Endoscopic treatment is effective for bleeding peptic ulcers, but bleeding recurs in 15 to 20 percent of patients. The mortality rate in these patients is high. In vitro studies have shown that a high intragastric pH could facilitate platelet aggregation.^...

Cerebrovascular disease is the second leading cause of death worldwide¹,² and the leading cause of long-term disability in developed countries.³,⁴ There has been controversy about whether there is an association between cholesterol levels and the risk of ...

Quantitative studies of iron balance in patients with thalassemia major have been limited by the lack of a method for determining the total amount of stored iron in the body. The plasma ferritin concentration and the amount of urinary iron excreted after ...

Most deaths from asthma are preventable, particularly those among young people. Nonetheless, the rate of death from asthma is between less than 1 and 4 per 100,000 per year among the general population worldwide and up to 10 per 10,000 per year among ...

Figure 1. A 39-year-old woman who had a small-bowel obstruction after resection of an appendiceal carcinoid tumor was given benzocaine topical spray for retropharyngeal discomfort from a nasogastric tube. Within minutes, she became ashen, dyspneic, and ...

The immune system has traditionally been divided into innate and adaptive components, each with a different function and role. The adaptive component is organized around two classes of specialized cells, T cells and B cells. Since each lymphocyte displays ...

A red eye is the most common ocular disorder that primary care physicians encounter. Most cases are relatively benign. Some, however, herald a vision-threatening or even life-threatening disorder. A detailed description of the full differential diagnosis ...

Stage

A 35-year-old woman was referred to the arrhythmia clinic because of palpitations and a finding of ventricular extrasystoles on a Holter recording. She had no history of heart disease, and her electrocardiogram (Figure 1) and echocardiogram were ...

The management of peptic ulcer disease has changed greatly during the past three decades. Infection with Helicobacter pylori is now recognized as the cause of most ulcers, the use of endoscopy has improved diagnosis, antisecretory drugs are available to ...

To the Editor: The editorial by Dr. Angell (March 30 issue)¹ that accompanied our article² conflated two Rakai Project studies. We conducted a community-based, randomized trial of sexually transmitted disease (STD) control for the prevention of human ...

To the Editor: Largely ignored in the report by Quinn et al. of their study of the heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) in Uganda (March 30 issue)¹ is the finding that of 137 uncircumcised men who were negative for HIV-...

To the Editor: Alendronate is indicated for the treatment of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis and patients with glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis.¹ We report liver dysfunction due to alendronate in a postmenopausal woman given the drug for ...

To the Editor: As one of the medical advisers to the Ehlers–Danlos Support Group in Britain, I have examined and advised more than a dozen families with Ehlers–Danlos syndrome type IV. I would like to draw attention to a few clinical features that did ...

To the Editor: We disagree with the decision of Drs. Landor and Petrozzo (March 16 issue)¹ to perform two additional radionuclide imaging studies “to confirm a presumptive diagnosis of hemangioma.” Hepatic hemangioma is typically an incidental finding, ...

To the Editor: The cause of ulcerative colitis remains unknown. Direct exposure to alimentary antigens or intestinal bacterial flora may trigger the mucosal inflammation in persons who are predisposed to ulcerative colitis.¹ We describe a case of ...

In A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society, James Watson once again proves that he is the “prose laureate” of biomedical sciences (Figure 1). As a result of his classic works, The Double Helix (1968) and Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965), we ...

The highly specialized functions of blood cells and their ready accessibility account in large part for the rapidly expanding knowledge of the molecular basis of hematologic diseases. In his foreword to this book, Max Perutz states that the day he spent ...

This book reviews a wide variety of congenital and acquired conditions caused by abnormalities in ion-transport mechanisms. It starts with a description of relatively simple channels that respond to voltage changes or certain cellular metabolites by a ...

On his 10-year voyage back to Ithaca from the Trojan War, Ulysses was warned by Circe to take precautions if he wanted to hear the Sirens' transfixing song, or there would be “no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him, /no happy children beaming ...