1. Global Reputation & Expertise

• Iran has earned the title “nose job capital of the world”, with thousands undergoing rhinoplasty annually.
• Iranian surgeons are celebrated for their advanced techniques, combining skill with aesthetic artistry .
• Their mastery extends to both closed and open rhinoplasty, tailored to meet patients’ unique anatomical and cultural aesthetic goals ).

2. High Quality & Low Cost

• Despite political pressures and rising inflation, rhinoplasty in Iran remains 80–85% cheaper than in the U.S./Europe, ranging from $1,200–2,500 USD.
• Many clinics offer all-inclusive packages (hospital, visa help, transfers, translators) for 7–10 days — combining affordability with convenience.

3. Cultural & Social Drivers

• A cultural beauty standard, particularly among young Iranians, has driven rhinoplasty into mainstream acceptance — often seen as a means to social mobility or improved confidence (ft.com).
• Celebrity culture and social media have further amplified demand, making facial cosmetic enhancement almost normative .

MyHospitalNow: Reinventing Medical Tourism in Iran

1. Centralized Information Hub

• By compiling and verifying best-in-class hospitals, MyHospitalNow helps international patients explore reputable Iranian healthcare options, including elective procedures like rhinoplasty (myhospitalnow.com).

2. Curated Hospital Listings

• Their profile features Iran’s leading public and private hospitals, offering transparency about specialties, capacities, and accreditation — allowing prospective medical tourists to choose wisely (myhospitalnow.com).

3. Guidance on Cost & Packages

• MyHospitalNow illustrates typical price ranges (e.g., rhinoplasty vs. local costs), and advises on package inclusions, maximizing affordability and value (myhospitalnow.com).

Leading Hospitals Featured on MyHospitalNow

Below are key hospitals in Iran featured, known for their expertise and international readiness:

1. Tehran Heart Center (Tehran)
   • While focused on cardiology, this world-class cardiac facility signals Iran’s high medical infrastructure, indirectly supporting cosmetic surgery safety (myhospitalnow.com, ft.com).
2. Shariati Hospital (Tehran)
   • A large public hospital offering general surgery and oncology, and often affiliated with cosmetic and reconstructive services (myhospitalnow.com).
3. Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex (Tehran)
   • Iran’s premier teaching hospital with advanced surgical capabilities — a strong sign of regulatory quality in procedural care (en.wikipedia.org).
4. Milad Hospital (Tehran)
   • A private, multi-specialty hospital with ISO accreditation, modern ORs, and experienced staff — ideal for complex procedures like rhinoplasty (myhospitalnow.com).
5. Pars Hospital (Tehran)
   • Specialized in cardiology, orthopedics, general surgery, and cosmetic surgery — positioned as a top private care center (myhospitalnow.com).
6. Rajaei Cardiovascular Medical Center (Tehran)
   • Another top-tier cardiac facility — underscores national standards in surgical care and monitoring (myhospitalnow.com).
7. Razavi Hospital (Mashhad)
   • A modern private hospital, ACI-accredited, offering cosmetic surgery among other specialties, and experienced in medical tourism protocols (en.wikipedia.org, myhospitalnow.com).
8. Arad General Hospital (Tehran)
   • Offers a broad range of services including plastic surgery, with emergency and ICU capacities that boost patient safety (en.wikipedia.org).
9. Noor Eye Hospital (Tehran)
   • Though focused on ophthalmology, its reputation for high standards and modern technology reinforces the overall quality perception of Iranian private hospitals (en.wikipedia.org).

Comparing Hospitals for Medical Tourists

Conclusion

• Iranian rhinoplasty is globally renowned due to affordable, high-quality surgeries, executed by experienced surgeons.
• MyHospitalNow provides a trustworthy, centralized platform that:
  • Details local hospitals’ credentials
  • Offers cost transparency
  • Enhances patient confidence in medical travel decisions

If you’re considering rhinoplasty or any surgery in Iran, using MyHospitalNow’s vetted resources can help you choose reliable hospitals like Milad, Pars, or Imam Khomeini — combining expert care, modern infrastructure, and cost efficiency.

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The pandemic of Coronavirus (COVID-19) has influenced each part of life comprehensively. This has brought along some changes in economic situations. The current scenario of the ever-evolving business sector and introductory and future appraisal of the effects are covered in this report.

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Many parts of Massachusetts are moving into a new phase of reopening Monday even as coronavirus metrics hit numbers that haven’t been seen since the height of the pandemic — leading medical experts to question Gov. Charlie Baker’s decision to forge ahead.

