Dr David Cox

Based on new European Commission data, Ireland has the second-highest rate of new cancer diagnoses out of all European Union nations, with more than 24,000 new cases every single year.
As Professor Patrick Redmond, a GP, associate professor at RCSI, and leading cancer care researcher notes, cancer is now the leading cause of mortality in Ireland, causing 28% of deaths each year: “It’s a big public health issue. It’s taken over from heart disease as the major contributor in terms of mortality ...

At the turn of the century, HIV was so rampant in Botswana that politicians and doctors viewed it as an existential threat. One in eight infants were reported to be infected at birth, while rates of mother to child transmission either through pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding ranged from between 20 and 40%, according to UNAIDS. Between 1990 and 2000, mortality among children under five almost doubled due to HIV.
With a population of just 1.7 million people, no cure available and the seco...

Since they first met in 2009, Sarah Wellband and her partner James have settled into a nightly routine which involves, at the minimum, sharing the best part of a bottle of wine together.
“We have a gin and tonic, followed by two or three glasses of wine with dinner and watching TV,” says Wellband, a 62-year-old remedial hypnotherapist.
Such a routine, seven nights a week, would probably amount to somewhere between 46 and 62 units of alcohol per week, depending on whether that third glass of w...

As a junior doctor in her mid-thirties, working an average of 80 hours a week while raising young children, Cathy Wield found herself both burnt out and attempting to deal with suppressed childhood trauma.
“As a child, my parents lived overseas, and I was sent away to boarding school from the age of nine,” recalls Wield, now 65. “I hated it, and managed to bury the memories of what was a very difficult and traumatic time for me. But when my eldest child won a place at the Royal Ballet School,...

Men with incurable prostate cancer could be given precious extra time by tailored immunotherapy.
Scientists have said a new drug combination has had an “extraordinary” effect on some patients with no other hope, keeping the disease at bay for more than four years.
The Neptunes trial found that the drug cocktail could extend life when conventional hormone therapies have stopped working, shrinking tumours when given to the right patients.
Hormone-based drugs that block the production of testost...

As a consultant haematologist, I spend my working life treating patients with blood cancers at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, but like many, I also have my own personal history with cancer.
My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer in his 60s, and while he went through a number of lines of treatments over more than a decade, he eventually died from the disease in his late 70s.
Now at the age of 54, which is very close to when my dad was diagnosed, I have had a PSA test done,...

For years, Philip Goulder has been obsessed with a particularly captivating idea: In the hunt for an HIV cure, could children hold the answers?

The moment Merry Fitzpatrick realized that Gaza’s malnutrition crisis had progressed to a newer and deadlier phase was when surgeons at the few hospitals still operational on the Strip reported that wounds were no longer closing.

A CPAP machine with a clear mask ready for sleep therapy.Photograph: Getty Images

In 2023, Mitchell Miller, a sleep medicine doctor based in Clearwater, Florida, received a visit from an unusual patient.

Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer among men in England, with cases surging among both men and women by 25 per cent between 2019 and 2023 according to NHS data. It’s also the second deadliest form of the disease for men after lung cancer, killing one man every 45 minutes despite being highly curable if caught in time.
Yet there is still no formal screening programme for prostate cancer in the UK. In the US, Czech Republic and Lithuania by contrast, screening is offered to men w...

Microplastics have even been found inside our bones – but what impact are they having on our health? Here's everything we know about what they're doing to our bodies.
Initiated by Victorian aristocrat and landowner John Bennett Lawes, who later became a successful pioneer of modern fertilisers, the aim was to test out various ideas for boosting wheat production. But without the help of modern technology, the only means of storing data was to meticulously collect samples of dried wheat grain, ...

For the past four decades, my family has grappled with a mystery – can midlife mental health problems actually precipitate the onset of dementia?
Back in the early 1960s, my grandfather suffered the sudden, unexpected loss of his twin brother, a deeply traumatic event from which he never fully recovered. Of course, at that time bereavement counselling or therapy did not really exist, and by all accounts, it left a marked change on his personality.
He began suffering from mood swings, unable t...