Across leading cancer journals, clusters of interconnected papers bearing the hallmarks of paper mill products accumulate far more citations than other papers despite having fewer readers, the authors wrote |Image used for representational purpose only | Photo Credit: Getty Images An analysis of 33,159 cancer journal articles revealed tell-tale patterns of fake citation numbers across 4,000...
Tag: Health
Being a good doctor is risky in India
The shortage of doctors in India, particularly in rural areas, is well documented. This shortage compounds the suffering of rural communities, where people must suffer not only with disease but also with the struggle to access care. Illness in rural India is therefore not merely a departure from good health. It can push entire families...
What human brain tissue transplanted into mice showed us
A study published in September in Nature by neuroscientist Sergiu Pașca’s group at Stanford University reports an experiment that sounds almost like science fiction. Human brain tissue grown from stem cells was transplanted into mice in which much of the cerebral cortex had been genetically prevented from forming. The transplanted tissue grew into this vacant...
How Haryana’s village health centres are screening heart patients and helping save lives
On July 15, Raj Rani, 52, an ASHA worker in Yamunagar, Haryana had just completed her tasks for the day when she felt a throbbing pain in her left arm and in the middle of her chin. Since this pain had persisted for a few days, she went to the Community Health Centre (CHC) in...
New, sophisticated drugs did not move the needle on hearts attacks, strokes: what this teaches us
In March this year, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA), both globally recognised premier organisations in cardiovascular medicine, handed down their newest dyslipidemia guideline, and gave universal Lipoprotein(a) screening in every adult a ‘Class I’ recommendation — the strongest tier there is. The High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hsCRP) test got...
New, sophisticated drugs did not move the needs on hearts attacks, strokes: what this teaches us
In March this year, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA), both globally recognised premier organisations in cardiovascular medicine, handed down their newest dyslipidemia guideline, and gave universal Lipoprotein(a) screening in every adult a ‘Class I’ recommendation — the strongest tier there is. The High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hsCRP) test got...
Biotechnology and healthcare: where we are in India, and where we need to go
Biotechnology, when I was a student in the early 1970s, was test tubes, pipettes, culture plates and microscopes. Today, however, biotechnology is no longer just a laboratory discipline. It is a platform for technologies that power healthcare, agriculture, industrial manufacturing and environmental solutions. Biotechnology today is an integrated inter and multi-disciplinary science where biology has...
Do mRNA tumour vaccines herald a new revolution in cancer treatment?
Not long ago, a diagnosis of advanced cancer left doctors with little more than symptom control and hope. Over the course of a few of decades, however, that picture changed dramatically. Chemotherapy delivered the first meaningful survival gains, though at a steep cost in side effects, a cost later softened by a new generation of...
The science behind social media bans, and why they don’t work
Ask a sixteen-year-old about a social media ban, and you get an answer sharper than most adults arguing about bans. She says, “It doesn’t prepare us for the real world when we will have to deal with these distractions in our life”. The teenager’s response strikes at the core of the ban vs. no ban debate: the...
A tiny insect, a deadly enemy: how medicine’s discovery of its impact shaped health and town planning
Anyone waiting for municipal approval of a building plan may wonder why a local body should regulate construction on private land. In the Madras Presidency, such powers were formalised under the Madras City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919. After Independence, the first Conference of State Ministers on Town and Country Planning in 1960 gave impetus to...
