoid arthritis. The study's results appear April 4 in the open-access journal
PLoS Genetics.
ID, HIV experts urge more resources for TB
In honor of World TB Day 2008 (March 24), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the HIVMA Medicine Association (HIVMA) are urging U.S. policymakers to step up the fight against tuberculosis by committing substantial resources against the disease both at home and abroad.
Newly developed anti-malarial medicine treats toxoplasmosis
A new drug that will soon enter clinical trials for treatment of malaria also appears to be 10 times more effective than the key medicine in the current gold-standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a related parasite that infects nearly one-third of all humans—more than two billion people worldwide.
Lack of political will and the subordination of women are major barriers to tackling AIDS
Denial, myths, complacency, lack of political will and the subordination of women are major obstacles in the fight against HIV and AIDS. And with no cure or vaccine in sight, scaling up prevention is of paramount importance, according to Professor Lars Kallings, a leading expert in the global fight against the world’s first modern pandemic.
Sub-Saharan Africa: the population emergency
Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing phenomenal population growth since the beginning of the XXth Century, following several centuries of population stagnation attributable to the slave trade and colonization. The region’s population in fact increased from 100 million in 1900 to 770 million in 2005. The latest United Nations projections, published in March 2007, envisaged a figure of 1.5 to 2 billion inhabitants being reached between the present and 2050.