1. Neurology

Category Archives: Neurology

RNA-only genes: ancient infections hide in human genome and get themselves passed from generation to generation

Posted on by

From the Economist:

Not so long ago, received wisdom was that most of the human genome—99% of it—was “junk”. If this junk had a role, it was just to space out the remaining 1%, the genes in which instructions about how to make proteins are encoded.

That, it now seems, was far from the truth. The decade since the completion of the Human Genome Project has shown that lots of the junk must indeed have a function. Almost two-thirds of human DNA, rather than just 1% of it, is being copied into molecules of RNA. As a consequence, rather than there being just 23,000 genes, there may be millions of them.


Human chromosomes (grey) capped by telomeres (white). Image source: Wikipedia, public domain.

One new genetic class is known as lincRNAs. Molecules of lincRNA are similar to the messenger-RNA molecules which carry protein blueprints. However, they do not encode proteins. More than 9,000 sorts are known, and their job is the regulation of other genes.

LincRNA is rather odd, though. It often contains members of a second class of weird genetic object. These are called transposable elements - “jumping genes” - because their DNA can hop from one place to another within the genome. Transposable elements come in several varieties, but one group of particular interest are known as endogenous retroviruses. These are the descendants of ancient infections that have managed to hide away in the genome and get themselves passed from generation to generation along with the rest of the genes.

This Nature video takes you on an audio-visual journey, diving into a cell to show how genes are transcribed to make messenger RNA (mRNA) and how RNAi can silence specific mRNAs to stop them from making proteins:

References:

RNA-only genes: The origin of species? The Economist.

Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CasesBlog/~3/0E3rwFX3FSY/rna-only-genes-ancient-infections-hide.html

Shoulder Pain, Decreased Motion, and Quantum Neurology at The Hayden Institute – Video

Posted on by


Shoulder Pain, Decreased Motion, and Quantum Neurology at The Hayden Institute
A patient at The Hayden Institute, in northwest Houston, Texas receives chiropractic care and Quantum Neurology rehabilitation for left shoulder pain with decreased range of motion. For more...

By: Dr. Chase Hayden

See the original post:
Shoulder Pain, Decreased Motion, and Quantum Neurology at The Hayden Institute - Video

12 tips for using Twitter as a learning tool in medical education – PubMed article

Posted on by

The suggested tips are organized into the following categories:

- mechanics of using Twitter
- suggestions and evidence for incorporating Twitter into many medical education contexts
- promoting research into the use of Twitter in medical education

However, you will need paid (or institutional) access to read the actual 12 tips for using Twitter as a learning tool in medical education, published at the Informa website:

http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/0142159X.2012.746448

References:

Twelve tips for using Twitter as a learning tool in medical education. Forgie SE, Duff JP, Ross S. Med Teach. 2012 Dec 21.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23259608

Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CasesBlog/~3/UvADxkluIQs/12-tips-for-using-twitter-as-learning.html

Physician: "I think it’s time to put the blogging down"

Posted on by

My good Twitter friend, and probably the most famous orthopedic surgeon using social media, @hjluks recently wrote: "Think it's time to put the blogging down...."

Is it time? Does blogging still have some place in the busy day of a practicing physician?

It really depends on what you use the blogging for. Here are just three examples:

- My blogs are my personal archive. I often post brief summaries of interesting articles with my personal comments. When I need to retrieve those during discussions with residents, students or patients, finding them is just a click away by using the custom search engine of the blog. Depending on the purpose of your blogs, the readership size and engagement often do not matter that much. For example, I have blogs that almost no one reads (my gardening blog) but I still post there and find them useful.

- Sometimes you need to point your Twitter/Facebook followers to a longer form explanation on a topic or a controversial issue. Blogs work well for that. A cardiologist was misunderstood by an e-patient recently. It took a 1,000-word blog post for him to explain what he really meant.

- You can create a practice website using blogging software. For example, FAQs for a physician practice can be hosted on a blog. Facebook and Twitter are disorganized and not easily searchable, and not everyone has the patience to watch videos to find (or miss) the answer to their question at the end.

Reasons to stop blogging

I know medical bloggers who stopped blogging or closed their Twitter accounts for similar reasons to those summarized below:

"He says in his final blog post that while he intended the personal blog to be a place where he could talk about ideas, his posts had started to “spark whole conversations that I never intended to start in the first place, conversations that leech precious time and energy while contributing precious little back.”

