Health Report

Bladder problems Today we're looking at whether low-dose, continuous oral antibiotic therapy prevents urinary tract infections in predisposed children, Australian research that investigated the overactive bladder and researchers in the US have looked ...

Health care reform World renowned health researcher and physician, Professor Elliott Fisher, is a leading health care reform commentator who visited Australia recently to speak at a forum of the Hospital Alliance for Research Collaboration. In this ...

Caesarean sections - part two Nicky Phillips has made this two part feature about caesarean sections. In this program we take a look at some of the consequences of the operation and we'll meet two mothers who developed serious complications from their ...

Caesarean sections - part one of a two part feature Caesarean sections are on the rise. In Australia one in three babies are born this way, and once a mother has one caesarean she's got at least a 50% chance of having another one in a following ...

Cancer and the use of complementary and alternative medicine Researchers at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne have investigated the use of complementary and alternative medicine amongst cancer patients, with the aim to develop guidelines for ...

Treatment of macular degeneration Age-related macular degneration is the leading cause of blindness in people over the age of 50. Researchers in Boston have investigated the effectiveness of a cancer drug in the treatment of this condition. The effect ...

Global patterns in mortality in young people Researchers at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne have published a first ever study of global child and adolescent health and they looked particularly at death rates and causes of ...

The fight against antibiotic resistance New research from NYU School of Medicine gives a ray of hope in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Researchers there have found that the chemical Nitric Oxide plays a key role in protecting bacteria against ...

Mysterious viruses Just when you're beginning to relax about pandemic influenza, you're going to hear about relatively mysterious viruses which come and go for no reason, but when they re-appear and infect humans, up to 80% of them die. We have some of ...

The health of Australian Vietnam veterans The first results of a 15 year old Australian follow-up study of the health of Vietnam veterans have recently been published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Antidepressants and suicidal ...

Link between a common sexual infection and the risk of aggressive prostate cancer A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital researchers has found a strong link between the common sexually transmitted infection ...

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a devastating and incurable muscle-wasting disease which can affect boys. Symptoms tend to appear before the age of 6 years and life expectancy is usually under 25 years. An international ...

Younger onset dementia Dementia is not inevitable as you age, but it becomes increasingly common the older you get. However, in some rare cases dementia can occur in people at the age of 40, 50 or 60. In this program Lynne Malcolm speaks with a ...

Portugal's drug laws Ten years ago Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. Heroin use was out of control and the rate of HIV infections in drug users became a humanitarian crisis. So what did Portugal do? They decriminalised all personal ...

Research into addiction The definitions of addiction have changed over the years, according to Barry Everitt, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He and his colleagues have done research into addiction, identifying the kind of ...

Treatment for osteoporotic vertebral fractures One of the treatment options for vertebral fractures is a procedure called vertebroplasty, where a cement is injected directly into the fracture with the aim to provide immediate stability and pain relief. ...

Proposed changes to death certificates Leading Australian public health and cancer researchers propose that questions abut the smoking status of a deceased person should be added to a revised death notification form. The origins of HIV Since its ...

The Heimlich manoeuvre In the early 1970s a new procedure for treating choking victims burst onto the scene in the United States and soon it was famous around the world. The procedure was called the Heimlich manoeuvre, named after the man who created it ...

Bone density monitoring/blood pressure monitoring A study recently published in the British Medical Journal found that monitoring bone mineral density in postmenopausal women taking osteoporosis drugs is unnecessary and potentially misleading. Norman ...