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Health Check: 02/08/2010

02/08/2010

BBC World Service - Health Check, 02/08/2010

Claudia Hammond reports on new research showing how education may lower dementia risk

Claudia Hammond reports on research into dementia and education; pioneering treatment for piles; the 1st Global Sickle Cell Congress in Ghana; and sudden cardiac death in young people.

Having ten years of education as a child instead of nine reduces your risk of developing dementia by 11%, and the risk keeps decreasing the more years you stay on at school or college. New research by scientists in Finland and the UK, which looked at over 800 brains donated to science, may help us understand why this is the case. Claudia Hammond talks to Dr Hannah Keage from Cambridge University, co-author of the study.

Piles, or haemorrhoids, causes pain to millions. Sometimes they go away by themselves, but when surgery is required the recovery process can be agonising. A new technique being pioneered in Europe may help reduce this pain and improve recovery time dramatically. We meet one patient who’s had the treatment, and his surgeon Gordon Buchanan, who learnt the technique in Italy.

A century after the first case was recorded the First Global Congress on Sickle Cell Disease has just been held in Ghana. Claudia Hammond speaks to one of the organisers, sickle cell expert Dr Kwaku Ohene-Frempong from the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. Cecilia Shoetan, who runs a support group for people living with the condition in the UK, attended the congress and gives her perspective.

In the UK twelve apparently fit and healthy young people die each week from what is later discovered to be an undiagnosed heart problem. Speaking recently at the Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, Professor Greg Whyte from Liverpool John Moores University discusses how often sudden cardiac deaths occur during exercise, and what can be done to avoid such tragedies.

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