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Health Check: 18/01/2012

18/01/2012

BBC World Service - Health Check, 18/01/2012

Hepatitis C can destroy the liver - will a new vaccine mean the end for the virus?

The first trials of a new vaccine for hepatitis C, the latest thoughts on testing men's testosterone levels and can thunder and lightning really cure a wart, as some people in Uganda believe?

HEPATITIS C 
Hepatitis C is a virus which lives in the body silently for many years. Now scientists hope to mimic the way some people's bodies get rid of the virus naturally. In some people it can cause irreversible damage to the liver, even cancer. Early clinical trials have been carried out in Ghana using a new vaccine which could be used for those already infected with the virus as well as to prevent its spread. One hundred and seventy million people around the world are infected and Egypt has one of the highest rates of infection – around 1 in 5 people carries the virus. 

HEALTH MYTH - WARTS
A listener to the BBC in Uganda wants to know whether it's true that thunder and lightning can cure warts - and if it is a myth, what really works?

TESTOSTERONE
The male sex hormone testosterone does everything from making a foetus in the womb develop male characteristics to causing men to grow beards after puberty. But how does a man know if his testosterone levels are too low? Dr Max Pemberton goes along to a clinic to have his hormone levels checked out.

MALARIA AND SALMONELLA
It's long been known that children with the blood-borne malaria parasite are at a high risk of contracting infections such as salmonella which can be fatal. It was assumed that this was because malaria weakened the whole immune system. But now researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine working in London and in the Gambia have discovered that the susceptibility to salmonella results from a very specific response by part of the immune system, a problem which they hope to be able to correct.

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