False Memory Syndrome

he False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) is an organization that advocates on behalf of individuals who claim they have been falsely accused of perpetrating child sexual abuse.[1] The FSMF was formed in 1992 by Pamela and Peter Freyd after they became aware that their adult daughter Jennifer Freyd, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, believed that Peter Freyd had sexually abused her when she was a child. [2][3] Ralph Underwager, a prominent defense expert witness in child sexual abuse cases, and his wife Hollida Wakefield, assisted the Freyds in the founding of the FSMF and in gathering an advisory board and a membership consisting mainly of of parents who had been accused of child sexual abuse by adult children who, according to the parents, had no memory of abuse before entering some form of therapy.[1][4]

The FMSF coined the term false memory syndrome to describe their theory that some adults who belatedly remember instances of sexual abuse from their childhood may be mistaken about the accuracy of their memory. The term does not have wide scientific use.[5] From this, the Foundation hypothesized that the so-called false memories may have been the result of recovered memory therapy, another term coined by the FSMF in the early 1990s.[6]

Diabetes mellitus

Diabetes mellitus (IPA: /ˌdaɪəˈbiːtiːz/ or /ˌdaɪəˈbiːtəs/, /məˈlaɪtəs/ or /ˈmɛlətəs/), often referred to simply as diabetes (Greek: διαβήτης), is a syndrome characterized by disordered metabolism and abnormally high blood sugar (hyperglycaemia) resulting from insufficient levels of the hormone insulin. The characteristic symptoms are excessive urine production (polyuria) due to high blood glucose levels, excessive thirst and increased fluid intake (polydipsia) attempting to compensate for increased urination, blurred vision due to high blood glucose effects on the eye's optics, unexplained weight loss, and lethargy. These symptoms are likely to be less apparent if the blood sugar is only mildly elevated.

The World Health Organization recognizes three main forms of diabetes mellitus: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes (occurring during pregnancy), which have different causes and population distributions. While, ultimately, all forms are due to the beta cells of the pancreas being unable to produce sufficient insulin to prevent hyperglycemia, the causes are different. Type 1 diabetes is usually due to autoimmune destruction of the pancreatic beta cells. Type 2 diabetes is characterized by insulin resistance in target tissues. This causes a need for abnormally high amounts of insulin and diabetes develops when the beta cells cannot meet this demand. Gestational diabetes is similar to type 2 diabetes in that it involves insulin resistance; the hormones of pregnancy can cause insulin resistance in women genetically predisposed to developing this condition.

Gestational diabetes typically resolves with delivery of the child, however types 1 and 2 diabetes are chronic conditions. All types have been treatable since insulin became medically available in 1921. Type 1 diabetes, in which insulin is not secreted by the pancreas, is directly treatable only with injected insulin, although dietary and other lifestyle adjustments are part of management. Type 2 may be managed with a combination of dietary treatment, tablets and injections and, frequently, insulin supplementation. While insulin was originally produced from natural sources such as porcine pancreas, most insulin used today is produced through genetic engineering, either as a direct copy of human insulin, or human insulin with modified molecules that provide different onset and duration of action. Insulin can also be delivered continuously by a specialized pump which subcutaneously provides insulin through a changeable catheter.

Diabetes can cause many complications. Acute complications (hypoglycemia, ketoacidosis, or nonketotic hyperosmolar coma) may occur if the disease is not adequately controlled. Serious long-term complications include cardiovascular disease (doubled risk), chronic renal failure, retinal damage (which can lead to blindness), nerve damage (of several kinds), and microvascular damage, which may cause impotence and poor healing. Poor healing of wounds, particularly of the feet, can lead to gangrene, which may require amputation. Adequate treatment of diabetes, as well as increased emphasis on blood pressure control and lifestyle factors (such as not smoking and keeping a healthy body weight), may improve the risk profile of most aforementioned complications. In the developed world, diabetes is the most significant cause of adult blindness in the non-elderly and the leading cause of non-traumatic amputation in adults, and diabetic nephropathy is the main illness requiring renal dialysis in the United States.

Mesothelioma

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking. Compensation via asbestos funds or lawsuits is an important issue in mesothelioma (see asbestos and the law).

