Health Report

If you mention Transient Global Amnesia – TGA – chances are that nobody has heard of it. When Dasha Ross lost her memory for a day she was diagnosed as having experienced this mysterious ‘neurological enigma'. It affects over a thousand Australians a year, and Dasha was determined to find out why it happened and what caused it.

One of the sessions at the recent World Science Festival was The Pulse of the Pandemic with Michael Osterholm, who spoke about pandemics past, present, and future. He's researched them for most of his career and was one of the first to warn that the current one was going to be bad. Plus recent research on pre-diabetes - which sometimes does not lead to diabetes.

Recently the issue has been raised about the credibility of people with mental health issues - what does psychiatric research and evidence tell us about the issues? And concern from doctors that their capacity to comment on COVID-19 vaccines is being reduced. And a West Australian group of researchers has looked at whether testosterone can really do all we think it can.

The Auckland COVID-19 Lockdown; Microplastics and seafood - what do we actually know about its effect on our health; a team of researchers from Monash University has discovered that a cardiac drug (carvedilol) could greatly reduce breast cancer progression; and the lifespan of Australians in capital cities can vary by 30 years, depending on where someone lives. In regional Australia there’s a greater difference.

What you can find out in cancer drug trials when you follow then for years, and the huge disparity in cancer clinical trials between rich, and low to middle income countries, and how there's a mismatch between burden of disease and what's actually studied.

Breastfeeding mothers want more advice about whether it's safe to have a COVID-19 vaccine whilst they are breastfeeding; and what we know about the immunising properties of breast milk; weighing up the means to decrease our alcohol consumption; and how to reduce salt in packaged food.