Word: basal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Sonic hedgehog--they have been able to awaken hair follicles from a resting state and force them into an active one. Alas, that's just in mice. Whether the therapy works on human pates remains to be seen. One potential problem: the Sonic hedgehog gene is linked to basal-cell carcinoma, a common, treatable skin cancer...
...patients with Huntington's disease, it's the part of the brain called the basal ganglia that's destroyed. While these victims have perfectly intact explicit memory systems, they can't learn new motor skills. An Alzheimer's patient can learn to draw in a mirror but can't remember doing it; a Huntington's patient can't do it but can remember trying to learn. Yet another region of the brain, an almond-size knot of neural tissue known as the amygdala, seems to be crucial in forming and triggering the recall of a special subclass of memories that...
...thyroid gland controls the body's basal metabolic rate--the rate at which it consumes energy while at rest. When the thyroid hormone is produced in excess, the body consumes energy faster than it can be supplied. The result is a haywire combination of anxiety, tension and fatigue. The body wants to go, go, go--and it does, even when it isn't going anywhere. This type of things can wear you out, even if you haven't been exerting yourself...
...Stoltzfoos, daughter-in-law of Jacob and Naomi. But Barbie Ann soon developed a fever, and Morton admitted her to Lancaster General. Stressed by infection, a child with glutaric aciduria does not metabolize certain amino acids normally. The resulting buildup of glutarate attacks the nervous system and damages the basal ganglia, a part of the brain that controls body movement. Once brain injury occurs, a child never recovers. "If it weren't for Dr. Morton and the clinic," Lydia says, "Barbie Ann would have ended up like many of Amos and Suzie Miller's children. Five of them died...
...even more remarkable service to modern medicine by establishing a link between metabolic disorders like glutaric aciduria and cerebral palsy. Most practitioners have long believed that oxygen deprivation or trauma at or before birth causes cerebral palsy, a motor disorder that reflects injury to the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia. But Dr. Karin Nelson at the National Institutes of Health, as well as colleagues at other research centers, has concluded that these causes do not explain most cases of the disease. "Holmes Morton has given us fresh insight into the source of cerebral palsy," says Nelson. Adds Dr. Victor McKusick...