Health-care advocates bring new book to Stratford - GRANT HAVEN MEDIA

15 hours agoShannen HeadleyWest MidlandsCCLGLiberty York died aged 19, a year after she first experienced symptoms of an angiosarcoma Liberty York was 19 when she died from a rare form of cancer, two days after her birthday. A year after her death, her mother Hannah York has talked about her strength and the parts of her daughter that existed outside of her illness. "The first thing that comes to mind when I think about Liberty is how kind she was and thoughtful," she said. To Hannah, she was still the same determined teenager throughout the final year of her life, before she died from an angiosarcoma, a rare form of soft tissue sarcoma, a type of cancer which starts in areas of the body such as muscle and fat. The first signs appeared in May 2024 when Liberty, from Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, began feeling unusually tired and nauseous. A year earlier she had been diagnosed with Addison's disease, a rare autoimmune condition, so at first the family thought it was possible the two could be linked. Liberty was referred to see a specialist but while the family waited for answers, she developed swelling and pain in her left breast.

European Medical Journal news storyPeople living with HIV may experience subtle changes in heart muscle function even when conventional measures of cardiac performance remain normal, according to findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Researchers identified significantly impaired global longitudinal strain (GLS) among people with HIV compared with HIV-uninfected individuals, despite preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in both groups. The findings suggest that speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) could provide additional information about early myocardial dysfunction in this population. Read the full news story here.

Among cancer patients, the high financial cost of cancer care is a prevalent problem. This financial burden is also associated with potentially harmful behavioral strategies that patients might use to cope with costs, such as delaying or forgoing treatment and skipping medications. Collectively, researchers refer to this impact as financial toxicity.