The Daily Mail reports of a study from Thailand which has found that turmeric may help prevent heart attacks in people who have just had bypass surgery.
The paper reports that the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of the turmeric (a curcimin) can help ease the damage caused to the heart by the prolonged lack of blood flow during surgery.
The researchers studied 121 patients who had non-emergency bypass surgery at their hospital between 2009 and 2011 and was published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Cardiology.
Over on BBC online is a report of a Glasgow-based doctor who is leading the world's biggest study into Parkinson's disease.
The website says Dr Donald Grosset, a neurologist at Glasgow University, and Parkinson's UK were hoping for 3,000 volunteers to take part in the study that aims to find better ways of both diagnosing and treating the disease.'
Dr Grosset hopes to identify markers in the blood which could be used to create a simple diagnostic test for the disease. The project will eventually link up to 40 research centres across the UK.
The first specialist ovary freezing clinic is due to open in the UK. The paper reports that women ‘in their twenties and early thirties will be able to "bank" their ovarian tissue when it is most fertile, and have it re-implanted years later.'
The procedure could cost up to £16,000 and involves extracting about a third of the tissue of one of the two ovaries then storing it in liquid nitrogen at temperatures of minus 190 degrees centigrade. When the woman decides she is ready for children it is thawed and re-inserted into the ovary.
The paper says the people in the countries that this procedure is currently available in – including Denmark, Belgium and the US – have largely been cancer patients.
