Clinical medicine

The Dominican Republic said on Jan. 23 that it has 10 confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, the ailment suspected of causing serious birth defects in newborns.

Altagracia Guzman, the Caribbean country's health minister, said lab testing of samples sent to the United States had confirmed Zika in 10 out of 27 suspected cases. 

A study from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York found that oral sex dramatically increases the risk of head and cancers. The new research suggested that people carrying the virus in their mouth were an alarming 22 times more likely to develop a lethal tumor.

A man in eastern India went to the doctor complaining of reduced vision, redness, pain and floaters. Optometrists discovered that there was a live work living in his eye. Specifically, the work lived behind the lens and in front of his retina.

Three years ago, in northern Samsun province's Çar?amba district, five-year-old Zehra broke her arm while playing with her friends. Her mother took her to a private hospital and her arm was put into a cast.

Tens of thousands of Iranians head for the operating table every year in a rush for a nose job or other plastic surgery. South American and Turkish soap operas have helped boost the trendLying on an operating table in northern Tehran, Nazanine says she wants it all: a third nose job, her eyebrows tattooed and liposuction on her thighs to "fix" her figure.

A total of five patients with swine flu-like symptoms have died in the first week of 2016 in two Turkish provinces, as authorities have urged for calm, stressing the definitive causes of death were yet to be determined. 

The head of the Turkish Kidney Foundation has sent a letter to Turkey's health minister demanding him to take action against a recent court ruling which has prompted fears of increased organ trade in the country. 

Two Turkish courts have annulled procedures of an organ transplant commission prohibiting organ donation to third parties, a move that may encourage illegal organ trade according to an organ donation foundation.

South Korea announced on Dec. 23 the official end to a deadly outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) that killed 36 people and sparked widespread panic in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

Turkey ranks the world's first for the number of hair transplant operations carried out, amid rapidly rising demand from Arab citizens from Gulf countries.

A senior official from the Health Ministry, Ömer Tontu?, said over 200 hair transplant operations were carried out daily in Turkey, mainly on foreign patients.