Specialized Medicine

Two Crises In ancient Ionia, the physician-philosopher Galen of Pergamos and Rome wrote, children would take pig bladders, “fill them with air, and then rub them with ashes near the fire …and sing songs [in] an exhortation to the bladder to increase in size … until the bladder seems to them to have become large enough.” This describes with near perfection the beliefs and behavior of... read

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded Temple University a five-year, $8.34 million grant to create a Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Core Center (CNAC) at the School of Medicine. The new center, one of only nine funded by NIMH, will enable researchers to study basic science and clinical aspects of HIV-induced neurological diseases and neurocognitive disorders. Kamel Khalili,... read

"Medea syndrome" refers to the complex picture of signs and symptoms that characterize the female parent that, in response to stress and / or conflict with her partner, discharges her aggression and frustration into her child turning her child into an instrument of power and revenge against the spouse, going as far as to the extreme action of depriving him/her of life. The term originates from... read

In our society, flooded with a multitude of news destined to evaporate in a few days, the "TB case", which for weeks has been the scoop in newspapers and TV, is causing unnecessary anxiety and alarm. The story is well known. A complaint filed by an association of consumers (Codacon) about the presence of a nurse "suffering from tuberculosis" in service at the Policlinico Gemelli in Rome, led to... read

Viruses are entities on the boundary between the living and inanimate matter. Rather than living organisms, they resemble crystals or mere machines. Since 1940, when they have been photographed for the first time, their form has not ceased to raise intriguing questions. In bacteriophage T4 virus, (whose shape has inspired one of the Apollo lunar module), for example, the "head" is an icosahedron... read

In this article we wanted to address the 8 most frequent cases of First Aid of an unconscious person that is not breathing In a situation of first aid to an unconscious person that is not breathing you should carry out: ARTIFICIAL RESPRATION!!! RESPIRATORY APPARATUS: • ANATOMY: mouth, nose, throat, bronchi, bronchioles, alveoli. The lungs are enveloped in the pleura and rest on the... read

Position the person in the “lateral recovery position" You can also apply this to a conscious person if there is a delay in the arrival of the emergency aid, or if there are several injured persons. The position helps avoiding worsening caused by unconsciousness suffocation, due to vomiting or blood aspiration. Description: • Place the person lying on his left side • The two... read

In recent decades the development of "small molecules", term that indicates biologically active small molecules, has had a big impact in pharmaceutical chemistry for the treatment of diseases, in the development of additives for the agriculture, and in cosmetics. Regarding the development of new drugs, only in the last decade, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 183 small... read

A fundamental problem in cancer research is identifying the cell type that is capable of sustaining neoplastic growth. There is evidence that the majority of cancer cells are clones and that cancer cells represent the progeny of a single cell (reviewed in [1] La Porta 2009). However it is unclear which cells possess the tumor-initiating cell function, maintaining the tumor growth. The idea of... read

Dry-eye syndrome is one of the most commonly diagnosed ophthalmic conditions in the general U.S. population as its stimated frequency ranges from 11% to 17%. Certain autoimmune diseases, medications, environmental factors, smoking, increased age and the popularity of refractive procedures, such as laser vision correction and the implantation of premium IOLs, has increased ophthalmologists' need... read

Chromoendoscopy associated with high-definition video endoscopy offers the possibility to analyze the spectra of colors in the captured image, using dyes (indigo carmine, methylene blue), and high-definition zooming, to study the mucosa (magnification). This technique becomes essential for the recognition of early stages of dysplasia and intestinal cancers, but becomes crucial in patients at high... read

The Summer School: Statistics and Epidemiology for Clinical Trials, a project aimed at creating intensive courses on "public health", useful for both, clinicians and researchers, will be held in Brindisi between July 25 and August 5, 2011. This practice is very popular in the United States (Harvard, Yale, UCLA, etc...), and is especially necessary for the acquisition of epidemiological and... read

The treatment of varicose veins of the legs with EVLT (Endo Venous Laser Treatment) is a very popular technique, not only among professionals, but also, and perhaps especially, among the patients. For nearly three years we have "converted" to this method, although we believe that the indications and technical modalities should be improved and shared, after a careful and rational use. However, in... read

A few days ago, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, the American institution that controls food and drug safety) approved the use of Ipilimumab, a drug based on a monoclonal antibody, which has yielded encouraging results in the fight against melanoma. During the testing phase of this antibody, the survival of patients has increased significantly: it has almost doubled at one year, rising... read

We can safely say that snoring is a completely spontaneous and democratic behavior that affects a large part of the world population regardless of sex. This disorder, which can be considered trivial, is present in childhood, youth and in senescence. In Italy, a recent EURISKO survey showed that 44% of 19 million and 600,000 snorers (equal to 40% of the national population) are female. Snoring -... read

The Anisakis is a common intestinal parasite of fish; parasites, as such, live at the expense of other organisms of a species different from theirs. The Anisakis Simplex is nematode of the Anisakidae family, present in the intestines of many marine mammals, such as dolphins, seals, etc... and, in its larval stage, in many fish, including sardines and anchovies, cod, hake, tuna and mackerel;... read