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Organized and early acute stroke treatment has been shown to improve functional deficits, reduce the need for institutionalization after stroke, and reduce patient mortality. Today, stroke research has evolved to incorporate an integrated, multidisciplinary treatment approach. Data from a study done in 2005 in Ontario, Canada, demonstrate the utility of providing rapid and integrated acute stroke treatment in a real-world setting. The study evaluated functional outcomes associated with rehabilitation services that are part of a flagship stroke treatment program initiated by the Ontario government. The hope for the future is that this approach to patient management will reduce associated health care costs, which are anticipated to increase dramatically in the coming decades.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the leading cause of postneonatal death in the United States.1 This unfortunate disorder is characterized by the sudden, unexpected death of an of infant between ages 1 and 12 months whose cause of death remains a mystery in the aftermath of a thorough postmortem examination that includes an autopsy, an investigation of the death scene, and a careful review of the infant's medical history. New research, published in the November 2006 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association,2 that made recent headlines confirmed earlier research by the same investigative team3,4 showing that serotonergic brain stem abnormalities may be the at the root of SIDS.

In recent months, it's been the rare week that doesn't come with a report about the dangers of antidepressants. These drugs do have their drawbacks, but the dangers they pose are not their main problem. Their biggest shortcoming is that they don't work very well; fewer than half of the patients treated with them get complete relief, and that relief takes an unacceptably long time 2 o 3 weeks t kick in.

PD is a common and challenging neurodegenerativemotor disorder, affecting at least a half millionpersons in the United States, according to the NationalInstitute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Withthe aging of the population, incidence is expected toincrease.

A panel of Proteonomic Biomarkers found withinCerebrospinal fluid (csf) may be the key to early differentiationOf alzheimer disease (AD) from other dementias.

Patients with PD may be at more than twice the risk for the development of malignant melanoma than the general population, according to research by John M. Bertoni, MD, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Neurology at Creighton University, Omaha, and colleagues.1 He presented the results of this research at the American Neurological Association's 131st Annual Meeting this past October in Chicago.

Theories about the causes of Parkinson disease (PD) are as tangled as the neurofilament proteins of Lewy bodies. However, investigators are teasing out threads of evidence that increasingly implicate environmental factors--perhaps aided and abetted by genetics--as contributors to this common neurodegenerative disorder.