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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 20 general entries.
Special Topics
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Mixed Health Questions
| The term for the collection of disorders in which the bones do not grow or develop properly is called what? | Medical Miscellany
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Chondrodysplasias. Chondrodysplasias are often associated with mutations in type II collagen, a protein present in bones, cartilage, the vitreous humor of the eye, and connective tissues.
| What is the name of the craniosynostosis (premature fusion of cranial sutures) in which the vault is narrow, elongated, and boat-shaped? | Medical Miscellany
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Scaphocephaly. Scaphocephaly, also known as dolichocephaly, is the most common type of craniosynostosis, with an incidence of 55% in babies born with one or more cranial suture prematurely fused. It gets its name from the Greek skaphoiedes, "like a bowl," (ultimately from skaphe, "boat," and oeides, "shape") and kephale, "head." Other types of craniosynostoses inclue turricephaly (a "turret-shaped" head), plagiocephaly (an obliquely slanted head), brachycephaly (a "short" head), trigonocephaly (a pointy forehead), and kleeblattschadel (a "clover-leaf" head).
| The disorder in which the brain lacks gyri (convolutions) is called what? | Medical Miscellany
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Lissencephaly. The word lissencephaly comes from the Greek lissos, "smooth," and enkephalos, "brain." A brain with "mild" lissencephaly is known as pachygyric (pachys, "thick," and the Latin gyrus, "circle") because of the broad, flat gyri. Complete lissencephaly renders the brain completely smooth (agyria, meaning "without circles"), while a "classical" lissencephalic brain has areas of pachygyria and agyria.
60 days. The radioactive half-life is "the time for half the radioactive nuclei in any sample to undergo radioactive decay." 125-Iodine decays via electron capture to 125-Tellurium. In electron capture, an inner-shell electron is "captured" by a proton in the nucleus, where it then forms a neutron and a neutrino. Since a proton is lost and a neutron is gained, the element changes into another.
(quote from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/halfli.html)
| In Canavan Disease, when aspartoacyclase is not produced, what compound in the brain cannot be broken down? | Medical Miscellany
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NAA. NAA, or N-acetylaspartate acid, is essential in the production of myelin, which is the fatty coating around nerves. Normally, the brain produces enough aspartoacyclase to break down NAA into its constituent parts so myelin can be constructed, but in Canavan disease this enzyme is not found. This disease is most common in Ashkenazi Jews and Saudi Arabians, and is characterized by muscle rigidity and hypotonia, mental retardation, blindness, and exaggerated reflexes. Most children afflicted with this disorder die a year and a half after diagnosis.
| What is the origin of the name of the Pap test used to detect cervix cancer? | Medical Miscellany
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Dr. George Papanicolaou. Dr. George Papanicolaou began his research into vaginal and cervical cytology in the 1920s at Cornell University. In 1943, Drs. Papanicolaou and Traut published their findings regarding the vaginal smear. The test for cervical cancer, which involves scraping cells from the mouth of the uterus with a swab, is known as a Pap test or Pap smear after this Greek doctor.
Progeria. Children afflicted with progeria appear to age at about 7 times the natural rate. The symptoms include dwarfism, baldness, aged-looking skin, stiff joints, atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular problems. Another form of progeria, called Werner's syndrome, occurs in late adolescence and early adulthood, and has many of the same symptoms.
Urease. James Batcheller Sumner crystallized and purified jack bean urease in 1926. He shared the 1946 Nobel prize in Chemistry with John Northrop and Wendell Stanley "for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized" (the other scientists dealt with te tobacco mosaic virus).
(http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1946/index.html)
| Approximately how many percent of pubescent boys with Klinefelter's Syndrome develop breasts large enough to cause embarrassment? | Medical Miscellany
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3 - 10 percent. Klinefelter's syndrome, or XXY disorder, is characterised by small testes, sparse body hair, a round body shape, and enlarged breasts. In 1942, Dr. Harry Klinefelter co-authored a paper on this new disease in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Since he was the youngest member of the group submitting the paper, his name was listed first, and the medical community began calling the chromosomal abnormality Klinefelter's syndrome. He believed the credit was due his mentor, Dr. Fuller Albright, saying, "He unselfishly allowed my name to come first on the list of authors." Hence, the disease is sometimes known as Klinefelter-Reifenstein-Albright syndrome.
(http://www.genetic.org/ks/scvs/ks_bio.htm)
India. As close as they can figure it was performed sometime aroud the year 500 B.C.
Hippocrates. He had the balls sewn out of animal skins and stuffed with sand. He directed his patients to lob them back and forth to prevent and recover from certain injuries.
Louise. She was Louise Brown, and she was born in England in 1978.
| How many quarts of blood does the average adult heart pump through its chambers during an hour of just sitting quietly? | Odd Medical Facts
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300. During exercise this can increase as much as 1200 quarts or 300 gallons an hour.
| Where in an adult human body would you find the muscles that contract the most frequently over the course of a typical day? | Odd Medical Facts
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In the eyes. The small muscles that constantly adjust eye position move, on average, three to four times per second in patterns called saccades. For comparison, the human heart beats only one to one and a half times per second (60 to 90 per minute) at rest and rarely faster than three beats per second (180 per minute) even at maximum exertion.
1830. The book Moral Physiology was written by social reformer Robert Dale Owen.
Luke and Acts. Written by St. Luke who of course was a physician.
poetry. I guess Jack and Jill would neither be cute nor funny!
double vision. In medical terminology the prefix di means two, thus giving you double. Ironically enough also in medical terminology bi also means two.
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