Musicians get it. So do writers and people sewing or doing handicrafts. Muscles in the hand or arm cramp up. The medical name for this is focal task-specific dystonia (FTSD). ... Read More

Researchers at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York have reported in the August 1, 2006, issue of Blood about their work with mice with von Willebrand ... Read More

Doctors at New England Baptist Hospital, in Boston, reviewed 10 medical journal articles that discussed treating individuals who had the skin disease pemphigus vulgaris. The articles described a total of ... Read More

September is National Sickle Cell Month. Sickle cell anemia may occur in people whose ancestors come from sub-Saharan Africa, Spanish speaking regions of the world, Saudi Arabia, India, and Mediterranean ... Read More

GTC Biotherapeutics has developed a way to produce a human anti-clotting protein, antithrombin, using genetically-modified goats. GTC is marketing the antithrombin as ATryn, for treating a rare disorder called ... Read More

The 12th International Conference on Behcet's Disease is being held September 20-23, 2006, in Lisbon, Portugal. The conference will bring researchers from around the world together to present information on ... Read More

Researchers from the Huntington Study Group are conducting a large study called Prospective Huntington At Risk Observational Study (PHAROS). There two interesting parts of this study. The first is that ... Read More

Most parents know not to give aspirin to a child who is sick or has a fever. The reason why is that the child might develop Reye syndrome, a serious, ... Read More

The 2006 National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) Annual Conference will be held September 28-October 1, 2006, in Bethesda, Maryland. The conference, "Road Map for Rare Disease Research," will address ... Read More

Copper is an essential nutrient for normal development. In Menkes disease, children are born with a gene defect that interferes with the body's ability to use copper. This leads to ... Read More

On September 11, 2003, actor John Ritter collapsed on a TV soundstage where he was working. Despite emergency surgery to repair an aortic dissection (sudden tearing open of the aorta), ... Read More

This past week I met a boy with fucosidosis. In this disorder, an enzyme (alpha-fucosidase) is missing in the body. Without it, the body can’t finish breaking down certain sugar, ... Read More

The Second Eastern European Conference on Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs will be held September 8-9, 2006, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, under the auspices of the Bulgarian Ministry of Health. It ... Read More

African-American newborns are usually considered to have a low risk of developing high levels of bilirubin in their blood. However, researchers at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem found, when ... Read More

The Spastic Paraplegia Foundation (SPF) is dedicated to generating awareness and research funds for primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) and hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP). On September 15-16, 2006, the SPF will ... Read More

Don't let your Labor Day cookout send you to the hospital. Bad food handling habits can turn your favorite foods into sources of disease. Hotdogs can cause listeriosis and hamburgers ... Read More