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Health Check: 21/12/2011

21/12/2011

BBC World Service - Health Check, 21/12/2011

Sunshine and chicken pox; Wellcome Book Prize; silent strokes and sickle cell disease.

Sunshine stops chicken pox spreading; Wellcome Book Prize is thriller featuring Alzheimer’s disease; health myth on water and dry skin; silent strokes in children with sickle cell disease.

SUNSHINE AND CHICKEN POX
Chicken pox - with its trademark rash of blisters - is a disease which is highly infectious - except in parts of the world where it's very sunny. And here it doesn't seem to get passed on quite so easily. Claudia talks to the virologist who has made this connection, Dr Phil Rice of St George's Hospital in London. He explains that the key factor seems to be the strength of the sun's ultraviolet rays in different parts of the world.  

WELLCOME TRUST BOOK PRIZE AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
For the first time ever a novel has scooped the prestigious Wellcome Trust Book Prize for medical literature. The book, which tackles the topic of Alzheimer's disease, is called Turn of Mind and it's by American author and academic Alice LaPlante, whose mother has dementia. Alice tells Claudia how she hit on the idea of exploring the disease through a murder mystery.

MEDICAL MYTH - WATER AND SKIN
In this week's medical myth, Dr Tony Bewley, a consultant dermatologist at Barts and the London Hospitals, answers the question - is it true that drinking plenty of water keeps your skin moisturised? 

SICKLE CELL DISEASE
New research has found that some children with sickle cell disease who have both anaemia and high blood pressure are at risk from so-called "silent strokes". Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood condition where red blood cells become hard and sticky and shaped like sickles. This can block the flow of blood causing pain, serious infections and organ damage. And it's far more common amongst black communities. Dr Baba Inusa, of the Evelina Children's Hospital in London is part of the international collaboration which did the new research, and he explains what it has done.

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