“We need to stay where we are and watch things carefully and keep our guard up,” Boston University infectious diseases specialist Davidson Hamer said. “I can’t read his mind, but I just wonder if he’s under a lot of pressure from businesses.”

All but 29 of the Bay State’s 351 cities and towns are allowed to move forward with step two of the third phase of reopening on Monday, which allows indoor performance venues, roller rinks and fitting rooms to reopen, places such as gyms and museums to increase their capacity and outdoor gathering limits to bump up to 100.

At the same time, the state’s coronavirus reproduction rate has climbed to its highest rate since the end of March, weekly case totals rose throughout September and new daily cases crossed 700 twice in the past week — a number not seen since the height of the pandemic.

Twenty-three communities landed in the state’s red zone for being at a high virus risk last week as well, the highest since the state switched to the color-coded risk assessment system in August. The seven-day average positive test rate has also ticked up over 1% again, after hitting a low of 0.8%.

“We’re at a point where caution and weekly reassessment is needed and if we make a mistake and things get out of control, we’ll have to go back to more draconian measures,” Hamer said.

Baker has repeatedly defended his decision to expand indoor dining and this week to increase capacity at retail and other establishments even as cases have started to rise, noting the state’s positive test rate has tumbled from 10% to around 1% for the past couple of months.

Contact tracing, he said, shows “the biggest concern” is “informal, no-rules, no-guidance gatherings” and not work.

“Some people are going to say we’re going too fast and some people are going to say we’re going too slow,” Baker said. But “we rethink the reopening pretty much every day.”

Dr. Irwin Redlener, head of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said there’s no cut-and-dried answer for governors, who have to play “3D chess” managing the at-times competing pressures of public health, the economy and the desire to get kids back to school.

“These are no easy answers to come by,” he said.

Dr. Todd Ellerin, director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health, said the uptick here is predictable with students returning to classrooms at all levels. But cases nationally and here in Massachusetts are “obviously going in the wrong direction.”

“I can’t fault the governor for pressing forward, although I have to say, this is a very tough time to do it,” Ellerin said. “I would feel more comfortable if this were the spring going into summer.”

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Medical cannabis was found to exhibit an overall positive effect on maintaining nightime sleep in patients with chronic pain, but frequent use was associated with problems of both waking up at night and falling asleep, according to study findings published in the journal BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.

Chronic pain is a debilitating condition affecting approximately 19% to 37% of adults in developed countries. Among those affected, there are high rates of comorbid insomnia, which causes symptoms such as difficulty initiating sleep, disrupted sleep, and early morning awakenings. Research on MC has exhibited positive, yet small effect sizes as a pain reliever, with further efficacy being reported on managing sleep.

“Research has demonstrated that the endocannabinoid system has a role in the regulation of sleep, including the maintenance and promotion of sleep,” said the study authors.

They note that many of the studies reporting a significant and positive impact of MC use on sleep are of poor quality due their small size and because the legal status of MC varies, warranting further examination on the growing popularity of MC to manage sleep problems and chronic pain.

The study authors examined the association between the use of whole plant cannabis and sleep problems among 128 patients with chronic pain (mean age, 61 ± 6 years; 49%, males), distinguished as MC users (n = 66) and nonusers (n = 62). Regression models tested the differences in sleep problems between the 2 study cohorts, with Pearson correlations between MC use measures (dose, length and frequency of use, number of strains used, tetrahydrocannabinol/cannabidiol levels) and sleep problems assessed among MC users. The results were adjusted for age, sex, pain level, and use of sleep and antidepressant medications.

Among the entire study cohort, 24.1% reported always waking up early and not falling back asleep, 20.2% reported always having difficulties falling asleep, and 27.2% reported always waking up during the night. Of the comparative study results, MC users were shown to be less likely to wake up at night than nonusers (mean: 4.59 vs 5.54; P = 0.018), with no further differences found in sleep measures between the groups.

In a final analysis of the MC users, Pearson correlations showed that frequency of MC use was the sole association with sleep issues, indicating the potential significance of tolerance among MC users. “Specifically, more frequent use was associated with more problems related to waking up at night and problems falling asleep,” said the study authors.

The researchers highlighted that limitations to the study, including MC administration and specific strain usage, may signal differential effects on sleep, warranting the need for future studies to examine this variability in more detail.

“These findings may have large public health impacts considering the ageing of the population, the relatively high prevalence of sleep problems in this population, along with increasing use of MC,” said the study authors.

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After 40 years, despite breakthroughs in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, Canadian scientists working in Kenya are still up against a stubborn roadblock: How do you encourage people to get tested for HIV?

“On paper, we have the means of dealing with the epidemic. But in practice, it is very different,” said Larry Gelmon, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba and director of the university’s program in Kenya. “We have the solutions. The research issues [now] are how do you get those solutions to the people who need them?”

