Health related information and news from around the world.

It can’t be repeated too often that the risk of HIV transmission from household, social, school or work contact is infinitesimally small. If you’re a health worker or at any other occupational risk, your employers should train you in any special measures necessary to prevent infection. You don’t catch HIV through touching, hugging, kissing, sharing [...]

Inflammation of the kidneys is called nephritis. When nephritis is caused by an infection, it is usually the result of a spread upwards from the bladder, resulting in pyelonephritis (inflammation of the ureters and the kidneys). Infection occasion ally reaches the kidneys from the bloodstream. Pyelonephritis is more common in women than in men, particularly [...]

The polycystic ovarian (PCO) syndrome (also called Stein-Leventhal syndrome) is a condition in which the development of ovarian follicles has gone haywire. In PCO, none of the 10-20 follicles that start to mature in each ovary at the beginning of the menstrual cycle reaches full maturity and releases an ovum. Without ovulation all follicles that] [...]

Ovarian causes The ovaries can fail to respond to pituitary hormones. This occasionally happens in women younger than the expected age of menopause, though rarely for women under 30 years of age. Ovaries often fail after treatment of cancer (in any part of the body) with radiation or chemotherapy, but in most other cases the [...]

Many of society’s attitudes to families and having children have changed in recent years. Childlessness is no longer regarded by all as a terrible misfortune. We no longer use the harsh words ‘barren’ or ‘sterile’. Some fertile couples are happily choosing not to have children, the situation is very different for who remain childless against [...]