Aura Migraines In Mid-life Women Linked to Brain Adjustments Later
The women were almost twice as likely to show small areas called lesions in the brains cerebellum, which controls motor activities and balance, than women who didnt have headaches, according to research published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Men in the study who had aura migraines in mid-life didnt show a statistically significant increase in cerebellum brain lesions compared with men who didnt get headaches, the research found.
Scientists said there is no evidence that the so-called “silent” lesions, which can be as [...]
Healthbeat: Scientists Studying Possible Protection For Babies Brains If Moms-to-be Drink
The only help today: intense behavioral or educational therapies once children with fetal alcohol-caused disabilities reach preschool or school age, says new research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency is spending $1.5 million this year to start spreading those programs so more youngsters can find care.
Better would be discovering a way to short-circuit what scientists now know is a complex chain reaction of toxicity that even moderate drinking during pregnancy - and especially a binge - can trigger in a babys developing brain.
Dont misunderstand: This is not a hunt for a pill to allow women to [...]
Scientists Uncover Culprit In Huntingtons Disease
The discovery may provide a long-awaited target for developing treatments for the incurable killer - and also may have ramifications for more common brain diseases like Alzheimers.
“Up until now, nobody had the vaguest notion of what was the cause of the brain damage and the death,” said Dr. Solomon Snyder of Johns Hopkins University, whose team reported the findings in Fridays edition of the journal Science.
“This is a significant step forward,” said Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of the National Institutes of Healths brain division.
Huntingtons is a rare inherited disease - there are an estimated 30,000 U.S. patients - that [...]
Army Officials Say War Concussions Overdiagnosed
The three are taking aim at Department of Veterans Affairs rule for treating such veterans and determining disability pay. They want to call many mild cases “concussions” rather than “brain injuries.” They say the latter implies an ongoing, incompletely healed problem rather than a temporary one thats in the past.
“I think its fair to say theres overdiagnosis of concussions going on,” said Dr. Charles Hoge, a top Army psychiatrist. Hes one of three authors of an article published in Thursdays New England Journal of Medicine.
Some veterans groups applaud efforts to better diagnose traumatic brain injuries, but say its more likely [...]
Brain Injury Victims Can Seem Ok, Symptoms Delayed
Doctors say sometimes patients with brain injuries have whats called a “lucid interval” where they act fine for an hour or more as the brain slowly, silently swells or bleeds. Later, back at her hotel, Richardson fell ill, complained of a headache, and was taken to a hospital. She died Wednesday in New York.
An autopsy Thursday showed that the 45-year-old actress hit her head, which caused bleeding between the skull and the brains covering, resulting in whats called an epidural hematoma. Its a type of injury often caused by a skull fracture.
Because of that lucid interval, [...]
Attempting to Zap Parkinsons Through Spinal Cord
The research, reported in Fridays edition of the journal Science, is just a first step. More animal testing is needed to tell if the approach could be tried in people. Implants in marmosets, a type of primate, are to begin soon.
But sufferers of chronic pain already can have spinal cord stimulators implanted that send electrical currents to block the “Im hurting” messages sent to and from the brain. For Parkinsons, the idea is similar.
The 1.5 million Americans with Parkinsons gradually lose brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical key to the circuitry that controls muscle movement. The result: Haywire brain [...]
Air Force Unveils Brain Injury Clinic In Alaska
These are some of the unseen scars left by a roadside bomb in Iraq. But at the Air Forces only traumatic brain injury clinic, the 26-year-old soldier is learning new skills to deal with the aftermath of the blast.
“I wouldnt say my memory really is getting any better, but my ability to adapt to the fact that my memorys really not getting any better has gotten a lot better,” said DeRosa, a sergeant assigned to Fort Richardson in Anchorage.
He is among 1,500 patients screened since the TBI Clinic opened at neighboring Elmendorf Air Force Base and one of 75 currently [...]
Study: Smart Drug Provigil May Be Habit-forming
“It would be wonderful if one could take a drug and be smarter, faster or have more energy,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who led the study with a Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist. “But that is like fairy tales. We currently have nothing that has those benefits without side effects.”
The study, appearing in Wednesdays Journal of the American Medical Association, may bust the myth that the drug is safe for healthy people, experts said.
Provigil is approved to treat excessive daytime sleepiness caused by narcolepsy. On the market since 1999, its the flagship product [...]
Report: Fetal Stem Cells Trigger Tumors In Ill Boy
Scientists are furiously trying to harness different types of stem cells - the building blocks for other cells in the body - to regrow damaged tissues and thus treat devastating diseases. But for all the promise, researchers have long warned that they must learn to control newly injected stem cells so they dont grow where they shouldnt, and small studies in people are only just beginning.
Tuesdays report in the journal PLoS Medicine is the first documented case of a human brain tumor - albeit a benign, slow-growing one - after fetal stem cell therapy, and hammers home the need for [...]
Genentech Finds Alzheimers “death Receptor” Target For Drugs
The particle, dubbed “death receptor 6,” plays a previously unknown role in sparking mass cell death in Alzheimers disease, said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, executive vice president of research drug discovery at the South San Francisco, California-based biotechnology company. DR6 does this by binding to a fragment, called N-APP, of amyloid precursor protein, a known bad actor in the brain degeneration of Alzheimers.
The interaction of the death receptor with N-APP may play an innocent role in a developing brain by pruning neurons until there is just enough for [...]