Free Republic

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (Gray News) – A 14-year-old from Virginia was crowned America’s Top Young Scientist for inventing a soap that treats skin cancer. According to a news release, Heman Bekele, a ninth grader at W.T. Woodson High School in Annandale, won the 2023 3M Young Scientist Challenge last week. Heman developed Melanoma Treating Soap, a compound-based bar of soap designed to treat skin cancer. Over the next five years, he hopes to refine his innovation and create a nonprofit organization that will distribute this low-cost solution to communities in need. The final product came out to a shockingly cheap...

Biologists have definitively linked the brain's immune system to epilepsy. The researchers lay out a chain of events that can cause seizures—the most common manifestation of epilepsy—to worsen. The sequence begins when oxidative stress in the body causes the brain's immune system to react. That activation by the brain's resident immune cells (called glia) triggers more severe seizures. It’s the first time the brain immune system–epilepsy link has been experimentally proved. "We have provided genetic proof that both oxidative stress and activation of the brain immune system make epilepsy worse," says John Manak, professor. "This is hugely significant because our...

Scientists are reporting a breakthrough discovery: A $3-per-pill epilepsy drug may be used to “switch off” autism symptoms in mice, according to a new peer-reviewed study published Tuesday in Molecular Psychiatry journal. Autism spectrum disorder is a complex developmental condition that impacts how an estimated 5.4 million (2.2% of) adults — and one in 44 children — in the United States perceives and socializes with others. It is often accompanied by abnormalities such as epilepsy or hyperactivity, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. A team of experts at Germany’s Hector Institute for Translational Brain Research found that...

Playing videogames could trigger a potentially fatal cardiac episode in children with existing heart conditions, according to an international study published this week. The study, "Life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death during electronic gaming," examined 22 incidents in which children between the ages of seven and 16 experienced an irregular heartbeat, either proven or suspected, and lost consciousness while playing videogames. Six of the children suffered cardiac arrest, and four died. "This is a relatively small study, but we still found a number of cases where children who were actively engaged in video games had a very severe cardiac event,"...

Following a modified Atkins diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates plus taking medication may reduce seizures in people with tough-to-treat epilepsy, according to a study. "For people with drug-resistant epilepsy, or those who have been unable to find effective treatment to reduce seizures, it's encouraging to see that there are lifestyle changes that can be combined with standard drug therapy to reduce the number of seizures," said Manjari Tripathi, MD, DM. "Our study found that this combination may reduce seizures by more than half." The modified Atkins diet is a combination of the Atkins diet and a ketogenic...

Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a “whistleblower” seeking to expose the overreach of NSA’s information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowden’s chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.

High-dose folic acid is protective against congenital malformations if the mother is at particular risk of having a child with congenital malformations. Treatment with antiseizure medication in pregnancy is associated with risk of congenital malformations in the children, and women with epilepsy are therefore often recommended a supplementary high dose of folic acid (4–5 mg daily) before and during pregnancy. However, some studies have raised concern that folic acid can increase the risk of cancer not only in the mother, but in the child when exposed during pregnancy. "We found an increased risk of childhood cancer if the child was...

A drug used to prevent epileptic seizures and migraine has been found to double the chances of a child developing autism if their mother takes it while pregnant. An urgent review has been launched into topiramate, known by the brand name Topamax, which has been prescribed for decades. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has begun a safety review to assess the ‘benefits and risks’ of the drug, which is likely to raise the odds of other intellectual impairments, as well as congenital birth defects. It follows warnings about another epilepsy drug, sodium valproate, marketed as Epilim, which...

I grew up hearing that mental health disorders and illnesses of every kind were evil. Because I was told these things from an isolated world of fundamentalist Christianity, I was not surprised to see Pastor Greg Locke’s sermon suggesting autism, epilepsy and other mental health disorders are actually demon possession. I’ve heard this countless times while sitting in the pews of independent fundamental Baptist churches. A screaming child was said to be a rebellious child who the devil was using. I recall the preachers saying often, “How many lost souls did those ‘tantrums’ lead into hell?,” berating children and the...

