Word: generality
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...most part, however, doctors are happy that anesthetics indeed work and seem to be safe. Used at the right doses in healthy people, the drugs rarely cause serious complications or side effects; the risk of death in patients undergoing general anesthesia, for example, is 1 in 250,000. But recent inquiries into how these strange chemicals act on the cellular level have uncovered a troubling long-term possibility: that general anesthetics may potentially contribute to cognitive impairment in vulnerable patients such as the very young and very...
...Zhongcong Xie, now an associate professor of anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues published the first in a series of studies demonstrating that commonly used general anesthetics can cause cell death and plaque accumulation in brain cells - both potential hallmarks of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. More recently, at the Mayo Clinic, in Minnesota, anesthesiologist Dr. Robert Wilder published a study that found a link between exposure to anesthesia and surgery in infancy and learning disabilities later in life. Both doctors have since been approached with inquiries from concerned patients - but armed only with early data, neither can offer...
...apoptosis. In an experiment in young rats undergoing this crucial stage of neural development, Christopher Turner, an assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, witnessed out-of-control apoptosis in the brains of rats treated with drugs that mimicked the action of the general anesthetic ketamine. Starved of calcium, whole portions of the rats' brains died off - enough to cause significant cognitive impairment. In adult rats, the effect was much less severe. "There is something about the young brain that makes it exquisitely sensitive to the loss of calcium," says Turner...
...separate area of research, Xie at Massachusetts General tested another anesthetic, isoflurane, on a culture of human brain cells. (Isoflurane had already been shown to cause cognitive impairment in rats.) He saw a vicious cycle of apoptosis and the accumulation of beta-amyloid protein - the sticky plaques that build up in Alzheimer's patients' brains - among the cells. But in this case, it may have been an excess of calcium that led to cell death. Xie and his colleagues have since found that the Alzheimer's drug memantine, which works by reducing calcium levels inside cells, can slow the rate...
...scene may seem eerily familiar, especially since the rally was held in front of the very offices Barack Obama's campaign used last year in this northwest Virginia town. But the rally in Leesburg on Sunday was for the Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell; the speakers included attorney general nominee Ken Cuccinelli (the leader of the "Yes, we can" chant) and Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling ("Help is on the way"). And while the tone may have sounded reminiscent of Obama's stirring rallies of a year ago, the platform couldn't have been more conservative. "This has been a campaign...