Bangladesh has become the first country globally to be validated for elimination of visceral leishmaniasis, a life-threatening neglected tropical disease. The country achieved the elimination target of less than one case per 10,000 population at the sub-district level in 2017 and has sustained it to date.
North Korea introduced a mass measles-rubella immunization program in November 2019. Through this mass immunization activity, achieving more than 99.8% coverage in almost 6 million target population, the country has rapidly built substantial population immunity for rubella.
Dubbed “Calixcoca,” the treatment, developed by researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, triggers an immune response that blocks cocaine and crack from reaching the brain. Last week, the project won the top prize of €500,000 at the Euro Health Innovation Awards for Latin American medicine.
The researchers from the University of Cambridge found that, on its own, the blood test could diagnose up to 30% of patients with BD, but combining it with the online psychiatric assessment significantly improved the diagnosis rate, especially in people whose diagnosis was not obvious.
In the study by the UCL Cancer Institute, 250 women with cervical cancer received the new treatment – an intensive six-week course of carboplatin and paclitaxel chemotherapy. Five years later, 80% of those who had received the new treatment were alive, an 8% improvement over the control group.
For centuries, this disease has afflicted millions of people worldwide, causing pain, severe disability and social stigmatization. It is now the second neglected tropical disease (NTD) that the Southeast Asian country has eliminated following the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in 2017.
For the first time, scientists from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have combined the six primary skin cell types with specialized hydrogels to ‘print’ a thick, multilayered skin that, when transplanted, successfully integrated with surrounding tissue to heal wounds faster and with less scarring.
The R21/Matrix-M vaccine, developed at Oxford University, is expected to offer countries a cheaper and more readily available option than the world’s first shot against the parasitic disease.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina have developed an AI model that can predict in real-time whether or not cancerous tissue has been fully removed during breast cancer surgery. The model performed as well as, or better than, human doctors.
Japan’s Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago. If successful, the medicine could be available for regulatory approval by 2030.
