Most US women face stroke risk

The name may sound scary but meningitis can be dealt with easily. Take precautionary measures and don't panic. It's usually caused by either bacteria, viruses or similar infectious agents. Symptoms: Fever, severe headache, pain in the neck, vomiting, seizures, tiredness Treatment: Depends on the organism causing the infection, your age and the extent of infection. Patients do get better within three days but seeing the doctor is essential.

For people who suffer a stroke and are treated quickly with the clot-buster drug rtPA to open up the blocked brain artery, recovery of function is likely to be better for men than women, new research shows. However,more men than women die from the stroke. "Other studies have shown that women have worse functional outcomes after stroke;this shows that this is also true when women are treated with rtPA," said lead author Mitchell S V Elkind from Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, in a statement. The goal of stroke treatment is to administer a clot-busting drug within three hours after a stroke begins, so that blood flow to the brain can be restored before too much damage is done.

A researcher from the University of Newcastle has been working on a new treatment that only affects cancer cells and not the normal body cells. Kathryn Skelding's work may be an improvement on conventional chemotherapy and radiation treatment, which leave their impact on normal body cells too. "In theory, the viurs is able to selectively target and destroy many different types of cancer cells, including breast cancers, whilst leaving normal cells unaffected,"she said. Debilitating symptoms associated with conventional treatments-nuasea,vomiting and hair loss-could also be avoided by using the Coxsackie virus. "If this research is successful we could have something that produces side effects as harmless as a mild, common cold-like infection yet it could successfully treat breast cancer,"she said.