Immune System

Tennessee Tech basketball coach Mike Sutton was still in critical condition yesterday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, where he is being treated for a rare illness that attacks the immune system. Sutton, 49, fell ill while attending a tournament for potential NBA players in Portsmouth, Va., earlier this month and was admitted to a Virginia hospital. He was transferred to Nashville last Friday, and doctors are treating him for Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disease that attacks the immune system and causes paralysis.

Notre Dame? Who cares? Cover our teams The Inquirer's Sports' "Season of Change" series (April 10-16) is a real disappointment. Why is so much space being devoted to the football teams of South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana? Wouldn't the people of this area be much more interested in the schools where we send our kids, and pay for with our tickets, tuition and taxes? I know that Notre Dame is a hallowed subject at The Inquirer, even though most columnists usually end up at the end of the season asking the question, why?

One week after coming down with what appeared to be a common form of the influenza virus, a sixth-grade student at Bala Cynwyd Middle School has died. Adam Jordan Spandorfer, 11, a normally healthy high-spirited boy with red hair and freckles, died Tuesday at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where his family said doctors labored bravely to save the boy but could not. The boy's rapid demise from a common illness saddened and stunned his Main Line neighbors, many of whose children have the flu. "It's not supposed to happen this way," said Karen Zucker, a local district justice and mother of a Bala Cynwyd seventh grader.

IT'S A RECIPE for disaster. The holidays brought family members of all ages together. Bitter-cold January and February will keep everyone indoors for a couple of months. And on top of all that, there is a shortage of the flu vaccine this year. These are perfect opportunities for viruses to spread. For most people, viral illnesses last only a few days. But along with making millions of people feel miserable every year, colds and flu can cause serious problems and can even be deadly.

The holidays are hard on your amygdala, a primitive little part of your brain that gets activated whenever you experience a feeling. Emotions - both good and bad - give the amygdala such a workout this time of year that your frontal lobe, a more recently evolved part of the brain that acts as a rational brake on your primal impulses, has to work extra hard to keep you on an even keel, says Ruben Gur, a University of Pennsylvania neuropsychology professor....

When I was diagnosed with terminal liver disease in 1979 at age 31, it seemed an impossible dream that I would live to experience life as a father to five grown children and four grandchildren as well as being husband to an incredible wife. Recently, my family and I humbly celebrated the 15th anniversary of my having another man's liver transplanted into my body. Each anniversary is an opportunity to appreciate the last 365 days of life that I'm so lucky to have enjoyed. During routine gall bladder surgery in 1979 I was diagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis.

Frogs with three legs - natural phenomenon or the result of pollution? Both forces may be at work, according to a study published yesterday by researchers at Pennsylvania State University. It is a debate that has raged for more than a decade, ever since schoolchildren and naturalists began finding what seemed to be increased numbers of frogs with grotesque deformities. Both environmental groups and conservative think-tanks have entered the fray - the former blaming pesticides and other human influence, the latter warning against a sky-is-falling mentality, noting that deformed frogs have been found since the 1700s.

Tests on humans will begin this fall to see if a promising new vaccine can stop and even reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease. The vaccine, called AN-1792, has already proved safe for humans and somewhat successful in mice. The new tests, involving 375 people in the United States and Europe, will determine if the vaccine is effective in combating the premature senility and memory loss caused by Alzheimer's, a disease of the central nervous system. The vaccine, developed by Elan Corp.

Did you know that taking charge of your life may actually improve your health? It turns out that the pursuit of happiness has a beneficial trickle-down effect. Everyone wants to be healthier, and biologists are always testing things that affect the immune system. One study, designed by Marian Diamond at the University of California at Berkeley, indicates that the part of the brain that plans (the dorsolateral cortex) appears to communicate with the immune system. When Diamond found that mice with a diminished dorsolateral cortex did not produce immune cells, she tested a theory on humans.

One of the hallmarks of the AIDS virus is that it wreaks its havoc in an unusual way: It destroys the very immune-system cells that the body uses to combat infectious disease. But in a path-breaking study released today, scientists at Harvard University report that it may be possible to "educate" the body's immune system to keep the virus under control in the absence of anti-AIDS medicines. The finding, based on a study involving eight patients, has potentially far-reaching implications for the future of AIDS treatment.