Dr David Cox

Scientists want to use the bacteria living in your gut and mouth to help you sleep better at night.

As you lie in bed tonight, your body will be a teeming mass of activity. Across almost every inch of you – and inside you too – billions of tiny organisms are writhing and jostling for space. But if that horrifying thought is likely to keep you up at night, consider this: they might also help you get a better night's sleep.
Emerging research suggests that the communities of bacteria, viruses ...

The condition of our lungs can reveal a great deal about our wider health. Luckily you can also get them into better shape.

How old do you think your lungs are? With every breath, they are exposed to a myriad of pollutants, microbes, dust and allergens. Unsurprisingly this can take a toll on these delicate organs, accelerating how they age. But they also can affect how the rest of your body ages too.
In early May 2025, an international team of respiratory experts published one of the first ...

An over-the-counter nasal spray which has been used for years as a safe and effective treatment for seasonal allergies could potentially prevent Covid infections, according to clinical trial results released Tuesday.
The antihistamine azelastine works as an antiviral against a range of respiratory infections, including influenza, RSV and the virus that causes Covid, a growing number of studies have shown.
German scientists at Saarland University Hospital recruited 450 adults, mostly in their ...

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.