Cases of illness from the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease, known as COVID-19, have been confirmed in more than 100 countries. The outbreak was first recorded in China in December last year. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that cause illnesses that can range from a common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The Conversation Africa’s Ina Skosana spoke to Shabir Madhi about the situation.
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The University of Basel is part of the global search for a drug to fight the rampant coronavirus. Researchers in the Computational Pharmacy group have so far virtually tested almost 700 million substances, targeting a specific site on the virus—with the aim of inhibiting its multiplication. Due to the current emergency, the first results of the tests will be made available to other research groups immediately.
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As the number of U.S. COVID-19 cases climbed past 530 in at least 34 states and the death toll hit 22, the State Department issued an advisory Sunday that urged all Americans to avoid cruise travel.
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There has been a dramatic increase in the incidence of bowel cancer in adults under the age of 50, according to new research from the University of Bristol, UWE Bristol and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UH Bristol).
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Scientists at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) Munich and Denali Therapeutics (South San Francisco, CA, U.S.) have developed an approach to stimulate immune cells of the brain in such a way that they might possibly provide better protection against Alzheimer’s disease. Their report has been published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. These findings could ultimately enable development of novel therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
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While you may be aware that a loss of vision, hearing and memory is a sign of aging, something that is perhaps not so noticeable is a reduction in height. This apparent shrinking is due to several factors relating to changes in bone, muscles, joints and other tissues in your body. While a certain amount of height loss is a normal part of aging and unlikely to be associated with any health problems, significant height loss may indicate underlying issues. Understanding what happens to your body as you age is important so you can counteract some of the negative effects of aging.
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Delivering a baby is one of life’s most thrilling and nerve-racking experiences. Whether someone is about to become a first-time parent or they have young ones at home already, most families have a host of questions before, during and after delivery. The Obstetrics and Gynecology team at St. Michael’s Hospital is committed to making sure people have the answers they need and that parents have excellent care and support throughout their pregnancy.
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A team of researchers from New York University and NYU Langone Health has found that deep learning electrocardiogram devices can be susceptible to adversarial attacks. In their paper published in the journal Nature Medicine, the group describes how they developed an attack approach and tested it with electrocardiogram devices.
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Invasive plants can not only interfere with the recovery of native plants, but also become hotbeds of arthropod disease vectors. Increased numbers of chigger mites that can transmit deadly scrub typhus were observed under exotic invasive plants with facilitated by industrialization, according to disease ecologist Chi-Chien Kuo and colleagues from National Taiwan Normal University and Taiwan Centers for Disease Control in a new study published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
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The Intelligent Medical Imaging (iMED) Group at the Cixi Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (CNITECH) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed a fully automated method for image-level corneal nerve fiber tortuosity estimation, contributing to the examination and diagnosis of eye-related diseases. The study was published in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.
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