The symptoms of mesothelioma include shortness of breath due to pleural effusion (fluid between the lung and the chest wall) or chest wall pain, and general symptoms such as weight loss. The diagnosis can be made with chest X-rays and a CT scan, and confirmed with a biopsy (tissue sample) and microscopic examination. A thoracoscopy (inserting a tube with a camera into the chest) can be used to take biopsies. It allows the introduction of substances such as talc to obliterate the pleural space (called pleurodesis), which prevents more fluid from accumulating and pressing on the lung. Despite treatment with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or sometimes surgery, the disease carries a poor prognosis. Research about screening tests for the early detection of mesothelioma is ongoing.

HEPATITIS

The liver is the largest internal organ, and one of the most complex. It regulates the amount of sugar, fat, and protein that circulate in your blood. It makes cholesterol, vitamin A, clotting factors, and about a quart of bile a day, which helps digest fats. And it detoxifies your blood, removing drugs, alcohol, and other potentially harmful chemicals so you can eliminate them.
A key compound your liver filters from blood is bilirubin, a breakdown product of old red blood cells. When your liver is healthy, it processes bilirubin, and adds it to bile, which enters the small intestine on its way to elimination. But if your liver is damaged and can’t filter properly, bilirubin builds up in your blood and eventually gets deposited in your skin and eyeballs, turning them yellow. That’s jaundice, a classic sign of liver disease.
Your liver usually purrs along, quietly performing its many critical tasks despite all the noxious drugs and alcohol you send its way. But your liver can also get infected by several viruses. That’s hepatitis. There are six types of viral hepatitis: A, B, C, D, E, and G. But the three main ones are A, B, and C.
Hepatitis A
The bad news is that hepatitis A is the most common viral liver infection in the U.S. The good news is that, in the vast majority of cases, within two months, you heal completely. Hepatitis A spreads through contaminated food or water. Two to three weeks after you get infected, you develop jaundice along with flu-like symptoms, and your urine turns dark because some bile mixes with it.
Hepatitis A is a hazard of travel to areas with poor sanitation. In the U.S., it’s common in daycare center children and staff, and in children age five to 14.
Hepatitis A does not cause cirrhosis, nor does it become chronic.
Hepatitis B
Hepatitis B causes the same symptoms as hepatitis A, but it can last longer, and cause more damage including cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Hepatitis B spreads by blood-to-blood or sexual contact. It’s a major occupational hazard of nurses and other health workers who accidentally get stuck by needles containing contaminated blood. Pregnant women can pass the infection to their babies. And some people are carriers–they don’t develop symptoms, but they’re infected and can spread the disease through blood-to-blood or sexual contact.
About 300,000 cases of hepatitis B are diagnosed each year, and 10 percent of those people become chronic carriers. The younger you are when diagnosed with hepatitis B, the greater your risk of chronic infection. Chronic hepatitis may cause no symptoms. Or you might experience fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, fever, and recurring jaundice. Around 20 percent of people who have had hepatitis B die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer.
Hepatitis C
Only about 10 percent of people infected with hepatitis C develop typical hepatitis symptoms, but an estimated 85 percent become carriers. Within 10 years of infection, about 25 percent of those who have had hepatitis C develop cirrhosis and 10 percent develop liver cancer.
The National Institutes of Health estimates that 4 million Americans now have hepatitis C. An estimated 170,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. And some 9,000 Americans die annually from cirrhosis caused by it. To make matters worse, like AIDS, hepatitis C may not cause symptoms for many years after infection. Today, an estimated 1 million Americans are symptom-free carriers who can spread the infection.
Like hepatitis B, hepatitis C spreads by blood-to-blood contact and sexually.

