Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The virus spreads through blood-to-blood contact, and is usually associated with the use of intravenous drug use, blood donations and other unhygienic use of medical equipment leading to exchange of blood. Once infected, a patient can go years without facing severe symptoms, like liver failure and cirrhosis, only to feel it’s accumulated effects after a long period.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder where the body does not produce or effectively use the hormone insulin, resulting in elevated levels of glucose in the blood. Monitoring the amount of blood glucose can aid effective diagnosis, treatment, and access to quality healthcare management to diabetic patients. One of the ways to monitor blood glucose is through commercially available biosensors. Although such a test can be done at home at any time, there is a growing need to have pain-free alternatives. Hence, researchers are exploring glucose biosensors that do not need so much blood and are reliable, accurate, biodegradable, biocompatible and user-friendly. In a recent study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at the Indian Institutes of Technology Indore and Bombay, have developed one such sensor.

Hypertension is the most prevalent chronic ailment in India. According to the National Health Profile (NHP) 2019 data, of all the patients who visited government clinics in 2018, 6.19% of the people were diagnosed with hypertension. It is higher than the people diagnosed with diabetes, the next prevalent chronic disease in India, which accounts for 4.75%. However, the numbers could be an underestimation, since the NHP does not assess people who visit the private clinics.

Researchers from IIT Bombay, Microsoft India and Google Inc, develop a search system to extract meaningful data from live social media posts

Dr Neena Gupta, Associate Professor at the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2019, in the field of Mathematical Sciences. This prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the country for research in Science, honours scientists for significant and cumulative contribution to their area of research. Dr Gupta, the youngest person in Mathematical Sciences to receive this award till date, has been recognised for her contributions to affine algebraic geometry, especially in proposing a solution to the Zariski Cancellation Problem.

The Indian monsoon, which sees much variability, has been crucial to the country's economy. It affects 42% of employed individuals in the country — farmers and those working in the agricultural sector. At times, a 'normal' monsoon brings enough rain to keep everyone happy, but sometimes, there is either a deluge or a drought. With recent meteorological advances, these variations can be predicted and recorded. But, how do we go back hundreds of years in time to understand the historical variability in Indian monsoon? Corals in the Red Sea may have answers, says a study by American researchers.

In a recent study, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, have shown that the release of calcium from the neurons in specific synapses promotes their reuse.

In a recent study, scientists from the Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, have found a new species of earth-boring dung beetle in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh during one of their field expeditions. Named after the district it was discovered in, Enoplotrupes tawangensis belongs to the family Geotrupidae.

In a new study, the researchers from the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bengaluru, in collaboration with researchers from France and Chile, provide us with an understanding of the physical forces that drive axonal beading and retraction. The findings could hold new insights on understanding neurodegeneration. The results of the study, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), are published in the Biophysical Journal.

In India, one woman dies of cervical cancer every 8 minutes, and for every two women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, one succumbs to it. In 2018, all over the country, 7,84,821 people lost their lives to cancer. Numerous scientific research is underway to discover new and improved drugs for cancer. Chemotherapy, where anti-cancer drugs are administered to kill cancerous cells, is one of the traditional and most successful treatment methods. In a recent study, Dr Sumit Ghosh, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, discusses cisplatin, the first-ever metal-based drug used in chemotherapy.