Science For Health Care » disease

Symptoms and treatment for Parkinson’s disease

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:26:41 +0000

Parkinson’s disease (PD) belongs to a group of conditions called motor system disorders, which are the result of the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells. The four primary symptoms of PD are tremor, or trembling in hands, arms, legs, jaw, and face; rigidity, or stiffness of the limbs and trunk; bradykinesia, or slowness of movement; and postural instability, or impaired balance and coordination. As these symptoms become more pronounced, patients may have difficulty walking, talking, or completing other simple tasks. PD usually affects people over the age of 50. Early symptoms of PD are subtle and occur gradually. In some people the disease progresses more quickly than in others. As the disease progresses, the shaking, or tremor, which affects the majority of PD patients may begin to interfere with daily activities. Other symptoms may include depression and other emotional changes; difficulty in swallowing, chewing, and speaking; urinary problems or constipation; skin problems; and sleep disruptions. There are currently no blood or laboratory tests that have been proven to help in diagnosing sporadic PD. Therefore the diagnosis is based on medical history and a neurological examination. The disease can be difficult to diagnose accurately. Doctors may sometimes request brain scans or laboratory tests in order to rule out other diseases.

At present, there is no cure for PD, but medications or surgery can provide relief from the symptoms.

In some cases, surgery may be appropriate if the disease doesn’t respond to drugs. A therapy called deep brain stimulation (DBS) has now been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In DBS, electrodes are implanted into the brain and connected to a small electrical device called a pulse generator that can be externally programmed. DBS can reduce the need for levodopa and related drugs, which in turn decreases the involuntary movements called dyskinesias that are a common side effect of levodopa. It also helps to alleviate fluctuations of symptoms and to reduce tremors, slowness of movements, and gait problems. DBS requires careful programming of the stimulator device in order to work correctly.

HIV facts

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:06:31 +0000

What is HIV ?
A chronic, slowly progressive infectious disease caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which enters the body and slowly destroys the human immune system. With the virus infected people known as HIV – infected, HIV-seropositive or HIV viruses.

HIV and AIDS are not the same thing, but the virus can lead to the disease. Watch this video and learn more about HIV and AIDS

Heart attack & symptoms

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:52:48 +0000

The heart is a muscle like any other in the body. It needs blood flow to supply oxygen to allow it to do work. When there isn’t enough oxygen, the muscle starts to suffer, and when there is no oxygen, the muscle starts to die.

Heart muscle gets its blood supply from arteries that start in the aorta and run on the surface of the heart, known as the coronary arteries. The right coronary artery supplies the right ventricle of the heart and the inferior (lower) portion of the left ventricle. The left anterior descending coronary artery supplies the majority of the left ventricle, while the circumflex artery supplies the back of the left ventricle.

Heart Attack Causes

Over time, cholesterol buildup can occur in these blood vessels in the form of plaque. This narrows the artery and can restrict the amount of blood that can flow through it. If the artery becomes too narrow, it cannot supply enough blood to the heart muscle when it becomes stressed. Just like arm muscles that begin to hurt if you lift too much, or legs that ache when you run too fast; the heart muscle will ache if it doesn’t get adequate blood supply. This ache is called angina.

If the plaque ruptures, a small blood clot can form within the blood vessel and acutely block the blood flow. When that part of the heart loses its blood supply completely, the muscle dies. This is called a heart attack, or an MI – a myocardial infarction (myo=muscle +cardial=heart; infarction=death due to lack of oxygen).

Heart Attack Symptoms

Classic symptoms of a heart attack may include:

chest pain associated with shortness of breath,
profuse sweating, and
nausea.

The chest pain may be described as tightness, fullness, a pressure, or an ache.

Unfortunately, many people do not have these classic signs. Other presentations of heart attack may include:

indigestion,
jaw ache,
pain only in the shoulders or arms,
shortness of breath, or
nausea and vomiting.

This list is not complete, since many times people can experience a heart attack with minimal symptoms. In women and the elderly, heart attack symptoms can be atypical and sometimes so vague as to be easily missed. The only complaint may be extreme weakness or fatigue.

Antiaging

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:29:58 +0000

Cynthia Kenyon is a structural biologist who trained at MIT and at Cambridge University under the legendary Sydney Brenner, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine. In 1993 she stunned the world by announcing that her lab had suppressed a single gene in Caenorhabditis elegans worms—nematodes only a millimeter long favored by geneticists as model organisms—and doubled their normal life span. Recently, with a few more changes, she has extended their life span sixfold. Usually the worms live about 20 days. Her worms lived more than 125 days. More startling, the worms remained robust almost until they died. Kenyon is the Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco. She is also the cofounder of Elixir Pharmaceuticals, a company that plans to apply her findings and those of other researchers to create a human antiaging pill.

