While it is well-known that trees produce oxygen, and thereby contribute in a positive way to the balance of gases in the air, a substance produced by them called isoprene – which also presents several benefits for the plant – has now been proved to have a negative impact on the environment and people's health.

Environmentalists and biologists have known for quite some time that isoprene was used by trees to protect their leaves from oxygen damage and also from temperature fluctuations, both from natural and unnatural causes.

However, in 2004 teams learned that this substance in fact led to the production of particles which could get lodged in lungs – leading to pulmonary cancer and asthma – damaging them and other tissue, as well as cause problems for the environment.

Nevertheless, it was not known exactly how this came about, which is what scientists have now discovered as life science investigations continue to reveal more secrets about the world around us.

Assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health Jason Surratt revealed that isoprene, once it comes into direct contact with sunlight, chemically alters when it reacts with man-made nitrous oxides. This is what creates the particles that can be damaging to both human health and the environment.

These unnaturally produced oxides enter the atmosphere via a number of means, including numerous types of vehicular transport and coal plants, for example. "The work presents a dramatic new wrinkle in the arguments for reducing man-made pollutants worldwide," said Surratt.

As he continued, we are unable to get rid of isoprene – that would mean cutting down trees, which is far from a viable solution to the problem. "We can work on reducing these man-made emissions to cut down the production of fine particulate matter," he added.

The reality is that originally isoprene is purely a beneficial substance. It is only because of nitrous oxide pollution brought about by humans that it has become harmful to its own environment.

The NHS estimates that 100,000 people in the UK are affected by the neurological condition, and the MS Society report entitled A lottery of treatment and care: MS services across the UK showcases considerable discrepancies between the care administered to patients.

The largest-ever survey of MS sufferers in the country suggests healthcare workers are failing to provide these people with the treatment and assistance they need to maintain a higher level of independence.

The condition results when a person's immune system, which is responsible for destroying harmful pathogens in attempts to prevent infection, mistakenly identifies the body's own tissues as harmful and begins to attack them.

In the case of MS, these cells destroy the myelin which surrounds nerves. This insulates and protects the fibres, and damage or elimination results in serious problems with the nervous and neurological system.

Patients often experience loss of vision since nerves cannot effectively communicate this type of information to the brain, while issues with mobility, coordination and numbness are also often witnessed.

A significant number of people require assistance with their MS through the provision of home adaptations, wheelchairs and other aids, although the charity found that there is somewhat of a 'postcode lottery' when it comes to distribution of help.

Director for policy and research Nick Rijke said: "Our survey findings worryingly suggest that the likelihood of someone receiving a life changing treatment or service is often based on luck – like where they live or how helpful their healthcare professional is – rather than their genuine clinical need."

In attempts to promote the provision of tailored and effective care to all MS patients, the organisation has launched an e-petition. It wants the UK to increase MS drug prescription rates and improve provision of aid so that patients benefit from a superior quality of life.

The NHS estimates that three in every 1,000 people are affected by the condition each year, with prevalence highest in the over-50s. The infection is caused when the herpes varicella-zoster virus, which causes chicken pox, is reactivated later in life.

A vaccination called Zostavax can reduce a person's chance of contracting the condition by 50 to 70 per cent, according to the healthcare provider, although patients today will usually have to fund the jab privately.

However, the new programme will see over-70s, who are most prone to complications, routinely administered the vaccination. BBC News reports that 800,000 elderly people in England will be protected in the first year alone.

The vaccine works by introducing a weakened form of the virus into the recipient's body. This allows the immune system to generate antibodies which destroy the disease without threat of serious infection.

Memory cells retain the coding information required to produce these pathogen-fighting proteins, and are activated in the event of reinfection. This means that the immune system is more quickly equipped to fight off the virus.

It should prevent many people from suffering the symptoms, which include exhaustion, a painful rash and fever, as well as complications such as transverse myelitis (inflammation of the spinal cord) and scarring of the cornea.

Since the vaccination should help to prevent many hospitalisations, the Department of Health estimated that the programme will save the organisation £20 million per year. It is thought that the scheme will cost £25 million annually to implement.

University of Bristol's Professor Adam Finn told the BBC: "There's a cost involved in both buying and giving the vaccines but there's also enormous savings from all the disease that you prevent. Not only suffering and some deaths but also all the costs of hospitalisation, not to mention all the inconvenience, people taking time off work to look after their children and so on and so forth."

