PainKillers Killing You SlowlyIJ
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are often prescribed to treat a variety of painful conditions but popping these pain-killers may put you at the risk of ulcers, increased blood pressure and heart problems, warns a new study. “It’s been well known for a number of years that newer types of NSAIDs — known as COX-2 inhibitors — increase the risk of heart attacks,” said Morten Schmidt from Denmark’s Aarhus University, who was in-charge of the study. “For this reason, a number of these newer types of NSAIDs have been taken off the market again. We can now see that some of the older NSAID types, particularly Diclofenac, are also associated with an increased risk of heart attack,” Schmidt added. The study, published in the European Heart Journal, emphasised that arthritis medicine is particularly dangerous for heart patients, and also that older types of arthritis medicine, which have not previously been in focus, also appear to be dangerous for the heart.
lost memories may be recoverable
Researchers have found that sufferers of the disease may not have ‘lost’ their memories, but could simply have difficulties in accessing them. Further, they said that they had a possible treatment that could one day offer a cure for dementia. Nobel Prize-winner Susumu Tonegawa said that studies on mice showed that by stimulating specific areas of the brain with blue light, scientists could make the creatures recall thoughts that were otherwise unavailable to them. The results published some days earlier offer some of the first evidence that the Alzheimer’s disease does not destroy specific memories, but rather it makes them inaccessible.
Smartphone can detect skin cancer
Mobile phone-based microscopy can be used to diagnose skin cancer accurately in settings where a traditional microscope is not available, according to a new study. Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston (UTHealth), said that smartphone microscopes could improve the detection of skin cancer in developing countries. “Doctors in some remote areas don’t have access to the high-powered microscopes we use to evaluate skin samples,” said Richard Jahan-Tigh, assistant professor of dermatology at UTHealth. “Doctors there could use their smartphones to photograph growths and forward them for examination,” said Jahan-Tigh. “We did a head-to-head comparison with a traditional light microscope and while the smartphone microscope wasn’t as accurate it resulted in the detection of about 90 per cent of the non-melanoma skin cancers,” said Jahan-Tigh.