This Week In Health: A Tough Strain Of Tuberculosis

“This Week In Health” offers some highlights from the world of health news and wellness tips that you may have missed this week:

• Alzheimer’s Disease is significantly less prevalent among people who have received an organ transplant, according to findings from a University of Texas at Galveston study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s not the transplanted organs themselves fighting Alzheimer’s, but the medication that transplant patients take daily in order to prevent organ rejection.
• The possibility that stem-cell treatment could be the cure-for-everything has been heralded for years. Much is still unknown, however, and as the first generation to be treated using stem-cell therapies on a large scale, patients should be aware of the potential risks.
• A woman with an especially tough strain of tuberculosis — extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) — is being treated at the National Institutes of Health after traveling through the U.S. for about six weeks. XDR-TB, which does not respond to the most potent antibiotics used to fight it, is not easier to contract, but it is more lethal. The Centers for Disease Control are currently trying to ascertain who the woman may have come into contact with, and who rode in airplanes with her, during her visit. According to the CDC, tuberculosis can be spread when released into the air via coughs, sneezes, shouting, or singing.
• A stroke takes a toll on its victims roughly equal to aging eight years all at once. According to a new study published in the journal Stroke, stroke survivors’ performance in memory and quick-thinking tests suffered as badly as if they had aged 7.9 years.

Photo: Sanofi Pasteur via Flickr