For several days we have been communicating with a new source who claims to have devastating inside information about the current state of the Church of Scientology... When the pandemic struck, the Church’s response was a program which laid out “protocols” that all staff and all public Scientologists had to follow. These included wearing a mask and gloves at all times while not in your own home, as well as other rigid mandates, some of which bordered on impossible to follow. The most ridiculous mandate was that the staff of Class V orgs had to keep a statistic of “Number...

Epileptic seizure frequency fell by an average of 86% among 10 children treated with whole plant medicinal cannabis, reveals a case series, published in the open access journal BMJ Paediatrics Open. None of the children had responded to other treatments, including the only cannabidiol (CBD) product licensed for their condition. The findings prompt the researchers to call for further exploration of the potential therapeutic benefits of whole plant medicinal cannabis products. Substantial anecdotal evidence on the value of medicinal cannabis for treating childhood epilepsies has been accumulating since the 1800s, say the researchers. But there’s not been much recent scientific...

Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major K448 is known for its effects on cognition and other brain activity, but researchers are still seeking to understand why. In this study, scientists played the piece for patients equipped with brain implant sensors to monitor the occurrence of IEDs - brief but harmful brain events suffered by epileptics between seizures. They found IEDs decreased after 30 seconds of listening, with significant effects in parts of the brain associated with emotion. When they compared the response to the structure of the work, they found the effects increased during transitions between longer musical...

These findings may have implications for brain disease, disorders. Scientists at the Krembil Brain Institute, part of University Health Network (UHN), in collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), have used precious and rare access to live human cortical tissue to identify functionally important features that make human neurons unique. This experimental work is among the first of its kind on live human neurons and one of the largest studies of the diversity of human cortical pyramidal cells to date. “The goal of this study was to understand what makes human brain cells ‘human,’ and...

BREAKING: #SCOTUS confirms Chief Justice Roberts was hospitalized overnight after a fall June 21st. "The injury required sutures ... His doctors ruled out a seizure. They believe the fall was likely due to light-headedness caused by dehydration."

FRESNO, Calif. -- A California mother is outraged after she says her son, who has autism, was placed in handcuffs instead of being taken to the hospital.

"The people with hemispherectomies that we studied were remarkably high-functioning," study author Dorit Kliemann said in a statement. "They have intact language skills. When I put them in the [brain] scanner, we made small talk, just like the hundreds of other individuals I have scanned," she explained. "You can almost forget their condition when you meet them for the first time," added Kliemann, who is a post-doctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena. Kliemann and her team noted that the six patients in the study had all struggled with relentless epileptic seizures from a...

Store security video shows an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer on top of a man who suffered an epileptic seizure at a Speedway gas station one year ago.

Tutankhamun died at a young age with a feminine physique. His closest relatives, including his father Akhenaten, his uncle or brother Smenkhkare and preceding 18th dynasty pharaohs Amenhotep III and Tuthmosis IV, all shared similar features and fates. While scholars tend to relate the deaths of these pharaohs to separate circumstances, Hutan Ashrafian suggests that the royal family may have had an inherited disorder: temporal lobe epilepsy. Temporal lobe epilepsy is known to affect the release of hormones and sexual development. Tutankhamun was depicted with a feminine physique. Due to his short life, his representations are far less common than...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A medicine made from the marijuana plant moved one step closer to U.S. approval Thursday after federal health advisers endorsed it for the treatment of severe seizures in children with epilepsy. If the Food and Drug Administration follows the group's recommendation, GW Pharmaceuticals' syrup would become the first drug derived from the cannabis plant to win federal approval in the U.S. The 13-member FDA panel voted unanimously in favor of the experimental medication made from a chemical found in cannabis - one that does not get users high. The panelists backed the drug based on three studies...

The FBI has arrested a man accused of sending Dallas reporter Kurt Eichenwald a tweet that triggered an epileptic seizure. The agency announced that John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Salisbury, Md., was arrested Friday morning in Maryland on a cyberstalking charge. Eichenwald tweeted that the man who "assaulted" him also is expected to be indicted by the Dallas district attorney on different charges in the next few days. Eichenwald's attorney, Steven Liberman, told Newsweek that "What Mr. Rivello did with his Twitter message was no different from someone sending a bomb in the mail or sending an envelope filled with...