Archive for September, 2007

A group of viruses known to cause respiratory and gut infections may also be a major trigger for chronic fatigue syndrome, known as CFS. In a newly published study, four out of five CFS patients showed evidence of chronic enterovirus infection in stomach tissue biopsies, compared with just one in five healthy people.
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Virus Link To Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) can no longer be judged as only a disease of the lungs, say authors of an article in The Lancet.Professor Klaus Rabe,Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, Netherlands, and Dr Leonardo Fabbri, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, say: “We propose to add the term chronic systemic inflammatory syndrome to the diagnosis of COPD to stimulate discussion around the frequent complex chronic comorbidities in people with COPD and to provoke a new view of the disease in general .”

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COPD Not Just A Disease Of The Lungs

Can you listen to a phone message in one ear while a friend talks into the other? If you can, it may be thanks to your genes scientists report.Your brain analyzes the sounds you hear so you can make sense of them. This “auditory processing” helps you decide whether a sound is a voice you should listen to or background noise you can safely ignore. Abnormal auditory processing affects up to 7% of school-age children in the U.S. The disorders also affect older adults and stroke victims.

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Can You Listen to Two Things at Once?

The rare immunodeficiency disorder known as Job’s syndrome is caused by a specific genetic mutation that both overstimulates and understimulates the human immune system, leading to harmful bacterial and fungal infections and the physical features characteristic of the syndrome, according to two independent groups of scientists, one from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the other from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University.

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Cause of Job’s Syndrome Identified

Scientists have shown that a protein involved in cholesterol metabolism may cause the accelerated onset of Alzheimer’s Disease in individuals affected with Down Syndrome.

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New Link Between Down Syndrome And Alzheimer’s Disease

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that patients suffering from the metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that increases the risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes — also have a propensity to develop highly acidic urine, which increases the risk of developing kidney stones.
The first study, to demonstrate this relationship independent of age and renal function, appears in the September issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

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Metabolic Syndrome Heightens Risk For Development Of Uric-acid Kidney Stones