depression

Everyone gets “the blues” when disappointed. And everyone gets depressed over job lay-offs, divorce, the death of a loved one, or other major losses. Sadness is a normal part of life. But when sadness never returns to gladness, it becomes what the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) calls the nation’s leading mental health problem, “clinical” or “major” depression.
Depression is so common, it’s often called “the common cold of mental illness.” In any year, 10 percent of Americans—some 17 million people—suffer episodes of major depression. Depression can strike at any age, though symptoms in children, teens, and the elderly are often unusual (see below).
Depression costs the nation more than $43 billion a year for medications, professional care, and lost school and work days. The toll in human misery is incalculable. The dark cloud of depression has an even darker lining—thoughts of suicide. Each year, tens of thousands of depressed people attempt suicide. About 30,000 succeed, making suicide the nation’s ninth leading cause of death.
Even when depression doesn’t lead to suicide, it shortens life. University of Pittsburgh researchers assessed depression in 5,201 elderly people, and then followed them for five years. Independent of all other factors (age, illness, education, marital status, etc.), those who were initially depressed had a death rate 38 percent higher. Danish researchers came up with similar findings. They surveyed the physical and mental health of 730 men and women in the Danish town of Glostrup over 27 years beginning in 1964. Compared with participants who were not depressed, those who were had a death rate 60 percent higher. Why does depression lead to an early grave? Largely because it impairs the immune system, notably by suppressing the activity of natural killer cells, special white blood cells that fight disease.
Many famous people have struggled with clinical depression, among them: President Abraham Lincoln, former talk show host Dick Cavett, journalist Mike Wallace, poet Sylvia Plath, statesman Winston Churchill, artist Georgia O’Keefe, actor Rod Steiger, and writers William Styron, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Mark Twain.
The American Psychiatric Association recognizes several types of clinical depression:
• Normal Grief: Grief is a natural reaction to loss. Triggered by a specific event, it involves sadness, lethargy, and in serious cases, for example, grief after the death of a loved one, often despair, anger, insomnia, poor appetite, or weight gain, obsessive thoughts about the departed one, and possibly guilt about problems in your relationship with the person. But eventually, you recover. After losing a job you wanted, it may take a week or two to bounce back. After a lay-off, it may take a few months. After the death of a loved one, it may take a year. But if you never become your old self again, you may have clinical depression and should consult a doctor.
• Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood. Life is full of changes. Coping with them can be difficult. You may feel overwhelmed and “crazy” for a while. Then you get things under control. If you don’t, and become persistently gloomy, angry, and unable to cope, that’s adjustment disorder with depressed mood.
• Mild Depression (Dysthymia). This causes loss of self-esteem and low-level symptoms of major depression (see below). You become a “sad sack” and feel like a loser. Quite often, dysthymia (dis-THIME-ee-uh) has no specific trigger, no loss or life change. But just as you can catch a cold seemingly out of nowhere, you can also slip into dysthymia for no apparent reason.
• Major Depression. This is what people mean when they call someone “seriously depressed.” Major depression often causes despair and hopelessness so profound that you lose interest in life, become incapable of feeling pleasure and sexual arousal, and may be unable to get out of bed or eat for days at a time. But this illness may also cause other symptoms not popularly associated with depression: anxiety, irritability, agitation, chronic indecisiveness, weigh loss or gain, or sleep disturbances (insomnia or sleeping all the time). In other words, you can suffer major depression and not feel very blue. Quite often, major depression strikes without any triggering loss.
Beyond the misery it causes, the big risk with major depression is suicide. Within five years of suffering major depression, up to 25 percent of those with major depression try to kill themselves.
• Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depression): This illness involves alternating periods of major depressive and unusually high energy (mania). Mild mania (hypomania) involves cheerfulness to the point of excessive self-confidence. Moderate mania combines grandiose ideas with agitation, irritability, paranoia, or anger. Severe mania causes greater agitation and hyperactivity. However, these brief descriptions do not do mania justice. Its manifestations are as unique as the individuals who become bipolar. Mania is not always negative. Manic individuals may be amazingly productive. Typically, bipolar disorder develops without any clear cause.
• Atypical Depression: “Atypical” means unusual. Instead of feeling unrelenting gloominess and lethargy, a person with this condition might seem deeply depressed for a few days, then fine for a while, or anxious and irritable. Like many other forms of depression, the atypical variety often develops without a triggering event.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Often called “winter blues,” this is a reaction to lack of sunlight in winter (see sidebar).
• Post-Partum Depression. New mothers typically expect to feel overjoyed. But because of the enormous hormonal changes of delivery and the challenges of dealing with an infant, some two-thirds of women feel transient sadness. About 10 to 15 percent become clinically depressed. And about 1 in 1,000 become so severely depressed that they must be hospitalized for their own safety and the safety of the baby (see sidebar).
The various types of depression don’t have clear boundaries, says psychiatrist Alan Brauer, M.D., founder of TotalCare Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, one of the nation’s first clinics to combine mainstream and complementary therapies. It takes professional judgment to know when normal grief or an adjustment disorder cross the line to become the more serious forms of depression. Friends and relatives often miss the subtle signs that point to a need for professional help. Many doctors also have difficulty diagnosing depression, often because people don’t mention depressive symptoms. Psychiatrist William Zung, M.D., and colleagues at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and elsewhere, surveyed 75,858 people who visited primary care physicians. Only 1 percent complained of depression, but 21 percent had at least some depressive symptoms. No wonder depression often goes undetected, and so many people attempt suicide.
