If you have pain on the side of your wrist opposite your thumb, it’s called ulnar wrist pain. There are many things that can cause it, and there are several ways to treat it.
“Ulnar wrist pain is a small area from the pinky side of your hand. And it’s from this little knobbly bone called the ulnar to this area near the wrist,” says Dr. Sanj Kakar, a Mayo Clinic hand and wrist surgeon. “It’s very, very common.”
Ulnar wrist pain can occur after a fall onto an outstretched hand. But it also happens in people who play stickhandling sports, like tennis or hockey, and certain occupations that require lifting or using a repetitive motion in the wrist.
Postmenopausal women whose screening mammograms show signs of calcification in their breast arteries may have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease: https://t.co/iktQotQz5n#HarvardHealth
The routine mammograms women receive to check for breast cancer may also offer clues to their risk for heart disease, new research suggests.
White spots or lines visible on mammograms indicate a buildup of calcium in breast arteries. This breast arterial calcification is different from coronary artery calcification, which is known to be a marker for higher cardiovascular risk. For the study, researchers followed 5,059 postmenopausal women (ages 60 to 79) for six and a half years. They found that those with breast arterial calcification were 51% more likely to develop heart disease or have a stroke than those without calcification. The study was published March 15, 2022, in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.
Vulnerability to heart disease can be projected before symptoms occur, Mayo Clinic discovered in preclinical research. This proof-of-concept study revealed that heart muscle changes indicate who is vulnerable to disease later in life. These changes can be detected from blood samples through comprehensive protein and metabolite profiling. This exploratory mapping, conducted in the Marriott Family Comprehensive Cardiac Regenerative Program within Mayo Clinic’s Center for Regenerative Medicine, is published in Scientific Reports.
“The team implemented state-of-the-art technologies to predict who is vulnerable and who is protected from heart disease,” says Andre Terzic, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist and the senior author. “In this era of post-genomic medicine, the acquired foundational knowledge provides guidance for development of curative solutions targeted to correct the disease-causing maladaptation.” Dr. Terzic is the Marriott Family Director, Comprehensive Cardiac Regenerative Medicine, for the Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Marriott Family Professor of Cardiovascular Research.
— Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) June 2, 2022
Chronic pain can develop from an acute pain state. The mechanisms mediating the transition from acute to chronic pain remain to be elucidated. Here, Parisien et al. focused on the immune system using samples from patients and animal models. Transcriptomic analysis in immune cells from subjects with low back pain showed that neutrophil activation–dependent inflammatory genes were up-regulated in subjects with resolved pain, whereas no changes were observed in patients with persistent pain. In rodents, anti-inflammatory treatments prolonged pain duration and the effect was abolished by neutrophil administration. Last, clinical data showed that the use of anti-inflammatory drugs was associated with increased risk of persistent pain, suggesting that anti-inflammatory treatments might have negative effects on pain duration.
Endometriosis is a health condition in which the kind of tissue commonly found in the inner lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the body. This can cause severe pain and other complications. Miguel Luna, MD is here to share signs of endometriosis, how the condition is diagnosed and treatment options available
Learning about cirrhosis can be intimidating. Let our experts walk you through the facts, the questions, and the answers to help you better understand this condition.
Timeline: 0:00 Introduction 0:24 What is cirrhosis? 1:05 Who gets cirrhosis? / Risk factors 2:03 Symptoms of cirrhosis 2:49 How is cirrhosis diagnosed? 3:38 Treatment options 4:42 Coping methods/ What now? 5:17 Ending
Rabies has been known since ancient times, and continues to produce thousands of deaths each year, primarily in Asia and Africa, almost invariably from the bite of an infected animal. There is usually at least a 2-3 week incubation period, while the virus is traveling up the nerves to the brain. This allows a period of time for a prophylactic vaccine treatment. Once symptoms actually develop, however, the disease is almost universally fatal.
Rabies is present as a Reservoir in wild animals. For this reason, flavorful baits laced with oral rabies vaccine are often sprinkled throughout endemic areas near human settlements, an expensive, although cost effective treatment. A bite from any wild animal is worrisome, but, in the United States, Bats are the main source of infection. The last fatal case of rabies in the United States occurred in an Illinois man who awakened with a bat on his neck. He refused Rabies vaccine and was dead within two weeks.
Dog bite used to be the most common source of rabies in America, but this is no longer the case, due to almost universal Rabies vaccination in American dogs. In India, however, the biggest problem is still dogs, which amazingly have recently been protected by law. India accounts for approximately 1/3 of the worlds rabies fatalities.
The development of rabies vaccine is an interesting story. It was first developed by Louis Pasteur and given in 1885 to a 12-year-old boy who had been mauled by a rabid dog.
The vaccine was prepared from the spinal cord of a rabbit who had the virus growing in his nervous system. Rabbits are very susceptible to rabies, and repeated rabbit passage increases the virulence of the virus. The virulence can be diminished by drying out infected tissue in the air, and Pasteur used a piece of spinal cord from an infected animal which was dried in the air for several days. The boy was given multiple doses of the vaccine over as many days, and survived. This technological achievement occurred before anybody even knew what a virus was. These invisible, infectious sources were called “filterable viruses”, since the infectious agent could not be strained out of the blood plasma by passing it through a filter which effectively removed bacteria, much larger entities.
The Rabies virus has been very clever over the millennia. It modifies the behavior of its victim towards irritability and aggression, which makes transmission of the virus more likely. It is highly concentrated in the salivary glands, increasing the likelihood that the aggressive animal’s bite will transmit the virus.
If you or an acquaintance are bitten under suspicious circumstances, be sure to get the vaccine, which is now been perfected and inactivated so that side effects are most acceptable, considering the almost universal fatality of the disease.
—Dr. C.
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