Health

Health-related content, clinics, hospitals and latest research

Where does the vaccine for Covid-19 stand?

May 11, 2025 • 10:30 AM

In the worldwide race for a vaccine to stop the coronavirus, the laboratory sprinting fastest is at Oxford University. Most other teams have had to start with small clinical trials of a few hundred participants to demonstrate safety. But scientists at the university's Jenner Institute had a head start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations, including one last year against an earlier coronavirus, were harmless to humans. That has enabled them to leap ahead and...

Study finds smoking e-cigarettes could cause cancer

May 11, 2025 • 10:30 AM

A recent study hints that e-cigarette smoke may contribute to lung and bladder cancer, as well as heart disease, in humans.

Using mice models for their study, scientists at the Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, have proposed that e-cigarette smoking is carcinogenic. The study results also found that e-cigarette smokers are at a higher risk of developing lung and bladder cancers and heart diseases compared to non-smokers.

Smoking tobacco creates a...

Flu virus becomes more virulent in pregnant women

May 11, 2025 • 10:30 AM

When a woman is pregnant, her immune system is dampened to protect the unborn foetus. This is because the baby is recognised as a foreign being by the mother's immune system - the baby is genetically different to that of the mother.

Scientists at the
Heinrich Pette Institute in Hamburg have shown in mice that the mother's suppressed immune system provides a unique opportunity for the influenza virus not only to infect the mother but to evolve into a more powerful strain.

"Pregnant women become...

More News...