Chronic fatigue syndrome affects between one million and four million Americans. They suffer from memory and concentration problems, debilitating pain and severe fatigue. Unable to identify a cause, doctors often dismissed these patients as complainers. Currently, diagnosing chronic fatigue syndrome is largely a process of elimination.
As scientists race to find a biological cause for chronic fatigue syndrome, long considered by many doctors to exist in patients’ heads, the National Institutes of Health could shed new light on the debate at a major scientific workshop on the disorder.
Researchers at the University of Utah and elsewhere are working to create diagnostic tests, based partly on proteins or other markers that appear to show up in greater quantities in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. Diagnosing the disorder is difficult, in part because symptoms vary among patients.
Other scientists are trying to understand why other infections, such as mononucleosis, appear to prompt chronic fatigue syndrome in some patients. And in a program at New York’s Columbia University, researchers are seeking to identify pathogens that may appear prominently in patients with the disorder. Researchers will be testing “for all those agents that we know affect vertebrates on this globe,” says Mady Hornig, who heads the Columbia program. Curious? Continue reading
The numbers are, well, depressing: More than 2 million people age 65 and older suffer from depression, including 50 percent of those living in nursing homes. The suicide rate among white men over 85 is the highest in the country — six times the national rate.
And we’re not getting any younger. In the next 35 years, the number of Americans over 65 will double and the number of those over 85 will triple.
So the question becomes, how to help elderly depressed individuals?[continue reading…]
What does death look like in the 21st century? Joanna Walsh sketched the dying for an eye-opening exhibition
It all started when the woman living next door started to die. Her bed and Joanna Walsh’s were separated by just the thin wall of their houses. In the lonely darkness, Walsh could hear her neighbour, sometimes in pain, sometimes at peace.
“Her death became part of my life,” she says.
“I didn’t know her, but I was sharing the rhythm of her life as it came to an end. It was a peculiar intimacy.
Joanna is spending two weeks at Wellcome Collection, where you can watch her make a drawing based on her work with patients at Sobell House Hospice.
From the ancient Egyptians to modern psychotherapists, the nature of dreaming has fascinated people for centuries. Now, neuroscience is giving us more rigorous methods to understand what dreams are, why we have them, and how we might depend on them for our very survival. Find out more in this short animated film.
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Chronic fatigue syndrome affects between one million and four million Americans. They suffer from memory and concentration problems, debilitating pain and severe fatigue. Unable to identify a cause, doctors often dismissed these patients as complainers. Currently, diagnosing chronic fatigue syndrome is largely a process of elimination.
