Posts tagged with ‘disease’

Rapid drug treatment leads to a “functional cure” of HIV

HIV treatment drug cocktails have become very effective in controllling the spread of severity of the disease in the body, but a new study has shown that with quick diagnosis and treatment, some patients are functionally cured of HIV after just a few years. This means that while the virus isn’t completely eliminated from one’s body, its levels remain low enough that there isn’t a need for further drug treatment.

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Woman’s hair turns into fingernails. CURSED!

Twenty eight year old beautician and University of Memphis law student Shanyna Isom one day started getting black spots all over her skin and when she went to the doctor, she discovered she had developed an incredibly rare condition where all of her hair spontaneously started turning into fingernails.

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And today in zombie news, baffling illness turns children in Africa into zombies

Straight in to the IHC Action News desk, a strange new illness in Africa has been turning children into zombies. The illness has been sweeping through Uganda, causing mental degradation and in 10-15% of the cases, increased violence and aggression. 

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Eighteen quaint vintage anti-VD posters

The government: protecting soldiers’ junk since VD made ‘em unfit for duty. And don’t forget… loose lips sink ships.

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Bizarre syndrome seems to be affecting teens at a New York high school

It first started with 16 year old Lori Brownell fainting at a concert. She later started developing Tourette’s like symptoms that included verbal and physical ticks. Since then, 17 other students at LeRoy High School in Genesee County, New York have come down with similar symptoms, but no one knows what it is.

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Ocean explorers find the world’s largest virus, 20x larger than the average bug

Appropriately named Megavirus, this virus is 20 times larger than most viruses or bacteria, large enough to be seen with a normal schoolroom-grade microscope. Discovered off the coast of Chile, infects amoeba and other single-celled organisms in the water.

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Scientists sequence black plague DNA, admit previously they may have been looking at the wrong bacteria

Studying the bacteria that caused the Black Plague isn’t as easy as one might think. Scientists can study the bones of plague victims, but the bacteria that caused the plague is a normal naturally-occurring bacteria that has lived in dirt for millennia and still lives in dirt. So trying to trace how the plague evolved is a bit tricky, but scientists now think they’ve pinned down the real culprit.

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Sex with Neanderthals helped the human race by boosting our immune system

This used to be the height of sexy.

For decades, scientists debated on whether or not Homo sapiens had sex with Neanderthals, and at this point it seems pretty solid that we were knocking boots with our smaller brained, more muscular hominid relatives. But an upside to that Neanderthal sex was that it apparently boosted the human immune system, which isn’t surprising if you think about how nasty Neanderthal genitalia was.

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Tiny microchip tests for HIV in 15 minutes, costs $1

One of the main problems with stopping the spread of HIV in developing countries is ignorance. Not only ignorance about how the disease spreads, but who has it and who doesn’t. And for many countries, without a stable infrastructure and health system, getting testing to those who need to know becomes extremely difficult. But now there’s a microchip that can test blood for HIV in just 15 minutes and it costs just a dollar. That’s good news for stopping the spread of HIV and AIDS in poor countries.

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Biologist says that cancer might be a newly evolved species living in your body

Cancer’s obviously pretty bad, and in comes in quite a few forms. But are these clumps of cells simply your own cells that have gone rogue, or is someone with cancer evolving a new parasitic organism inside their body? UC Berkeley biologist Peter Duesberg thinks that perhaps carcinogenesis, the process of the formation of cancer cells can be equivalent to the process of a new species being formed.

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Viruses as beautiful blown glass art

Glass blower Luke Jerram, with the help of virologists, made a series of deadly gorgeous viruses in blown glass. Viruses seen under a microscope are already deceivingly beautiful, but in glass, even more so. Above is smallpox. 

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