Quick Thoughts

N Engl J Med. 2008 Jan 24;358(4):353-61 --> 4/5 patients with end stage renal disease were weened off immunosuppressive therapy 9-14 months after receiving a kidney from a mismatched donors.

Ideas: Bone marrow transplantation from the donor helped diminish the recipients immune response against the foreign organ. The bone marrow transplant achieved a "lymphohematopoietic chimera".

• Treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) with a bone marrow transplant of a healthy same match donor. Some believe that CFS is an immune system disorder where the immune system is up regulated. One particular virus, HHV-6, has been recently linked to CFS and is known to preferentially infect CD4+ T lymphocytes. Could a full bone marrow transplant regenerate functioning CD4+ cells or just reboot the immune system?

Brain. 2008 Mar;131(Pt 3):866-76. --> music can enhance cognitive recovery and prevent negative mood after a stroke. "Listening to pleasant music activates an interconnected network of subcortical and cortical brain regions, which includes the ventral striatum, nucleus accumbens (NAc), amygdala, insula, hippocampus, hypothalamus, ventral tegmental area (VTA), anterior cingulate, orbitofrontal cortex and ventral medial prefrontal cortex"

• There is a theory that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is caused by an improper cycle in the brain. It is hypothesized that stress causes the amygdala to be highly sensitized to any negative physical symptoms arising from the body. The amygdala assigns significance to cognitive or sensory input and creates a network of neurons that amplify the bodies response to physiological events. One proposed treatment method is cognitive therapy. Verbal stimulation and meditation should theoretically activate the amygdala and weaken the correlation between certain physiological or mental events and the negative symptoms associated with CFS. As music has been shown to activate various networks in the brain, maybe we can use musical therapy to rebuild the neuronal connections that might be involved in this disease?

A joke at every end:

Why do farts smell?
To make deaf people laugh.