Word: kiernan
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...Martin Charcot, suggested grouping several conditions under one name - what we now call MND. Then things went quiet for 120 years. "Traditionally, it was a case of doctors saying to patients, in effect: 'You've got motor neurone disease - go home and write your will,'" says Sydney neurologist Matthew Kiernan. "The specialist didn't like looking after these patients because he knew he had nothing to offer them." There were cracks of light in the 1990s, when researchers implicated a genetic mutation in a small subset of MND patients, and the pharmaceutical company Rhone-Poulenc Rorer launched riluzole (Rilutek...
...against this gloomy backdrop that Kiernan and a fellow neurologist from Sydney's Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute last week announced a breakthrough. Among the many gaps in the MND puzzle has been a definitive test: clinicians are able to diagnose the condition only after months of observing symptoms and excluding other disorders. Kiernan, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, and Ph.D. student Steve Vucic say they've developed a better way. Described in the American journal Muscle & Nerve, it involves 40-year-old technology called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which the pair have tailored...
...Kiernan and Vucic observed that this twitch, as registered on their computer screen, was more pronounced in 28 MND patients than in people free of the disease; even a smaller current produced similar results. "The difference was stark," says Kiernan. "Almost as soon as we'd start the test, Steve and I would know (if the patient...
...test is painless and takes about 30 minutes. But the absence of an effective treatment for MND - of which there are some 1,400 sufferers in Australia - raises the question of whether there's much to be gained from early diagnosis. Kiernan and Vucic are adamant that there is. Their procedure can detect the disease in its very early stages, they believe, when symptoms amount to no more than stiffness, weakness or cramping in the hands - up to a year before a clinician relying on traditional methods could hope to make a diagnosis. Starting patients earlier on riluzole, which works...
...lower main level of the House. Even its name has furred eyebrows. “I don’t like that people refer to it as the ‘Elmo painting,’ because Lambchop is just as prominent in the picture,” said Kiernan P. Schmitt ‘06-’07. For the second time this semester, Elmo—and Lambchop—have mysteriously vanished. The disappearance dashes the House’s efforts to enliven its famously dreary décor. Artwork such as “Elmo?...