Depression may be difficult to diagnose, but it has clear biochemical roots, Dr. Brauer explains. Depressed individuals have unusual levels of one hormone (cortisol) and several brain chemicals (the neurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine). These biochemical abnormalites can be inherited, which one reason why depression tends to run in families. Another is that children of depressed parents pick up their gloomy worldview.
No one knows exactly what triggers the biochemical changes that cause depression, says Stuart Yudofsky, M.D., of the psychiatry department at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, but several important risk factors have been identified:
• Previous depression. Depression tends to recurr. In Seattle, University of Washington researchers followed 251 people previously treated for major depression. Within one year of their diagnosis, 37 percent suffered another bout of major depression. The more episodes, the greater the risk of recurrence.
• Family history. An estimated 20 percent of people who suffer depression have close relatives who have also had it. If you have a close family member who has suffered major depression, you’re at increased risk. Some of this risk appears to be genetic, the rest, the result of your family environment.
• Severely stressful events. For those predisposed to depression by heredity or upbringing, severe stress may trigger it, for example, job loos or death of a loved one. Depression may not develop immediately, but may take six months to a year.
• Drug abuse. Alcohol, a central nervous system depressant, is the major offender, especially in men. (see below). But several other drugs can trigger or aggravate depression, among them: Valium and other tranquilizers, birth control pills, the flu medicine amantadine (Symmetrel), steroids (prednisone, cortisone), and some cancer chemotherapy drugs.
• Women: According to most surveys, women suffer depression twice as frequently as men, recover from it more slowly, and are more likely to suffer recurrences. One reason is that women must cope with the mood-altering hormonal effects of the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, and/or oral contraceptives.
Another is that compared with men, women have traditionally been socialized into more passive social roles, which may leave them feeling powerless, and prone to depression. Recent social changes have made the sexes more equal, but some women are still brought up to be subservient, and even when they are not, some women have found it difficult—and possibly depressing—to adjust to the recent changes in their position in society.
“Women are also more likely than men to define themselves in terms of their relationships with others,” says Boston-area psychologist Eda Spielman, Psy.D., who teaches at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. “As a result, women tend to experience losses more deeply, which makes them more vulnerable to depression.”
Finally, some research suggests that severe childhood emotional trauma often plays a role. The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Women and Depression discovered that 37 percent of depressed women had suffered significant physical or sexual abuse by age 21.
On the other hand, compared with women who have no children, mothers are much less likely to suffer severe depression or attempt suicide, presumably because the intensity of their relationships with their children shields them against emotional damage from other losses.
• Men. Men are less likely than women to suffer the classic symptoms of depression. But Terrence Real, Ph.D., a psychotherapist in Cambridge, Massachusetts who specializes in depression in men, contends that they are just as likely to get depressed. However, they reveal it differently, through alcoholism, other substance abuse, and antisocial behavior.
• Children and Teens. It can be hard to spot depression in young people for two reasons: Even when not depressed, they often experience frequent, roller-coaster mood swings. In addition, depression in kids and teens may not cause classic symptoms of depression. Instead, you might notice irritability, angry outbursts, and problems in school. Tragically, suicide is the third leading cause of death among Americans to age 24, taking more than 5,000 lives each year.
• The elderly. An estimated 15 percent of people over 65 experience depression at some point during their elderly years. Instead of typical symptoms, depressed elderly may complain of persistent fatigue, appetite loss, weight loss, and difficulty concentrating. Compared with other age groups, the elderly commit suicide twice as frequently. Suicides are especially common among elderly men, who account for 81 percent of suicides of those over 65.
• People with chronic illnesses. Depression is one of the most common—and potentially dangerous—complications of every chronic illness. Many surveys show how depressing it is to have a chronic illness. In the general population, the lifetime risk of depression is 10 to 20 percent for women and 5 to 12 percent for men. However, the prevalence of depression in those with chronic illnesses is much higher. NIMH studies show that depression develops in 25 percent of people with cancer or stroke, and about half of those with heart attacks. According to depression specialist Arthur Rifkin, M.D., a psychiatrist at Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York, the most common misconception about depression and chronic illness is that it’s understandable in the face of chronic illness. Perhaps, but only during the initial adjustment, a period that should last no longer than a few months. If depression lasts longer without treatment, it shortens life 11 percent, according to a study of 3,529 people with serious illnesses by researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.
• Anyone Born After You Were: For reasons that remain unclear, rates of clinical depression have increased worldwide in each succeeding generation born since 1915. The fact is, anyone can become seriously depressed. That’s why everyone should know more about it.
Tragically, only two-thirds of those suffering what William Shakespeare called “too much sadness,” and author and depression survivor William Styron has called “despair beyond despair” ever seek treatment. The myth is that people who can’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” lack character. But “depression is not a moral weakness,” says psychiatrist Alan Brauer, M.D., founder of TotalCare Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, one of the nation’s first clinics to combine mainstream and complementary therapies. “It’s a medical illness with clear biological roots.”
Fortunately, depression is increasingly treatable—with a number of nondrug and complementary therapies in addition to pharmaceutical antidepressants. With the combination of therapies now available, “as many as 85 percent of people with major depression have fairly good results,” says John McIntyre, M.D., a past president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Even if you take an antidepressant, Dr. Brauer says you usually get better results by combining drugs with nondrug and complementary approaches.

