“For years, brain tumours have remained notoriously difficult to diagnose. They affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year, and kill more children and adults under the age of 40 in the UK than any other cancer.
Now a research team has designed a simple blood test that could help diagnose patients with even the deadliest forms of brain cancer much more quickly, potentially sparing them from invasive and high-risk surgical biopsies.”
From The Guardian.
“In the early 1980s, Nepal’s children suffered from some of the highest death rates from pneumonia in the world, with over 1,400 deaths for every 100,000 children under five. That meant around 39,000 children died from pneumonia each year, more than from any other cause.
Since then, Nepal has made huge progress. The death rate has fallen almost 20-fold. This improvement is due to various measures, including pneumococcal and Hib vaccines, better access to healthcare and antibiotics, and improved nutrition.”
From Our World in Data.
New York Times | Noncommunicable Disease
“With the rise of CAR T-cell therapy in oncology, Dr. Georg Schett, a rheumatologist and immunologist at the University of Erlangen in Germany, started mulling a new idea to help lupus patients.
Lupus causes the body’s B cells — white blood cells that produce antibodies — to go haywire. In CAR T-cell therapy, a patient’s own T cells, a type of immune cell, are extracted and engineered to wipe out disease-causing B cells. They’re then put back in the body, where they replicate, acting like ‘serial killers’ that can clear out B cells even from deep within tissues that other drugs can’t reach, Dr. Schett said.
Perhaps most tantalizing to Dr. Schett was the idea that a single infusion might do the trick, freeing young women from the constraints, and uncertainty, of living with lupus…
Of the two dozen lupus patients Dr. Schett has treated, all but one went into remission and remained off treatment after at least six months, and some for longer than four years. (One patient who had a relapse underwent CAR T-cell therapy a second time and is now symptom free.)
It will be years before doctors know for sure whether those results can last. In the meantime, patients say the treatment has given them an opportunity to live a normal life.”
From New York Times.
New York Times | Noncommunicable Disease
“A single infusion of a stem cell-based treatment may have cured 10 out of 12 people with the most severe form of type 1 diabetes. One year later, these 10 patients no longer need insulin. The other two patients need much lower doses.
The experimental treatment, called zimislecel and made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals of Boston, involves stem cells that scientists prodded to turn into pancreatic islet cells, which regulate blood glucose levels. The new islet cells were infused and reached the pancreas, where they took up residence.”
From New York Times.
“Egypt has become the first country in the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean Region to meet the WHO target for hepatitis B control, a milestone achievement officially recognized during a ceremony held in Cairo on Sunday.
At the event, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health Khaled Abdel Ghaffar received a formal certificate from WHO, confirming Egypt’s success in achieving the benchmark for reducing hepatitis B prevalence among children and maintaining sustained vaccine coverage.
According to national surveys conducted between 2008 and 2024, hepatitis B prevalence among individuals under 60 has declined by 15% since 2015, while rates among children under ten have dropped by 50%. Notably, prevalence among children under five now stands at below 1%—the threshold established by WHO for hepatitis B control.”
From Daily News Egypt.
