Specialist and mainstream audiences alike rely on the Health Report to bring clarity to health and medical issues from social, scientific and political points of view.
Many people are told to take a vitamin D supplement, especially in winter when there's less sunshine, but you can have too much of it. We unpack the story of a UK man admitted to hospital with Vitamin D toxicity—caused by taking far more than the recommended daily intake.
Sepsis is a condition claiming thousands of Australian lives each year, but especially in the early stages its symptoms are very vague. Now, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare has created a national clinical care standard for diagnosis and treatment. And we hear a sepsis patient's story—Caitlin was dubbed 'mystery girl' by the medical team treating her.
In 2009 Australia launched a National Preventive Health Strategy with the aim of being the healthiest country in the world by 2020. The strategy focused on tobacco use, alcohol use, and obesity. Although on tobacco and alcohol we're improving, the situation for obesity has worsened.
One of the measures taken to prevent virus transmission has been social distancing and lockdown, but these can have their own negative health impact. A study on the behaviour of teens undertaken during the pandemic identified some of the particular health risks for this group.
People with Type 1 diabetes need to monitor what's going on with their bodies because they can't make insulin—and it's vital in maintaining blood glucose. An imbalance can be dangerous and damage blood vessels, nerves, and kidneys.
Updated versions of coronavirus vaccines targeting the Omicron variant have recently been announced by Pfizer and Moderna. There's been an impressive turnaround time and yet still the virus has continued to mutate.
Australia has recorded a lot of COVID-19 cases, and about 10 per cent of affected people have had prolonged symptoms, consequently there are many stories from those who say they have long COVID but unable to access help.
Research on links between mental health and premature mortality has some disturbing conclusions—a mental health disorder can impact future mental health as well as physical health.
The risk factors for heart disease or stroke are often high blood pressure, cholesterol, and maybe smoking. But Indigenous people think that the wisdom of culture can help combat these negative elements.
Does Australia need a Disease Control Centre? How would it operate, and what work would be done there?
About one in 10 Australians have osteoarthritis — it's caused by the wear and tear of the cushioning in your body's joints, and it can be painful to the point of being debilitating.
We know healthy food is good for our body, but evidence shows it's good for our mind too, and the peak body for dietetics in Australia wants nutrition help to be covered by Medicare in mental health plans.
Radiation and hormone therapy come with side effects, and while many people are willing to go through whatever it takes to make sure breast cancer is well and truly gone, a new study has shown there may be an easier way.
A new Australian study says we shouldn't necessarily be telling all women about their breast density as a matter of course, because it can have downsides too.
The cancer risks that run through generations of families—and the growing frontier in medicine trying to change that.
Conversations about the bad form of cholesterol involve LDL — low-density lipoprotein. Whereas high density lipoprotein is the good form, taking cholesterol out of the artery. LDL is supposed to be as low and HDL to be on the high side. An important new study suggests there's a limit on how high HDL should be.
Conversations about the bad form of cholesterol involve LDL — low-density lipoprotein. Whereas high density lipoprotein is the good form, taking cholesterol out of the artery. LDL is supposed to be as low and HDL to be on the high side. An important new study suggests there's a limit on how high HDL should be.
In Australia smoking has decreased generally, but tobacco use is higher than average in young people with mental health issues. And especially so in those with more severe types of mental illness.
The term 'time toxicity' has been conceived by a group of cancer researchers in Canada, to express the idea that if treatment to extend the life of a patient involves lengthy periods in various medical facilities, it may actually be time wasted.
Heart defects at birth are not uncommon, and most can be patched, but some need surgery and leave babies with half a heart. Now new research is looking at exercise as a key to improving their life expectancy.
Cancer drugs can reduce the size of tumors, but it's also important to know if someone's life will be improved by taking them. This factor is not considered so relevant for some of these drugs' marketability.
Study on the types of fat in our body has become more in-depth and now 800 different lipids can be measured to check your metabolic risk and health profile.
Abortion is legal in Australia, but those at greatest risk from unplanned pregnancy are often least able to access it. Experts say better training pathways are needed to ensure an equitable spread of abortion access nationwide.
One of the hottest areas in mental health research is a possible connection between mental health and the immune system, and if mental health is associated with immune disorders like ulcerative colitis and asthma.
About 40,000 Australians have a stroke each year, and swift diagnosis is vital. A pilot study in Melbourne brings the critical parts of stroke treatment directly to patients in a specialised ambulance called a mobile stroke unit.
The Australasian Skin Cancer Congress has been discussing how best to treat the rise in melanoma incidence.
Monkeypox virus is classified as an Orthopoxvirus—one which uses mammals as host. Humans are protected against it by the smallpox vaccine, but becoming more susceptible to monkeypox now due to less people being vaccinated, and waning immunity from the vaccine.
We host a pre-election health discussion with 4 experts assessing the pressing issues. What are the most pronounced problems, and what health questions have not been raised at all?
