If you stick a nickel-plated needle through your skin, what happens is essentially that your body senses the intrusion and opens up the capillary walls in the surrounding area to let plasma and antibodies in to kill any bacteria and start repairing the damage. Now, since you used proper sterile piercing procedure, there are no…
Tourette Syndrome was named for Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who first described the syndrome in 1885. Although the disease was identified in 1885, today in 1996, there still is a mystery surrounding Tourette Syndrome, its causes and possible cures. Tourette Syndrome is a neurological disorder that researchers believe is caused by an abnormal metabolism…
Classification The Fabry Disease is a hereditary disorder, caused by the lack of alphagalactosidase A. It is an x-linked recessive inheritance. Therefore it is the females that carry it. The ones who are mostly affected by this disease are the males. Female carriers, though, may develop angiokeratomas and may have problems with burning pains. Very…
Sudden infant death syndrome, better known as S.I.D.S., is one of the leading causes for the inflated infant mortality rate in this country today. It is often misunderstood or unrecognizable. For the most part, the causes of SIDS are unknown to the general public. This is changing, however, as public awareness is ever increasing. Thus,…
Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is a common problem of people living in northern United States. People who are affected by this disorder commonly suffer from depression, lethargy, inability to concentrate, overeating and weight gain. People from the north tend to suffer more from this disorder because of the shortened days. It appears, that due…
Everyone’s spine has curves. These curves produce the normal rounding of the shoulder and the sway of the lower back. A spine with scoliosis has abnormal curves with a rotational deformity. This means that the spine turns on its axis like a corkscrew. Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine which may have its onset…
Rabies is an infectious disease of animals which is a member of a group of viruses constituting the family Rhabdoviridae. The virus particle is covered in a fatty membrane, is bullet-shaped, 70 by 180 nanometres and contains a single helical strand of ribonucleic acid (RNA). Although rabies is usually spread among domestic dogs and wild…
with no known cure; causing mental retardation, short stature, low muscle tone, incomplete sexual development, and its main characteristic, the desire to eat everything and anything in sight. Prader-Willi syndrome was first known as Prader-Labhart-Willi Syndrome after three Swiss doctors who first described the disorder in 1956. The doctors described a small group of kids…
Introduction With the introduction of such modern conveniences such as the automobile, remote control, and even the electric toothbrush people are relying on technology to do everything for them. With a generation growing up in today’s society physical tasks have almost become obsolete. Tasks such as even going shopping and going out to visit a…
Multiple births are rare in humans with twins as being the most common form of this event. Multiple births can arise in many different combinations of ways but the probability of giving birth to more than one child remains fairly constant when compared to the entire human race. The chances of multiple births can also…
Mononucleosis is an infectious disease of humans in which the blood and tissues contain mononuclear leukocytes (white blood cells with only one nucleus), either monocytes or lymphocytes. An infectious disease is a disease that can give you an infection, can be transmitted by infection without actual contact, or can be caused by a microorganism. All…
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), better know as Mad cow disease is a relatively new disease. Most sources state that BSE first showed up in Great Britain in 1986 [Dealler p.5] but some say it popped up in 1985 [Greger p.1]. However the official notification was not until 21 June, 1988 [Dealler stats. p.1]. Spongiform encephalopathies…
Dreams are the playground of the mind. Anything can happen when one is dreaming. The only limitation is that we only rarely realize the freedoms granted to us in our dreams while we have them. Lucid dreaming is the ability to know when one is dreaming, and be able to influence what will be dreamt.…
Leukemia strikes all ages and both sexes. There are many symptoms of leukemia. The symptoms of leukemia are the same for all the different types of leukemia. The acute types of leukemia, ALL and AML, symptoms are seen more quickly than in the chronic types of leukemia, CLL and CML, where symptoms do not necessarily…
Leprosy or Hansen’s disease is a chronic, infectious disease that mainly affects the skin, mucous membranes, and nerves. A rod shaped bacillus named Mycobacterium leprea, causes the virus. Mycobacterium leprea is very similar to the bacillus that causes tuberculosis. The reason Leprosy is also known as Hansen’s disease, is because it was first identified in…
A hernia is any type of abnormal protrusion of part of an organ or tissue through the structures that normally contain it. A weak spot or opening in a body wall allows part of the organ or tissue to bulge through. Hernias may develop in almost any area of the body, but they most frequently…
Eczema is a category of skin disease that is characterized by inflammation, itching, dry scaly skin, and in severe cases, small fluid filled blisters and insomnia. It is the most common skin disease in children today. Mild cases of Eczema are a little worse than a tendency toward dry, itching skin. Severe cases can affect…
Color blindness is the inability to distinguish particular colors. It is generally an inherited trait, but can result from a chemical imbalance or eye injury. There are three primary colors. They are red, blue, and yellow. All other colors are the results of different combinations of primary colors. Special visual cells, called cones, are responsible…
The word “albinism” refers to a group of inherited conditions. People with albinism have little or no pigment in their eyes, skin, or hair. They have inherited genes that do not make the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin. One person in 17,000 has some type of albinism. Albinism affects people from all races.…
Paranoid Personality Disorder is a disorder commonly mistaken for schizophrenic personality disorders. Schizophrenia, a psychosis, is when a person has an image of a world and its transpiring events, and he/she is “living” it. Paranoid Personality Disorder, however, is a neurosis where an individual is living in the real world. This disorder, though not as…