Stem Cells Reveal New Secrets About Mental Illness
Dina Fine Maron, health & science editor at Scientific American, discusses the breakthrough that could help doctors diagnose mental illnesses. Stem cells have enabled researchers to see how lithium affects the brain.
Researchers are converting patients skin cells into brain cells through genetic instruction. This allows them to look at the brain cells of a person with bipolar disorder and better understand how to treat it.
Maron explains this breakthrough will allow doctors to customize a patient's treatment plan, instead of giving them the same treatment given to everyone. Maron says the hope is one day researchers will be able to expose a patient's cells to a particular drug and see how they react before prescribing the drug to an actual patient.
America’s honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found.
A line of severe storms produced what a meteorologist calls a rare combination of multiple tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and softball-sized hail in west Texas, killing at least four people, injuring nine and causing significant damage around the town of Matador, a meteorologist said Thursday.
