More than 25 million people in the world today are affected by dementia, most suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In both developed and developing nations, Alzheimer's disease has had tremendous impact on the affected individuals, caregivers, and society. The etiological factors, other than older age and genetic susceptibility, remain to be determined. Nevertheless, increasing evidence strongly...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This is a study of cardiac diseases associated with the 1,382 cases of first cerebral infarction in residents of Rochester, Minn., during 1960-1984. METHODS This is a population-based study in Rochester, Minn., for which the medical record-linkage system was used to identify cardiac disease among patients with first cerebral infarction. RESULTS There were 318 patients...

The science of medical genetics is progressing rapidly. The practical importance of this pro­gress should be considered by medical doctors. Both genetic and environmental factors are involved in the abnormail phenotypes considered diseases. The relative significance of the two factors varies from disease to disease. All di­seases can be viewed as falling on a spectrum in this regard. Hereditary...

Legionnaires' disease (LD) is an acute form of pneumonia, and changing weather is considered a plausible risk factor. Yet, the relationship between weather and LD has rarely been investigated, especially using long-term daily data. In this study, daily data was used to evaluate the impacts of precipitation, temperature, and relative humidity on LD occurrence in Taiwan from 1995-2011. A time-str...

INTRODUCTION In Parkinson's disease (PD), respiratory insufficiency (including functional and muscle disorders) can impact dysarthria and swallowing. Most studies of this topic have been performed retrospectively in populations of patients with advanced PD. The objective of the present study was to characterize lung function (under off-drug conditions) in early-stage PD patients at baseline and...

Systemic mast cell activation disease (MCAD) comprises disorders characterized by an enhanced release of mast cell mediators accompanied by accumulation of dysfunctional mast cells. Demonstration of familial clustering would be an important step towards defining the genetic contribution to the risk of systemic MCAD. The present study aimed to quantify familial aggregation for MCAD and to invest...

Enteric granulomatous inflammation can be caused by a number of conditions including Crohn's disease, sarcoidosis, enteric infections, chronic granulomatous disease and also by drug reactions. Granulomas have also been described in microscopic colitis associated with certain medications and autoimmune diseases. The association of granulomatous ileocolitis with coeliac disease is not common. We ...

mycotoxins are an increasingly discussed topic. several scientific reports have been written which review the effects of these toxic substances on the health and productivity of animals. however, there is a lack of work regarding the incidence of mycotoxins in ensiled material and the consequences of this occurrence. in this review, practical and field information was converged with scientific ...

INTRODUCTION Since 1970, lengthening of the rectosigmoid has been suspected to be a solitary manifestation of Chagas colopathy. METHODS To test this hypothesis, opaque enema was administered on 210 seropositive and 63 seronegative patients, and radiographs in the anteroposterior and posteroanterior positions were examined blind to the serological and clinical findings. The distal colon was me...

BACKGROUND Both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cerebrovascular atherosclerosis (CA) contributed to dementia in an aged population. Whether they share the same mechanism is unknown. AIM Our goal was to explore the occurrence rates of CA in AD patients. METHOD Here we examined the degree of CA in different groups of AD patients with contrast angiography. Ninety-three AD patients were recruited ...