On the night of June 23, it was all hands on deck in the emergency department at Yale New Haven Hospital. They were running out of resuscitation rooms and breathing tubes. Patients were put in overflow rooms, and doctors and nurses came from other departments to keep up with the flood of patients. The pace was unrelenting—beginning at 4 p.m. and lasting for six hours. The emergency staff had never seen anything like this before.(more…)
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have, for the first time, described the genetic basis of endometriosis, a condition affecting millions of women that is marked by chronic pelvic pain and infertility. The researchers’ discovery of a new gene mutation provides hope for new screening methods.
Published in the Feb. 3 early online issue of EMBO Molecular Medicine, the study explored an inherited mutation located in part of the KRAS gene, which leads to abnormal endometrial growth and endometrial risk. In endometriosis, uterine tissue grows in other parts of the body, such as the abdominal cavity, ovaries, vagina, and cervix. The condition is often hereditary and is found in 5%-15% of women of reproductive age, affecting over 70 million women worldwide. (more…)