After being hit in the eye by a stone, a detached retina left a man blind in his right eye. Despite surgery to remove a cataract when the man was 23, which temporarily restored light perception, the patient was completely blind in that eye. Doctors at The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary have reported a case, published in BioMed Central's open access Journal of Medical Case Reports, describing how this patient had functional vision restored 55 years after the childhood accident which left him blind.
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Combining information from hospitals and police can prevent violence and make communities safer, according to a study published on bmj.com today.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified interpersonal violence as a global public health issue. In 2008-9, police recorded over 900,000 violent incidents in England and Wales, yet a substantial proportion of violence which results in treatment by doctors is not known to the police.
People who have duplications in a region of chromosome 16 (16p13.1) that is present in approximately 1 in 1000 individuals have a 12-fold increased risk of thoracic aortic aneurysms leading to a tear in the aorta, or acute aortic dissections. An estimated 10000 people die annually from thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections (TAAD) in the United States, where TAAD have ranked as high as the 15th leading cause of death.
DURHAM, N.C. – Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have found that larger fungal spores can be more lethal. Their findings about two different spore sizes of the fungus Mucor circinelloides, a pathogen that kills half or more of its victims, could help to develop new treatments and fight other types of fungal infections.
HOUSTON--Patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms that lead to acute aortic dissections are 12 times more likely to have duplications in the DNA in a region of chromosome 16 (16p13.1) than those without the disease, according to a study led by genetic researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
The results of the innovative study, which included researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, are published in the June 16 issue of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.
A newborn described as a "happy blue baby" because of her bluish skin color but healthy appearance made a small mark in medical history when one of her physicians discovered something new in her genes—the hemoglobin Toms River mutation.
PHILADELPHIA - There are ten microbial cells for every one human cell in the body, and microbiology dogma holds that there is a tight barrier protecting the inside of the body from outside invaders, in this case bacteria. Bacterial pathogens can break this barrier to cause infection and senior author Jeffrey Weiser, MD, professor of Microbiology and Pediatrics from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and first author Thomas Clarke, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Weiser lab, wondered how microbes get inside the host and circulate in the first place.
The bacteria that cause Lyme disease, one of the most important emerging diseases in the United States, appear to hide out in the lymph nodes, triggering a significant immune response, but one that is not strong enough to rout the infection, report researchers at the University of California, Davis.
Patients with Barrett's esophagus may have a lower risk of esophageal cancer than previously reported, according to a large, long-term study published online June 16 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
A gel that creates a watertight seal to close surgical wounds provides a significant advance in the treatment of patients following spinal procedures, effectively sealing spinal wounds 100 percent of the time, a national multicenter randomized study led by researchers at UC Davis has found.
The substance, a polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel sealant, plugs miniscule leaks in the thin sheath inside the spinal column that encloses the spinal cord, called the dura. The spinal cord and nerves float in cerebrospinal fluid inside the sheath.
Chevy Chase, MD – Diabetes leaders today are responding to the announcement made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday that the use of the diabetes medication Actos (pioglitazone) for more than one year may be associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer. According to the FDA's Safety Announcement, information about this risk will be added to the Warnings and Precautions section of the label for pioglitazone-containing medicines. The patient Medication Guide for these medicines will also be revised to include information on the risk of bladder cancer.
Bethesda, MD— "Super bugs," which can cause wide-spread disease and may be resistant to most, if not all, conventional antibiotics, still have their weaknesses. A team of Canadian scientists discovered that specific mixtures of antimicrobial agents presented in lipid (fatty) mixtures can significantly boost the effectiveness of those agents to kill the resistant bacteria. This discovery was published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org).
Porto Alegre, Brazil- Glycomics is the functional study of the entire set of sugars found in a given species. To some, the term may sound like a distant cousin of more familiar names such as genomics and proteomics. Indeed, while genomics and proteomics of several species have been extensively investigated in the last years, glycomics is still an emerging field. Now, a paper published in Science magazine by an international collaboration headed by Dr.
Two-year-old Owen Stark came to St. Louis Children's Hospital in the summer of 2010 near death from heart failure and dangerously high blood pressure in his lungs.
Washington University physicians and surgeons at St. Louis Children's Hospital knew they had to act fast to save his life. They collaborated to make several strategic and innovative decisions that led to the first successful use of an artificial lung in a toddler.
Their efforts are reported in the June 2011 issue of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
Stem cell technologies have been proposed for cell-based diagnostics and regenerative medicine therapies. However, being able to make stem cells efficiently develop into a desired cell type -- such as muscle, skin, blood vessels, bone or neurons -- limits the clinical potential of these technologies.