Scientists from Winnipeg are gathering in Nairobi this week, marking the 40th anniversary of a research partnership, initially established between the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi before the world became aware of HIV/AIDS to try to control sexually transmitted infections in Kenya. That partnership, called the University of Manitoba-University of Nairobi Collaborative Research Program, grew to include researchers from the United States, Belgium and other Canadian universities, and it turned its attention to HIV/AIDS as the disease swept Africa in the 1980s.

The group’s work is far from over. In 2018, 25.7 million people were living with HIV in Africa and 1.1 million were infected that year, accounting for two-thirds of new HIV infections globally, according to the World Health Organization.

Over the decades, Dr. Gelmon said, the focus of the research collaborative has shifted from learning about HIV in the 1980s to trying to find a way to create a vaccine in the 1990s, which was unsuccessful. Since then, he said, it has focused on the social and cultural issues hindering the prevention and treatment of infection.

With the right medications, people with HIV can now live long lives. Although the death toll has plunged in Africa and around the world, the WHO estimates 470,000 people in Africa died of HIV-related causes in 2018 – more than 60 per cent of the estimated 770,000 deaths globally that year.

“A lot of the stigma and prejudice that prevented people from getting tested 30 years ago is still happening,” Dr. Gelmon said, adding that even though treatment is now available, many are hesitant to be treated because they do not want others to know they are HIV-positive.

For sex workers, anti-retroviral medications can be taken before having sex as a pre-exposure prophylactic to protect themselves, he added, but they are often reluctant to carry the pills for fear others will assume they are infected.

“So, to a large extent, the research that we’re doing now is how do you get people to get tested? How do you encourage them, if they’re on treatment, to stay on their treatment?” he said.

This involves various qualitative, operational research projects aimed at trying to figure out the best way to implement treatments and preventative measures beyond the laboratory and clinical settings. For instance, the group is working with sex workers in Nairobi to provide peer education, conduct HIV testing and hand out condoms in the places where they work, such as bars, clubs, hotels and bus stops.

Researchers are also working on new methods to prevent infection that are accessible and could be readily adopted. For example, building upon decades of the group’s research, Keith Fowke, head of the University of Manitoba’s department of medical microbiology and infectious diseases, is testing the use of a low daily dose of aspirin to block inflammation, as a way of preventing HIV target cells from getting into the genital tract.

Taking a pill every day would not be ideal for everyone, Dr. Fowke said. But for women at high risk of exposure to the virus, particularly sex workers, the common anti-inflammatory drug could turn out be an affordable, socially acceptable prevention tool they could add to their arsenal, he said.

Meanwhile, researchers have not abandoned their efforts to develop a vaccine or a cure.

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In more than 30 states, it is illegal for someone with HIV to have sex without first disclosing their status. Some are now pushing to change that, arguing that the laws are actually endangering public health.

More than 1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and their HIV status could conceivably put them behind bars. That’s what happened to Michael Holder.

“I served 8 1/2 years in prison and three years after on parole,” Holder says.

Back in 2000, Holder’s ex-girlfriend testified that he didn’t disclose his HIV status before they had sex. That’s a crime in Michigan and in most states in the country.

He says the day after she said that, she came in and recanted.

“She testified the truth and said that she had lied and said that she was jealous, and she loved me and that I had told her just like I had testified and said I’d told her,” Holder says. “And she told the truth, but it was too late.”

Holder couldn’t prove that he told her. Public health experts say that’s one of many problems with HIV criminalization laws. Ohio, Tennessee and Florida are the top prosecutors, charging more than 120 people in the last decade.

“Would you want to have to disclose your sexual practices and your personal health in front of a medical professional and your partner?” asks Daphne Kackloudis, of the Ohio Health Modernization Movement. “I don’t think anyone wants to have that difficult conversation in front of a third party in order to prove that they’ve had the conversation.”

She’s part of a group of public health experts pushing to change Ohio’s 1999 statute.

“A lot has happened since 1999, and lawmakers don’t necessarily know that,” she says. “And let’s be honest. A lot of citizens, you know, who aren’t lawmakers don’t know the advances that have been made in science and the reasons that we believe this law should be modernized.”

Medical advancements have helped turn HIV from a fatal infection into a manageable chronic condition.

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that if people take antiretroviral drugs as prescribed, the amount of HIV in their blood can become undetectable. If it stays undetectable, they have little risk of passing the virus to a partner through sex, and can live long, healthy lives.

This past June, the American Medical Association called for the total repeal of HIV criminalization. That sparked action for reforms in Washington, Missouri, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee and Florida.