Attribution: Yale Rosen

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology replicated conditions of a study presented at the Proceedings of the Second ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium in order to determine whether communicating with young patients in this way was beneficial.

Investigators recruited 30 asthmatic ten to 17-year-olds who were attending a private pediatric pulmonology clinic and randomly assigned them into three different groups so that they could compare the effects of different experimental conditions.

One set of participants was sent a text message per day, which prompted them to consider their symptoms or provided them a piece of information concerning the respiratory illness. Another received this communication every other day.

The remaining subjects acted as a control group, and were not sent any messages. Researchers ensured that all children involved were able to understand the texts by checking that they had attained a certain reading level.

Investigators then analysed clinical outcomes of the youngsters by looking at healthcare records and gaining information from physicians, and cross-referenced outcomes of each group to determine whether there were any significant trends.

Findings revealed that sending one text message per day was associated with improved wellbeing. This might involve lower incidence of symptoms, such as coughing, wheezing, tightness in the chest or breathlessness.

Lead author of the study Rosa Arriaga said: "It appears that text messages acted as an implicit reminder for patients to take their medicine and by the end of the study, the kids were more in tune with their illness."

Findings were presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013, and could have implications in terms of treating other illnesses. Many patients could benefit from prompts which motivate them to take their medicine.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), half of people fail to take drugs correctly. This could be having a hugely detrimental impact on their quality of life.

Cancer Research UK found that one-in-five diagnoses of the disease relate to these younger females, despite age being such a significant risk factor.

The findings indicate that the younger generation is increasingly engaging in other risky lifestyle practices, such as unhealthy levels of alcohol intake.

People who are overweight or obese are also more likely to develop the condition, and research indicates that the population's average body-mass index (BMI) has been increasing in recent decades.

Researchers also believe that adapting attitudes to childbirth, including increased use of the contraceptive pill, could be impacting hormone levels and, therefore, contributing to risk.

However, medical advancements and improvements to healthcare mean that a growing number of women are experiencing favourable outcomes following a breast cancer diagnosis.

The charity's director of health information Sara Hiom said: "Thanks to research, awareness and improved care more women than ever before are surviving the disease."

A research team led by Dr  Janet L Stanford, co-director of the Prostate Cancer Research Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, conducted an investigation in order to determine whether this trend was scientifically measurable. The results were published in the online journal The Prostate.

Scientists recruited more than 1,000 participants into their experiment, all of whom had been diagnosed with the potentially life-threatening disease, which affects approximately 40,000 and kills around 10,000 men in the UK every year. They asked about their medication, and then followed their health outcomes for eight years so that they could cross-reference the data.

Analysts found that the risk of death from prostate cancer was one per cent in the group of subjects who were taking statins. Those patients who were not taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs had a five-times higher chance of fatality.

However, lead author Milan S Geybels MSc, who is based at Maastricht University, explained that the results must be verified through further investigation in order to justify administration of statins as an anti-prostate cancer treatment. Prescribing them needlessly is dangerous, since side-effects like inflammation and insomnia sometimes arise.

He said: "[Statins] cannot be recommended for the prevention of prostate cancer-related death until a preventive effect on mortality from prostate cancer has been demonstrated in a large, randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trial."

Cholesterol plays an indirect role in the survival of diseased cells, and so taking statins may help to reduce the size of tumours and prevent development of aggressive, fatal growths. However, the exact biological mechanisms behind the apparent link are currently unknown. Geybels said "any compound that could stop or slow the progression of prostate cancer would be beneficial".

Scientists from the University of Tromso analysed data concerning more than 600,000 19 to 67-year-olds which had been gathered by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The data spanned 14 years, giving analysts opportunity to look for long-term trends.

They analysed colon cancer rates in the group, and cross-referenced incidence to smoking habits in order to determine whether there were any significant trends. They then calculated the risk applicable to each gender.

Findings revealed that women increased their chance of developing the disease by 19 per cent if they took up the unhealthy habit, although smoking upped men's likelihood of colon cancer by eight per cent.

The length of time a woman had been smoking correlated to the risk, with those who had retained the habit for 40 years or more having a 50 per cent higher chance of developing the potentially fatal condition.

