Faculty Bibliography

The bright side is that median survival time for glioblastoma patients has more than tripled in the past 40 years, from about four and a half months to 14 or 15 months today. [...] there are now a few rare patients who live four, five or six years. In the late 1960s, Mary Lasker, a Manhattan philanthropist, was campaigning for an all-out war on cancer and Senator Kennedy became a leading legislative supporter, setting off a tug of war between him and President Nixon for political credit

Scientific reports taught him that many such patients developed tiny bleeding ulcers in the stomach and small bowel. Since at least 1906, doctors reported seeing curved bacteria in the stomach of patients who died with ulcers.

Scientific reports taught him that many such patients developed tiny bleeding ulcers in the stomach and small bowel. Since at least 1906, doctors had reported seeing curved bacteria in the stomach of patients who died with ulcers but less often in people without them

Although influenza typically strikes in colder months, the swine flu virus, A(H1N1), has swept through summer camps in North America and parts of Europe. That pattern has led to the belief that many more people will get swine flu than seasonal influenza this fall and winter, or that countries could face outbreaks of both strains, perhaps at different times. Dr. [Richard P. Wenzel] said he had observed a broad spectrum of illness from human swine influenza: people who experienced few or no symptoms to those who rapidly developed complications and died. An odd feature of the new virus is the lack of fever in a significant proportion of documented cases, even after some patients become seriously ill. In Chile, it was about half, in Mexico City about a third. Lack of fever has been noted by other observers in several Canadian cases. Absence of fever among substantial proportions of patients, when fever is specified in the definition of the flu virus, can cause serious underestimation of totals. Also, absence of fever limits the usefulness of thermal scans to identify people who have the virus, and thus control the pandemic. Mexican doctors found the swine influenza virus on the hands of workers, on tables next to patients' beds, on other hard surfaces and on a computer mouse, Dr. Wenzel said. So, he added, 'infection control in hospitals must be assiduous to prevent spread, particularly those with impaired immune systems.'

[...] the number of beds in hospital intensive-care units and emergency rooms is limited, as is equipment like mechanical respirators to help patients breathe when the virus attacks the lungs

European scientists have discovered a new strain of the virus that causes AIDS and linked it to gorillas, creating a mystery about when and how the first patient found to have the strain became infected

''Our findings allow us to look at H.I.V. from a new angle, comparing and contrasting chimpanzee and human infections,'' Dr. [Beatrice Hahn] said in an interview. Her team's study was reported in the journal Nature on Thursday. ''We cannot date exactly when chimpanzees first got infected, but we certainly suspect that it was much, much longer than 100 years ago,'' Dr. Hahn said. ''Our gut feeling is that the chimp virus infection is not quite as'' damaging as H.I.V.-1 is in humans. The difference in the way the virus damages tissue, she said, ''leads us to speculate that chimps may be one step ahead in adapting to the virus, and identifying that step would be important.''

The scientists made the discovery by testing hundreds of samples of chimpanzee waste in a nine-year study of three small communities of chimpanzees at the Gombe National Park in Tanzania, which Jane Goodall made famous. While chimpanzees nested in trees at night, a field assistant who sat below them caught urine in a plastic bag held between a forked twig. Researchers also picked up feces from the forest floor. Most chimpanzees were tested at least once a year. More than 40 simian immunodeficiency viruses are known to infect African primates. In many studies, monkeys infected with the virus that causes simian AIDS have not developed AIDS. Only seven naturally infected chimpanzees have been studied in captivity, and five of them died of unknown causes as infants. Infected chimpanzees died or disappeared at a faster rate than uninfected chimpanzees. Workers recovered the bodies of 8 of the 18 chimpanzees that died (7 bodies of 17 infected chimps and 11 bodies of 77 uninfected chimps) and performed autopsies

The only chimpanzee that was naturally infected with the simian virus and underwent standard virological and immunological tests showed none of the typical damage of AIDS, like low CD-4 cell counts and damaged lymph nodes.

Two other chimpanzees injected with S.I.V.cpz in captivity did not show such changes. [...] scientists have known little about S.I.V.cpz's effects on chimpanzees in the wild, because they lacked the means to identify and monitor chimp behavior there