“The data doesn’t support that any of these laws that criminalize HIV actually decrease transmission rates,” says Jada Hicks, with the New York-based Center for HIV Law and Policy.

In some places, the public health push has worked. California, Iowa and Michigan recently reformed their laws.

Ohio’s statute has been challenged multiple times since it was introduced. In a 2017 Ohio Supreme Court case, lawyer Samuel Peterson defended the law on behalf of the state.

“When you have sexual conduct, there are two parties to that conduct,” Peterson said in archival footage. “And the other person has a right to know and has a right to be party to the decision to engage in the sexual conduct.

Daphne Kackloudis says she understands that argument, but that’s only one part of the legal puzzle.

“We would never want someone who intentionally transmits HIV to not be able to be prosecuted under the statute. We think that’s not right,” she explains.

But she says, as it’s written, the law puts the burden on people like Michael Holder to prove that they disclosed.

She fears these laws, which intended to stop the spread of HIV, may actually be doing just the opposite, disincentivizing people to know their status in the first place.

“If they didn’t have the law, more people would come in and get tested, you know,” Holder says. “Because they wouldn’t have to risk having done to them what was done to me.”

According to the CDC, 1 in 7 people with HIV don’t even know they have the virus.

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Research led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has uncovered a new process that may help explain how Type 2 diabetes develops. In tests on live mice and human cells in the lab, the team found a new mechanism besides insulin resistance and high glucose levels that triggers pancreatic cells to begin overproducing insulin.

Type 2 diabetes is the form of the disease that’s usually a result of lifestyle choices, such as poor diet and not enough exercise. It involves a kind of vicious cycle of insulin – beta cells in the pancreas produce too much insulin, which causes the body to become resistant to it. That in turn means the beta cells could produce even more to compensate.

It was long thought that high glucose levels – most commonly caused by eating too much sugary and fatty foods – was the trigger for the beta cells to begin overproducing insulin. But it’s also been shown in the past that even beta cells isolated in a lab dish can over-secrete insulin, without glucose playing a part.

So the team on the new study investigated what else could be causing beta cells to overproduce insulin. In tests on obese, pre-diabetic mice, the researchers discovered a new, separate molecular pathway that can induce insulin secretion without glucose. Instead, the trigger appears to be fatty acids.

When levels of these fatty acids rose too high in the mice, a protein called Cyclophilin D (CypD) caused protons to “leak” into the mitochondria of the beta cells. This triggers them to boost production of insulin.

To check the mechanism, the team then engineered mice without the gene that codes for CypD, and found that their insulin stayed at regular levels.

The researchers also investigated whether the same mechanism could be occurring in humans, by testing human pancreas cells isolated in the lab. When exposed to high levels of fatty acids – levels found in obese humans – the cells began to produce more insulin. Again, there was no glucose present.

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If you remember the 1980s, you will likely summon up the image of the Grim Reaper or a black tombstone when asked to think about AIDS. Those images, embedded in our collective memory by two iconic Australian and British public health campaigns of that decade, reveal how AIDS has been both a medical and a cultural epidemic since it was first clinically observed in the US in 1981. In the words of American scholar Paula Treichler, AIDS has always partly been an “epidemic of meanings”.

As we commemorate another World AIDS Day and remember all those who have died, we must remind ourselves of all that is still left to do to eradicate HIV. We must also remember the role culture plays in shaping our understanding of the virus and those living with it.

If we take into account the highly homophobic social context in which news of the condition first started circulating, then its cultural dimensions become all the more important. We must consider what AIDS meant to people in the 1980s and 1990s, and what HIV still means today, at a time when antiretroviral therapies are being used successfully to manage existing infections and prevent new ones.

Take, for instance, these 1987 public service announcements, produced in the US for the State Health Division of Oregon:

These videos highlight some of the key features of the publically-funded AIDS awareness campaigns of the 1980s and early 1990s. Even if we ignore the fact that governments only publicly acknowledged AIDS years after the first known patients (homosexual men) started dying, these and other films of the time are evidence of the impact a homophobic mainstream culture had on the ways AIDS was dealt with in public.

Despite the fact that homosexual men had been one of the demographics most affected by the condition, these campaigns still refused to address homosexuals directly and communicate clearly to them ways in which homosexual sex could be made safer. Instead, they preferred to deal in visual metaphors and allusions aimed at an abstract general public.

Marked by a fear, on the part of the Thatcher and Reagan governments, that speaking directly to homosexuals could be seen as endorsing “deviant” homosexual behaviour, the often moralistic – and publicly-funded – health campaigns released during the peak of the Western AIDS crisis ignored the specific realities of those most affected by the epidemic.

