Mary Cooke

A new study gives hope that an effective treatment for Lyme disease may be available in the future. The new treatment involves the drugs cefotaxime and azlocillin. Lyme disease affects nearly 300,000 people a year in the United States and around…

Scientists report that the global rate of people dying with kidney disease has seen a sharp increase in the past 27 years and that many of these deaths were preventable. When a person develops chronic kidney disease (CKD), their kidneys slowly stop…

You may think that having cerebral malaria is bad enough, but what if the parasite could manipulate your body odour and make you even more attractive to blood-feeding mosquitoes? It’s a disturbing prospect both for the patient and the wider…

Have you seen this mosquito? The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, the notorious carrier of yellow fever, Chikungunya, Dengue and a known associate of the Zika virus, has disappeared from Palmyra Atoll. The mosquito, that was accidentally…

It’s disappointing when your Friday night internet date doesn’t match their profile. But for male periodical cicadas this could mean their match is in thrall to a body-snatching fungus and they’re about to be the next victim. In their recently…

The authors of a recently published observational study have found evidence that a child’s overall chance of survival is improved if the last vaccine they received was for measles. The researchers analysed routine vaccination and survival data for…

Marathons are more popular than ever around the world. This weekend 53,000 runners are registered to compete in the London Marathon. Yet recent headlines about short-term kidney damage remind us that running over 26 miles may not be as healthy as we…

A debilitating form of children’s epilepsy may be caused by an autoimmune response triggered by infection with a parasitic worm, suggests a new study published this week in Science Translational Medicine. The exact cause of Nodding syndrome, which is…

It’s a cruel fact that this January, while we’re busy repenting that third helping of Christmas chocolate, the news has been full of Nutella, pictures of Nutella and headlines that simultaneously imply that Nutella could give you cancer while…

It is news that should warm any curry lover’s heart: eating spicy food may be good for your health — that is, if it contains turmeric, the bright yellow spice used in many Asian dishes. You may think you’ve heard this before — after all, aren’t half…

It’s Monday morning, you’re already late and as you look across the open-plan office you see the last spare desk has a broken chair, a dodgy monitor and bits of someone’s lunch on the keyboard. If this sounds familiar you’ll probably agree that…