Sternberg's Diagnostic Surgical Pathology

This is fourth edition of Sternberg's diagnostic surgical pathology, published in 2004. Does not require a introduction. Fifth edition has been published in last quarter of 2009.

Peanut allergies tackled in largest ever trial

Cambridge University researchers will give increasing doses of peanut flour to 104 British children, up to the equivalent of five nuts a day.

Twenty out of 23 sufferers in an earlier study became able to eat more than 30 peanuts safely.

The new £1m three-year trial could lead to a widely available treatment.

About one in 50 young people in the UK suffers from peanut allergies which can cause breathing problems, itching and, in severe cases, a potentially fatal inflammatory reaction called anaphylaxis.

A year later, woman told she's not HIV+

Till last January, 23-year-old Batashi and husband Tarak, 26, of Serampore were the quintessential happy couple. They had married for love and were expecting their first child. Then a routine blood test brought their world crashing down. Batashi was inexplicably diagnosed HIV positive at Kolkata's School of Tropical Medicine (STM). A test on Tarak proved negative.

What followed was worse than nightmare for Batashi. Her in-laws ostracized her and her husband accused her of straying. Tarak would have kicked her out had a little compassion for the woman he had once loved not lurked in one corner of his heart.

5,000 more post-grad medical seats

India will now produce 5,000 more specialized doctors every year. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday approved health ministry's proposal to add more postgraduate seats in 148 state government medical colleges.

The Rs 1,350 crore scheme will see a cost sharing ratio of 75:25 between the Centre and states. Though still far short of the numbers needed, the decision is being viewed as a positive step for a country that has a shortfall of six lakh doctors, 10 lakh nurses and two lakh dental surgeons.

Ironically, Indian doctors who have migrated to the developed world form nearly 5% of the medical workforce of their respective countries.

An eye opener from neuropathology blog - "Should Football Be Illegal?"

       Dr. Brian recently posted this article on his blog, I found the post so interesting that I am replicating the post entirely.

"Two neuropathologists are prominently spotlighted in an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the October 19 issue of The New Yorker. The article explores a provocative question raised by autopsy results on football players: namely, should football be illegal? Featured are Dr. Ann McKee (pictured), neuropathologist at the Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts and Dr. Bennet Omalu, forensic neuropathologist and San Joaquin Valley (CA) chief medical examiner. Drs. McKee and Omalu have done some interesting autopsy work which suggests that the tau-positive chronic traumatic encephalopathy suffered by football players is much more common, even among high school players, than previously realized. As an example, McKee provides photomicrographs from a case of an 18-year-old high school football player and says: "He's got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular.... This is completely inappropriate. You don't see tau like this in an 18-year-old. You don't see tau like this in a fifty year old."

Tests show King Tut died from malaria

There has been speculation about the fate of the boy king, who died sometime around 1324 BC probably at age 19, since the 1922 discovery of his intact tomb in Egypt's Valley of Kings.

Tests performed on 16 royal mummies found four, including Tut, had contracted a severe form of malaria that likely cut short Tut's reign -- ruling out murder or some other sickness.

Scientists from Egypt, Germany and elsewhere, including Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, compiled results from genetic and radiological testing performed on the mummies between 2007 and 2009. The results clarify details about the 155-year-long 18th Dynasty that included Tutankhamen, who inherited the throne at age 11.

Analysis: Chocolate may reduce stroke risk

Just in time for Valentine's Day, research out this week suggests eating chocolate may have a positive impact on stroke. Don't go buying too many heart boxes just yet, though, say the study authors.

A new analysis, which involved a review of three prior studies, suggests eating about a bar of chocolate a week can help cut the risk of stroke and lower the risk of death after a stroke. But the evidence is still limited, says study author, neurologist Gustavo Saposnik at St. Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto.

"This is something that requires further investigation," Saposnik says.

Child Obesity Risks Death at Early Age, Study Finds

A rare study that tracked thousands of children through adulthood found the heaviest youngsters were more than twice as likely as the thinnest to die prematurely, before age 55, of illness or a self-inflicted injury.

Youngsters with a condition called pre-diabetes were at almost double the risk of dying before 55, and those with high blood pressure were at some increased risk. But obesity was the factor most closely associated with an early death, researchers said.

Three Simple Steps to Healthy Weight in Children

To curb the childhood-obesity epidemic, health experts have long urged parents to make healthy changes to their family's lifestyle — such as eating nutritiously, reducing TV time, exercising and getting a good night's sleep.

Individually, these behaviors have been linked to a lower risk of obesity in kids, but researchers at Ohio State University were interested in learning whether their effect might be cumulative — that is, whether families who adopted not just one but two or more of these behaviors could reduce their children's risk of obesity even further.

Study links sugary soft drinks to pancreas cancer

People who drink two or more sweetened soft drinks a week have a much higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an unusual but deadly cancer, researchers reported on Monday.

People who drank mostly fruit juice instead of sodas did not have the same risk, the study of 60,000 people in Singapore found.

Sugar may be to blame but people who drink sweetened sodas regularly often have other poor health habits, said Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota, who led the study.

"The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth," Pereira said in a statement.

Promising Blood test For Pancreatic Cancer Detection

Scientists state that they have been successful in developing a blood test which could detect pancreatic cancer early on in its more treatable stages.

The test employs an antibody that functions as a heat-detecting projectile that homes in and attaches to cells which bear PAM4 protein which is found vastly in pancreatic cancer cases.

The researchers stated that this protein is pancreatic cancer-specific and is atypically present in healthy tissues or in other types of cancers.

India to turn out over 145,000 rural doctors

With people-doctor ratio six times lower in rural India in comparison to cities, the central government on Thursday said it will produce 145,000 rural doctors through a truncated medical course designed after the Chinese "barefoot doctors".
"The proposal envisages training persons from rural areas on the basis of merit to equip him or her to primarily, I underline, primarily to work in 145,000 sub centres," Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said here.

Iron deficiency V/S thal minor V/S chronic disease anemia

A variety of equations have been proposed to distinguish the microcytic anemia of iron deficiency from that of thalassemia minor.

These formulas may not be applicable:

(1) if the patient has been treated with iron;

(2) if the patient has been treated with blood transfusions;

(3) if both iron deficiency and thalassemia minor coexist in the same patient

(4) in some patients with polycythemia vera who develop iron deficiency (England-Fraser formula)

Some of the formulas do not account for a gray, intermediate region where it is not possible to differentiate between the two conditions reliably.

Mentzer Formula

How One Woman's Cells Changed Medicine

               In a microbiology lab at New York's Columbia University, Professor Vincent Racaniello experiments with some cells that have led to some of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the last hundred years. But these are no ordinary cells.

Henrietta Lacks, circa 1950.

(Courtesy of PNAS.org)

They're called, HeLa. And they were first used in research that led to the Polio vaccine, as well as helping to develop medicines to fight cancer, the flu and Parkinson's disease, and in the research that led to gene mapping and cloning. They were used to test the effects of atomic radiation and sent into outer space.