BACKGROUND The stress response in humans is a healthy response and is necessary for life. The effects of chiropractic manipulation (CM), if any, on stress are ill-defined. Cortisol has been used as an accurate measure of the stress response system in humans. Salivary cortisol is a noninvasive technique to accurately quantify biologically active cortisol. OBJECTIVE To determine whether basal s...

CONTEXT Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a chronic condition that affects a growing number of people and is currently among the most common disorders seen in clinical practice. OBJECTIVE To develop a protocol for the management of GERD with osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMTh) applied to the diaphragm and esophagus, and to evaluate the protocol's effectiveness using the quality of...

In this volume, an article by Hruby and Hoffman titled "Avian influenza: an osteopathic component to treatment" proposes the use of osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) as an adjunct to other forms of therapy in the management of a potential pandemic of avian influenza or "bird flu" [1]. This article is certainly timely and presents a much-needed reminder of the potential use of OMT in the ...

Patient care experiences represent opportunities for establishing theories, testable hypotheses, and data to assess the potential use of osteopathic manipulative treatment in various disease conditions. The re-analysis of Bandeen's 1949 raw data described herein summarizes the effects of osteopathic manipulative treatment involving pancreatic stimulatory and inhibitory techniques in diabetic an...

The 2012-2013 influenza epidemic arrived approximately 4 weeks early, augmented by an unusual variant type-A ("swine flu") strain that caused greater-than-normal illness and a lack of efficacy in vaccination against it. Tens of thousands of people die of influenza or related complications during a nonepidemic influenza season. Osteopathic medicine can substantially help to address the complicat...

Patients suffering from cervicogenic headache (CeH) are commonly treated with spinal manipulative therapy. We have analyzed the quality and the outcomes of published, randomized, controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of spinal manipulation in CeH. Among 121 relevant articles, only two met all the inclusion criteria. Methodological quality scores were 8/10 and 7/10 points. Only one of th...

Concussions commonly occur in adolescents. Although the majority of adolescent patients' symptoms resolve, about 11% continue to experience symptoms at 3 months. Standard treatment options for prolonged symptoms are not available, and the role of osteopathic manipulative treatment in the management of adolescent concussions is unclear. The authors describe a case of a 16-year-old girl with a hi...

We assessed the effects of red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta; hereafter fire ant) on the foraging of hispid cotton rats (Sigmodon hispidus). We used a manipulative experiment, placing resource patches with a known amount of millet seed within areas with reduced (RIFA [-]) or ambient (RIFA [+]) numbers of fire ants. We measured giving up densities (the amount of food left within each pa...

An important research topic in the field of computational social choice is the complexity of various forms of dishonest behavior, such as manipulation, control, and bribery. While much of the work on this topic assumes that the cheating party has full information about the election, recently there have been a number of attempts to gauge the complexity of non-truthful behavior under uncertainty ...

Finding a cell that reprograms in a nonstochastic manner without genetic manipulation has proven elusive. In this issue, Guo et al. report the identification of a cell defined by an ultrafast cycle whose progeny reprogram in a synchronous and rapid manner.