Researchers develop a technique to predict epileptic seizures
A third of epilepsy sufferers are resistant to treatment for this neurological disease that affects 1% of the population. The onset of seizures is unpredictable, and has been the subject of fruitless research since the 1970s. The unforeseeable nature of the disease means patients are forced to take medication and / or adjust their lifestyles.
Neuroscientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospital of Bern (Inselspital) - working with the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) and Brown University in Providence - have succeeded in developing a technique that can predict seizures between one and several days in advance. By recording neuronal activity over at least six months using a device implanted directly in the brain, it is possible to detect individual cycles of epileptic activity and provide information about the probability of a future seizure. This approach, published in the jour
No More Boys or Girls?
An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine argues that having birth certificates display gender could harm “intersex and transgender people,” leading to concerns that the NEJM could have been pranked or hacked.
“Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people,” says the abstract of the article, authored by doctors Vadim M. Shteyler and Eli Y. Adashi, and lawyer Jessica A. Clarke, and tweeted out by NEJM on Thursday.
Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people. Moving such designations below the line of demarcation would not compromise the birth certificate’s public health function but could avoid harm.