Tag Archives: illness

When the Illness Is a Mystery, Patients Turn to These Detectives

They are patients with diseases that mystify doctors, people whose symptoms are dismissed as psychosomatic, who have been given misdiagnosis upon misdiagnosis. They have confounded experts and have exhausted every hope save one. And so they wind up in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, a federally funded project that now includes 12 clinical centers, including one… Read More »

In Brief: Mothers with Affective Illness (Even In Remission) Have Deficits in Emotional Processing

We have long known that postpartum depression may have negative effects on the child and may contribute to deficits in social development and emotional regulation.  Exactly what mediates these effects is not so clear; however, researchers have observed that depressed mothers tend to be less responsive to their children’s emotional cues and are more likely… Read More »

AFM: The scary polio-like illness

It is a scary illness, not just for parents but for doctors, too: Acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) causes sudden weakness and loss of muscle tone in the arms and legs and can go on to cause even more serious problems. It’s not just the symptoms that are scary. It’s also scary because we don’t know… Read More »