For most people, learning they have a 90 percent chance of developing cancer would be devastating. But for 17-year-old Casey Longstreet, it was a call to action.
“I’m not living in fear. I don’t want to live my life in fear. I want to go out and make a difference in this world,” Casey said.
Casey has a rare mutation of the TP53 gene — a gene that provides the body with instructions for suppressing tumors. Having this mutation gives her a chance of more than a 90 percent of developing cancer.
Her little brother, Tanner Longstreet, had the mutated gene, too. Tanner died from a glioblastoma brain tumor when he was 11.
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The Longstreet family (clockwise from top left): Greg, Marlo, Tanner and Casey. Photo courtesy of Marlo Longstreet
New guidelines for the personal protective equipment that wear have on when treating Ebola patients make clear that what you wear counts — but even more important is how you put it on and take it off.
And the guidelines that the World Health Organization updated Friday suggest only highly trained medical professionals should be taking on the dangerous job of caring for Ebola patients, say the country’s leading doctors at the National Institutes of Health.
“Anybody could do this, but the training process is something that takes a lot of time,” Dr. Francis Collins, who heads the National Institutes of Health, told NBC News in an interview.
Sure we’ve known all along getting older means heading down a path of graying hair, a couple of wrinkles here and there, and maybe losing the youthful physique we once had. We can come to terms with that. But it’s not OK to be feeling the effects of aging before our time.
Health officials are warning that ingredients in some popular acne products including brands such as Proactiv, Neutrogena, Aveeno and Clean & Clear have been linked to potentially life-threatening allergic reactions.
Products containing benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid can cause rare but potentially dangerous reactions or severe irritation, Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.
For the first time ever, the World Health Organization on Monday declared the spread of polio an international public health emergency that could grow in the next few months and unravel the nearly three-decade effort to eradicate the crippling disease.
The agency described current polio outbreaks across at least 10 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East as an “extraordinary event” that required a coordinated international response. It identified Pakistan, Syria and Cameroon as having allowed the virus to spread beyond their borders, and recommended that those three governments require citizens to obtain a certificate proving they have been vaccinated for polio before traveling abroad.
“Until it is eradicated, polio will continue to spread internationally, find and paralyze susceptible kids,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, who leads WHO’s polio efforts, said during a press briefing.
Stephen Hawking may be best known as a physicist, cosmologist and one of the world’s smartest people, but these videos are proof he should add ‘comedian’ to his already robust résumé.
A new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on Wednesday has indicated that taking vitamin E supplements during the early stages of Alzheimer’s can slow the progression of cognitive decline symptoms.
Study researchers said they found the supplement allowed patients’ to maintain their ability to perform basic tasks by an average of about six months.
“It will be very interesting to see to what extent this will change practice,” study author Dr. Maurice Dysken told Reuters. “I think it will, but we’ll have to see how people in the field such as providers view the findings and patients too.”
Previous research had revealed that the vitamin hampered the disease’s progression in people with a moderately severe Alzheimer’s. However, vitamin E had not been shown to be an effective treatment for people with a pre-Alzheimer’s condition called mild cognitive impairment.
For the new study, the researchers recruited over 610 volunteers between August 2007 and March 2012 from 14 Veterans Affairs medical centers. Participants were arbitrarily assigned to one of four groups.
One group took a daily supplement containing 2,000 International Units (IU) of vitamin E. A second group received the Alzheimer’s medication memantine. A third group took both the supplement and the drug and the final group took a placebo.
It seems there’s almost nothing computers can’t simulate these days: Now, a new computer program simulates human birth using 3D virtual reality.
The simulator is the first of its kind to take into account factors such as the shape of the mother’s body, and the shape and position of the baby. It could help doctors and midwives prepare for unusual or dangerous births, according to the researchers in England who developed it.
“You can’t see inside during a live birth. The simulator shows you what’s happening inside,” said Rudy Lapeer, a computer scientist at the University of East Anglia, leader of the research that was presented Nov. 22 at a conference on E-Health and Bioengineering in Romania.
Hospitals have used models to simulate the birthing process since the 1800s, Lapeer told LiveScience. But whereas most current simulators are based on known scenarios, the new simulator models the physics of childbirth — the basic forces exerted by the cervix, abdominal muscles and the doctor or midwife — so it can simulate an unfamiliar birth scenario.
The simulator is also designed to be patient-specific. Doctors can scan a pregnant woman, and then adapt the simulator to her anatomy. They can run through a number of scenarios based on previous births.
A federal appeals court in Missouri has upheld the execution of white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, restoring the state’s plans to kill Franklin just hours after the execution was blocked.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled early Wednesday that Missouri could proceed with Franklin’s execution. The order came just hours after a lower court blocked the execution and claimed the state’s disputed protocol for administering lethal injection must be resolved.
The latest ruling means that only the U.S. Supreme Court can intervene and stop the execution.
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Avowed racist and convicted murderer Joseph Paul Franklin gestures while seated in the courtroom in Clayton, Mo., Thursday, Feb. 27, 1997. Franklin, who threatened to kill again if allowed to live, was sentenced to death for killing a man in a sniper shooting at a synagogue in 1977. The 46-year-old Franklin represented himself during the trial and had asked the all-white, all-male jury for the death sentence, thanking the court for a fair trail after the sentencing. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Disp | ASSOCIATED PRESS
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