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Category: General Medicine
Thalidomide, once a pariah drug, finds a new life in cancer therapy
The drug thalidomide, which was banned in the United States after it caused serious birth defects in 10,000 babies worldwide four decades ago, can produce dramatic improvements in people with a cancer of the bone marrow, according to a study being published today.The study is a “significant advance” in treatment for myeloma, Dr. Kenneth Anderson,…
Here’s to your health: the benefits of drinking outweigh the risks, but only within limits
On Thursday, the French will go nuts. We know this because they go nuts every year on the third Thursday of November, the day the latest crop of just-off-the-vine wines hit the market. Wine-lovers will swarm to those cute little bistros, swell with Gallic pride, swill a glass of this fairly flimsy red stuff, and…
Cutting-edge drugs a must in treating rare cancer
With any serious disease, it’s obviously a good idea to find the best doctor – and the best hospital – you can. But with ovarian cancer, a rare disease that strikes 25,000 women a year, kills nearly 15,000, and is almost impossible to detect early – it’s absolutely essential. That’s because there are often no…
Site has all the research that fits
In the elite world of medical research, Dr. Harold Varmus is at the top of the heap. He runs the government’s biggest health research engine, the National Institutes of Health, and won the 1989 Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on cancer genes. Yet Varmus, 59, has proposed such a radical, power-to-the-people idea involving Internet…
Chocolate’s not so dark secret
I slip it reverentially into my mouth. Luscious, gooey, it melts on my taste buds, caresses my tongue. I stop talking, thinking, even breathing. I have but one sense: Taste. I have but one love: Chocolate. Nanoseconds later, the guilt sets in. I imagine my arteries seizing, my weight soaring. Yet I am powerless: I…
Treatments improve, but hepatitis C still a threat
For decades, hepatitis C, a potentially fatal liver virus harbored by 3 million Americans, was a virtual black box. Scientists knew there was some kind of nasty virus afoot in the land – and in the nation’s blood supply. In fact, they knew that one in five people who got a blood transfusion came down…
Herbal prostate drug goes mainstream
The gradual enlargement of the prostate gland with age is “the most common benign disease of mankind,” says Dr. Kevin R. Loughlin, director of urologic research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. And while many men now try to treat it with herbal remedies, many still prefer the traditional therapies, for which there are…
Cell transplants, drugs tested for spinal injuries
The experiments creating the biggest buzz among spinal cord researchers are those involving fetal cell, stem cell or embryonic stem cell transplants. So far, most of the research is in animals, though some studies are beginning in people. In all three methods, the idea is essentially the same: To implant in the damaged spinal cord…
A glimmer of hope
Ten years ago scientists scoffed at the thought that a paralyzed person could walk again; today they’re counting on it. Four years after being paralyzed from the neck down in a riding accident, Christopher Reeve is preparing to walk again, a feat long assumed to be impossible for any quadriplegic, even Superman. As scientists work…
Plaque can gum up the works in legs
Dr. Zdan Korduba, an anesthesiologist at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, wound up having one toe amputated, losing months of work and feeling like a total chump for missing symptoms he’d have spotted right away in a patient. Beginning five years ago, he says ruefully, he began noticing that his legs hurt after…
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