December 31st, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Often lesser known diseases do not get the media or pharmaceutical company attention that better known diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease receive. Two of these lesser known diseases are Huntington’s disease and Spinocerebellar Ataxia 1, and they are no less devastating to patients, family, and friends as the better known diseases.
Dr. Juan Botas, associate professor [...]
December 30th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Good health and well being is partly achieved by a balance between caloric intake and expenditure. When caloric intake balance is disrupted by an excess of calories we gain weight.
The reason we consume more calories than needed is often thought to be psychological, but Maribel Rios, PhD, and Thaddeus Unger, graduate student at Sackler School, [...]
December 29th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
In 2005 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) adapted a voluntary measure suggesting that agency-funded investigators provide public access of their research papers into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central.
President Bush’s signature on H.R. 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007, now requires the full text of articles to be made publicly [...]
December 28th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
According to a recent article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) there are common medical myths that are unproven or untrue.
Researchers selected seven commonly held medical beliefs that are espoused by both physicians and the general public, then searched for evidence to support, or refute, each of the claims.
The results:
There is no medical evidence for [...]
December 27th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
In previous studies post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had been associated with changes in brain activity. However, none of those studies were able to determine whether the changes were contributing or merely a result of PTSD.
Senior investigator Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of NIH, used the Vietnam Head Injury [...]
December 26th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Little is understood about borderline personality disorder. A devastating mental illness that affects 1 to 2 percent of Americans.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, used the functional MRI (fMRI) to observe the prefrontal cortex of 16 patients with borderline personality disorder and 14 healthy control participants. [...]
December 25th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Surgical stitches have been in use for the past 4,000 years. Complications can arise from sutures from the invasive stitches/sutures because they can fail to seal the incision fully and sometimes can act as a source of infection.
Surgical glues have the advantage of not being invasive, but the gel-like substance that bonds to the tissue [...]
December 24th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Spinal cord injuries can cause some people to take very desperate steps, like going to other countries, to receive stem cell transplants. Most of these approaches are often not controlled trials and the patient undergoes a lot of risk and expense.
Researcher, Karim Fouad, University of Alberta, Edmonton, reports in an article recently published in the journal Brain, [...]
December 23rd, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) has been growing in popularity during the past decade. Part of its increase in popularity are the studies that claim people suffering from chronic mental or physical disabilities benefit from the dolphin “healing” experience.
Lori Marino, Behavioral Biology Program, and Scott Lilienfeld, Department of Psychology, both of Emory University, reviewed 5 studies published [...]
December 22nd, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Muscle injury can sometimes occur with a sudden, inconsiderate movement. Unlike other tissues, such as bone, muscles are not efficient at repair.
Regeneration of the muscle requires complex coordination between several different processes. The key player in muscle repair is the muscle stem cells, which divide and produce new muscle cells to fix the muscle damage. [...]
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