A modelling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that if efforts are not made to mitigate and overcome interruptions in health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500 000 extra deaths from AIDS-related …
INDIANS are a peculiar lot. They have three 'unique' genes which are not present in any other race across the world. These genes, belonging to the group DR2, put them at a high risk of contracting diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy. The DR2 group has 11 sub-types of genes. The …
AMONG infectious diseases, tuberculosis (TB) stands out as the principal exterminator of humans, with an estimated 8 million new cases and 2.9 million deaths occuring worldwide annually. The situation is particularly alarming in developing countries, where 7 per cent of all deaths, and 19 per cent of deaths of adults …
India is sitting on a "tuberculosis (tb) time bomb", says the World Health Organization (who), 1995 report on the tb epidemic. About half the adult population in the country is reportedly suffering from the dreaded disease; every week, the disease claims some 10,000 lives, despite projects undertaken to control the …
A World Health Organisation's (WHO) recent B Programme report has warned the world community of tuberculosis epidemic. The annual global death toll from TB could rise to 4 million by AD 2005. This happens even after WHO declared TB a global emergency 2 years ago. And less than 0. 1 …
Malaria -- whose incidence dropped from an estimated annual 75 million cases with 0.8 million deaths before Independence to 0.1 million cases with no deaths by 1964 -- showed feverish activity in the '70s. It is stabilising now at about 2 million cases a year. Of late, however, a potentially …
Along with problems associated with unhealthy living conditions and drug resistance, tuberculosis poses an additional danger as it has targeted HIV carriers. As such, TB is a leading cause of death due to a single infectious agent. In the developing world, the annual incidence of all forms of TB is …
Historical ills Malaria It has been hypothesised that the malarial parasite evolved either with humans or even earlier. Hippocrates wrote about it in the 5th century BC. In India, Ayurvedic gurus' Charaka and Susruta related malaria to mosquito bites. For 2,000 years, the Chinese have been using extracts from the …
Right from the "60s, DDT resistance of the malaria parasite host, Anopheles culicifacies, was detected in Gujarat. It was a rising trend. Another important vector, A stephensi, became so rugged that it can now grow in stagnant water found in coolers, used tyres -- just about anywhere. DDT remains the …
Garlic is effective in treating tuberculosis, especially the kind which is resistant to antibiotics, claim scientists P Ratnakar, D Srilatha and P S Murthy of the University College of Medical Sciences and the Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital in Delhi. The researchers obtained extracts from fresh garlic cloves, using alcohol as …
THE long anxious wait for a sputum or blood test report to confirm whether that persistent cough is tuberculosis, or the unexplained, but constant fatigue and failing appetite is hepatitis B could soon be shortened from days to just a few hours. Results of recent clinical trials of techniques developed …
When the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus was discovered a decade ago, researchers were confident of finding a way to check its growth. Today, about 13 million people have been infected with HIV, but science is still groping in the dark for a cure for AIDS. NEVER underestimate your enemy. But …
RESEARCHERS are unsure of being able to devise a simple series of shots that would give a person lifetime protection against AIDS. To do that, a vaccine will have to ward off all the current HIV strains as well as any future mutants. Vaccines are basically harmless imposters intended to …
HIV IS fast spreading its tentacles in India. According to the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), more than 300 people have contacted AIDS since the first case was reported in India in 1986. It is feared that by the turn of the century, about five million persons in the country …
Scientists at the Jammu laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have found a Himalayan herb, which can considerably increase the absorption of tuberculosis (TB) drugs in the human bloodstream. Scientists Usha Zutshi and K L Bedi explain that because the human body can absorb less than …
A STATEMENT by the US surgeon general in 1969 that it was time to "close the book on infectious diseases", seems incredible today in the face of figures that prove such diseases remain the largest cause of death in the world, and of them, tuberculosis (TB) is still the leader. …
TUBERCULOSIS, the number one killer in India -- two million cases of active TB are diagnosed each year -- and the AIDS epidemic are showing a disturbing tendency of coalescing and infecting the same individual (WorldAIDS, No 23). The risk groups of both diseases overlap in many countries in the …
MY GRANDFATHER was young when he died of tuberculosis and our family was quite traumatised by the event. Thank God no one has to die of that terrible disease in today's world -- or so I thought, before I started my medical practice in Kumaon. My first lesson about TB …
STEWART Cole and his team of scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have discovered that the absence of a single large gene is responsible for making certain strains of tuberculosis bacteria resistant to isoniazid, the principal drug used to treat the disease. (Nature, Vol 358, No 6387) On reinserting …
THE STAKES are high in the rifampicin (a new anti-TB drug) sweepstakes. Lupin Laboratories presently dominates the market, which, according to the ministry of chemicals, did a business of Rs 236 crore during 1992-93. To break the monopoly, which enables Lupin to charge as much as 15 per cent more …
Medical researchers at the University of Arkansas have found a way to reduce dramatically the time needed to diagnose tuberculosis. The new method, which involves analysing genetic material found in tuberculosis cells, will enable laboratories to diagnose TB in just 36 hours, instead of upto four weeks that it takes …