Aster Medical Journal (AMJ)

Ten plus months, and a million and more deaths. People around the world are now longing for closure of the new ‘normalcy’ imposed on them. The world waits in fortitude for the end of it, even if everyday life will never be quite the same as it was be

A pandemic has two typical endings. One, a medical ending where the curve flattens, and rates of incidence and death plummet. Two, the social ending, where the fear factor about the outbreak wanes and the people learn to live with a disease, opting o

The CDC released a report describing a "multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults" or (MIS-A), months after a similar condition was reported in children. MIS-A is a severe illness that targets multiple organs and causes increased inflammation in th

Africa is free from wild poliovirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on 25 August — leaving just two countries where the virus remains endemic, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Africa Regional Certification Commission, an independent body

Four-month-old Hadia was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus (fluid in the brain) and club foot. Sophia, a community rehabilitation expert, is showing her mother, Zaina, a treatment called the Ponseti method, which uses stretches and casts to corre

Doctors in Bengaluru have come across cases of children, who have developed diabetes after contracting COVID-19. In a person with Type 1 diabetes, the body doesn’t produce enough insulin which breaks down sugar and turns it into energy. Dr Srikanta J

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the greatest challenges modern medicine has ever faced. Doctors and scientists are scrambling to find treatments and drugs that can save the lives of infected people and perhaps even prevent them from getting sick in t

David Quammen predicted everything. There would indeed be a new disease, likely from the coronavirus family, coming out of a bat, and it would likely emerge in or around a wet market in China. But what was not predictable was how unprepared we would

A bat virus specialist known as China’s “batwoman” and her lab in Wuhan have become the centre of a conspiracy theory related to the origin of the coronavirus. The U.S. President Donald Trump insists he has seen evidence coronavirus was leaked from t

Overall, central causes were responsible for 47% cases; peripheral causes were seen in 31% cases, functional and psychiatric causes in 12% of patients and other causes in 9% of cases. Vestibular migraine was the most common central cause, Benign paro

The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing challenge to public health systems around the world. It has exposed the stark reality that many of these systems could be better prepared to make effective and coordinated responses to combat and contain the spread

Long before the world had ever heard of COVID-19, Kay Tye set out to answer a question that has taken on new resonance in the age of social distancing: When people feel lonely, do they crave social interactions in the same way a hungry person craves

1DNB-PG Resident, Department of Pulmonology, Aster Medcity, Kochi, India; 2Head of Department and Lead Consultant, Department of Pulmonology, Aster Medcity, Kochi, India; 3Consultant Pulmonologist, Aster Medcity, Kochi, India; 4Specialist in Pulmonol

Mitochondria play an important role in the generation of adenosine triphosphate via the electron-transport chain through oxidative phosphorylation. Mitochondrial dysfunction often leads to disorders that present with various neurologic, hepatic and m

The ongoing pandemic has given us a unique opportunity to transform India’s health system, which needs to be prioritised and escalated through infrastructure, investment and manpower. By undertaking radical reforms, India will not only be able to sav