SCHERERVILLE | Many women face difficulties in getting pregnant. Some resort to medications or in vitro fertilization. But a Dyer woman's journey to motherhood involved an altogether different tactic: brain surgery. Katie Bieker started having epileptic seizures when she was 18. She thought she might never have a baby because she was on so many epilepsy medications and experiencing seizures up to three times a week. After years of failed treatment for the disorder, Bieker was referred to a Chicago neurologist who specializes in women's epilepsy. Dr. Elizabeth Gerard, of Northwestern Medicine, assured Bieker she could help her have a baby and potentially cure her of the seizures if she underwent brain surgery. Even though Bieker was shocked she had never heard of neurosurgery as an option to treat epilepsy she didn't think twice about doing it. Not only were the seizures preventing her from starting a family, they were increasingly putting her life in danger. Once, her husband came home to find her passed out on the floor with her head bloodied and food cooking on the stove. Another time, she felt a seizure coming on when she was preparing a meal. Instead of turning off the boiling water, … Continue reading →

Abstract Hyperprolactinemia is a common endocrinological disorder that may be caused by several physiological and pathological conditions. Several drugs may determine a significant increase in prolactin serum concentration that is frequently associated with symptoms. The so-called typical antipsychotics are frequently responsible for drug-related hyperprolactinemia. Risperidone is one of the atypical neuroleptics most likely to induce hyperprolactinemia, while other atypical drugs are unfrequenlty and only transiently associated with increase of prolactin levels. Women are more sensitive than men to the hyperprolactinemic effect of antipsychotics. Classical and risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia may be revert when a gradual antipsychotic drug discontinuation is combined with olanzapine or clozapine initiation. Antidepressant drugs with serotoninergic activity, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO-I) and some tricyclics, can cause hyperprolactinemia. A long list of other compounds may determine an increase in prolactin levels, including prokinetics, opiates, estrogens, anti-androgens, anti-hypertensive drugs, H2-receptor antagonists, anti-convulsivants and cholinomimetics. Finally, hyperprolactinemia has also been documented during conditioning and after autologous blood stem-cell transplantation and during chemotherapy, even though disturbances of prolactin seem to occur less frequently than impairments of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad/thyroid axis after intensive treatment and blood marrow transplantation. Keywords: anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, estrogens, opioids, prokinetics, prolactin Prolactin (PRL) is a … Continue reading →

The Role of Imaging in Stroke Treatment With CT scans and MRI doctors can get a clearer picture of a stroke patient's condition and how best to treat them. By: HCPLiveTV … Continue reading →

A study carried out into a new treatment of strokes has shown that it significantly reduces disability and deaths from the condition. The clot retrieval procedure known as endo-vascular treatment was examined by researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. The study involved patients who had suffered an acute ischemic stroke, which is caused by a clot in the brain, and accounts for 80% of all strokes. It has been described as the most significant development in stroke treatment in the past two decades. Positive outcomes for patients receiving the new "clot removal" treatment increased from 30% to 55%. In many cases, instead of suffering major neurological disability, patients went home to resume their lives. The overall mortality rate was reduced by 50%, from two in ten patients for standard treatment of care, to one in ten patients out of those who received the new treatment. Professor David Williams, one of the co-leads on the international study said:"The results of this study represent the most significant development in stroke treatment in the past 20 years and will impact stroke care in Ireland and around the world. "More than 10,000 people in Ireland are … Continue reading →

In recent months, several national initiatives for personalized medicine have been announced, including the recently launched precision medicine initiative in the US, driven by rapid advances in genomic technologies and with the promise of cheaper and better healthcare. Significant challenges remain, however, in the management and analysis of genetic information and their integration with patient data. The sheer scale and complexity of this data, generated using cutting-edge technologies such as next generation DNA sequencing, requires the development of new computer algorithms and systems that can mine this data to get actionable knowledge. Now, scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have reported another breakthrough in the development of expert systems that can trawl large datasets, integrating complex disease information to guide doctors in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The latest in this series is the development of a system called OncoIMPACT that combines cancer omics data and models learned from hundreds of patients to better sift through genetic mutations and pick potentially causal ones. The lead investigator in this study, Dr Niranjan Nagarajan, Associate Director of Computational and Systems Biology at the GIS, noted, "We are particularly excited about OncoIMPACT's ability to take into account the unique genetic … Continue reading →