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The number of adults living into older age in sub-Saharan Africa is rapidly growing yet many older men and women will have an illness or disability that limits their ability to function, according to a study by researchers from the US and Malawi published in this week's PLOS Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-older-people-africa-limited-functional.html Health Tue, 07 May 2013 17:00:14 EST news287160106 (Medical Xpress)—Malaria is responsible for about 700,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa alone, and a team of Texas A&M University researchers is doing their best to help stem this perpetual tide of human suffering. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-published-malaria-mosquito-woes.html Genetics Tue, 07 May 2013 07:27:00 EST news287130411 HIV-infected women in sub-Saharan Africa who fed their babies exclusively with breast milk for more than the first four months of life had the lowest risk of transmitting the virus to their babies through breast milk, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Women who stopped breast feeding earlier than four months had the highest concentrations of HIV in their breast milk, and those who continued to breastfeed, but not exclusively, had concentration levels in-between the two practices. The findings are online in the journal Science Translational Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hiv-infected-moms-breastfeed-exclusively-virus.html HIV & AIDS Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:02 EST news285423153 A new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows that alcohol is now the third leading cause of the global burden of disease and injury, despite the fact most adults worldwide abstain from drinking. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-unhealthy-widespread-world.html Addiction Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:48:22 EST news281616491 The largest study of epilepsy in sub-Saharan Africa to date reveals that programmes to control parasitic diseases and access to better antenatal care could substantially reduce the prevalence of the disease in this region. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-parasites-poor-antenatal-main-epilepsy.html Neuroscience Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:00:02 EST news278789821 A study of young twins in Malawi, in sub-Saharan Africa, finds that bacteria living in the intestine are an underlying cause of a form of severe acute childhood malnutrition. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-gut-microbes-root-severe-malnutrition.html Medical research Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:46:27 EST news278790376 (AP)—In the early 90s when South Africa's Themba Lethu clinic could only treat HIV/AIDS patients for opportunistic diseases, many would come in on wheelchairs and keep coming to the health center until they died. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-south-africa-hivaids.html HIV & AIDS Sat, 01 Dec 2012 06:16:37 EST news273564984 Twenty-five countries, many in hard-hit Africa, have at least halved new HIV infections in the past decade, with particular progress made toward protecting children from the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-hails-sharp-decline-hiv-infections.html HIV & AIDS Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:00:01 EST news272627063 The University of Liverpool has been awarded funding to determine whether differences in our genes determine how patients respond to drugs used to treat Tuberculosis (TB) in Sub-Saharan Africa. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-scientists-role-genes-tuberculosis.html Genetics Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:40:13 EST news270383337 A swarm of trained rats is on its way to Mozambique to help the country's over-stretched health system detect tuberculosis in patients, officials said Friday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-rats-tb-mozambique.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:30:45 EST news269256635 New research that combines cell phone data from 15 million people in Kenya with detailed information on the regional incidence of malaria has revealed, on the largest scale so far, how human travel patterns contribute to the disease's spread. The findings from researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and seven other institutions indicate that malaria, in large part, emanates from Kenya's Lake Victoria region and spreads east, chiefly toward the capital, Nairobi. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-cell-people-movement-effective-malaria.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:00:10 EST news269180595 (Medical Xpress)—A new study out today reveals that the emergence and spread of a rapidly evolving invasive intestinal disease, that has a significant mortality rate (up to 45%) in infected people in sub-Saharan Africa, seems to have been potentiated by the HIV epidemic in Africa. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-invasive-non-typhoidal-salmonella-epidemic-sub-saharan.html Genetics Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:00:05 EST news268208664 New research published online first in the Lancet suggests that drug-resistant HIV has been increasing in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa since the roll-out of antiretroviral therapy nearly a decade ago. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-scientists-surveillance-hiv-drug-resistance.html HIV & AIDS Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:30:01 EST news262178877 Here are some key facts and figures on HIV/AIDS in 2011, released by UNAIDS on Wednesday ahead of the International AIDS Conference set to take place in Washington on July 22-27. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-facts-hivaids-worldwide.html HIV & AIDS Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:46:22 EST news261826820 More than eight million people -- a record number in low- and middle-income countries -- are now taking antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV, according to data released Wednesday by UNAIDS. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-hiv-drugs-mn-people-needy.html HIV & AIDS Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:38:54 EST news261826694 Clinical trials are urgently needed to test a new treatment that could jointly tackle leading causes of death for babies in sub-Saharan Africa, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-treatment-tackle-death-newborns-sub-saharan.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 15 May 2012 16:00:10 EST news256309400 The Millennium Villages Project aims to co-ordinate improvements across multiple sectors in health, agriculture, the environment, business, education, and infrastructure in villages in sub-Saharan Africa. New research published Online First by The Lancet shows that, three years after implementation, mortality in children aged under 5 years in Millennium Villages has fallen by a third compared with matched control sites, showing that accelerated progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is possible with improvements across a range of sectors. The research is by Professor Jeffrey D Sachs and Dr Paul M Pronyk, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA, and colleagues. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-millennium-villages-efforts-mdgs.html Health Mon, 07 May 2012 18:30:01 EST news255629056 Thousands of pre-school children in Africa could benefit from access to treatment for an endemic disease, after tests showed infants to be at high risk of infection. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-treatment-benefit-african-infants-endemic.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:00:01 EST news254371714 (Medical Xpress) -- Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a growing cancer burden, and hematologic malignancies account for almost 10 percent of cancer deaths in the region.  In the United States and other resource-rich settings, patients with diseases such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma have benefited from treatment advances that have resulted in unprecedented rates of long-term control. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-hematologic-malignancies-rapidly-unaddressed-sub-saharan.html Cancer Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:50:44 EST news252748235 A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that community members correlate an increase in HIV vulnerability among adolescent girls with weak structural support systems. While adolescent girls are three to four times more likely than adolescent boys to be living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, few studies have examined the reasons community members believe girls are so vulnerable to HIV. The findings are published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-factors-girls-vulnerability-hiv-sub-saharan.html HIV & AIDS Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:11:17 EST news229777867 (AP) -- The world's top emerging countries banded together Monday to help fight diseases in the poorest countries, pledging to explore the transfer of technologies to the developing world to enable poor nations to produce cheap and effective lifesaving medicines. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-brics-countries-vow-poor-nations.html Health Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:42:02 EST news229614109 When a person living in a malarial area gets a fever, health workers need to know the cause to make absolutely sure they give the right treatment. For many years in sub-Saharan Africa primary health workers have often assumed a fever is caused by malaria, and given antimalarial drugs. This approach means sometimes people receive the wrong treatment for their illness. It also wastes resources and, over time, can promote resistance to available drugs. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-simple-rapid-diagnostic-malaria.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 06 Jul 2011 03:09:48 EST news229140555 28 June 2011. Geneva, Switzerland. As Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian state Duma, calls for a "total war on drugs" to tackle Russia's growing drug problem, the International AIDS Society (IAS) urges the Russian government to radically reassess its approach to drug policy, and to accept that the war on drugs has failed dramatically from both a law enforcement and a public health perspective. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-ias-urges-russian-radically-reassess.html HIV & AIDS Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:02:35 EST news228409340 A human genetic variant associated with an almost 30 percent reduced risk of developing severe malaria has been identified. Scientists from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Hamburg, and Kumasi University, Ghana, reveal that a variant at the FAS locus can prevent an excessive and potentially hazardous immune response in infected children. The study appears in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on May 19. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-malaria-genetic-predisposition-cell-suicide.html Genetics Thu, 19 May 2011 17:33:28 EST news225045169