Cases of scabies, a highly contagious skin condition caused by microscopic mites, continue to remain higher than normal across England this winter, according to the latest surveillance data. Recent findings from the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Research and Surveillance Centre indicate that scabies has been spreading more widely than expected over the past few months, with infections steadily increasing through autumn and winter.

Overall, reported cases have stayed above the usual five-year average, with the sharpest rise recorded during the final four months of last year, particularly across northern regions of the country. With scabies infections continuing to climb, concerns are growing around which treatments are safe to use, especially when it comes to children.

What Is Scabies?

Scabies is caused by a microscopic parasite known as Sarcoptes scabiei. This mite burrows into the top layer of the skin to lay its eggs, triggering severe itching and a red, spotty rash that often becomes more intense at night. Although the mites are too small to be seen easily, measuring less than half a millimetre, the body reacts to their saliva, eggs, and waste, leading to an allergic response.

Scabies spreads through prolonged skin-to-skin contact and can affect people of all ages. According to the NHS, it is most commonly transmitted through close household contact, including between partners, family members, people living together, and during sexual activity.

How Is Scabies Spreading In The UK?

UK Health Security Agency surveillance data shows that scabies cases reported through sexual health services remained relatively stable before the COVID-19 pandemic, but numbers began rising sharply from 2022 onwards. Diagnoses increased from 3,393 cases in 2023 to 4,872 cases in 2024, marking a 44 per cent rise.

• London accounted for roughly one-third of all cases recorded in 2024.
• The steepest percentage increase was seen in the North East, where reported cases nearly doubled.
• Young adults aged 20 to 24 made up 41 per cent of diagnoses, while those aged 25 to 34 accounted for 31 per cent.

Scabies UK: What's Behind The Surge In Cases?

Both the UKHSA and the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) suggest several reasons could be driving the surge:

• Increased social interaction and physical contact following the pandemic, after years of reduced mixing.
• Greater awareness of scabies and more testing taking place at sexual health clinics.
• Overcrowded housing and the ongoing cost of living crisis, which may delay access to prompt treatment.

Experts also caution that the actual number of cases is likely much higher, as the available data only reflects diagnoses made in sexual health settings.

Scabies UK: Can Ivermectin Treat Scabies In Children Safely?

Ivermectin is an oral antiparasitic medicine used to treat scabies by paralysing the mites. It offers a systemic alternative to topical creams and is often considered in cases that are widespread, severe, or involve institutional outbreaks. Because the drug does not kill scabies eggs, a second dose is usually required after seven to fourteen days to target newly hatched mites.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, ivermectin is generally well tolerated, improves treatment compliance compared to creams, and has been widely used in mass drug administration programmes, though repeat dosing is important due to its limited effect on mite eggs.

Despite its broad use in programmes targeting conditions such as river blindness, intestinal worms, and scabies, ivermectin has traditionally not been recommended for children weighing under 15 kilograms, largely due to limited safety data. However, researchers revisited this concern following a systematic review and meta-analysis that suggested the drug could be safe even in children weighing as little as 11 pounds.

In a double-blind clinical trial, researchers assessed the safety, effectiveness, and pharmacokinetics of ivermectin in young children with scabies. A total of 240 children weighing between 11 pounds and under 33 pounds in The Gambia, Kenya, and Brazil were randomly assigned to receive ivermectin at doses of 200, 400, or 800 micrograms per kilogram alongside a placebo cream, or placebo tablets alongside permethrin cream. Blood samples were collected on days 0, 3, 7, 10, and 14 to monitor biochemical markers, drug levels, and blood health.

Ivermectin: Only One Serious Adverse Event

The findings showed that ivermectin was effective in treating scabies, with just one serious adverse event reported. This involved a temporary increase in liver enzymes, which returned to normal levels within 32 days. All other side effects possibly linked to the treatment were mild, resolved on their own, and were similar to those seen in children weighing more than 33 pounds.

“Outcomes from the Ivermectin Safety in Small Children trial will hopefully provide greater reassurance that ivermectin can be safely used in children weighing less than 15 kilograms,” said lead study author Kevin Kobylinski, PhD, an honorary visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford with the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok, in an ASTMH press release.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has quit smoking after 20 long years. The reason: his two–year–old son with girlfriend Erin Darke.