Not only that, but health campaigns and news stories often played with metaphors that were not only deeply sexist and homophobic, but also inspired by the language of warfare. They also mostly chose to endorse celibacy or monogamy rather than educate people about risk-management and safer sex.

A fatal price

In Oregon’s “Revolver” video, for example, promiscuity is posited as the ultimate cause of AIDS. Further, the penis is represented by a gun and the (infected) semen by killer bullets, associating HIV transmission, in most cases unintentional, with murder.

Or consider the image below. Published in the popular science magazine Discover, in December 1985, medical illustrations and considerations about human anatomy are used to portray the rectum as “vulnerable” and the vagina as “rugged … designated to withstand the trauma of intercourse”. As a result, the article concluded “AIDS … is now – and is likely to remain – largely the fatal price one can pay for anal intercourse.”

Even in the realm of art, the earliest representations of HIV and AIDS weren’t any less problematic. When, in 1988, American photographer Nicholas Nixon included portraits of men living with AIDS in his show Photographs of People at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, activists were quick to respond with anger.

In the photos, which led activist group ACT UP New York to protest against the show, emaciated bodies of sick men are portrayed in a way that could be seen as objectifying them. In one image included in the show, the subject – Donald Perham – is depicted as an “AIDS body”, deprived of individuality or agency, his whole existence violently reduced by the camera to the syndrome that would eventually kill him. The photograph tells us nothing about him apart from his name and the health condition that will eventually destroy him. He is portrayed as a living corpse.

A new visual vocabulary

Despite the many counter-narratives of HIV and AIDS that artists and activists have been producing since the 1980s, this mainstream visual imaginary still informs how we picture HIV today and sustains the stigma that remains associated with the virus. While many recent films and TV productions such as How To Survive a Plague (2012), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Normal Heart (2014), or 120 BPM (2017), have been revisiting the early years of the AIDS crisis and looking at it from afar, we need a new visual vocabulary to make sense of the virus today, at a time when treatment has made HIV a manageable and untransmittable condition.

Further, if AIDS became such a defining spectre haunting gay men during the 1980s and the early 1990s, we need to think about the ways in which gay masculinities and sexual practices are today being shaped and represented in the age of antiretroviral therapies.

That is, in part, the aim of my new research project, funded by a fellowship of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which will look at contemporary representations of masculinity in “post-AIDS” gay pornography. The hope is that it will help us to understand the ways in which the AIDS crisis and its aftermath have impacted the lives, identities, and sexual practices of gay men, rather than just see it in terms of tombstones and grim reapers.

The post On World AIDS Day, we shouldn’t let homophobic and moralistic images of 1980s still haunt us appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Therefore, the definition should highlight this distinction between transgender persons and intersex persons enabling them to exercise the rights which they are entitled to. Some persons born or living with intersex traits can live with a non-binary identity or may choose to live as gender fluid persons. The Bill fails to account for these possibilities. Neither does it provide for the definition of terms such as gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics.

The Bill doesn’t say much about discrimination against intersex persons. Intersex conditions are termed in derogatory terms even by medical professionals. To address this, the Bill should have included a provision directing medical professionals to ensure that intersex traits are not characterised as “disorders of sex development”. Intersex traits should not be considered as genetic defects/ disorders, and terms like ‘gender dysphoria’ should be used to characterise them.

Unnecessary medical procedures

As per court-based jurisprudence, medical procedures are not a necessity for self-identification. Still, the Union Health Ministry has admitted that medical procedure including sex reassignment surgeries are being performed on intersex children. The Ministry has given the justification that this is only done after a thorough assessment of the child, with the help of appropriate diagnostic tests and only after taking a written consent of the patient/guardian. When this response was presented before the Madras High Court in Arunkumar, the court slammed the Health Ministry for its poor understanding of consent rights and imposed a ban on the practice of sex reassignment surgeries on intersex infants/children. The Bill fails to protect intersex persons from unnecessary medical intervention.

World over, the discourse around gender and sexuality has evolved a great deal in the last decade. However, the current legislative discourse on this issue suffers from lack of foundational understanding. Intersex persons are particularly vulnerable and experience barriers in access to education, employment, marriage, etc. In its current form, the Bill turns back the clock on decades of positive change brought about by intersex activists.

Prashant Singh is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India

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Abbott, an American medical devices and health care company, recently announced their discovery of a new strain of HIV, which is keeping medical researchers one step ahead of the virus. Researchers published their findings in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome explaining that the subtype of the virus found was called HIV-1 Group M, subtype L, marking the first time a mutation in Group M has been discovered since 2000.

