Spinal osteochondrosis is an urgent problem of modern medicine, sociology, psychology, and a number of other disciplines. The interdisciplinary status of degenerative-dystrophic diseases of the spine is indicated by the fact that they are a manifestation of both a number of somatic and neurological diseases. Every year the number of patients with…

Meta-analyses of clinical trials typically focus on one outcome at a time. However, treatment decision-making depends on an overall assessment of outcomes balancing benefit in various domains and potential risks. This calls for meta-analysis methods for combined outcomes that encompass information from different domains. When individual patient…

A Professor of Medical Ethics and a theatre director, also mother and daughter, talk about health, illness, suffering, performance and practice. Using the lenses of ethical and performance theory, they explore what it means to be a patient, a spectator and a practitioner and cover many plays, texts and productions: Samuel Beckett's "Not…

The use of comics can be a powerful tool to expand educational outreach efforts for improving the health and well-being of people everywhere. Dr. Ian Williams coined the term "graphic medicine" to denote the use of comics in medical education and patient care ("Graphic Medicine"). Alzheimer's disease affects approximately five…

The practical work described here is designed for third-year bachelor students in Life Sciences attending a kidney physiology course. It illustrates how urinary biochemistry can be used for a medical diagnosis. Students have to measure glucose, proteins, and creatinine concentrations in three simulated urine samples. First, they independently…

Dysphagia in people with lifelong disabilities places a substantial burden on people with lifelong developmental disabilities, their carers, health and disability service, and society as a whole. Dysphagia in this population can be associated with respiratory illness, impaired nutrition, increased support needs, emergency hospital admissions with…

"Toxoplasma gondii" is a protozoan parasite that infects about a third of human population. It is generally believed that in immunocompetent hosts, the parasite infection takes usually asymptomatic course and induces self-limiting disease, but in immunocompromised individuals may cause significant morbidity and mortality. "T. gondii" uses sulfated…

Objective: This study was designed to extend the use of a memory training technique, known as the repetition-lag procedure, to Alzheimer patients. The specificity of this procedure is to target the process of recollection for improvement. Method: A group of 12 patients were trained individually for 6 h. The training procedure consisted of a series…

Studies of incidental category learning support the hypothesis of an implicit prototype-extraction system that is distinct from explicit memory (Smith, 2008). In those studies, patients with explicit-memory impairments due to damage to the medial-temporal lobe performed normally in implicit categorization tasks (Bozoki, Grossman, & Smith, 2006;…

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is recognized globally as the greatest health challenge of the present generation. It is widely acknowledged to be the foremost killer disease in Africa. Since the first AIDS case was publicly announced in 1986, the astronomical increase in victims has been a matter of concern. The rates of HIV/AIDS infection indicate that…

Clinical reasoning is the specific cognitive process used by health care practitioners to formulate accurate diagnoses for complex patient problems and to set up and carry out effective care. Athletic training students and practitioners need to develop and display effective clinical reasoning skills in the assessment of injury and illness as a…

Intervention research for couples and families managing chronic health problems is in an early developmental stage. We reviewed randomized clinical trials of family interventions for common neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and diabetes, which is similar to the content of previous reviews discussed later. One overriding theme…

Live kidney transplantation (LKT) is underused by patients with end-stage renal disease. Easily implementable and effective interventions to improve patients' early consideration of LKT are needed. The Talking About Live Kidney Donation (TALK) social worker intervention (SWI) improved consideration and pursuit of LKT among patients with…

Objective: Our goal was to evaluate the existing literature on psychological, social, and behavioral aspects of chronic hepatitis C viral (HCV) infection and antiviral treatment; provide the state of the behavioral science in areas that presently hinder HCV-related health outcomes; and make recommendations for areas in which clinical psychology…

Mitochondrial diseases are very heterogeneous and can affect different tissues and organs. Moreover, they can be caused by genetic defects in either nuclear or mitochondrial DNA as well as by environmental factors. All of these factors have made the development of therapies difficult. In this review article, we will discuss emerging approaches to…