Coccidioidomycosis and tuberculosis coinfection at a tuberculosis hospital: clinical features and literature review.

Tuberculosis (TB) and coccidioidomycosis can have similar clinical and radiologic presentations but require different treatments. Coinfection with TB and Coccidioides immitis is uncommonly reported and may be underdiagnosed in endemic areas.We performed a retrospective review of the medical records of all patients admitted to a TB referral hospital between 1995 and 2007, and selected all cases of TB and coccidioidomycosis coinfection in patients aged 18 years or older.

The estrogen myth: potential use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Estrogen and other sex hormones have received a great deal of attention for their speculative role in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but at present a direct connection between estrogen and the pathogenesis of AD remains elusive and somewhat contradictory. For example, on one hand there is a large body of evidence suggesting that estrogen is neuroprotective and improves cognition, and that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at the onset of menopause reduces the risk of developing AD decades later. However, on the other hand, studies such as the Women's Health Initiative demonstrate that HRT initiated in elderly women increases the risk of dementia.

The p38 pathway is activated in Pick disease and progressive supranuclear palsy: a mechanistic link between mitogenic pathways, oxidative stress, and tau.

In Pick disease and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), accumulations of phosphorylated tau are associated with oxidative stress, although the mechanism linking these features remains unknown. However, we suspected that the oxidative stress-induced activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases might lead to tau phosphorylation and accumulation as characteristic inclusion bodies. To test this notion, we investigated whether the activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases is involved in the pathogenesis of Pick disease and PSP.