The finding is especially notable because the Group M viruses are those that were responsible for the global AIDS crisis. Group M virus can be traced to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Sub-Saharan Africa and the sample, called Specimen CG-0018a-01, was collected in 2001 as part of an HIV prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) study. By discovering the mutation immediately, researchers and medical facilities are able to contain and study the virus, as well as develop treatments and anticipate and find new mutations of the virus.

“Since the beginning of the global AIDS pandemic, 75 million people have been infected with HIV and 37.9 million people today are living with the virus.” Says a press release from Abbot. Great strides in HIV research have been made in the past decades, which have led to effective treatments of those infected, HIV preventative medicines for high risk patients, and ever more strides to find an ultimate cure for the disease. Abbott’s discovery further highlights the great strides being made in front end research of the virus, which allows medical communities to understand the genome of the virus and how it could mutate in the future.

The mutation was discovered using next-generation sequencing technology, which allows researchers “to build an entire genome at higher speeds and lower costs.” Abbott used this new technology and coupled it with “new techniques to help narrow in on the virus portion of the sample to fully sequence and complete the genome.”

“‘Identifying new viruses such as this one is like searching for a needle in a haystack,’ said Mary Rodgers, Ph.D., a principal scientist and head of the Global Viral Surveillance Program, Diagnostics, Abbott, and one of the study authors. ‘By advancing our techniques and using next generation sequencing technology, we are pulling the needle out with a magnet.’” As stated by Abbott.

The findings also highlight how interconnected HIV researchers have become globally and Abbott has plans to share their findings and the new strain with other researchers. As on of the study’s authors, Carole McArthur, Ph.D., M.D., professor in the departments of oral and craniofacial sciences, University of Missouri — Kansas City, explains, “In an increasingly connected world, we can no longer think of viruses being contained to one location.” Explaining, “This discovery reminds us that to end the HIV pandemic, we must continue to outthink this continuously changing virus and use the latest advancements in technology and resources to monitor its evolution.”

Luckily, HIV is not the death sentence it was just 40-years ago and stigma around the disease has waned. With research teams staying vigilant and interconnected there is hope that HIV will never again ravage families as communities, and indeed, that a cure may be in sight.

The post New Strain Of HIV Discovered appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

The growing phenomenon of transgender detransitioning has hit the headlines recently. Although it is difficult to estimate how common detransitioning is, the networks of detransitioners around the world attract growing attention both of the media and of the medical community.

The possibility of regret and reversal of gender transitioning is an important factor that cosmetic surgeons have to consider before they start the treatment of transgender patients. Due to the possibility of detransitioning, the scope and pace of surgical procedures has to be carefully adjusted according to the medical history and psychological condition of the individual patient.

Transgender detransitioners are the people who chose to return to their original biological gender after first changing it. Despite the controversy that detransitioners cause inside the LGBT community, healthcare professionals expect the phenomenon to become even more widespread as a growing number of people start transgender transitioning at a very early age.

“Gender dysphoria is a very complicated condition not only sexually, but also psychologically. Patients often suffer from conflicting emotions and aspirations. Therefore, gender transitioning has to be a subtle and gradual process. I would strongly advise against quick and radical surgery that transgender person may come to regret,” said Andrius Pajeda, surgeon at Nordesthetics clinic.

The World Health Organization has recently reclassified gender dysphoria – a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity – as sexual rather than a mental condition. But it causes great psychological stress and a recent study suggests that surgical treatment of gender dysphoria results in psychological relief.

However, Andrius Pajeda suggested starting with corrections that could make a transgender person feel better about the general appearance of the body, such as rhinoplasty, lip augmentation, other facial corrections. These could be followed by liposuction and breast or buttock implants.

“The full range of our services to transgender patients varies from facial corrections to breast removal and buttock lift. However, the particular list and sequence of operations depend on the individual patient. Our doctors pay full attention to the medical history of the patient and the advice of mental therapists in trying to find the treatment that would make that particular person feel better, not worse,” Andrius Pajeda explained.

According to him, up to 2-4 transgender persons are treated at Nordesthetics clinic every month Most of the procedures offered by the clinic could be reversed or their results could be corrected if a particular patient considered detransitioning.

Nordesthetics clinic is one of the leading centers of medical tourism in the Baltic states. Located in Kaunas, Lithuania, the clinic provides plastic surgery procedures to foreign patients of whom the majority come from the UK and other EU countries. Nordesthetics clinic offers European standards of high-quality surgery for prices 2-3 times lower than those in the UK and Western EU. In addition to that, the clinic provides full travel support to their patients as well as the possibility of recovery treatment in Druskininkai – the Lithuanian SPA resort very popular among their patients.

