CINCINNATI, Ohio - The day started liked any other for Brad and Sara Fahrenkamp with breakfast before work with their two little boys. But suddenly, Brad got very sick. "He said, 'I just dont feel well. I feel kind of nauseous and flu-like. Im just going to stay home today,'" Sara recalled. Throughout their marriage, Brad had always been healthy. By nighttime, they knew something was very wrong. "My left arm and part of my face were numb and tingling," Brad said. "I went to stand up to dress myself and I fell right to the floor." "I was absolutely shocked when the physician in the ER said to us, 'Your husband has had not just one stroke, but three strokes,'" Sara said. A stroke occurs when blood flow is blocked to the brain or blood leaks in the brain and damages cells. Symptoms occur in the parts of the body controlled by those cells. "The quicker that you can obtain emergency services and emergency care, the quicker you can receive treatment and medication that can hopefully stop the stroke or prevent it from becoming worse," said Paige Thomas, a neurological physical therapist for the University of Cincinnati. That's why … Continue reading →

Abu Dhabi: More and more couples across the UAE are today undergoing genetic testing in a bid to have successful pregnancies and healthy babies, medical experts say. Genetic tests can help parents to select the gender of their baby or to ensure that the child is not susceptible to genetic diseases. Increased awareness has led to a surge in the number of residents who opt for genetic analyses. Parents understand that it is easier and better to raise a healthy baby than one with an incurable genetic condition, and removing the gene that leads to the abnormality is just one of many treatments possible with the advances in reproductive medicine, Dr Michael Fakih, founder and medical director at renowned fertility clinic Fakih IVF, told Gulf News. One in every five couples in the UAE currently requires fertility treatment and with clinics often offering testing facilities in-house, genetic analysis has gained acceptance, experts say. Compared to last year, we have seen a 30 per cent rise in the number of couples who seek genetic tests, especially parents who want to ensure that their babies are not born with hereditary disorders, said Dr Ali Hellani, reproductive geneticist at Fakih IVF. The facility … Continue reading →

The bioengineering pioneer Leroy Hood has seen vast changes in medicine over his decades in the biz, in part thanks to his own work on automated DNA sequencing. But he's not much for looking back he's too busy envisioning a future model of medicine. "Contemporary medicine is all about disease, and not about wellness," he says. Hood says the medical profession must learn to measure and maximize wellness, and he's happy to show the way. At the annual meeting of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Hood presented his vision for "P4 medicine," which is predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory. In a keynote speech, he described the 100K Wellness Project he launched this year as president of the Institute for Systems Biology. The ambitious study aims to enroll 100,000 participants and track their biometrics over 20 years (funding permitting). Hood wants to quantify wellness, and also to provide "actionable information" to the participants. In March, the project enrolled 108 healthy people to take part in the pilot study. At the end of 2014 the project will scale up to 1000 participants, with the big steps to 10,000 and then 100,000 people expected in the next few years. Each … Continue reading →