Word: brained
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When 9-month-old Hunter spent 18 days in Sunrise Hospital, where he was treated for a brain aneurysm, the Westers received a bill for $135,000. Bills from other doctors and health-care providers brought the total to $180,000. Wester says he began making payments on the hospital bill, but they weren't enough. Sunrise turned the bill over to a collection agency and then sued. A judge knocked the total bill down to $98,000, which included court costs and attorney fees. An attorney suggested bankruptcy, but then a friend of a friend who worked...
...missed it the first time. There was also a flurry of scientific news that offered hope to the families already struggling with Alzheimer's, as well as to the baby-boom generation that's up next. Unless something dramatic happens, the number of Americans living with this terrifying brain disease could triple, to about 16 million, over the next 50 years. There's still no cure in sight, but there is progress on several fronts. Among them...
COMBINATION THERAPY A yearlong study of more than 400 Alzheimer's patients showed that two drugs that work differently on the brain's chemistry act well together to help slow down the disease. Patients who were being treated with donepezil (sold as Aricept), an older drug that preserves the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, were also given memantine (Namenda), a new drug approved by the FDA last October that blocks overproduction of a harmful brain chemical called glutamate. The two drugs worked even better in combination than they did alone, providing substantial benefit for patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's, according...
...BRAIN IMAGING Finally, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh announced that they had successfully developed a procedure that allows them to peer into the brains of Alzheimer's patients with positron emission tomography (PET) scans to see telltale plaque deposits. Before now, doctors could not track the progress of these plaques until after the patient died, when the brain could be autopsied. Using the new technique, doctors may be able to begin treatment long before the first symptoms appear...
...women ages 33 to 88 with no history of stroke or dementia. Researchers found that as the risk of stroke increased--indicated by variables like age, blood pressure, diabetes, smoking status, history of heart disease--the subjects' cognitive functions declined, perhaps owing to small, undetectable changes in the brain. "People don't just wake up one morning and find they are demented," says lead author Merrill Elias. "They progress over time." --By Sora Song