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Several major strides have been made towards a cure for HIV in recent years, and now, researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) may have found a new potential target. In lab tests, the team identified a cellular “switch” that could be turned off to clear out the virus lying dormant inside cells.

Currently, people with HIV undergo a life-long treatment called antiretroviral therapy, which suppresses symptoms and keeps the infection from developing into AIDS. But it isn’t a full cure – the virus can lay dormant inside a patient’s cells, ready to start multiplying again if the treatment is ever stopped.

Finding ways to kill the virus while it lays dormant is the holy grail of HIV research, and now the UCSD team says it’s a step closer to a cure. They found that a particular RNA molecule appears to be elevated in people with HIV, and in tests on cultured cells they showed that silencing or removing it prevented HIV from recurring after antiretroviral therapy was stopped.

The molecule is what’s known as a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), meaning it doesn’t encode for proteins but instead helps control the switching of genes on and off within a cell. The team has dubbed this particular molecule HIV-1 Enhanced LncRNA (HEAL). Interestingly, the HEAL gene appears to have emerged fairly recently, and it regulates HIV replication in immune cells.

“This is one of the key switches that the HIV field has been searching for three decades to find,” says Tariq Rana, an author of the study. “The most exciting part of this discovery has not been seen before. By genetically modifying a long noncoding RNA, we prevent HIV recurrence in T cells and microglia upon cessation of antiretroviral treatment, suggesting that we have a potential therapeutic target to eradicate HIV and AIDS.”

In experiments on isolated human immune cells in the lab, the researchers either silenced HEAL, or snipped it out of the genome using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. In both cases, HIV didn’t re-emerge after the antiretroviral therapy stopped.

“Our results suggest that HEAL plays a critical role in HIV pathogenesis,” says Rana. “Further studies are needed to explain the mechanism that leads to HEAL expression after an individual is infected by HIV, but this finding could be exploited as a therapeutic target.”

Of course, this is a very early test, and it hasn’t yet been performed in animals, let alone humans. Still, it’s an interesting new avenue for research into a potential cure.

And it’s not the only one scientists are investigating. Earlier this year a team used a new type of antiretroviral therapy called LASER ART to suppress the virus, then snipped it out using CRISPR – effectively curing the infection in mice. Another team used stem cells to put a man into long-term remission for only the second time ever – but the treatment itself was dangerous, painful and not likely to be recommended to general patients in its current form.

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According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), worldwide, raised blood pressure is estimated to cause over nine million deaths every year.

The prevalence of hypertension (HTN), more commonly known as high BP, is seeing a steep rise among Indians—in both rural and urban areas—for a variety of reasons. According to a recent study, there is a high prevalence of masked hypertension (difference in the readings of blood pressure at home and at clinic/office) and white-coat hypertension (a syndrome whereby a patient’s feeling of anxiety in a medical environment results in an abnormally high reading when their blood pressure is measured) in Indians. The study also found that Indians have a higher average resting heart rate of 80 beats per minute, higher than the desired rate of 72 beats per minute.

Commissioned by Eris Lifesciences, The India Heart Study has been conducted under the aegis of Batra Hospital and Medical Research Centre. It found that of the 1,643 participants studied in Mumbai, 15.4 per cent of the respondents were oblivious of their high blood pressure levels (masked hypertension) and 22.8 per cent of respondents were found to have white-coat hypertension and were misdiagnosed. Another striking finding of the study is that unlike other countries, Indians seem to have higher blood pressure in the evenings than in mornings.

This, suggest experts, should make doctors rethink the time advised for anti-hypertensive drug dosage. Dr. Upendra Kaul, cardiologist, chairman and dean of Academics and Research of BHMRC, who was the principal investigator of the study, said, “India Heart Study points to a need for better clinical management of hypertension in India. This is India-specific data and should help shape the best practices for the diagnosis of high blood pressure among Indians. The study presents exhaustive data on the various aspects of hypertension.” Masked Hypertension, if undetected, is a dangerous phenomenon. It is important to monitor one’s blood pressure, beyond the clinic, even at home, according to prescribed guidelines. Because accurate diagnosis of hypertension is important to fight against the disease and improve health outcomes.

The study was conducted on ‘drug-naive’ set of participants, using a comprehensive process of taking blood pressure readings. The investigators examined the blood pressure of 18,918 participants (male and female) through 1,233 doctors across 15 states over a period of nine months and their blood pressure was monitored at home for four times in a day during seven consecutive days.

