July 25th, 2011 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Opinion
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For years now, we’ve all heard the drum-beat. Bill-boards in cities have proclaimed it. Various medical associations have touted it’s importance. Stroke symptoms have to be treated immediately! Give clot-busting drugs, also known as ‘thrombolytics!’
Until, of course, those in favor of giving the drugs (namely neurologists) realized that a) Not everyone with a stroke, aka ‘brain attack’ has insurance and b) people have a very inconsiderate habit of having said strokes at the most inconvenient of hours. For instance, after 5PM, on the weekend, on holidays. The nerve!
So across the country, physicians in emergency departments like mine are finding themselves expected by the court of public opinion to give a potentially dangerous drug (albeit a sometimes useful drug) without any neurologist being available to evaluate the patient. Our emergency department thought we had a tele-medicine link; even that has failed, as nearby physicians in our regional referral center don’t feel keen to take responsibility for our patients. Our own neurologists, of course, have Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
July 1st, 2011 by Berci in News
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Did you know that Natalie Portman (under the name, Natalie Hershlag) published a paper in a scientific journal in 2002 while at Harvard?
Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy.
The ability to create and hold a mental schema of an object is one of the milestones in cognitive development. Developmental scientists have named the behavioral manifestation of this competence object permanence. Convergent evidence indicates that frontal lobe maturation plays a critical role in the display of object permanence, but methodological and ethical constrains have made it difficult to collect neurophysiological evidence from awake, behaving infants. Near-infrared spectroscopy provides a noninvasive assessment of changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin concentration within a prescribed region. The evidence described in this report reveals that the emergence of object permanence is related to an increase in hemoglobin concentration in frontal cortex.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
June 28th, 2011 by American Journal of Neuroradiology in Research
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Gray matter (GM) damage, in terms of focal lesions,1 “diffuse” tissue injury, and atrophy is a well-known feature of multiple sclerosis (MS). Recently, T1-hyperintensity on unenhanced T1-weighted sequences has been found in the dentate nuclei of patients with MS with severe disability and high T2 lesion load.2 Such an abnormality has been interpreted as an additional sign of the neurodegenerative processes known to occur in the course of MS. This report describes a patient who, despite being mildly disabled and having a low T2 lesion load and no evident brain atrophy, showed a bilateral dentate nucleus T1 hyperintensity.
The patient was a 44-year-old man who had a diagnosis of relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) in September 1997, after 3 relapses that occurred in June 1995, March 1997, and September 1997. Brain and cord MR imaging and CSF examination were suggestive of MS. After the diagnosis, he started treatment with interferonβ-1α, with clinical stability until January 2009, when he complained of vertigo, which gradually resolved after 5 days of steroidtreatment (methylprednisolone, 1 g daily intravenously). In September 2010, he entered a research protocol and underwent neurologic and neuropsychologic (Rao Brief Repeatable Neuropsychological Battery) evaluations and brain MR imaging on a 3T scanner. The neurologic examination showed Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at AJNR Blog*
June 1st, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Research
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Have you ever lost your sense of smell or taste? Recall how it feels when your face/mouth don’t work properly until the nerve blocks wear off after a dental procedure.
Those are all things (and more) a facial transplant patient has to deal with. The article discussing recovery of sensation after facial transplantation in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery discusses this topic (first reference below).
In addition to reviewing their own face transplant patients (n=4), Dr. Maria Siemionow and colleagues did a literature review (English literature for peer-reviewed articles published between 1940 and 2010) of sensory recovery after various standard nerve repair techniques.
These other nerve repair techniques included repair of the peripheral branches of the trigeminal nerve; sensory return after free tissue transfer (ie noninnervated flaps, including radial forearm, lateral thigh, anterolateral thigh, latissimus dorsi, trapezius, et al and innervated free flaps, including radial forearm, anterolateral thigh, and rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flaps); and sensory recovery following replantation of scalp and forehead. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
May 20th, 2011 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Health Tips, Research
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A very well-written review of an orally-active drug for multiple sclerosis has just appeared in the April 25th issue of the Journal of Natural Products, a joint publication of the American Chemical Society and the American Society of Pharmacognosy.
The review, Fingolimod (FTY720): A Recently Approved Multiple Sclerosis Drug Based on a Fungal Secondary Metabolite, is co-authored by Cherilyn R. Strader, Cedric J. Pearce, and Nicholas H. Oberlies. In the interest of full disclosure, the latter two gentlemen are research collaborators of mine from Mycosynthetix, Inc. (Hillsborough, NC) and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. My esteemed colleague and senior author, Dr. Oberlies, modestly deflected my request to blog about the publication of this review.
So, I am instead writing this post to promote the excellent work of his student and first author, Cherilyn Strader. As of [Wednesday] morning, this review article is first on the list of most-read articles in the Journal. This status is noteworthy because the review has moved ahead of even the famed David Newman and Gordon Cragg review of natural product-sourced drugs of the last 25 years, the JNP equivalent of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (the album known for its record 14-year stay on the Billboard music charts.). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
