Half of adults with HIV are women

Women make up nearly half of the 37.2 million adults living with HIV and in sub-Saharan Africa the proportion rises to almost 60 per cent, according to a UN report. ?Increasingly the face of AIDS is young and female,? says Dr Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). In every region of the globe, the number of women infected with the deadly virus has risen during the past two years. For some women, the main HIV risk factor is the fact that she is faithful to a husband with previous or current sex partners. Teenage girls are acquiring the virus at a younger age and from older men. Violence against women also makes them more vulnerable to infection.

Ozone links to urban death

Increases in ozone pollution caused by cars, power plants and industry can be directly link-ed to higher death rates in many cities, says a study. Reducing such pollution by about 35 per cent on any given day can save about 4,000 lives a year acr-oss just the US, researchers at the Yale School of Environmental Studies said. The study looked at 95 urban areas in the US, comparing spikes in ozone pollution there with death rates from 1987 to 2000. People aged 65 to 74 had a slightly higher increase in the death ra-te, at 0.70 per cent. While ground-level ozone is considered a hazard, ozone layer on upper atmosphere is not, because it protects earth from harmful solar rays.

Hope for gallstone disease

A promising experimental compound prevents cholesterol gallstone disease in mice by stimulating the biochemical pathway that controls bile acid secretion by the liver, according to new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers. The findings in Nature Medicine suggest new approaches to developing drugs to prevent the disease, which afflicts some 20 million people a year. The studies also propose novel strategies for developing diagnostic tests to identify people with a genetically increased risk for developing gallstones. ?What we saw was remarkable,? said Mangelsdorf to Reuters. ?After just five to seven days of treatment, these animals, which were on a diet that would normally produce cholesterol gallstone disease, showed no trace of the disease.?

Grubs and bugs for nutrition

Central Africans should embrace edible catterpillars, grubs and insects as a source of protein-rich food, suggests a report by the United Nation?s Food and Agriculture Organization. Rich in protein and calories than beef and fish, they can help combat severe malnutrition in children, says the report.