Health

Leprosy is an infectious disease that has generated discrimination towards those who have suffered it throughout human history, because it causes deformities in the face and extremities. However, this disease is of low contagiousness, 95% of the people who are in contact with a patient will never be infected; It takes many years of cohabitation with a patient to acquire it, or even the simple fact of living in the same room with several people might generate it due to the load of bacilli and bacteria in the environment, which is why it has been directly related to hospital environments. extreme poverty. It is also known as Hansen’s disease, in honor of the Norwegian Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen who, in 1873, discovered this mycobacterium or also called mycobacterium leprosy. In 2005 this disease was eliminated in Mexico. Finally in 2008, the UN Human Rights Committee resolved to eliminate stigma and discrimination once morest people affected by leprosy.

With information from Dr. Rodolfo Acuña Soto, Professor of the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology of the Faculty of Medicine

– Vélez A. Hernán, Rojas M. William, Borrero R. Jaime, Restrepo M. Jorge, Fundamentals of Medicine, Dermatology, 2009, 7th edition, Medellín, Colombia: Corporation for Biological Research.

– Diseases in history: Leprosy in the world, Álvarez C. Rafael, vol. 53, No. 006 (2010), Magazine of the Faculty of Medicine, UNAM.

January 27, 2023

Going regularly to green spaces – parks, gardens – might help reduce the consumption of certain drugs such as antidepressants.

Many studies have already been carried out, giving green spaces a strong therapeutic power. But what are these virtues to be attributed to? To the frequency of visits to these parks, to the fact of living near these spaces, or even to the number of gardens present in a city?

It is to close the debate that Finnish researchers have looked at the impact of each of these facets of green spaces on the consumption of widely prescribed drugs: those to treat anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure and asthma.

Forests, gardens… cemeteries

To do this, they relied on the responses of 16,000 randomly selected people in 3 Finnish cities: Espoo, Helsinki, and Vantaa. All these participants provided information on their possible use of medication, the time spent in green spaces (defined as forests, gardens, parks, meadows but also… cemeteries or zoos) over several months, if they saw these spaces from their windows, etc.

Result: the amount of green spaces or their proximity was not associated with a lower use of psychotropic drugs or products to regulate tension. However, the frequency of visits was. In detail, compared to those who never went there, going there 3 to 4 times a week would lower the probability of using medication for mental health by 33%, the probability of having recourse to blood pressure products and 26% for asthma medications.

For authors, “The accumulating scientific evidence supporting the health benefits of exposure to nature should increase the supply of green space in urban environments. »