About 5 percent of all pregnant women have preeclampsia, defined as hypertension and proteinuria beginning during the second half of gestation.¹ Preeclampsia is a leading cause of maternal death throughout the world and is accompanied by substantial ...

Defining the genetic and environmental factors responsible for variations in bone mass during skeletal growth should aid in the identification of children at risk for osteoporosis and fractures later in life.¹ Although the influence of environmental ...

Cytomegalovirus retinitis is the most common opportunistic infection of the eye in patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).¹–⁶ If untreated, cytomegalovirus retinitis is invariably progressive, leading to retinal necrosis and loss of ...

Recent reports of disruptive mutations of the genes for the estrogen receptor or for cytochrome P-450 aromatase¹–⁶ have shed new light on the role of estrogen. In females the lack of estrogen due to aromatase deficiency leads to pseudohermaphroditism and ...

Figure 1. A 30-year-old woman was trapped in a car that had flipped over and landed in a shallow lake with a sandy bottom. She was rescued and rushed to the emergency department, where computed tomographic (CT) scans were obtained. Several hyperdense ...

Few disorders seem more confusing than autism. Common stereotypes — of a severely withdrawn, mute child with ceaselessly repetitive activities and an averted gaze or a freakish-looking, inept, mathematical prodigy — do not accurately reflect the broad ...

Until recently, long-term regimens consisting of daily intravenous infusions of ganciclovir or foscarnet were the only available treatments for patients with cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, a sight-threatening complication that affects approximately one ...

Presentation of Case

A 67-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of a progressive choreiform disorder.

The patient had been well until 13 months earlier, when she became dizzy and restless, had difficulty grasping things, and had to hold on ...

Preeclampsia continues to be a major health problem. It is a leading cause of maternal mortality in developed countries and is associated with a fivefold increase in perinatal mortality. It is now clear that preeclampsia is more than merely increased ...

Bone density is known to have strong genetic determinants. On the basis of studies of twins and mother–daughter pairs, it is estimated that heredity accounts for up to 70 percent of the variance in bone density in both women and men.¹ Thus, the ...

To the Editor: Having once been rear-ended by a driver who continued his cellular-telephone conversation even as he emerged from the offending vehicle, I read the recent report by Redelmeier and Tibshirani (Feb. 13 issue)¹ with great interest. Although ...

To the Editor: The report by the Digitalis Investigation Group (Feb. 20 issue)¹ on the effect of digitalis on mortality and morbidity in patients with heart failure raises several questions. The Digitalis Investigation Group chose a strategy of ...

To the Editor: In the past decade several reports have suggested that there are sexual or racial disparities in the use of invasive cardiac procedures.¹–³ Peterson et al. (Feb. 13 issue)⁴ report that in their study, racial differences persisted after ...

To the Editor: Regarding the treatment of renal-artery stenoses with endoprostheses, Blum et al. (Feb. 13 issue)¹ mention as primary outcomes in their patients that 16 percent had long-term normalization of their blood pressure and 84 percent were free ...

To the Editor: Heredopathia atactica polyneuritiformis was first identified as a distinct clinical entity by Refsum in the 1940s. Patients with this disorder usually present in the second decade of life or later with visual difficulties, distal limb ...

To the Editor: One morning I came across an announcement on a bulletin board in the emergency department to the effect that “Pfizer Night returns . . . at Boston Billiards.” The small poster proclaimed: “Come meet the new Pfizer representatives . . . not ...

In an article entitled “A Plea for the Beards,” one 19th-century physician argued that facial hair protected the throat and the lungs from tuberculosis. Patients at Edward Trudeau's tuberculosis sanatorium in upstate New York were treated with turtle ...

The Psychopharmacologists, a series of interviews by David Healy, is at once a fascinating and a disturbing book. Dr. Healy attempts to capture the birth pangs and promise of psychopharmacology in a series of interviews with major figures involved in the ...

After seeing the burns suffered by a British airman in World War II, Peter Medawar resolved to find a means for inducing immunologic tolerance to allogeneic skin transplants. By 1953 he and his coworkers Rupert Billingham and Leslie Brent had published a ...

The Origin of Species is the most radical reconfiguration of our place in the universe — as individuals and as a single species — since Moses brought down the Torah from Sinai. It remains today what it was on the day it was published in 1859: a model of ...

Few historians have enjoyed so enviable a reputation in their own day as Henry Sigerist. Born in Paris, raised in Zurich, and educated at Leipzig, Sigerist studied under the great medical historian Karl Sudhoff, whom he succeeded as director of the ...

Sarcoidosis Review Article, N Engl J Med 1997:336;1224-1234.. On page 1231, 10 lines from the bottom of the left-hand column, the word “quinolones” should have been “quinolines,” and on page 1232, in lines 25 and 26 of the left-hand column, “Quinolone ...

Use of Cardiac Procedures and Outcomes in Elderly Patients with Myocardial Infarction in the United States and Canada Special Article, N Engl J Med 1997:336;1500-1505.. On page 1503, in Table 3, the headings for columns 4 and 5 were reversed. The columns ...