Why Faculty Must Promote Their Own Self-Care

HIT-antibodies promote their own antigen.

Antiplatelet factor 4 (PF4) antibodies have an important role in the most frequent drug-induced immune disorder, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT). In this issue of Blood, Sachais and coworkers propose a new feature that may explain why only some anti-PF4 antibodies are pathogenic.(1) In addition to epitope specificity-determining affinity and a high titer, the ability of antibodies to pro...

Why patients should keep their own records.

Too many people now have access to confidential medical information. Patients are becoming justifiably wary and the doctor-patient relationship is deteriorating. We can avert the developing crisis by allowing patients to keep their own medical records at home. This will ensure that confidentiality is respected and that patients continue to trust their doctors.

Chimpanzees recognize their own delayed self-image

Unlike mirror self-recognition, recognizing one's own image in delayed video footage may indicate the presence of a concept of self that extends across time and space. While humans typically show this ability around 4 years of age, it is unknown whether this capacity is found in non-human animals. In this study, chimpanzees performed a modified version of the mark test to investigate whether ch...

Mobile Antibiotic Resistance Encoding Elements Promote Their Own Diversity

Integrating conjugative elements (ICEs) are a class of bacterial mobile genetic elements that disseminate via conjugation and then integrate into the host cell genome. The SXT/R391 family of ICEs consists of more than 30 different elements that all share the same integration site in the host chromosome but often encode distinct properties. These elements contribute to the spread of antibiotic r...

Why the federal government must lead in health care.