katueng/Shutterstock When I tell people about what I do for a living (a food scientist), I invariably get the same reaction. A roll of eyes and criticism about how the problem with food science is that it’s always telling me that red wine is good, then it’s bad, then it’sContinue Reading
Radiotherapy tattoos help ensure a patient is properly placed beneath the machine. Mark_Kostich/ Shutterstock Every day in the UK over 150 women will be given the devastating news that they have breast cancer. This is the start of a long journey of treatments that usually involves surgery to remove theContinue Reading
Babies born via caesarean had lower scores in fine motor skills and communication. Oksana Kuzmina/ Shutterstock The number of caesarean sections being performed globally every year is increasing. But while caesarean sections can be lifesaving for both mother and baby, an increasing number of them aren’t being performed for aContinue Reading
Medical records are a rich source of health data. When combined, the information they contain can help researchers better understand diseases and treat them more effectively. This includes COVID-19. But to unlock this rich resource, researchers first need to read it. We may have moved on from the days ofContinue Reading
Douglas Hartley, Author provided When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the UK, thousands of surgical procedures were put on hold. For a surgeon like me who performs operations on deaf children to restore their hearing, this created a significant moral dilemma – I wanted to get back into surgery toContinue Reading
Nine months into the pandemic, Europe remains one of the regions worst affected by COVID-19. Ten of the 20 countries with the highest death count per million people are European. The other ten are in the Americas. This includes the US, which has the highest number of confirmed cases andContinue Reading
The search goes on. Shutterstock/Orpheus FX Vaccination will be hugely important in controlling future waves of COVID-19. But for it to work, we will need high levels of public acceptance of a vaccine, if and when it eventually becomes available. In recent years, vaccination rates have fallen across the world,Continue Reading
As President Trump claims that he is immune to COVID-19 and isolated reports emerge of reinfection, what is the truth about immunity to COVID-19? To date, there have been six published cases of COVID-19 reinfection, with various other unverified accounts from around the world. Although this is a comparably smallContinue Reading
Shutterstock/Alex Kravtsov The serious harm caused by concussion in sport first became apparent among the “punch-drunk” boxers who suffered repetitive blows to the head over the course of their fighting careers. A related form of brain damage is known to affect a range of other sports and professions, where repeatedContinue Reading
Grip strength declines with many health conditions. Lars Hallstrom/ Shutterstock The human hand is remarkable. Not only does it allow us to throw, grab, climb and pick things up, it can also be a measure of health. Using hand-grip strength – which assesses the amount of force a person canContinue Reading