asthma

Your colds typically conclude with a dry, hacking cough that lasts a few days. But after one particular cold, your cough went on for weeks. You figured you had bronchitis.
You’d had bronchitis before. It was annoying, but nothing to worry about. You knew what to do: You took a cough suppressant, sipped herb teas, made a big pot of chicken soup, and upped your daily dose of vitamin C. But your coughing continued, and not just during the day. You also developed a symptom you’d never had before, terrible coughing fits that kept you up at night.
“The Bronchitis from Hell,” your doctor sighed, as he scribbled a prescription for antibiotics and a codeine cough syrup. But they didn’t help.
Four days later, a call to your doctor’s office got you a referral to a lung specialist. He listed to your story and had you blow hard into a strange tube. “You don’t have bronchitis,” he said. “You have asthma.”
“Asthma?” you gasped. “At my age? I’m a 53-year-old woman. I thought asthma was a childhood illness. And I though it caused wheezing. My problem is coughing.”
“Asthma is best known as a childhood disease,” the specialist replied, “so few people know that the majority of Americans who have it are adults. Many people, particularly women, get diagnosed in their thirties, forties, and fifties. And asthma doesn’t necessarily cause wheezing. A classic symptom is persistent coughing at night.”

common cold

The common cold is caused by any of about 200 viruses. Viruses are baffling bundles of genetic material. They’re so tiny that if a human throat cell were the size of the typical house, a cold virus would be about the size of a door or window. Using the common definition of “life,” viruses are barely even alive. Technically, each cold virus causes a “different” cold, but because all colds produce pretty much the same symptoms, we consider the common cold a single illness.
Cold viruses reproduce best in relatively dry air at around 90Ëš F, notes cold researcher Elliott Dick, Ph.D., recently retired chief of the respiratory viruses research laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, at Madison. Your first line of defense is your nose. It warms and moistens incoming air, making it less hospitable to the virus. In addition, your nose and throat are lined with mucus that traps virus particles like flypaper, and microscopic hairs (cilia) that push this mucus down into the stomach, where the acid in your stomach destroys the virus particles. But every so often—one to three times a year for the typical adult, and up to 12 times a year for young children—those pesky virus particles penetrate your throat’s protective mucus, and infect your throat cells.
This may comes as a surprise, but cold viruses don’t cause cold symptoms. Your sore throat, congestion, runny nose, and cough all result from your immune system’s battle against the infection. Before cold-infected throat cells die, they release special chemicals—notably interferon and immunoglobulin A (IgA)—that rally your immune sytstem to arms for the “cold war.” As your immune system swings into action, the tiny blood vessels in your throat expand. This draws extra blood to the infection, bringing with it white blood cells and other immune warriors, notably, antibodies, histamine, and bradykinin. Eventually, your swollen blood vessels trigger local pain nerves, and you feel “a cold throat coming on.” The phrase is ironic, because by the time you develop that sore throat, you’ve already been infected for about 24 hours.”
As the days pass, the extra fluid drawn to your throat to fight the infection accumulates in the sinus cavities around the nose, causing nasal congestion. Some of it leaks out as a runny nose, or triggers sneezing. Finally, your immune system’s fight against the infection irritates the bronchial tubes, and you develop the dry, hacking cough. “You feel fine as you become infected with colds,” says University of Nebraska cold researcher Stephen Rennard, M.D. “You feel ill because your body is making you well.
