The Research

F or patients with mild cognitive impairment, don’t be surprised if your health care provider prescribes exercise rather than medication. A new guideline for medical practitioners says they should recommend twice-weekly exercise to people with mild cognitive impairment to improve memory and thinking. The recommendation is part of an updated guideline for mild cognitive impairment published in the Dec. 27 online issue of  Neurology , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “Regular physical exercise has long been shown to have heart health benefits, and now we can say exercise also may help improve memory for people with mild cognitive impairment,” says Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D., lead author, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Mayo Clinic, and the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging. “What’s good for your heart can be good for your brain.” Dr. Petersen is the Cora Kanow Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research. Mild cognitive impairment is a...

Disturbing human experiments aren’t something the average person thinks too much about. Rather, the progress achieved in the last 150 years of human history is an accomplishment we’re reminded of almost daily. Achievements made in fields like biomedicine and psychology mean that we no longer need to worry about things like deadly diseases or masturbation as a form of insanity. For better or worse, we have developed more effective ways to gather information, treat skin abnormalities, and even kill each other. But what we are not constantly reminded of are the human lives that have been damaged or lost in the name of this progress. The following is a list of the 30 most disturbing human experiments in history. 30. The Tearoom Sex Study Sociologist Laud Humphreys often wondered about the men who commit impersonal sexual acts with one another in public restrooms. He wondered why “tearoom sex” — fellatio in public restrooms — led to the majority of homosexual arrests in ...

For a long time, a dengue vaccine was the holy grail in dengue research. Now that a dengue vaccine is finally on the market (Sanofi's Dengvaxia ® ), other issues have arisen, such as what happens in the babies of vaccinated mothers. A vaccinated mother passes anti-dengue antibodies to her child during gestation and breastfeeding. These antibodies from the mother should protect the child against infection with the same strain of dengue virus, but have unclear effectiveness against different dengue strains. In fact, a mother's antibodies can actually worsen a dengue infection in her baby, causing severe complications such as dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. These life-threatening conditions may be accompanied by symptoms such as abdominal pain and leakage of fluids into the lung and internal cavities. Thus, there was a need to determine whether babies born to dengue vaccinated mothers would be protected or at risk of developing severe dengue diseas...