Health News

South African Child Gauge tackles the slow violence of malnutrition

The Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT) publishes the South African Child Gauge annually to review the status of children in South Africa and to inform policy and programming. The South African Child Gauge 2020 was launched on 18 February in partnership with the Department of Science and Innovation-National Research Foundation (DSI-NRF) […]

Health News

Malnutrition is on the rise in older adults

While the obesity crisis is still considered the foremost public health epidemic in the west, one often overlooked condition is quickly becoming a growing concern. Malnutrition, sometimes referred to as under-nutrition, affects an estimated 3 million people in the UK alone. Globally, around 462 million adults are malnourished. Malnutrition is a condition where a person […]

Health Problems

Malnutrition linked with increased risk of Zika birth defects

Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) refers to a collection of developmental malformations associated with Zika virus (ZIKV) congenital infection. This syndrome includes devastating conditions that have a huge impact on the rest of the life of the individual and their family, such as smaller (microcephaly) and unfolded (lissencephalic) brains, retinal abnormalities, enlarged ventricles of the heart, […]

Personal Health

Form of severe malnutrition linked to DNA modification

A group led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has identified significant differences at the epigenetic level—the chemical tags in DNA that help regulate gene expression—between two clinically distinct forms of acute childhood malnutrition known as edematous severe acute malnutrition (ESAM) and non-edematous SAM (NESAM). The researchers report in the journal Nature Communications that […]