In 2015, I was living with a Malaysian Chinese flatmate in the United Kingdom. Smiling. Greetings. Smart-causal outfits. Everything from her seemed fair. I took several weeks co-living in the accommodation did I realise some abnormalities from her. She would easily get outrageous, emotional and sometimes very hyper. All these “abnormalities” were, at first, covered by her 10 A*s and 4 A*s scoresheets in Malaysia’s IGCSE and A-levels respectively, alongside her good-looking figure – a promising young lady, as many might conclude.

The main manifestations of peritonitis are acute abdominal pain (right), abdominal tenderness and abdominal guarding which are exacerbated by moving the peritoneum eg coughing (forced cough may be used as a test), flexing one’s hips or eliciting the Blumberg sign (aka rebound tenderness, meaning that pressing a hind on the abdomen elicits less pain than releasing the hand abruptly, which will aggravate the pain, as the peritoneum snaps back into place).

Higher exposure to commonly used oral antibiotics (right) is linked to an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease according to a recently published study by researchers form the Helsinki University Hospital, Finland.

Kuala Lumpur: It happened suddenly. One morning in 2006, Lokasundari Vijaya Sankar, a former lecturer from Petaling Jaya, woke up with her whole body feeling stiff.

ANTIBODIES that exist in the joints before the onset of rheumatoid arthritis can cause pain even in the absence of arthritis, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report.

KOTA KINABALU: Traditional and complementary medicine also referred as Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) has become popular among the population of Malaysian for health maintenance and disease prevention, especially cancer. A holistic approach of “emphasising on health rather than on disease” has greatly influenced the development of CAM and prevalence of CAM usage.

KOTA KINABALU: ‘Are these medications safe to be taken in pregnant women?’ ‘Can I take these medications if I’m pregnant?’ These are important questions yet rarely asked by patients when they’re collecting their medication at the pharmacy.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) remains as one of the largest pandemics in the world. Since its outbreak in North America in the early 1970s, approximately 75 million people have become infected with HIV. Currently, approximately 37.5 million people are living with HIV while 22 million are already on treatment. .

KUALA LUMPUR: The number of asthma cases saw an increase of 3.5 per cent to 1,265 cases for the week of Sept 15 Sept to 21 compared to 1,222 cases in the previous week, due to the current haze blanketing most parts of the country since a few weeks ago.

A three-fold jump since 1975 in the percentage of adults worldwide who are obese has been driven mainly by a shift in diet and lack of exercise, but genes do play a role as well, according a large-scale study.