Patients with vitiligo, a skin disorder characterized by patches of white, or de-pigmented skin, had better repigmentation of these patches when they were treated with a combination of laser therapy and tacrolimus ointment than patients treated with laser therapy alone. Vitiligo is a skin pigmentation disorder that affects one percent to two percent of people worldwide. Patients with vitiligo develop white patches on their skin, referred to as ”lesions.”

New mothers with fibromyalgia (FM) face multiple barriers to breast-feeding their babies, according to a new study. For the study, researchers analyzed the written stories and tape-recorded interviews of nine mothers with FM, ranging in age from 26 to 36. All had given birth to at least one child before being diagnosed with FM, a chronic disorder characterized by widespread pain and fatigue. Because there is no cure, patients often undergo physical therapy, counseling and medication to alleviate their symptoms.

In addition to its popular role in flavoring ice cream, fudge and cake frosting, vanilla may have a future use as a medicine. Recent laboratory research has strengthened the possibility that a form of vanilla may become a drug to treat sickle cell disease. After specially bred mice received a compound that turns into vanilla in the body, they survived five times longer than mice that did not receive the chemical. All the mice had been subjected to low oxygen pressure, a condition that causes their red blood cells to form the hazardous sickle shape.

A new strategy for cancer therapy, which converts the tumor-promoting effect of the immune system’s inflammatory response into a cancer-killing outcome, is suggested in research findings by investigators in San Diego. The findings provide new insight into the immune system’s response to inflammation, the connection between inflammation and malignancy, and how the delicate balance between cancer promotion and inhibition can be manipulated in the patient’s favor.

For the first time a major study is now being presented in which parents of children who died of cancer were given the opportunity to talk about their experiences. The findings are being published in several acclaimed articles and a doctoral dissertation at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. All parents of children who died of cancer in Sweden between 1992 and 1997 were contacted four to nine years after the death of their child. One part of the study based on the massive material takes up the question of whether the parents had talked with their severely ill child about death. None of the 147 parents who had done so regretted doing so. On the other hand, 69 (27%) of the 258 parents who had not spoken with their child about death later regretted not having done so, most of them because they had realized that their child had in fact understood that he/she was dying.

Researchers have demonstrated the significance of central corneal thickness (CCT) on the clinical management of patients with glaucoma and those suspected to have glaucoma. While confirming previous research about the relevance of CCT in glaucoma management, this study represents one of the first attempts to determine exactly how great an impact CCT has on a patient’s intraocular pressure (IOP), fluid build-up inside the eye that is a glaucoma risk factor. Results found that CCT affected more than half of the patients in the study.