Throwing light on the study, Dr. Willem Verberk, PhD., Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), and a key investigator, said, “For the ‘correct’ detection of hypertension, home blood pressure monitoring is advised. However, different patients may have different co-morbidities, like diabetes, which makes the use of validated devices for home blood pressure monitoring important and needs to be validated separately for pregnant women, adolescents and people with kidney disorders.”

White-coat hypertensives, who are misdiagnosed and put on anti-hypertensives, have to take unnecessary medication. There is also a risk of hypotension (low blood pressure, less than 90/60) in such persons. On the other hand, a masked hypertensive may go undiagnosed running the risk of complications for heart, kidney, and brain, leading to premature mortality. “High blood pressure affects multiple organs in the body, including the kidneys. Uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to Chronic Kidney Disease which complicates disease management,” added Dr. Prashant Rajput, a renowned Nephrologist.

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LONDON, Aug 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Delays in rolling out an HIV prevention pill in England are putting gay men’s lives at risk, with thousands buying it online without medical supervision, HIV campaigners said on Wednesday.

England is lagging behind the United States and Kenya, where the highly-effective drug is more widely available, as health authorities only give the pills to gay and bisexual men taking part in a three-year clinical trial, which ends in 2020.

“This is a scandal,” said Will Nutland, co-founder of PrEPster, which is lobbying for the once-daily pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) pill, also known by its drug brand name Truvada, to be offered in routine HIV prevention services.

“We have a technology that is cheap, accessible, is effective and is cost-effective, yet we’re still being denied full roll-out of this drug,” said Nutland, who is also a doctor.

“We know of people who have attempted to access PrEP and then have ended up being diagnosed with HIV three or six months later.”

Studies show that PrEP can cut by 99% the transmission rate of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Some 340,000 people are taking it globally, according to New York-based advocacy group AVAC, 40% of them in the United States.

The number of places on England’s National Health Service (NHS) trial in January was more than doubled to 26,000 from 10,000 due to soaring demand, but no date has been set for a potential national roll-out.

Other regions in Britain have different policies. PrEP is available in Scotland through sexual health clinics.

A survey of almost 2,400 PrEP users in Britain published on Wednesday, by the UK’s public health agency and advocacy groups PrEPster and iwantPrEPnow, found that 54% got free pills via the English NHS trial and 37% bought them privately, usually online.

Some people are also buying PrEP informally through friends and contacts, while a private doctor’s prescription costs about 400 pounds ($482) a month, according to PrEPster.

The survey found that only half of those who paid for PrEP privately took the necessary kidney function tests before or while taking the pills, and nearly a quarter had to stop taking the drug because it was too expensive.

It is important to test for HIV and Hepatitis B before starting PrEP and to have regular urine and blood tests to ensure the drug is not damaging bones or kidneys, PrEPster said on its website, which advises on how to buy pills safely online.

“Despite the side effects of taking PrEP being minimal for many users, it’s vital anyone wanting to or currently taking PrEP has the relevant screenings,” said Liam Beattie, a spokesman for the Terrence Higgins Trust HIV charity.

Some 38 million people globally are living with HIV, with 1.7 million newly infected in 2018, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations’ AIDS agency. ($1 = 0.8293 pounds) (Reporting by Rachel Savage @rachelmsavage; Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. 

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A Sioux City plastic surgeon facing action by the Iowa Medical Board says he expects to be vindicated.

The board alleges Dr. Adam Smith failed to provide appropriate care to 17 patients from December 2014 to September of 2017. 

“I have done my best for my whole time in Siouxland here to provide the best care I can for patients.”

A hearing on the allegations is scheduled for October.

“From my standpoint, it looks like they are doing their due diligence, they are investigating and they’re calling me to the Iowa Board to basically testify in front of them to why I made the decision I did.”

Dr. Smith admits he no longer has surgical privileges at Mercy or UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s because of clerical errors when his mail was forwarded to Ohio after he and his wife separated.   

“Paperwork had fallen through the cracks and I wasn’t even aware of some of these actions and they kind of snowballed downhill.”  to the point where I am supposed to have a hearing with UnityPoint to discuss these things.”

Siouxland Public Media talked to one of Dr. Smith’s former patients who says she suffered disfigurement and extreme infection after a tummy tuck. 

Dr. Smith says he can’t comment on specific patients without their permission.

Democrats in the Iowa House are continuing their call for an oversight hearing about Jerry Foxhoven’s resignation.  

The former Department of Human Services Director disclosed yesterday that he was asked to resign after reportedly objected to a salary-sharing agreement with the governor’s office, 

Foxhoven also told a Des Moines TV station he believes his objection to the salary-sharing agreement is why Reynolds asked for his resignation in June. But Reynolds’ spokesman says that wasn’t the reason, adding Foxhoven never raised concerns about it.

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