A decompression chamber may help children with autism, say researchers.
After 40 hours of hyperbaric treatment autistic children showed significant improvements in social interaction and eye contact compared with controls.
The BMC Pediatrics study could not show if the results were long-lasting but should prompt further investigation of the treatment, the US team said.
One theory is that oxygen can help reduce inflammation and improve flow of oxygen to brain tissue.
Hyperbaric treatment – effectively giving high concentrations of oxygen at increased atmospheric pressure – has been shown to have some benefit in other neurological conditions such as foetal alcohol syndrome and cerebral palsy.
Some studies have looked at the treatment in children with autism but they have not compared with a dummy procedure raising questions around a “placebo effect”.
Washington — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug, rufinamide — marketed as Banzel — to treat severe epilepsy.
The drug is to be used as an adjunctive treatment for seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.
“This approval offers another treatment option for patients who suffer from these debilitating, severe seizures,” Dr. Russell Katz of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research said Thursday in a statement.
Earlier this year we saw a flurry of news reports about an increasing trend among college women to skip meals and save calories so they can drink alcohol without worrying about gaining weight.
Alarm bells went off and many parents began questioning their daughters about this dangerous combination of binge drinking and self-starvation. Whether to classify this behavior as an eating disorder remains up for debate. What is certain, however, is that eating disorders and substance abuse are often linked.
Many people wonder under what circumstances you go to see a medical doctor.
A recent report from the United States Bone and Joint Decade (USBJD), a coalition formed to study musculoskeletal problems and their treatment, indicates that musculoskeletal problems may be the top reason to see a medical doctor.
According to the report, people in the United States report musculoskeletal conditions — including arthritis, back pain, osteoporosis and injuries — more than any other health condition.
ISLAMABAD: The results of a study published in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry suggest there is an association between asthma and a range of mental disorders.
Dr. Renee D. Goodwin, of Columbia University, New York, and colleagues studied a sample of 13,222 adults in Germany. Current and lifetime asthma cases were identified based on physician diagnosis, and the Composite International Diagnostic Interview was used to assess current and lifetime mental disorders.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved eltrombopag (Promacta) for the treatment of thrombocytopenia in patients with chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) who have had an insufficient response to corticosteroids, immunoglobulins, or splenectomy.
“Preventing platelet destruction has always been the primary means of treating patients with ITP. Recent advances, like the clinical trials of eltrombopag, show that increasing the production of platelets may also play a significant role in treating this disorder,” said James Bussel, MD, Platelet Disorders Center, Children’s Cancer and Blood Foundation Division of New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, New York. “The entire ITP community, including physicians, patients, and their families may benefit from this shift in thinking and these innovative new treatments.”
INDIANAPOLIS, (UPI) — U.S. researchers say they’ve created a comprehensive biological model of bipolar disorder.
Neuroscientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine “combined data from the latest large-scale international gene hunting studies for bipolar disorder with information from their own studies and have identified the best candidate genes for the illness,” the university said Friday in a release.
SINGAPORE: A second child in Singapore has been diagnosed with congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG), a rare genetic disease. But doctors warn there could be more cases going undetected.
Seven-month-old Shyann Tan has had several infections, a hole in her heart, and recently underwent surgery to prevent blood from flooding her lungs.
A college student committed suicide by taking a drug overdose in front of a live Webcam as some computer users egged him on and others tried to talk him out of it. Some watchers contacted the Web site to notify the police, but by the time officers entered the student’s home — a scene also captured on the Internet — it was too late. The student, Abraham Biggs, 19, was enrolled at Broward College and suffered from what his family said was bipolar disorder. He killed himself in his father’s Pembroke Pines house; it was unclear how many people were watching.
