It is true that medicines save lives, but the same might not apply to every 300th patient being admitted to a hospital. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in 10 hospital admissions leads to an adverse event and one in 300 admissions in death.

Dr Nikhil Datar, a gynaecologist and health activist, was quoted as saying to a leading newspaper that "the brunt of this adverse event might range from a patient being asked to spend an extra day in the hospital or missing a dose of medicine. Unintended medical errors are a big threat to patient safety".

No Indian data is available on this topic, and the WHO has listed it among the top 10 killers in the world. While a British National Health System survey in 2009 reported that 15% of its patients were misdiagnosed, an American study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000 quantified this problem most effectively.

It said that there are 2,000 deaths every year from unnecessary surgery; 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 from infections in hospitals; and 106,000 deaths every year from non-error, adverse effects of medications. In all, 225,000 deaths occur per year in the US due to unintentional medical errors.

Further, pointing towards the medical error cases being registered in the West, Dr Datar mentioned "in the Western nations, it is believed that the incidence of unintentional medical errors is between 10% and 17% of all cases".

The Indian government after realizing this concept, set up the National Initiative on Patient Safety in the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences a couple of years back.

Dr Akhil Sangal of the Indian Confederation for Healthcare Accreditation told a newspaper that "the idea is not to apportion blame. When medical negligence occurs, the first question to be asked is who is to blame. We instead have to evolve to a system in which we ask questions about how, when and where the negligence occurred".

Schizophrenia, a serious mental disorder that affects tens of millions of people worldwide, can be tackled through the amino acid L-lysine, a study suggests.

Preliminary research shows that patients who received L-lysine alongside their normal medication found some reduction in the severity of their symptoms.

These include poor concentration and memory, apathy, or a reduced ability to cope with social situations, the journal BMC Medicine reports.

Study leader Caroline Wass, pharmacologist at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, said: "This study suggests that L-lysine may be of benefit to patients in alleviating some of the negative and cognitive effects of schizophrenia."

In the study, a group of schizophrenic patients were given either six grams of L-Lysine or a placebo every day for four weeks, according to a Gothenburg statement.

Each of the patients had been on a stable dose of medication for the past three months and had been free from psychotic episodes for the two months before the study began.

They were tested for blood levels of lysine as well as the severity of their symptoms and functional ability at the start, after four, and after eight weeks.

The bulk of the patients responded to L-lysine treatment, as shown by an increase in blood lysine levels. Some of the patients reported that they felt an improvement.

It could be argued that a life free of lies and sarcasm would be a happier one. But the inability to recognize others' insincerity can also be hazardous - and a warning sign of a form of dementia.

Researchers have known for years that people with frontotemporal dementia - a type of dementia that affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain - often lose the ability to detect sarcasm and lies, while people who age normally don't experience this. (More on Time.com: Photos: My Aging Father's Decline: A Son's Photo Journal)

Because frontotemporal dementia affects regions of the brain involved in complex, higher-order processes like personality and behavior, patients may show certain striking symptoms like behaving in compulsive, socially inappropriate ways or suddenly changing religions. They also become gullible, as evidenced by the many patients who lose money to hucksters and scammers online.

What a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, wanted to find out was the strength of the association between frontotemporal dementia and the failure to identify insincerity or deception. Would these deficits show up in patients whose brains scans suggested the mental disorder? And would the link be strong enough to identify those at risk?

The researchers asked 175 older adults, more than half of whom had some form of dementia, to watch a video of two people speaking. One of the speakers occasionally lied or used sarcasm - made clear by verbal and non-verbal cues. Viewers were then asked a series of yes or no questions about what they saw. Researchers also took MRI scans of the participants' brains. (More on TIME.com: Brain Exercises Delay, But Can't Prevent, Dementia)

Mentally healthy older participants had no problem identifying the speaker's lies and sarcasm. But those whose brain scans showed signs of frontotemporal dementia were blind to the deception. People with other types of dementia, including Alzheimer's, performed somewhat better on the lie-detecting task.

