HIV is still plaguing humanity with 35 million infected people worldwide. Antiretroviral drugs do slow down the progression of the disease but at a high cost and with long term toxicity.

November 18 th is the annual European Antibiotic Awareness Day . Its purpose is to highlight the increase of bacterial resistance to antibiotics on the continent .

Patients affected by a bacterial infection can usually be treated with an antibiotic. But sometimes a resistant bacterial strain is causing the infection .

Nowadays, doctors treat patients with broad spectrum antibiotics without testing. But if they want to test they can send the bacteria away to a laboratory. This microbiology laboratory will test sensitivities to antibiotics for them.

Air quality is not a local problem. Like clouds moving through the sky, pollution is transported from one location to another by wind patterns in the atmosphere .

Drinking water flowing from your tap can contain harmful bacteria, viruses and single-cell animals. And most countries do not routinely test for all these bugs.

Europe’s bathing water has come a long way in the last few decades. Especially since the EU Bathing Water Directive in 1976, countries have worked to eliminate sewage contamination in the waters we swim or paddle in.

The life that inhabits the world’s oceans has almost infinite variety. It remains an untapped source of diversity.

Eating fruit or having a glass of red wine is seen as offering health benefits. The benefits are often pinned on polyphenols, natural chemicals —found in foods—referred to as flavonoids and phenolic acids, but also fragments of food proteins called peptides.

Many people in Europe are critical of genetically modified (GM) food, due to safety concerns. A Eurobarometer survey, published in 2010, revealed that the European public tends to be worried on a “mediate level” about GM food , with people in Austria being particularly concerned.

Seaweeds are not only tasty, but they are a source of nutrients that could be beneficial for health and wellbeing. And like terrestrial plants, seaweeds also contain significant portions of fibre that reach the colon undigested.

Peanut, egg and soy are more common food known to trigger an allergic reaction, a problem affecting around 8% of children in the EU. Intuitively, you might not list apples as causing allergic reactions.

If you can't kill them, trap them. Such is the fate that scientists are reserving to pathogenic bacteria, such as the infamous E. coli .

youris.com talks to Clare Hall, social science researcher at the Scottish Agricultural College in Edinburgh, UK, about the best ways to effectively inform the public about food safety in relation to pathogens responsible for foodborne diseases.

Marek Zadernowski is a consultant, specialist in quality management and safety in a food sector, based in Olsztyn, Poland. He is a member of Polish Association of Food Technologists and a fellow of the  UK Royal Society of Public Health .

Ragnar Löfstedt is an expert on risk management at King’s College London , UK, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Risk Research . He spoke to youris.

Alex Richardson, is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention , at the University of Oxford, UK, and the co-founder of the UK charity Food and Behaviour Research.

We can blame all sorts of things on the weather. But a stomach bug?  It seems unlikely. Yet, scientists say greater quantities of rainfall and bigger storms will lead to more stomach upsets in parts of Europe.

Martin McKee recently expressed his views at the 2012 European Health Forum in Bad Gastein, Austria. Can we measure the impact of austerity on people’s health? The human cost of austerity has been largely invisible because of lack of data.

Artificial noses have, until now, been used to detect diseases such as urinary tract infection, Helicobacter pylori, tuberculosis, ear, nose and throat conditions and even lung cancer.