Tell us what you have found in your studies of your worms..

K: We have studies in C. elegans [commonly known as the nematode] showing that daf-2 gene functions to control aging exclusively in the adult. So i you turn down this hormone system during development, and then you turn it back up in adulthood, there is no effect on aging. But if you turn it down at the beginning of adulthood, the worm would live as long as it would if the gene were turned down its whole life. So it’s only the adult that matters, which is great. We don’t know yet whether you continue to get large effects if you turn down daf-2 late in adulthood.

How could we use that result? Do you think might be able to trick the body into continuing to repair itself?

K: It’s like building a ship where you could replace all the parts and keep it going forever. The catch, the bib catch, is that there might be things you couldn’t do, things you couldn’t replace. Who knows?

What you’re talking about is a whole new approach to disease, to health care.

K: That’s exactly right. Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases. So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease. It’s radical. The whole idea that aging is plastic, and it’s something that’s not a given, it’s another variable, is a whole new paradigm.

But this seems too easy. Is there a catch?

K: We’re so used to thinking that you can’t get something for nothing. But why would that be true? Humans live a lot longer than dogs, and we don’t suffer any penalty that I can see. We’re superior in almost every way—they can smell better. But really, they can’t drive cars, they can’t do half the things we can. I don’t understand why you can’t live longer and be really fit. Like our long-lived worms.

Can you make a worm immortal?

K: I think that it might be possible. I’ll tell you why. You can think about the life span of a cell being the integral of two vectors in a sense: the force of destruction and the force of prevention, maintenance, and repair. In most animals the force of destruction has still got the edge. But why not bump up the genes just a little bit, the maintenance genes? All you have to do is set the maintenance level a little higher. It doesn’t have to be much higher. It just has to be a little higher, so that it counterbalances the force of destruction. And don’t forget, the germ lineage is immortal. So it’s possible at least in principle.

Is anyone trying to make an organism immortal, say, a short-lived organism such as a bacterium?

K: One could try. I wouldn’t stake my life on it—though it is staked on it, in a way.

Many biologists don’t believe long life is possible in humans, much less immortality. Leonard Hayflick, the scientist who discovered that cells have a programmed moment of death, says that there is a natural age limit for organisms, that things wear out and die.

K: When he heard about the worms, he apparently said that worms are just different, that it’s only true of worms but not mammals. But the fact is, it’s true of mammals now.

Would you want to live forever?

K: Of course, if I’m young and healthy. Wouldn’t everyone? Here’s one answer to your question: How many high school kids really believe that they’re going to die? They think they’re immortal. They’re not disturbed that they think they’re immortal.

But that’s partly an evolutionary imperative. They need to go out and hunt, and be brave, and confront the world to provide food and a safe place to have children. If we were 80 but had the bodies of 20-year-olds, wouldn’t we be more cautious?

K: I don’t know. You might be more cautious, or you might not be. I don’t know. That’s a really interesting question.

Wouldn’t you get tired of what you’re doing by the time you get to be 150?

K: I might want to change jobs. In fact, wouldn’t that be fun? My hobby is finance, and I’d love to go into that world, or economics.

Is your company conducting mouse trials of an antiaging drug?

K: We have animal data in the company, but it’s still in the early stages. We’re trying to make small molecules right now. We’re hopeful. We just got some preliminary information that looks great.

How would such a drug work in humans?

K: Chances are, if it works, it works in incremental steps. At first, we are more interested in various diseases and making people feel better.

How would it be delivered?

K: Our company right now is focused on a pill form. We’re working with compounds in mice, and they seem to have efficacy in mice, but we don’t know. It’s early. But it’s looking good.

There are people out there who object to the whole idea of extending life, such as Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics. He says we shouldn’t fool with these things.

K: But we’re already fooling with it by treating disease. We’re extending life in many ways.

What about overpopulation?

K: If everyone ages twice as slowly, you’ll still have the same percentage of old and young. So we’re not talking about filling the world up with elderly, infirm people. Overpopulation is a problem, but it’s already a problem. The best way to control population is to slow down the birthrate; in other words, to decrease the number of children and also raise the age at which parents have kids. My grandparents had many children when they were very young. If people have fewer children and they have them later, the birthrate will go down. This is already happening; it has to happen to sustain Earth. With a life-span-extending pill, the birthrate would have to come down just a little more.