Young children catch the most colds because their immune systems are not fully developed, and because they are lax in personal hygiene. In addition, Dr. Dick explains, recovery from every cold confers an estimated three to five-year immunity—and possibly longer—to that specific virus and its close relatives, and children have not lived long enough to have developed much of this virus-induced immunity.
Colds spread by either the “aerosol route” or by “direct contact.” Aerosol means through the air. “When you have a cold and cough, sneeze, or just exhale,” Dr. Dick explains, “you spew virus particles into the air. If someone inhales them, bingo, they can catch the cold.”
Direct contact refers to your fingers. “We all touch our noses subconsciously several times an hour,” says cold researcher Jack Gwaltney, a professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. “When you have a cold, nose-touching contaminates your fingers with virus particles. If you touch other peoples’ hands or hard surfaces—counters, doorknobs, telephones, etc.—you deposit virus on them, other people literally pick it up on their fingertips. Then they touch their noses and can get infected.” They might also rub their eyes. The tear ducts in the inner corners of the eyes are connected by a tube to the nasopharynx, so eye-rubbing with cold-contaminated fingertips can also transmit the common cold.

shigellosis

Shigellosis, also known as bacillary dysentery in its most severe manifestation, is a foodborne illness caused by infection by bacteria of the genus Shigella. It accounts for less than 10% of the reported outbreaks of foodborne illness in the USA. Shigellosis rarely occurs in animals other than humans and other primates like monkeys and chimpanzees. The causative organism is frequently found in water polluted with human feces, and is transmitted via the fecal-oral route. The usual mode of transmission is directly person-to-person hand-to-mouth, in the setting of poor hygiene among children.

acute renal failure

Acute renal failure (ARF), also known as acute kidney failure or acute kidney injury, is a rapid loss of renal function due to damage to the kidneys, resulting in retention of nitrogenous (urea and creatinine) and non-nitrogenous waste products that are normally excreted by the kidney. Depending on the severity and duration of the renal dysfunction, this accumulation is accompanied by metabolic disturbances, such as metabolic acidosis (acidification of the blood) and hyperkalaemia (elevated potassium levels), changes in body fluid balance, and effects on many other organ systems. It can be characterised by oliguria or anuria (decrease or cessation of urine production), although nonoliguric ARF may occur. It is a serious disease and treated as a medical emergency.

achalasia

Achalasia, also known as esophageal achalasia, achalasia cardiae, cardiospasm, dyssynergia esophagus, and esophageal aperistalsis, is an esophageal motility disorder.[1] In this disorder, the smooth muscle layer of the esophagus has impaired peristalsis (muscular ability to move food down the esophagus), and the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) fails to relax properly in response to swallowing.[2] The most common form is primary achalasia, which has no known underlying cause. However, a small proportion occurs as a secondary result of other conditions, such as esophageal cancer or (in South America) Chagas disease.

Pertussis, or Whooping Cough

Pertussis, or whooping cough, was a major cause of illness and death among infants and children in the United States before vaccines were introduced in the 1940s. Following the introduction and widespread use of the combined pertussis, diphtheria, and tetanus vaccine (DTP) among infants and children in the late 1940s, the incidence of reported pertussis declined to a historic low of 1,010 cases in 1976.Whooping cough is a very contagious and dangerous respiratory infection caused by the Bordetella pertussis bacterium. Symptoms of whooping cough generally include runny nose and a cough that gets worse and worse. Violent coughing spells can end with vomiting. Once the whooping stage begins, antibiotics don't work.Disease DictionWhooping cough got its name from the whooping sound children make when they try to breathe after a coughing spell.Whooping cough is spread through the air, making it particularly infectious.

