All posts by : Felistas

Despite being a top exporter of health care professionals, the Philippines faces a chronic shortage of nurses and physicians. Also, many health graduates in the country are unprepared for real-world public health work. Government primary care facilities and hospitals struggle to hire sufficient staff due to budget and policy barriers, while private hospitals struggle to keep their staff due to fiscal constraints.

When Columbia neurologist and scientist Neil Shneider speaks to his ALS patients who volunteer for experimental therapies, he’s unwaveringly honest. “Patients always ask me, ‘What can I hope to get out of this?”‘ Shneider says. “And I always say, in most clinical trials, our hope is that we can slow the disease or maybe even halt progression.”

For gene therapy to work well, therapeutic molecules need to be efficiently delivered to the correct locations in the body—a job commonly given to adeno-associated viruses (AAV).

New research published earlier this month in AIDS and Behavior highlights links between extreme weather events, such as drought and flooding, and increased HIV vulnerabilities among sex workers and sexually diverse men in Nairobi, Kenya.

Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. But what does it mean for this type of cancer to be called aggressive?

Inherited retinal degenerations (IRDs) are a group of genetic disorders that lead to progressive vision loss as the light-sensing cells of the eye—the photoreceptors—die due to mutations in genes needed for their function and survival.

As we get older, our bodies stop performing as they once did. We aren’t as strong as we once were, we don’t see as well as we used to and we start becoming less mobile. These changes inevitably lead to almost one‑third of people over the age of 65 falling each year, resulting in injuries and occasionally death.

Humans are by nature social creatures, far more so than other primates. Our desire to be accepted by our in-groups is universal and innate. It also comes early. Multiple studies have demonstrated how preschool-age imitation of adult behavior leads to acquiring new skills, sharing cultural knowledge and fostering a sense of affiliation.

Diabetes is characterized by the pancreas producing too little insulin, but there is a rarer condition in which it produces too much. A hormone-producing tumor originating in the pancreas—an insulinoma—is the cause. Patients with the condition often experience severe hypoglycemia, resulting in convulsions, impaired consciousness, and sometimes even death.

Mongolia, the world’s second-largest landlocked country, presents a unique health care landscape owing to its distinctive geography and historical influences. Nearly half of its population is concentrated in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, and the remainder is scattered across vast semi-desert areas known as the Gobi Desert. Because of this, Mongolia faces significant challenges in delivering equitable health care.