Observational epidemiologic studies suggest that people who consume higher dietary levels of fruits and vegetables containing beta carotene have a lower risk of certain types of cancer¹,² and cardiovascular disease,³ and basic research suggests plausible ...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in the United States, accounting for approximately 29 percent of deaths from cancer and 6 percent of all deaths.¹ New approaches are essential to prevent lung cancer in persons who have smoked ...

There is growing evidence that the oxidative modification of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) may be critical to the development of atherosclerosis.¹–³ Oxidized LDL is present in atherosclerotic plaques⁴; the oxidation of LDL appears to enhance the uptake of ...

Iron deficiency is frequent in patients with celiac sprue¹–³ and may rarely cause anemia in such patients in the absence of diarrhea and steatorrhea.⁴–⁹ Malabsorption of dietary iron is presumed to be the predominant cause of this iron deficiency,¹⁰–¹² ...

Chang et al.¹ have found herpesvirus-like DNA sequences in Kaposi's sarcoma tissue from a patient with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). To date, these DNA sequences have been detected by the ...

Figure 1. Strongyloides stercoralis infection occurs when filariform larvae from the soil penetrate the skin, pass through the circulation to the lungs, enter the airways, and are then swallowed. In the small-intestinal mucosa, the larvae mature into ...

Budget constraints increasingly determine the provision of health care services. One of the promises of cost-effectiveness analysis is that it can demonstrate how to maximize the health care benefits attainable within a specific budget.¹,² Despite this ...

Infections with parasitic helminths and protozoa are important causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Chemotherapy has an important role not only in the treatment of individual patients but also, in conjunction with public health and vector-control ...

For gene therapy to realize its clinical potential, there must be efficient and safe strategies of delivering therapeutic genes to somatic cells in vivo. Perhaps this problem simply represents a special case of drug delivery in which the therapeutic gene ...

In 1850, an article on the origin of epidemic yellow fever and malaria appeared in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. ¹ The anonymous author referred to earlier reports that “those who slept under musquito [sic] netting escaped the disease” and that ...

The report by Fine in this issue of the Journal, ¹ which describes frequent positive tests for occult intestinal bleeding among patients with celiac disease, adds a new dimension to our understanding of this disorder. Celiac disease can be overt, with the ...

Genes have become the preferred way to explain all types of ill health and unwanted behavior. Some of the attributions seem fairly clear-cut, but many are being embraced uncritically and oversold. This situation can be troubling for clinicians, as well as ...

To the Editor: The article by Rothman et al. (Nov. 23 issue)¹ followed our study, in which we identified a possible increase in the risk of certain birth defects associated with vitamin A supplementation, but information on dose was not available.² We ...

To the Editor: The paper by FitzGerald et al. (Jan. 18 issue)¹ provides important data on the frequency of common mutations of the BRCA1 breast-cancer–susceptibility gene in the Ashkenazi Jewish population. However, in their discussion of the use of ...

To the Editor: In his editorial (Jan. 18 issue),¹ Dr. Collins discusses many of the issues surrounding the presymptomatic testing of women for BRCA1 mutations when their families are at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Because of the high ...

To the Editor: Childs and Mercer's report (Jan. 4 issue)¹ of a young woman's emergence from what had been deemed a permanent vegetative state contains a clear description of the treatment and its progression. What is missing, despite some description of ...

To the Editor: CD4+ T-lymphocytopenia is extremely rare in the absence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in asymptomatic persons.¹,² For more than five years we have followed a 30-year-old woman with depletion of CD4+ T lymphocytes who had ...

Wheels and gears whirred.

The metal chair rolled to face right

at the flick of the switch

by a scalloped finger

sculpted from its melting muscles.

His legs scissored

on the chair supports

to dangle from his bulging torso.

His face was large in comparison,

Stephen Post's book on the bioethics of the care of those with dementia is not a dense academic tome so much as an extended conversation that touches on many issues that arise in the rendering of such care. Health professionals who deal with dementia, as ...

Recently I was in a patient's hospital room, discussing her possible discharge to home. The patient had been very sick, had a gastrostomy tube, required dialysis, and had seizures complicating multi-infarct dementia. The family was not united. Her elderly ...

The personality and varied talents of the author — as journalist, photographer, and emergency room physician — are evident in this remarkable book, which presents moving and thought-provoking accounts of assisted death and the decisions faced by five ...

Winfried Schleiner circumscribes his study of Renaissance medical ethics in two ways: first, by limiting his primary sources to the writings of physicians (excluding, for the most part, those of theologians, philosophers, and jurists) and, second, by ...

A Controlled Trial of a Two-Component Acellular, a Five-Component Acellular, and a Whole-Cell Pertussis Vaccine Original Article, N Engl J Med 1996:334;349-356.. On page 354, in the right-hand column, the first sentence of the last paragraph should have ...

Short Stature Caused by a Mutant Growth Hormone Original Article, N Engl J Med 1996:334;432-436.. On page 434, in Table 2, the sequences of the primers GHS1, GHS2, and GHS3 were wrong. The correct sequences, with the nucleotide numbers shown in ...