For migraine sufferers who don’t benefit from current migraine medications, hope may come from a new clinical trial, conducted in part at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The trial offers an unexpected solution ? doctors are closing a hole in the heart to try to fix the ache in the head.
Adequate levels of folate or folic acid (vitamin B) are important to prevent pregnancy complications like neural-tube birth defects – spina bifida, but in recent years folate levels have decreased among non-pregnant US women of childbearing age.
Ashley had a normal birth, but her mental and motor faculties did not develop. Over the years, neurologists, geneticists, and other specialists conducted every known traditional and experimental test, but still could not determine a diagnosis or a cause. Doctor?s call her condition ?static encephalopathy of unknown etiology?, which means an insult to the brain of unknown origin or cause, and one that will not improve.
When a stroke strikes, the supply of blood to the part of the brain affected is interrupted, starving it of oxygen. Brain cells can be seriously damaged or die, impairing local brain function.
Ashley X, called “Pillow Angel” by her parents, a bedridden 9-year-old girl had her uterus and breast tissue removed at a Seattle hospital and received large doses of hormones to halt her growth. She is now 4-foot-5; her parents say she would otherwise probably reach a normal 5-foot-6.
A new study on risk factors of new-onset diabetes mellitus (NODM) following liver transplant found that a history of obesity, impaired fasting glucose and hepatitis C infection (HCV) paired with the use of a particular immunosuppressant are associated with an increased risk of NODM. Since all of these factors can be detected prior to undergoing a transplant, treatment should be tailored to the patient’s risk.
In a new study to determine if genes on the Y chromosome are involved in prostate cancer, researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health in conjunction with Hebrew University found that men who had only daughters had a higher risk of prostate cancer than men who had at least one son. The results further indicate that the relative risk of prostate cancer decreases as the number of sons increases.
In work with mice, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine discovered a factor that could be responsible for many unexplained cases of elevated triglyceride levels.
Undernourished women who take a vitamin and mineral supplement while pregnant may be less likely than women taking only iron and folic acid supplements to have babies weighing less than 2,500 grams, and their newborns may be less likely to have morbidity in the first seven days of life, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
A 67-year-old Spanish woman gave birth to twins according to hospital officials in Barcelona, becoming the world’s oldest mother. The woman became pregnant after fertility treatment in Latin America.