This could also be linked to age, since the NHS claims that more than seven-in-ten patients are 65 or older. Approximately 40,000 people in the UK are affected by this condition every year – it is the third most common form of cancer.

However, the investigators did not take confounding factors such as diet and alcohol consumption into consideration with their calculations, meaning that smoking may not be the sole factor behind women's increased likelihood of developing colon cancer.

Diet, exercise levels, alcohol consumption and genes may all play a role in causing this condition, and women may be more prone to engaging in these risk activities, especially if they are smokers.

Dr Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital, told HealthDay: "Usually, smoking goes along with other bad health habits. However, this adds to the growing data that cigarette smoking contributes to the increased risk of colon cancer."

A study published by the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) reveals that the milk protein which can trigger an allergic response, casein, is also present in blackboard chalks.

Even though they claim to be dustless products, these chalks emit invisible particles which, when inhaled, could cause respiratory irritation in sensitive children.

According to Allergy UK, one-in-50 infants are affected by a milk allergy, compared to one-in-1,000 older children, meaning a significant number of students are at risk.

Chair of the ACAAI Indoor Environment Committee Dr James Sublett said: "Milk proteins can also be found in glue, paper, ink, and in other children's lunches."

Parents can help protect their children from experiencing symptoms like wheezing and vomiting by checking nutritional labels on food, asking for their child to be sat at the back of the class, and talking to their doctor about antihistamine medication.

Essex University scientists presented findings at the European Congress on Obesity, which revealed that a significant number of youngsters are at risk of medical problems due to their low body-mass index (BMI) readings.

After analysing information concerning the height, weight, age and gender of 10,000 nine to 16-year-olds in the east of England, the investigators showed that one-in-17 children are too thin.

The problem may be more common than is recognised by the general public, the media and the government. It might therefore be essential to implement further measures which protect and support youngsters who are underweight.

Obesity is the zeitgeist of today, but many young people are too thin. As economic difficulties mean that more families face poverty, a growing number of children are experiencing malnutrition. Body image issues could also be to blame.

Research from University College London (UCL) even shows that doctors may be missing the warning signs in underweight children, and therefore failing to provide appropriate advice and support to sufferers and their parents.

People who are underweight tend to experience fatigue, and the lack of energy can have a serious impact on schoolwork and other aspects of daily life. There is also the potential for developmental problems and stunted growth.

Too-thin people are also more prone to infections and other health issues because they have a weakened immune system. Consuming a healthy, balanced diet that provides an adequate amount of calories is, therefore, crucial.

Dr Hilary Cass, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, told the BBC: "If we can get our children eating, choosing and ultimately cooking nutritious food, then we have a much better chance of preventing all sorts of dietary related problems – whether that's being over or underweight."

The US Food and Drug Administration, as well as physicians, have documented that some patients using statins, a class of global top-selling drugs used to lower cholesterol, have experienced fuzzy thinking and reversible memory loss.

A study from the UA research team has revealed that brain cells being treated with statin drugs can experience unusual swellings within neurons, which was termed the ‘beads-on-a-string’ effect.

The reasons behind the formation of such beads was not ascertained, however the team is hoping that further investigation will explain why some people experience cognitive declines following the taking of statin medication.

UA neuroscientist Professor Linda L Restifo, who is leading the investigation, said: “What we think we’ve found is a laboratory demonstration of a problem in the neuron that is a more severe version for what is happening in some peoples’ brains when they take statins.”

The findings of Professor Restifo and her team’s co-authored study have this month been published in peer-reviewed journal Disease Models & Mechanisms.

Within the article clinical reports are cited, which note that statin users are often told by physicians that any cognitive disturbances are likely due to ageing or other effects. This latest research offers additional evidence that the reasons for declines in cognition are due to a negative response to the statin medication. 

Removing the statins was shown to restore normal growth and stop the beads-on-a-string effect from occurring, however it is thought that genetics may be involved in the bead formation and that such variations could result in different effects on neurons.

Also commenting on the results, Professor David M Labiner, who heads the UA department of neurology, explained: “If we can figure out a way to identify patients who will have certain side effects, we can improve therapeutic outcomes.”

Professor Restifo added: “If we are able to do genetic studies, the goal will be to come up with a predictive test so that a patient with high cholesterol could be tested first to determine whether they have a sensitivity to statins.”