For decades, cooling the body below the normal physiologic temperature has been used as a therapeutic tool. Hypothermia is used most often during cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass, as a means of protecting the brain from ischemic injury. ...

In this issue of the Journal, the reported results of two randomized clinical trials, one in Australia¹ and the other in Europe,² showed a neurologic benefit of mild therapeutic hypothermia (33°C in the first study and 32°C to 34°C in the second) in ...

NOD2, a gene conferring susceptibility to Crohn's disease, has been identified on chromosome 16. Homozygosity for a mutation that truncates the gene increases the risk of Crohn's disease by a factor of 20 to 40. No such mutations have been found in patients with ulcerative colitis. NOD2 has a role in apoptosis and in the recognition of microbial endotoxins.

Almost immediately after the attacks that struck New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, the federal government and the American Red Cross issued an appeal for blood donors. Nationwide, more than 1 million prospective donors responded to the call and almost 500,000 units of blood were collected for the victims. Yet only 258 units were used. Many of the collected units were unusable.

To the Editor: Sargent et al. (Oct. 11 issue)¹ report that adjuvant chemotherapy with fluorouracil is as effective in older patients with resected colon cancer as it is in younger patients. Their conclusion is based on the absence of a statistically ...

To the Editor: In support of the findings of Keane et al. (Oct. 11 issue),¹ we describe the reactivation of latent tuberculosis in a 19-year-old Pakistani man treated with infliximab for sight-threatening uveitis of unknown cause despite extensive ...

To the Editor: Baker et al. (Oct. 11 issue)¹ used disability data from the 1992 and 1996 surveys of the Health and Retirement Study to assess the effect of health insurance status on the risk of the development of a physical disability. Unfortunately, as ...

To the Editor: Shapiro and Meslin¹ and Koski and Nightingale² (July 12 issue) discuss the ethical problems that occur when developed countries sponsor clinical trials in developing countries. Many of the ethical problems arise because developing ...

To the Editor: Mendonca et al. (Oct. 11 issue)¹ conclude that the finding of discordance in growth and genital development in monozygotic twins “convincingly” rules out a genetic cause of male pseudohermaphroditism. There are known genetic mechanisms ...

To the Editor: Schuster et al. (Nov. 15 issue)¹ report an increased incidence of distress after the events of September 11 and advise clinicians to be prepared to assist people with trauma-related symptoms. Using national workload data from the ...

To the Editor: The emergence of antibiotic resistance during treatment for pneumococcal infection is exceedingly rare.¹ To our knowledge, there is no previous report of a genetically characterized, antibiotic-resistant pneumococcal mutant emerging during ...

Andrew Solomon is a successful and much admired author. He writes regularly for a number of periodicals and is an award-winning novelist. By his own account, he grew up as a healthy, happy, white American from a privileged background. He enjoyed positive ...

There is an interesting dilemma for those who would influence nutrition. In many places in the world, there are governmental agencies concerned with food security, food safety, agriculture, health, and trade that may, from time to time, implement policies ...

Recognition and Management of Anthrax — An Update Review Article, N Engl J Med 2001:345;1621-1626.. On page 1624, in Table 1, in the column headed “Children,” the dosage for amoxicillin should have read, “500 mg orally every 8 hr in children ≥20 kg; 80 mg/...

Diabetes, Insulin Secretion, and the Pancreatic Beta-Cell Mitochondrion Clinical Implications of Basic Research, N Engl J Med 2001:345;1772-1774.. On page 1772, in the legend to Figure 1, the sentence that begins on line 17 should have read, “An increase ...

When Medicaid was enacted in 1965 as a legislative afterthought to Medicare, few would have predicted its evolution into a basic component of the American health care system. In this report, I examine Medicaid, which has become one of the most complex ...