Speaking to media outlet Vulture, the 36-year-old English actor shared that after becoming a father, he was inspired by intrusive thoughts about his mortality, which enabled him to quit the deadly habit after two decades.

"I smoked for 20 years pretty heavily, and I was never even thinking about quitting, and then shortly after having my son, the intrusive thoughts of my own death really helped as an incentive to quit," Radcliffe was quoted as saying.

Radcliffe also shared how a book -- The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by Alan Carr -- helped him decide to quit smoking.

"It may not work for everybody, but it really worked for me," noted the star, currently starring in the Broadway play Every Brilliant Thing.

Earlier this month, the actor spoke with WSJ Magazine and shared that from being on “cigarettes all day”, he's transformed into a fitness freak.

How Does Smoking Affect Our Body?

Smoking can affect all organs in our body. While lung cancer and tuberculosis are the most prominent ones, smoking can seriously increase the risk of several chronic diseases. These include:

• Heart Disease
• Asthma
• Reproductive Health
• Vision Loss
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Cancers of the liver, stomach, and colon.

While quitting tobacco is important, it is a difficult task, with some people finding it harder to quit than others. It may be important to seek help quitting.

Also read: Cigarettes And The Female Body: The Hormonal Toll We Don’t Talk About

What Happens When You Stop Smoking?

• In just 20 minutes of stopping, your blood pressure and heart rate begin to normalize.
• Within a few weeks, your lung function improves.
• Over time, the risk of heart disease and cancer also decreases dramatically.

These strategies have shown varying levels of success in aiding smokers to quit permanently. In addition, alternative methods like e-cigarettes and mindfulness-based techniques have gained traction in helping reduce smoking addiction.

Science-backed Methods To Help You Quit Smoking

Behavioral Support

Quitting smoking isn’t just about resisting cravings. Often, behavioral support through counseling or therapy is crucial for tackling the psychological aspects of addiction. Behavioral therapy involves working with a trained professional to identify triggers, develop coping strategies, and create a tailored quit plan. Research shows that combining counseling with other quit methods can significantly increase success rates.

Prescription Medications

Some medications, such as varenicline (Chantix) and bupropion (Zyban), have been shown to help people quit smoking by reducing cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Experts suggest that varenicline works by blocking the effects of nicotine in the brain, while bupropion is an antidepressant that helps manage withdrawal symptoms. Both medications are generally more effective when combined with behavioral therapy.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT)

Nicotine replacement products, such as nicotine patches, gums, lozenges, and nasal sprays, deliver controlled amounts of nicotine to ease withdrawal symptoms. According to experts at Harvard Health, NRT can double the chances of quitting by alleviating physical cravings while the person works on overcoming the psychological addiction.

About 10.6 percent –15 percent of India's population suffers from some form of mental health conditions, with 15 percent of the adult population also requiring active intervention.

To enable researchers to gather as well as systematically document data on patients with major forms of mental illness, neuroscientists in India have developed CALM-Brain — a digital repository of data on brain structure and function from a range of psychiatric disorders.

CALM-Brain contains data from over 2,000 participants from 900 families across the country.

CALM-Brain will help clinicians and researchers

• to understand the onset of neuropsychiatric disease
• check progression
• decode underlying biological changes
• provide better diagnosis
• plan personalized treatments for patients.

“CALM-Brain was conceived as a method to assemble data from multiple scales of analysis of brain structure and function on a single platform. We believe that the application of modern methods of data analysis to this dataset will help bridge the gap between these scales of analysis,” said Prof. Raghu Padinjat, CBM co-ordinator at CBM-NCBS, in a statement.

Also read: World Happiness Report 2026 Flags Social Media Harms On Adolescents' Mental Well-being

What Is CALM-Brain?

CALM-Brain is the result of collaborative efforts of researchers at the Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind (CBM) — a partnership between the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) - TIFR.

CALM-Brain is India’s first-of-its-kind repository of clinical, neuroimaging, behavioral, genetic, and other datasets on disorders such as:

• addiction,
• bipolar disorder,
• dementia,
• obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
• schizophrenia.

• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
• Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS)
• electroencephalogram (EEG)
• observations of cognition
• eye-tracking
• genetic analyses of blood samples
• clinical assessments.

The dataset is also linked to a biorepository of stem cells, which can be used to perform biological research in psychiatry to understand the origins of such severe mental illnesses.

“The primary goals of the project are to identify biological markers of severe psychiatric illnesses, which cut across traditional diagnostic frameworks. In addition, we will try to identify fundamental biological mechanisms of the disease and medication response,” said Prof. Y.C. Janardhan Reddy, CBM coordinator at CBM-NIMHANS.

Burden Of Mental Illnesses In India

Mental wellness is a major health and economic concern in India. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates India’s economic loss due to mental health conditions to be USD 1.03 trillion (2012-2030).

Recently, health experts and policymakers, as part of the government-led Post-Budget Webinar series, highlighted the growing burden of mental and neurological disorders in India and also stressed the urgent need to strengthen institutional capacity to meet emerging healthcare demands.

"One in seven Indians is affected by mental health disorders, while several states continue to face a treatment gap ranging from 70 to 90 percent," the experts said.

They added that "neurological and mental health conditions are among the leading contributors to disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)" among citizens.

To address the rising burden, the government aims to launch NIMHANS-2 — first announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during the Union Budget 2026-27 — to deliver specialized care for mental health and neurological disorders in north India.

"In addition, the Central Institute of Psychiatry, Ranchi, and the Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur, will be upgraded as regional apex institutions to strengthen mental healthcare services in the eastern and north-eastern regions," FM Sitharaman said.

Metformin has remained the safe and most effective first-line treatment for Type 2 diabetes for the last 60 years. The anti-diabetic drug has been known to work through the liver and gut to lower blood sugar levels and improve the way the body handles insulin.

However, a new study has, for the first time, shown that metformin probably works through the brain, and neurons in a specific region boost its anti-diabetic effects.

The findings open up potential for more targeted and effective diabetes therapies as well as for improving brain health.

The international team of researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine, in the US, decoded a brain-based pathway involved in metformin's ability to lower blood sugar.

They found that the widely used diabetes medication switches off a key protein and activates specific neurons, and lowers blood sugar through a previously hidden pathway.

"Metformin is not just working in the liver or the gut, it's also acting in the brain. We found that while the liver and intestines need high concentrations of the drug to respond, the brain reacts to much lower levels," said corresponding author Dr. Makoto Fukuda, associate professor of pediatrics - nutrition at Baylor.

Metformin: New Brain Pathway

The new study, published in Science Advances, targeted a small protein called Rap1 -- located in a brain region known as the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH).

Mice studies proved that metformin fights blood sugar by suppressing the activity of Rap1 in VMH.

To prove the findings, the team deployed genetically engineered mice without Rap1 in the brain.

In mice with a high-fat diet that models type 2 diabetes, low doses of metformin did not improve their blood sugar levels.

On the contrary, when metformin was delivered in very small amounts directly into the brains of diabetic mice, it effectively lowered blood sugar levels.

Further, the team found that SF1 neurons located in the VMH are helping metformin to fight diabetes.

When the team measured the electrical activity of these neurons, they found that metformin’s activity increased only when Rap1 was present

The findings demonstrated that Rap1 is required for metformin to activate these brain cells and regulate blood sugar.

"This discovery changes how we think about metformin," Dr. Fukuda said.

Also read: Indian Drug Regulator Flagged 90 Combination Medicines Sold Without Approval

Metformin: Other benefits

Metformin has also shown potential to boost fertility levels in people with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) -- a condition that affects how the ovaries work.

Metformin treats PCOS by lowering insulin and blood sugar levels. This can also improve ovulation and encourage regular periods.

Metformin has previously shown its potential for slowing brain aging and improve lifespan.

While metformin is safe for most adults and children aged 10 years and older, the drug may not suitable for some people. this includes people who:

• have ever had an allergic reaction to metformin or other medicine
• have uncontrolled diabetes
• have liver or kidney problems
• have a severe infection
• are being treated for heart failure or have recently had a heart attack.