Dr David Cox

A gut toxin that’s been linked to colorectal cancers for more than two decades may be contributing to the sharp rise of the disease in younger people, according to landmark research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
A number of species of harmful gut bacteria — including certain strains of E.coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Citrobacter koseri — produce a toxin called colibactin. Since the mid 2000s, studies have repeatedly shown that this toxin can inflict distinct DNA damage on colon...

If you’ve ever reached for a Rennie after dinner you are not alone. Heartburn or acid reflux after a blow out meal is increasingly common. Anyone bothered by this unpleasant condition will be all too familiar with the sour taste and uncomfortable burn from their stomach contents being regurgitated back up their oesophagus and into their throat.
According to the NHS, an astonishing 20 per cent of the adult UK population have problems with severe acid reflux, with rising rates of obesity though...

Faecal transplants can boost the immune systems of patients with advanced cancer, improving their response to immunotherapy. Could this experimental treatment play a major role in the future?

In early 2022, the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston began enrolling patients with late-stage disease for a unique clinical trial.
With a matter of months to live, and all other treatment options exhausted, the centre’s oncologists offered these patients a chance to see whether manipulating thei...

More than 800 people in the U.S. have had measles since the beginning of the year, according to NBC News data. The majority of cases are in West Texas, where an outbreak that shows no signs of abating began in January.
Nearly all of the cases are among people who haven’t been vaccinated, but 3% of the identified cases are so-called breakthrough infections. People got sick despite being either partially or fully vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
Infectious diseases doc...

Genetic factors are thought to play a major role in the development of autism – but for decades what they are has proven elusive. Now scientists are starting to uncover clues.
Until the 1970s, the prevailing belief in psychiatry was that autism was a consequence of bad parenting. In the 1940s, the Austrian psychiatrist Leo Kanner had coined the controversial "refrigerator mother" theory suggesting that autism arose from early childhood trauma, created by mothers who were cold, uncaring and re...

At times, getting older can feel like a never-ending list of health check-ups. Vaccines you’re now eligible for, screenings to arrange, and a firm suggestion from your GP to begin a new course of medication.
We’re often warned about the long-term effects of certain drugs, but there are some midlife jabs or pills which appear to have hidden protective qualities, especially for the brain.
Take shingles vaccines for instance. A new study from Stanford University published in the renowned journal...

Your reaction times can reveal a surprising amount about what's going on inside your body, from your brain health to your risk of an early death.

Of the course of our lifetimes, our reaction times will slowly wane. It's one of the reasons why athletic performance tends to drop off from our 30s onwards.

Scientists are finding that being able to maintain an average reaction speed can be a key indicator that our brain is still in good working order, even into our latter decades. But that isn't a...

Low in calories and fat but packed with vitamins, mushrooms are a nutritional force for good and a tasty addition to any plate. Earthy, meaty and comforting, they’re amongst the most versatile of ingredients you could find in your fridge. Just as healthy as the ubiquitous avocado – and certainly as...

Do you struggle to sleep through the night without disruptions? If so, you’re far from alone. Sleep disturbances are something of an epidemic in the UK, with almost one in five people in the country getting insufficient sleep, according to the charity Mental Health UK.

But it isn’t just nodding off which is the problem but actually staying asleep. According to the not-for-profit Benenden Health, which recently commissioned a sleep survey of 2,000 adults across the country, half of those aged ...

At the age of 60, Geir Selbæk, a professor and research director at the Norwegian National Centre for Ageing and Health, reluctantly decided to start taking statins. “My father and his two brothers had all needed a coronary bypass operation at 60,” says Selbæk. “So when I reached the same age, I started thinking about this, and some examinations revealed I had some plaques in my coronary arteries.”

But despite his family history, Selbaek’s reluctance to take statins stemmed from the reported ...

The differences between the sexes is a topic of endless debate at the dinner party table, but the latest research reveals what many of us already suspected: that there are profound differences between the brains of men and women, and this governs everything from our decision-making and emotional responses, to our risk of certain diseases.
Last year a long-term study by Stanford Medicine used powerful “deep learning” computer algorithms to analyse brain-imaging data from more than 1,000 men an...

Zombie cells are a hot topic in the scientific community, with groundbreaking research being conducted worldwide to find ways to halt their damaging and inflammatory effects

Until recently, few outside the specialised world of ageing science had ever heard of senescent cells, the so-called “zombie cells”. These cells are located in organs and tissues throughout our bodies and stop dividing as normal but instead linger, refusing to die and perpetuating chronic inflammation.
In the past d...

If you took an average UK family, and lined up children, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, you’d likely notice a distinct shift in height from one generation to the next, especially in the male line.
During the course of the 20th century, the average height in the UK rose by nearly 4in (10cm) on average, as living standards shifted, childhood starvation disappeared as a public health threat and common infectious diseases were eradicated.
Earlier this year, a new study found that m...

In the spring of 2022, Tim Story’s doctor told him that he likely had just months to live.
Story, a high school football coach in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, had been diagnosed with Stage 3 small bowel cancer two years earlier, at the age of 49, after mysterious pains in his side turned out to be a tumor in his small intestine. Surgery and several grueling rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy had failed to stop the cancer, which had spread to other organs.
“I’m not a crying man, but my wife...

Last year, Jessica Kent, a doctor working in the department of emergency medicine at the University of Toronto, found herself with an unusual patient. Confused, nauseous, and slumped on the floor of the emergency department, readings showed that his blood pressure had soared to levels far higher than would be expected for an otherwise healthy 21-year-old university student. When medical staff attempted to ask some simple questions, his responses were nonsensical.
But this patient wasn’t drunk...