Tag: Health

The government of Tamil Nadu’s Directorate of Drug Control recently issued a public notice against a specific batch of Almond Kit syrup, after laboratory tests detected adulteration with ethylene glycol. This finding emerged during routine surveillance. It comes barely five months after India lost over 20 children in Madhya Pradesh last year due to contaminated...

A growing body of research is reshaping how scientists understand breast cancer—not just as a disease of rogue tumour cells, but as one that cleverly recruits the body’s own immune system to survive and spread. A recent review by researchers from two Indian universities explains how macrophages, a type of white blood cell meant to...

The role of biochemistry Cancer originates at the genetic micro-molecular level within a cell — resulting in a cascade of subtle biochemical and cellular abnormalities that escape internal patrol — and eventually manifests as a detectable disease. Onco-biochemistry involves quantifying tumour markers, enzymes, hormones and metabolites in blood and body fluids for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring...

A growing body of research is reshaping how scientists understand breast cancer—not just as a disease of rogue tumour cells, but as one that cleverly recruits the body’s own immune system to survive and spread. A new review by researchers from two Indian universities explains how macrophages, a type of white blood cell meant to...

India observes Anti-Leprosy Day on January 30, the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. For most of history, leprosy was treated not as a medical condition but as a moral one. Across major religions and ancient traditions, people with leprosy were described as impure, cursed, or unclean. They were made to live outside towns, barred from...

The story so far: In 2016, under its National Framework for Malaria Elimination in India (2016-2030), India set an ambitious target to eliminate malaria (zero indigenous cases) by 2030, with an interim milestone of interrupting indigenous transmission across the entire country, including all high-transmission States and Union Territories (UT), by 2027. By the end of...

The World Malaria Report 2025, launched in December, provided a bag of mixed news, five years ahead of the 2030 global malaria elimination deadline. While the reduction in estimated cases in southeast Asia provided definite hope, of serious concern were rising cases of resistance to artemisinin-based frontline treatment for malaria, and falling funding for malaria programmes.   Notably, it is the Asia Pacific region that posted much of the good news. The significant reduction was driven by 10 of...

GUWAHATI A team of scientists led by researchers from Assam’s Tezpur University has identified distinct chemical signatures in blood, offering fresh hope in the early detection of one of the deadliest and often undetected cancers in India. The scientists who studied patients from Assam, a part of the Northeastern region with one of the highest...

The jury is still out on the origin of the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus, although several hypotheses exist, including the possibility that the virus may have jumped from a secondary animal host, former World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said here on Wednesday. “We did not receive the data from the Wuhan lab needed to...

Older adults who are frail and have depression could be at a higher risk of dementia, with the factors combined contributing to 17 per cent of the overall risk, according to a study. The findings, published in the journal General Psychiatry, suggests that while frailty and depression each increase dementia risk on their own, having...