News by Subject Medicine & Health

Tiny microscopic worms, invisible to the naked eye, are helping scientists to better understand an extraordinarily complex biological pathway that connects fat to overall health and aging in humans.

There is a tremendous disparity between the need for home-based medical care and the number of frail seniors actually receiving it, a new study finds. In many rural areas, the problem is so great that the researchers label it 'remarkable.'

The number of severe maternal morbidities (SMM) a pregnant woman has is highly linked to her risk of maternal death, according to a new study by researchers at ICES and St. Michael's Hospital.

Ninety-one nations are not producing enough children to maintain their current populations, while the opposite is true in 104 countries where high birth rates are driving population increases, according to a new scientific study. Total fertility rates (TFR), a summary measurement representing the average number of children a woman would deliver over her lifetime, have declined since 1950.

Although long life tends to run in families, genetics has far less influence on life span than previously thought, according to a new analysis of more than 400 million people. The results suggest that the heritability of life span is well below past estimates, which failed to account for our tendency to select partners with similar traits to our own. The research was published in GENETICS, a journal of the Genetics Society of America.

Millions of people are living with the long-term consequences of cancer and its treatment, but currently there is very little research on the problems they face and how these can be tackled. This growing population report side-effects that seriously affect their quality of life, but a combination of a shortage of funding, a lack of clear direction and relatively few researchers with expertise in this area have left a gap in cancer research.

Twenty-nine per cent of health professionals would not recommend e-cigarettes to cancer patients who already smoke, according to research presented at the 2018 NCRI Cancer Conference. While e-cigarettes may pose some health risks, evidence suggests they are much less harmful than smoking. Health bodies have given support for the use of e-cigarettes as a less harmful alternative.

Data from the Global Burden of Disease Study shows that the overall health of Canadians is good and is consistent with other similar countries, and people are living longer with diseases, according to a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Men who have been newly diagnosed with prostate cancer say they would trade some improvement in their odds of survival for improvements in side effects and quality of life, according to research presented at the 2018 NCRI Cancer Conference.