Doctors at Royal Darwin hospital struggle to communicate with Aboriginal patients, but a podcast featuring Aboriginal elders answering doctors' questions aims to help better deliver culturally safe care.
Men are rightly the focus when we talk about prostate cancer, but the disease and its treatments can affect their relationships as well—and many partners find they're unprepared for the aftermath of a man's prostate cancer diagnosis.
In Australia there's great disparity in the risk of dying before your time, when compared with the average age at death. The risk is called premature mortality, and has been mapped on to federal electorates.
Many Australians experience blindness and severe vision loss because of a condition called Age Related Macular Degeneration. Some of them are able to have the progress to blindness slowed or halted by eye injections of a medication to stop blood vessels proliferating—but the cost of it to taxpayers is growing.
An article in The Medical Journal of Australia recently describes a disease claimed to have increased exponentially in the last 20 years. It's called Eosinophilic Oesophagitis, and can be mistaken for regular indigestion or acid reflux.
Opioids are a group of morphine-like drugs which are used to control pain. In Australia we haven't experienced an opioid disaster similar to the United States, but Australia has had problems.
The next pandemic may arrive because of climate change. A paper in the journal Nature describes the situation of animals moving to different habitats, where they meet new animals and then share their viruses. New viruses could emerge and affect humans.
It's expected now that we will generally live longer, but what really interests people is how to spend their longer life in good health—and what to do now in order to set a good foundation.
Around one in six Australians are living with tinnitus. So what causes it and what can be done to help?
For a cancer diagnosis, it's sometimes not known for sure which chemotherapy drug will work best. Clinical trials have helped to narrow the options for common cancers but even then, one drug won't always suit everyone. With the more rare kinds of cancer there may not be drug trial information to consult. To guide treatment, there's growing research on potential treatments using animal 'avatars'.
Many people are waiting for an organ donation and some of them may die before a suitable organ is found. Some researchers think that in the near future we will be able to grow organs in animals to be safely transplanted into humans. This healthcare potential raises ethical questions and we need to assess where we stand on such technological change. The first of two features about medicine's use of animals for organ and tissue transplantation. This program was originally broadcast in October 2021.
New variants of the COVID-19 virus continue to appear, and especially as there are low income countries with low levels of immunisation—and so high levels of circulating virus. The 2022-23 Australian Budget allocated A$85 million to COVAX, the international program for delivering COVID-19 vaccines particularly to low income countries. Is it enough? This week the German Government will host a meeting of international leaders who aim to raise US$5.2 billion ($7 billion AUS) for COVAX and fund a major push to ramp up vaccine coverage.
Doctors, nurses and other health professionals look after you and keep you as healthy. But despite Australia's relative good health, compared to other countries, it has major problems with general practice. By international standards we are probably overproducing medical graduates, but not enough are going into general practice and certainly not enough into rural and regional areas.
Researchers at the University of Sydney have reviewed multiple global studies on common painkillers and found that they have a marked effect on our resistance to infection—which is sometimes bad and sometimes good—and more studies are needed on possible alternatives for pain management. Some of these medications could also reduce our response to a vaccination—especially if they're taken ahead of one. Some good news though is that—in some studies—aspirin can reduce the disease burden of tuberculosis.
Primary aldosteronism (PA) is a hormonal cause of high blood pressure where the adrenal glands make too much aldosterone. It's treatable and there's a simple test.
If you have elevated blood pressure and lifestyle controls are not helping - so you need medication - by how much should pressure be reduced? Too low and you might overly restrict blood supply to the brain.
A 'temporary stroke' means people get the warning signs of a stroke but the symptoms go away without treatment. The medical name for this has been a Transient Ischaemic Attack - or a TIA.
A study yet to be peer-reviewed has assessed the evidence on treating COVID-19 with antibody infusions—particularly monoclonal antibodies. It has found that in the early days of the pandemic doses were too high—but things are different with Omicron and its variants, because the antibodies target different sections of the virus.
We know that when people's cognitive abilities decline they may develop mental health issues like depression and anxiety. But could mental health issues actually raise the risk of cognitive decline—because there are similar causes in the brain.
There's plenty of research to support the idea that a good diet—including wholefoods, fruit and vegetables—is really good at helping you to not get sick. But when people talk about using food to treat diseases the picture isn't so clear. And this is especially so with a disease like multiple sclerosis.
Knowing your blood group is handy information if you need a blood transfusion, or even an organ transplant. And it's essential information for the blood bank recruiting donors who match your blood type—and for people needing a blood product.
A study published in Lancet Public Health describes the large administrative data sets from four countries—covering 80 million people—and it looks at what's behind the reduction in mortality from cardiovascular disease.
US heart transplant patient David Bennett Senior died recently, and it reminded Norman of his 1985 interview with Dr Leonard Bailey—and Dr Bailey's revolutionary operation on Baby Fae, who was given the heart of a baboon. During the interview there was a surprising revelation.
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