Genital Herpes

Herpes simplex virus (HSV), better known as genital herpes, is a contagious viral infection estimated to infect 45 million Americans, with as many as 500,000 new cases occurring each year. Infections frequently go unrecognized by patients and/or clinicians. Two types of virus, HSV1 and HSV2, cause genital herpes. Both types produce sores in and around the vagina, penis, anal opening, and on the buttocks or thighs. Sores may also appear on other areas whenever broken skin comes into contact with HSV.The virus invades nerves cells and can reside there for life, causing periodic symptoms. Genital herpes infection is acquired by sexual contact with a partner having an outbreak of herpes sores in the genital area. Oral herpes can be transmitted to the genital area of a partner during oral sex. Some herpes infections may make people more likely to get an HIV infection if exposed to the virus. Reliable tests for HSV antibodies are now readily available. In addition, PCR tests can be used to detect herpes infection.Potent FactGenital herpes is not readily spread by contact with a toilet seat or in a hot tub.There is no cure for herpes. However, there are a number of drugs that are effective in treating the herpes virus. Acyclovir, an antiviral drug, is the “gold standard” of therapy. These drugs reduce symptoms and help to speed healing. They also lessen the chances of outbreaks. There is no vaccine for genital herpes, although recent trials of vaccines reduced the risk of infection by 75 percent. The vaccine was not effective in men, however, making it the first time a vaccine worked in one sex and not in the other. Unfortunately, herpes can be spread even if the infection is inactive.

Tuberculosis

IntroductionIn an age when we believe that we have the tools to conquer most diseases, the ancient scourge of tuberculosis (TB) still causes 2 million deaths a year worldwide—more than any other single infectious organism—reminding us that we still have a long way to go. Even equipped with drugs to treat TB effectively, we haven't managed to eradicate this deadly infection.What is the history of tuberculosis? And how has it managed to survive for so long? This section will answer these questions, plus describe the symptoms and treatment options available for TB.An Ancient Scourge That Still Kills TodayMycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, has been around for centuries. Recently, fragments of the spinal columns from Egyptian mummies from 2400 B.C.E. were found to have definite signs of the ravages of this terrible disease. Also called consumption, TB was identified as the most widespread disease in ancient Greece, where it was almost always fatal. But it wasn't until centuries later that the first descriptions of the disease began to appear. Starting in the late seventeenth century, physicians began to identify changes in the lungs common in all consumptive, or TB, patients. At the same time, the earliest references to the fact that the disease was infectious began to appear.In 1720, the English doctor Benjamin Marten was the first to state that TB could be caused by “wonderfully minute living creatures.” He went further to say that it was likely that ongoing contact with a consumptive patient could cause a healthy person to get sick. Although Marten's findings didn't help to cure TB, they did help people to better understand the disease.The sanitorium, which was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century, was the first positive step to contain TB. Hermann Brehmer, a Silesian botany student who had TB, was told by his doctor to find a healthy climate. He moved to the Himalayas and continued his studies. He survived his bout with the illness, and after he received his doctorate, built an institution in Gorbersdorf, where TB patients could come to recuperate. They received good nutrition and were outside in fresh air most of the day. This became the model for the development of sanitoria around the world.In 1865, French military doctor Jean-Antoine Villemin demonstrated that TB could be passed from people to cattle and from cattle to rabbits. In 1882, Robert Koch discovered a staining technique that allowed him to see the bacteria that cause TB under a microscope.Until the introduction of surgical techniques to remove infected tissue and the development of x-rays to monitor the disease, doctors didn't have great tools to treat TB. TB patients could be isolated, which helped reduce the spread of the disease, but treating it remained a challenge.Disease DictionTuberculosis was first formally described by Greek physician Hippocrates around 460 B.C.E. He called it phthsis which is the Greek word for consumption, because it described the way the disease consumed its victims. Consumption was the most widespread disease of the time, and most of its victims died. The word consumption was used to describe the disease until 1882, when the tuberculosis bacteria was identified as the cause of the disease.Antigen AlertTuberculosis is spread through the air, so everyone is at some risk.