Planning a week-long vacation abroad? Spontaneous travel for work?

If you’re currently taking a prescription medicine, those foreign trips offer a few new obstacles. It’s essential for travelers to understand how to travel with medicine. Some travel prep means you don’t make it across the world and suddenly run out of something you’re unable to get at the local pharmacy.

The severity of running out of your medication is heavily-dependent on your health condition. For some travelers, missing a dose of their medication is a mild issue. For others, it can be life threatening.

First things first, talk to your doctor.

[Read more…]

In 1959 the first human that was diagnosed with HIV was from the Belgian Congo.

Since then, over 35 million people have died worldwide from HIV. Roughly 40,000 people are diagnosed with the virus every year in the United States alone. Sharing intravenous needles and unprotected sex are still the primary ways of spreading HIV.

The first drugs that came on the scene to treat HIV were full of side-effects. Over time, we developed prescriptions for the virus that cause fewer side-effects and inhibit the progression of the virus. Those who have been diagnosed with HIV can live long productive lives.

But even with better medicine, we still lack a way to cure the virus. We’ve had recent promising developments, but still appear far from a widely-used vaccine. While we wait for that breakthrough, some recent outcomes show progress in the area.

[Read more…]

Mosquito-borne diseases have spread across the globe, affecting almost every part of the world. From yellow fever to malaria to Zika virus, these diseases do more than get headlines, causing millions of annual deaths.

Unfortunately, the problems with these diseases appear to be getting worse.

A recent study predicts that almost half of the world’s population will be infected with these illnesses. According to new research published in the journal Nature Microbiology, a few factors play a role in this.

[Read more…]

While we continue searching for a vaccine to combat malaria, we rely on other methods to prevent the virus. Two of the most common tools in this process are mosquito nets and antimalarials.

A new study looks at how we can combine the two products.

Malaria spreads through the bites from mosquitoes. Once infected, the virus can quickly create debilitating and deadly symptoms. This might mean headaches and muscle aches or fatigue. The virus could then progress to a high fever, vomiting, and convulsions, resulting in death.

[Read more…]

Travelers often have a hard time predicting when a food or drink will infect them with typhoid fever. The Salmonella typhi bacteria just needs to get into a some fresh fruit or a glass of water while at a restaurant, and the traveler catches the disease.

Once they’re infected, the real problems can start. The disease can cause mild symptoms like headaches, loss of appetite, and fatigue. In some cases, it progresses to much more dangerous levels, like stomach pains and a high fever. According to the CDC, typhoid fever can “kill up to 30 percent of people who get it” and go untreated.

Those eye-opening numbers make the typhoid vaccine that much more important for travelers.

But, researchers from the University of Liverpool and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine wanted to know if the vaccine could do more. Does the the immunization help against other diseases?

[Read more…]