Medical News.

[swestrup]

There's a surprising amount of Medical news just from the last week that I think should be mentioned:

1. Scientists at John Hopkins and U. of Minnesota have discovered part of the mechanism behind alzheimer's memory loss. They've managed to show that it isn't the plaques and tangles and associated neuron loss that causes the problem, but an amyloid-beta protein that shows up earlier in the disease.
2. Dr. Moshe Szyf of McGill university is doing fascinating research in the field of Epigenetics. Epigenetics is the science of the activation and deactivation of genes, and it seems we still have much to learn on this subject. There is now mounting evidence that it IS possible to inherit a genetic memory of what one's forefather's did, as some of the genes that get activated in one's body make it more likely that a child will be born with those same genes activated.
3. Natural eidetic memory is extremely rare; so rare that scientists have only recently had an example to work on: "AJ" can remember everything that has happened in her life, in excruciating detail. The scientists have dubbed this "hyperthymestic syndrome".
4. Leave it to the Japanese to discover that menstrual blood is a surprisingly good source of stem cells.
5. In what is being described as a "nanotech breakthrough" scientists have discovered that they can restore limited vision to blind rats who've had their optic nerves severed by injecting a peptide solution that self-assembles into a neural scaffold that enhances natural neuron regrowth.
6. It seems that recent results indicate that asthma has a completely different cause than has usually been assumed.