Disease

If you're worried about the recent study linking aspirin use to an age-related disease that leads to blindness , specialists at Wills Eye Institute have some reassuring advice. The Australian study, published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that taking aspirin at least once a week more than doubled the chance of macular degeneration, including the more damaging "wet" type, among 2,389 adults followed for 15 years. But the 15-year incidence was still relatively small - about 5.8 percent of regular aspirin users compared with 2.2 percent of nonusers.

On Dec. 17, three days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, my 11-year-old daughter asked me if I had heard about the teacher who hid her students in a closet while telling the gunman they were in gym class. "She was killed," my daughter said, her eyes waiting for a response from me. "I heard," I said delicately. "She gave her life to protect her students. " I kissed her on her forehead as she opened the car's passenger-side door, and watched as she walked up the stairs to her school.

Tropical diseases, once neglected, are getting more attention from governments and pharmaceutical companies but more funding and innovation are needed, the World Health Organization said in a report released Wednesday. Diseases rarely seen in the United States, such as lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), onchocerciasis (river blindness), schistosomiasis (a parasite), and soil-transmitted helminthiasis (intestinal worms) can ruin lives or even cause death in poorer and undeveloped parts of the world.

Junior Seau, one of the NFL's best and fiercest players for two decades, suffered from a degenerative brain disease often associated with repeated blows to the head when he committed suicide last May, the National Institutes of Health said in a study released Thursday. The NIH, based in Bethesda, Md., said Seau's brain revealed abnormalities consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. It said that the study included unidentified brains, one of which was Seau's, and that the findings on Seau were similar to autopsies of people "with exposure to repetitive head injuries.

JUNIOR SEAU, one of the NFL's best and fiercest players for 2 decades, suffered from a degenerative brain disease often associated with repeated blows to the head when he committed suicide last May, the National Institutes of Health said in a study released Thursday. The NIH, based in Bethesda, Md., said Seau's brain revealed abnormalities consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. It said that the study included unidentified brains, one of which was Seau's, and that the findings on Seau were similar to autopsies of people "with exposure to repetitive head injuries.

NEWARK, Del. - The day before she returned, Elena Delle Donne sat on a far bench at the Bob Carpenter Complex with Delaware coach Tina Martin. Before the Blue Hens' women's basketball star was to play for the first time in a month, against ninth-ranked Maryland nonetheless, her coach wanted to go over the sign she was to use if she needed an in-game sub. The start to this season, her final as a collegiate athlete, has been far from ideal for Delle Donne, a preseason national player of the year candidate.

A team led by a New Jersey researcher has been able to slow the course of a rare childhood brain disease by injecting patients with corrective genes, according to a study published Wednesday. Children often die of complications from Canavan disease by age 3, and almost always by 10. But 10 of the 13 study participants have passed age 10, with three in their late teens. None can walk or talk, but all can respond to their environment to some degree, and lab tests show that the degeneration of their brains has slowed or leveled off. Ordinarily, such patients become nonresponsive by 5 if they make it that far, researchers said.

The patient turned 40 over the summer and was already having symptoms that made her neurologist wonder whether she had Alzheimer's disease, the deadly, mind-killing dementia that usually attacks far older people. She and her husband went to the Adler Institute for Advanced Imaging in Jenkintown on a recent morning after 70 tests over the last year failed to explain her worsening symptoms. She was going to try yet another: a newly approved test developed by a Philadelphia biotech firm.

In March 2002, after hearing rumors that her partner was infected with HIV, Nancy Santiago got tested. When the results came back, her doctor gave her a hug and a referral to care. "Ten years later, I'm still here" - she didn't even need antiretrovirals until four years ago - "and I have a lot to do in the future," said the mother of five and grandmother of 10 from North Philadelphia. Santiago, 54, spoke Friday at a City Hall news conference, one of scores around the globe highlighting various challenges - hers involved the Latino community - on the occasion of World AIDS Day on Saturday.