Breakthroughs Today

According to the Philippine HIV and AIDS Registry, cases of HIV infection in the Philippines breached the 10,000 milestone since it started compiling data in 1984. With the total of 278 new cases recorded in July, total recorded HIV infections in the country reached 10,242. [ Read Report ]

I heard once from a mother or two how impressed they were that their young darling started menstruation at an age younger than usual, in fact younger than they were during their time. Recent developments in medical research puts a huge question mark to the bases for that.   THERE is an alarming trend that scientists have observed in the last 100 years. It is the decline of women's age at menarche, or the first occurrence of menstrual period.   In the United States and Europe, it has decreased at a rate of two to three months for every 10 years.   This trend towards earlier onset of menarche is worth watching because early menarche (onset of menstruation at less than age 12.1 years) is a long-known and established risk factor for breast cancer, metabolic syndrome, teenage depression and overweight.   Its connection to breast cancer has been established around the last part of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century. Its contribution to the development

As we age, a lot of things we easily can do when we were younger get harder to do as our bodily systems start to show problems in functioning. That's the case with TURP; and if you add the inevitable side effects of drugs used in treating it, you can only imaging how difficult old age can be.   A CERTAIN practice has been common in synthetic drug treatments (so common it may be considered a cliché).   You start taking a prescription for one health problem and you end up having a new one. Of course that is not true for all synthetic medications. But given lack of long-term studies in most pharmaceutical drugs today, who knows what’s going to happen in the next 20 to 30 years after taking a particular regimen.   In history, many drugs have been pulled out from shelves because they later turned out to be potential killers, if not already one.   The classic case is that of finasteride, a treatment used against certain complications that transurethral resection of pr

So much poverty continue to hound Filipinos in the Visayas particularly in Region 8. And the diseases it brings to the people there have been topping national surveys. It is tragedy still unfolding. PARASITES, those minute organisms that invade people’s bodies, are the bane to the poor. In fact, lead author of the recent Philippine National Baseline Prevalence Survey of Schistosomiasis, Lydia Leonardo (UP College of Public Health) wrote: “Schistosomiasis, ascariasis, and trichuriasis are considered diseases of poverty.” The bad news is the Visayas recorded the highest prevalence of soil-transmitted parasites such as ascaris and trichuris in the country. This indicates a widespread neglect of environmental sanitation in the islands, poor personal hygiene and illiteracy. The good news at least for Cebuanos is... [ READ MORE ] This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 16 August 2012  

All those food safety scandals that made China hit the  news lately also made her an exporter of dangerous foods into the Philippines. And health-conscious people must be more vigilant with foods coming from that country. Say, think about it a lot of times.  IN RECENT years, China has been plagued with an array of food safety scandals—toxic infant formula, pesticide-tainted vegetables, exploding watermelons, lean meat powder and pork reconstituted as beef. Lately, the issue has been about gutter oil—used cooking oil scooped out of restaurant drains. Vomiting from the grossness of it is the least of the dangers it can bring. It may not be accidental that the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences noticed the high liver cancer rates in China and in nearby parts of Asia. Waste oil can be contaminated with fungi that produce aflatoxin, a biological poison that increases the risk of liver cancer. And around September last year, the Chinese government had s

SCIENTISTS took a hint when they noticed that cancer cells can easily be destroyed in the lab than inside the human body. While chemotherapy prevents the reproduction of fast-dividing cancer cells, it has been learned that healthy that got damaged in the process secrete WNT16B, a protein that boosts cancer cell survival. [ Read Report ] 

THE FOOD AND Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (FNRI-DOST) reported that exclusive feeding have gone up from 36 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2011. Exclusive feeding is the practice of feeding infants with only breast milk for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health. This means giving no other food or drink--not even water--other than breast milk. The initiation breastfeeding done within one hour of delivery has increased from 32 percent to 52 percent in the same four-year period. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) lauded the accomplishment, and attributed it to Executive Order 51, or the Milk Code of the Philippines , that late president Corazon Aquino signed into law in 1986. This law requires giving women clear information on the benefits of breastfeeding without undue influence from infant formula companies. Sources WHO: "Up to what age can a baby stay well nourished b

You just feel a gnawing pain in your belly, and your bowel movement seems to go crazy. That is a medical condition that physicians still cannot explain how and why. IRRITABLE bowel syndrome (IBS) is the hallmark of a tension-filled, all-rushing lifestyle in today’s increasingly urbanized society. Abdominal pain or discomfort and a change in bowel habit are mainstays. By its name alone—being a syndrome, that is—much of it has not been understood yet. In fact, there has been no known structural or anatomical explanation accounting for its symptoms and “disease” manifestations. IBS therefore remains a mystery. Its exact cause remains unknown to-date. That explains why its management centers on treating or alleviating its symptoms. A study in 2008 concluded that certain groups of food and medicine are more effective than placebo in treating IBS. These are fibers, antispasmodics and peppermint oil. A traditional treatment of IBS takes the form of... [ READ MORE ] This