Home » Health and Medicine (Page 9)
Category Archives: Health and Medicine
Blood pressure monitoring and antihypertensive treatment for dementia prevention: A Review
By Holly Lam, Human Development, ’16
Author’s Note:
“I wrote this literature review as an assignment for UWP104F (Writing in the Professions: Health). We were able to choose any health problem of our interest and review current research pertaining to that topic. I chose to write about dementia particularly because it affects my grandmother. To this day, my family and I do not know how she went from being a fairly healthy 40 year old woman to being a person with Alzheimer’s disease. During my research, I came across an abundance of literature pertaining to the relationship between dementia and the blood supply to the brain. The notion of hypertension being a potential indicator of later dementia captured most of my interest given that it is relatively common in the US compared to other countries. What we can learn about the link between blood supply and the brain may give us a better understanding of dementia as well as insight for prevention.”
What is HIV?
By Connie Chen, Microbiology, ’16
Scope
This article was inspired by a friend who is an International Relations and Economics major. She was interested in the science behind HIV and AIDS because she only knew about the stigma carried with being infected with HIV and that it is an incurable virus. After talking to my friend for a few hours, I realized that many people don’t know too much about HIV besides how it spreads and that there is no current cure. My friend was amazed by how complicated HIV was and hopes that future policies about HIV and AIDS will have more background information rather than going with public opinion about the virus. The overarching goal of the paper is to inform the reader about what HIV and AIDS is, what HIV does to the human body, and what treatments are currently available. I hope that you, the reader, will be able to carry out some form of conversation about HIV and AIDS after reading this article.
The Future of Surgery
By Nicole Strossman, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, ’17
What do you picture when you think about surgery? Most likely, you imagine a person having their body cut open, and then a surgeon performing what is necessary to fix the problem, whether that be removing a damaged organ or tissue, repairing damages internally, or performing some other procedure. In all of these cases, it is expected that the doctor makes a cut large enough so that he or she can see what is inside of the body and operates. However, a new method of surgery takes a radically different approach. Laparoscopic surgery, also called minimally invasive surgery, Band-Aid surgery, or keyhole surgery, is a relatively new surgical technique that is revolutionizing the surgical field. Traditionally, surgery is performed by making a large incision in order to directly view and operate on the tissues, organs, and other structures of interest inside of the body. In contrast, with laparoscopic surgery, a series of small incisions, typically of .5 cm to 1.5 cm, are made along the abdomen. (more…)
Case Report: Sjogren’s Syndrome
By David Ivanov, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2015
Sjogren’s syndrome, like other autoimmune diseases, can be difficult to diagnose definitively, and often relies on a handful of signs and symptoms that can vary substantially from case to case. The only signs considered markers for Sjogren’s are anti-SSA and anti-SSB antibodies, and while anti-SSB is more specific, elevated levels of anti-SSB are actually less common in patients with Sjogren’s syndrome than anti-SSA, leading to some ambiguity in diagnosis.
A seventeen year old female patient presented with a large, soft, sublingual cyst on the left side of the floor of her mouth. While she reported no pain, the cyst was first spotted about a year earlier, and had been growing steadily. Visible swelling was observed on the left side of her face under her jaw line. Surgery was performed to remove the cyst, and an adjacent salivary gland was removed as well. The otorhinolaryngologist took a tissue sample, and histology confirmed a benign growth. The surgeon ordered a blood panel to evaluate antibody levels that might indicate an autoimmune disease. The patient’s serum was negative for rheumatoid factor, anti-SSB antibodies, and anti-nuclear antibodies. However, she was positive for anti-SSA antibodies, with a level of 50 U/ml. Bacterial cultures were negative for oral infection, and an X-ray was negative for sarcoidosis. Patient was discharged after surgery with no medications indicated, as she was not experiencing any other symptoms.
May the Odds Ever be in Your Favor
By Rayan Kaakati, Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior
Being born female automatically registers you in a game of Russian roulette: one out of eight women will have invasive breast cancer during their lives. Breast cancer is a disease that starts in the tissues of the breast and is statistically fatal for about one in thirty-six women (Breast Cancer Facts), but that does not mean it is a walk in the park for its survivors or even for women who end up not developing the disease. (more…)