Using existing data from 501 patients in clinical trials in Thailand, Uganda, Malawi and South Africa, Joe Jarvis and colleagues from St George’s Hospital in London discovered some key parameters of survival in cryptococcal meningitis in AIDS. One third of the patients had died by 10 weeks. Younger age, being fully alert, less weight loss… Read more »
A joint publication by the European Lung Foundation and European Respiratory Society provides detailed statistics on lung health in Europe. 1 in 8 deaths in the EU are as a result of respiratory disease and 6 million people are admitted to hospital each year. It is estimated for several diseases that this represents the “tip… Read more »
GAFFI was launched in Latin America on November 18th at the Escola Paulista de Medicina-UNIFESP. Over 90 participants including representatives of the Minister of Health, Vice-chancellor of the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Prof Eduardo Moacyr Krieger the Vice-President of the FAPESP (Fundação de Apoio a Pesquisa de Sao Paulo), the past-President of the Brazilian Academy… Read more »
Acclaimed actor Rupert Everett supports GAFFI to raise awareness of the scale of the challenge across the world Neglected by policy makers and most international health agencies, today sees the launch of Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI), an international organisation set to highlight the plight of 300 million people worldwide and begin to… Read more »
At their 64th General Assembly in Brazil, the World Medical Association adopted a statement on Fungal Disease Diagnosis and Management’. The statement reads: “The WMA stresses the need to support the diagnosis and management of fungal diseases and urges national governments to ensure that both diagnostic tests and antifungal therapies are available for their populations…. Read more »
New burden estimates from France, Jamaica, Mongolia, Korea, Sri Lanka, The Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Iran, Guatemala and Zambia – covering a total of 262 million people, have been presented at the Trends in Medical Mycology conference on Oct 11-13th in Copenhagen. Previously, estimates of the number of people suffering and dying from fungal… Read more »
About 2 billion people have no access to modern medicines, according to the Access to Medicines Foundation’s Founder and CEO Wim Leereveld. In a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, Hans Hogerzeil of Groningen, also in the Netherlands, reviews the 2012 index rankings of the major global pharmaceutical companies in terms of… Read more »
Mycetoma is a chronic, progressively destructive morbid inflammatory disease usually of the foot but any part of the body can be affected. Infection is most probably acquired by traumatic inoculation of certain fungi and bacteria into the subcutaneous tissue. Mycetoma was described in the modern literature in 1694 but was first reported in the mid-19th… Read more »
In a study of nearly a million Danish pregnant women of whom 7352 were exposed to fluconazole and 687 to itraconazole in the first trimester, Ditte Molgaard-Nielsen and colleagues from the Serums Staten Institute in Copenhagen found a 3-fold increase in the heart defect tetralogy of Fallot and a 2-fold increase in hypoplastic left heart… Read more »