More related thoughts:

"So many things can go wrong (with social media) if you don’t do it right. You can get stampeded and lose the game. Playing on the sidelines is more appealing.

If you run a hospital and decide to establish a vast living presence on the Web, people will say bad things about your doctors, your nurses, your waiting times in the ER, your food. You’ll have to deal with HIPAA. There’s also a chance that you’ll say something you’ll regret. Playing on the sidelines is more appealing."

On the other hand, consider this:


Duty calls. Image source: Xkcd.com, Creative Commons license.

See a perfect example why you must read medical blogs in this post by a practicing electrophysiologist: The first 4 months of a new era - anticoagulation with dabigatran. You can't find this first-hand real-life experience in any textbook or medical journal.

6 Reasons Why Doctors Blog

Here are the 6 Reasons Why Doctors Blog, according to Dr. John M., a cardiologist and electrophysiologist:

Here are the top six reasons why I and other doctors choose to author medical blogs:

1. The Practice of Medicine inspires
2. To educate
3. To better mankind
4. To give a look behind the curtain
5. To archive useful information
6. To display our humanness

My comment is here:

Thank you for the wonderful post and sharing insights, John.

Blogging "To better mankind" is beyond reach for me, I think. However, I hope that my blogs helped "To educate" at least some of the readers who flipped through more than 8 million pages since 2005...

Doctors are highly-qualified experts who limit their impact only to patients they see - if they don't publish, give lectures - and blog. In most cases, benefits far outweigh the risk and doctors should be encouraged to at least give it a try.

I tried to describe a practical and time-efficient approach here:

Social media in medicine: How to be a Twitter superstar and help your patients and your practice
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/social-media-in-medicine-how-to-be.html

Blogging also keeps you grounded and humble. Critical comments prompt you to back your clinical opinion, expressed in a blog post, with solid scientific references and that's a good thing.

This is a suggested Cycle of Patient Education (click here to enlarge the image):

A here is the suggested Cycle of Online Information and Physician Education (click here to enlarge the image):

The two cycles work together as two interlocking cogwheels. Here is how to facilitate the Rise of the ePhysican who works hand in hand with the ePatient:

Why you should start blogging

Quotes from an interview with Seth Godin and Tom Peters:

"Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.

No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook.

And it’s free."

Don't limit yourself to your blog - use Facebook and Twitter

Blogging can be great for personal growth but there is a lot more interaction on Twitter and Facebook nowadays as compared to blogs. If you have a blog, you must also have a Facebook "like" page (previously called "fan" page) and a Twitter account. These serve the dual purpose of distribution and commenting channels ("two-way street").

For example, Facebook pages get a lot more interaction than blogs for some medical journals - you can count the comments on the NEJM Facebook updates (the range is 9-180) vs. their blog (0). The blog has comments enabled, of course.

Facebook is the clear "winner" in terms of commenting activity, it is not even close:

NEJM Facebook page vs. NEJM blog

What is the oldest medical blog?

I have maintained medical blogs since 2004 but never thought about blog anniversaries - blogging seems such a mundane task of daily life.

What is the "life expectancy" of a medical blog?

The studies are ongoing but the current record is around 8-10 years... http://goo.gl/5LRx

In the medical blogging world, the physician bloggers who produce high volume of original content often quit after 1-2 years. There is too much to handle. Medical blogging is a difficult task that requires a lot of time and mental energy (scientific accuracy, HIPAA compliance, ethics, etc.), and the financial rewards are nonexistent or negligible.

As pointed out in the comments, the "oldest" medical blog probably is Family Medicine Notes, followed by GruntDoc.

Related reading and a lot of comments:

What is the oldest medical blog? http://bit.ly/1aSL3VY
Why you should start blogging in 2011 http://bit.ly/1aSKGdO
Doctors are natural communicators - social media is extension of what they do every day http://bit.ly/U2wB7O
6 Reasons Why Doctors Blog http://bit.ly/1aSL8c7
Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging http://bit.ly/1aSLb7M

Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CasesBlog/~3/KQSeAkbOvTo/physician-i-think-its-time-to-put.html


  1. Neurology