December 12, 2013,
News & Features
SEVERE emotional trauma may put its victims in double jeopardy, not only searing the psyche, but physically damaging the brain. New studies in trauma victims as diverse as Vietnam combat veterans and victims of childhood sexual abuse have found a shrinkage in the size of the hippocampus, a brain structure vital to learning and memory. The very hormones that flood the brain to mobilize it in the face of an overwhelming threat can be toxic to cells in the hippocampus, the studies suggest.
TO Christine Tejada and her family in Brooklyn, the procedure known as Gamma Knife radiosurgery is nothing short of a miracle. When she was 8, Christine was found to have a life-threatening blood vessel malformation in her brain and was scheduled to undergo risky invasive surgery that would have hospitalized her for perhaps 10 days and been followed by weeks or months of recovery and rehabilitation. Instead, she was treated successfully in Chicago without so much as a slit in her scalp.
LEAD: A hormone that promotes growth in children can also help adults lose fat, gain muscle and burn calories faster, a new study has found.
LEAD: MEDICAL researchers have begun experimenting with synthetic hormones that effectively block harmful body secretions, an approach they hope will lead to the better treatments for many common diseases. In the case of some cancers, the new approach may even eliminate the need for surgery.
LEAD: A ''SCALPEL'' forged by particle physicists is being used to treat life-threatening brain tumors or other abnormalities that elude surgeons using conventional medical tools.
THOUGH people have known probably since they evolved that it takes two - a man and a woman - to produce a baby, until the 1960's little if any attention was paid to the man when a couple failed to conceive. A combination of ignorance and male conceit led most to think of infertility as a woman's problem. Faced with the ego-threatening possibility that they might be unable to father children, many men even refused to submit to examinations. In the last decade or two, much has been learned about the contribution of male infertility to the fact that one couple in seven is involuntarily childless. It is now known that a problem with the man is the primary cause of infertility in about 30 percent of these couples and is a contributing cause in 20 percent more. In other words, just as men are 50-50 partners in parenthood, they are also 50-50 partners in the failure to achieve parenthood. New causes of male infertility are being discovered almost every year as more couples seek explanations for their difficulty in becoming parents. There is now even a subspecialty in urology called andrology, the study of male fertility.
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