The study's authors concluded that the inability to perceive lies or sarcasm may help doctors identify patients with dementia, especially since other early behavioral warning signs tend to be overlooked, misdiagnosed as symptoms of depression, mid-life crisis or Alzheimer's. (More on TIME.com: Alzheimer's: Largely a Woman's Issue)

"We have to find these people early," said senior author and UCSF neuropsychologist Katherine Rankin in a press release, noting that early detection offers the best chance for intervention and treatment.

Frontotemporal dementia is rare, making up perhaps 5% of patients with dementia; by comparison, Alzheimer's disease accounts for nearly 80% of such patients. Frontotemporal dementia tends to occur at a younger age than Alzheimer's, typically between the ages of 40 and 70. (More on TIME.com: Cover Story: Alzheimer's Unlocked)

"If somebody has strange behavior and they stop understanding things like sarcasm and lies, they should see a specialist who can make sure this is not the start of one of these diseases," said Rankin.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Hawaii.

Although it has been around for a long time, diagnosis of haemophilia still defeats doctors at times, with the result that some die with the condition undetected. It's not without reason that the medical fraternity is now beginning to feel that more awareness needs to be created about the rare disease, which strangely affects only men, while women remain carriers.

A bleeding disorder that doesn't allow the blood to clot normally, it means trouble for haemophiliacs, who need to extremely careful if they are injured as they may bleed for a longer time than others.

They could also suffer internal bleeding especially in the knees, ankles, and elbows , which may damage the organs, tissues and become life threatening.

Blood transfusion is usually a solution, but the cost is proving a deterrent. And so now the Haemophilia Society is requesting the state government to make blood factors 8 and 9 freely available to haemophiliacs as is being being done in Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

Its general secretary, Ranjana Ramachander says transfusion of blood clod factors costs anywhere between Rs.20,000 to Rs.1 lakh a month, and as of now only BPL card-holders are given the treatment free of cost in Karnataka.

The high cost of treatment clearly adds to the stress that patients and their families undergo, which by itself is quite distressing. "Once the father of a haemophilic child carried him straight out of the hospital with all the tubes attached to his body, to bring him to us and demand that we poison him using the same tubes as he couldn't see his son suffering," recalls Ms Ramachander.

The society is also concerned about the problems with diagnosis of the disease. "We still see cases of people dying of bleeding because doctors were not able to recognise that they were haemophilic and did not give them the right kind of treatment," says Dr Cecil Ross, haematologist, St. John's Hospital, admitting that there is still low awareness about the disorder even in the medical fraternity.

The Haemophilia Society ,which currently has around 700 registered members in the city and around 2,000 in the state, feels there could be many more out there who are not using its services to receive financial assistance and psycho social counselling, so essential in dealing with the disease. It would like to reach out to such people and tell them they are not alone.

A toddler from the U.K. is believed to be the only person in the world to be diagnosed with an extra strand of DNA - a condition so rare, doctors don't even have a name for it.

Alfie Clamp, from Warwickshire in northern England, has an "extra arm on his seventh chromosome.

Doctor discovered the extremely rare condition when Alfie, who was born blind and with severe disabilities, was just 6 weeks old.

A series of tests revealed the extra strand of DNA, which has left the medical world baffled. Doctors have no idea what his life expectancy will be or whether his condition will even improve.

The 2-year-old has digestive problems, needs drugs to help his body absorb nutrients and suffers spasms brought on by high temperatures and metabolic problems.

But his parents said despite his ordeal, their son means the world to them, and they are now concentrating on the simple things, the Daily Mail reported.

"When the doctors told us I was absolutely devastated," Alfie's mom, Gemma, said. "As a pregnant woman, you spend nine months thinking about what it will be like when your baby takes their first step or claps their hands. Having a boy like Alfie makes you appreciate the little things. He did't roll over until he was 18 months old, but we were so excited when he did."