Vitamin D, which the body synthesises with the help of sunlight, has an important bearing on the functioning of our auto-immune system, says a study.
Howard Amital, professor at the Tel Aviv University's (TAU) Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Centre, has discovered that the vitamin may also improve the well being of patients in intensive care.

India will soon ban blood tests to detect tuberculosis (TB) that are widely available across the country. An expert group set up by the Drug Controller General of India has found that blood tests are mostly inaccurate for TB detection. It has recommended to the Union health ministry to immediately ban them.

NEW DELHI: Could an antibody from the blood of a HIV patient help create the elusive HIV vaccine?
The hunt has begun to identify 100 volunteers belonging to a rare group of HIV infected patients who stay healthy for years without requiring life-saving antiretroviral treatment (ART). These antibodies in their blood are the ones that bars HIV from entering their blood cells and replicating , thereby progressing to AIDS.

MUMBAI: Rising awareness about diseases being transmitted during blood transfusion is bringing about a change in the mindset of patients as more and more people are opening up to the idea of donating blood for oneself. Cases of blood transfusion going wrong also seem to be playing an important role in the new trend gaining popularity.

The Gujarat high court directed police on Thursday to register an FIRin thecaseof 23thalassaemic children being given HIV-infected blood during transfusion in Junagadh. Parents of the infected children had approached the high court demanding directions to the cops to investigate negligence by the Junagadh Civil Hospital authorities. Advocate Girish Das has filed another PIL demanding investigation and Rs 5 lakh compensation

The hunt for blood will no longer be as frantic as it usually is, if a Web-enabled system set up in Orissa serves the purpose for which it has been designed.
The e-blood bank service, which the government calls the first of its kind in the country, is built around ebloodbank.nrhmodisha.in, with real-time updates on how much of what type of blood is available in which of the blood banks in the state. A patient’s relative also has the option of sending an SMS or calling 1800-345-7777 toll-free for an update.

Five Thane-based researchers, including two doctors, have created a device that can measure haemoglobin, oxygen saturation level in the blood and monitor heart rate without the prick of a needle for just Rs5.
The device, TouchHb, will be available from February 2012 and will be especially beneficial to pregnant women who are anaemic and scared of using the needle.

It took three years for Mysikin Ingawale, Dr Abhishek Sen, Dr Yogesh Patil, Dr Darshan Nayak and Aman Midha who formed a company called Biosense Technologies Private Limited to create the device.

Prevalence of anaemia among non-pregnant women in India is higher than that in other South Asian countries, a recent study published in reputed medical journal The Lancet has revealed.

According to The Lancet, anaemia affects a quarter of the global population, including 293 million (47%) children younger than 5 and 468 million (30%) non-pregnant women. In India, the prevalence of anemia was found to be higher than that of Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and South East Asian countries.

London: Scientists have developed a portable blood test device which they say diagnoses an infection within minutes and could be an effective weapon in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the developing world.