What is HLH, and what role did it play in the death of a healthy 34-year-old ESPN reporter? – 11Alive.com WXIA

ATLANTA How does a healthy 34-year-old die after being diagnosed with pneumonia?

That's the question at the heart of the tragic and sudden death of an ESPN reporter earlier this week.

According to college football reporter Edward Aschoff's fiance, Katy Berteau, about a week after being diagnosed with a severe form of pneumonia, he began treatment for a "presumed diagnosed" of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH). Three days after being moved to the ICU, Berteau tweeted from Aschoff's account on Thursday night, he died.

RELATED: Edward Aschoff's fiance releases new information about ESPN reporter's sudden death, memorable life

HLH is a rare and complicated condition that's not entirely well-understood by researchers, but it basically stems from your immune system severely overreacting to an infection (such as pneumonia) or another illness.

"It just gets overworked and starts fighting regular tissues, so usually those tissues are organs, like your spleen or your liver," Atlanta area doctor Will Epps said. "So it can result in liver failure or organ failure and unfortunately end up expiring from it."

Here's a general outline:

According to the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center at the National Institutes of Health, HLH comes in two forms: A genetic form and an acquired form.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital says the genetic form is more common in young children, while the acquired form, sometimes called the secondary form, usually affects older children and adults, such as Aschoff.

What happens, broadly, is this: Faced with a severe infection, such as pneumonia (or other severe conditions like cancer), a person's immune system overreacts and, as the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine describes it, certain while blood cells called histiocytes and lymphocytes "attack your other blood cells."

"These abnormal blood cells collect in your spleen and liver, causing these organs to enlarge," Johns Hopkins says.

(According to the NIH, HLH may also be associated with a separate genetic condition X-linked lymphoproliferative disease - XLP - when it results from an inappropriate immune response.)

It can cause death in a matter of weeks, according to researchers.

A 2012 paper in the medical journal "Clinical Advances in Hematology & Oncology,"outlines adult HLH extensively.

"It is useful to think of HLH as the severe end of a spectrum of hyperinflammatory diseases in which the immune system causes damage to host tissues," the paper's authors, Dr. Roman Leonid Kleynberg and Dr Gary J. Schiller, wrote.

That paper estimated HLH occurs in only 1.2 cases per one million individuals every year, making it extremely rare.

Specifically amongst children, St. Jude estimates HLH is diagnosed in fewer than 1 out of every 50,000 - 100,000 children per year.

The condition's mortality rate is difficult to pin down because it can fluctuate based on what caused it. Many sources say a common cause is Epstein-Barr virus, for example, and the 2012 paper reported the mortality rate associated with that 18-24 percent. Other causes can have lower mortality rates.

Generally, doctors try both to treat the underlying trigger for HLH and address the immune response.

"Treating that is tamping that down, either through steroids or with a chemotherapeutic agent which tends to attack or lower that immune system," Epps said.

John Hopkins Medicine also details antibiotic and antiviral drugs being used, or if drug treatment fails doctors may turn to stem cell transplants.

There is no known way to prevent HLH.

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What is HLH, and what role did it play in the death of a healthy 34-year-old ESPN reporter? - 11Alive.com WXIA

New technology being used to heal serious wounds – WWLTV.com

NEW ORLEANS Nancy Van Den Akker went through a difficult time.

Compressed discs caused pain shooting down her leg. In May, she had surgery to fix that. Then there was another problem.

"Was about ready to start physical therapy when apparently some of the stitches in the side opened up. I had kind of these gaping holes there," said Nancy Van Den Akker.

It's harder for diabetics like Nancy to heal, so even with standard wound medicine the incision stayed open for three months. Then Tulane reconstructive plastic surgeon Dr. Abigail Chaffin asked Nancy to try new technology.

"What we're talking about today is living tissue. These are donated placentas from healthy mothers, undergoing planned C-sections, that give consent to donate tissue that would otherwise be discarded," explained Dr. Abigail Chaffin, a reconstructive plastic surgeon specializing in wound medicine who is the Medical Director of the MedCentris Wound Healing Institute at Tulane.

The tissue comes in many sizes. Dr. Chaffin spreads it out over the wound, then it's bandaged for a week. The tissue bathes the wound in growth factors and stem cells helping regenerate your own tissue, faster.

"These can be used for many different type of wounds, from diabetic ulcers, venous ulcers, non-healing surgical wounds, over any area of the body," said Dr. Chaffin.

This can keep people out of the operating room with anesthesia and from having a painful skin graft that leaves a big scar. It can also help prevent infection and limb amputation. She even used it successfully before surgery on a young patient whose wound did not heal for 10 years.

Nancy healed in four weeks with the treatment.

"It's all healed up. I don't even feel it. Within just a couple of weeks, I was able to start physical therapy," said Nancy Van Den Akker.

Every time someone is finished with the treatment the medical team rings a big bell hanging in the center.

Now that her medical team has declared Nancy healed, she can't wait to take the senior dog she rescued out for walks again.

Here are more before and after pictures:

The MedCentris Wound Healing Institute is doing a study at Tulane on the effectiveness of the new technology.

It's for any child or adult who has an open wound for at least four weeks.It is through your insurance and co-pay.

For more call 504-399-3605 or toll free, 1-855-HEAL-DAT.

Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in theIOS App StoreorGoogle Play.

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New technology being used to heal serious wounds - WWLTV.com

Five hot topics in autism research in 2019 – Spectrum

This year, researchers unearthed clues to the causes of autism and how to treat it from a variety of sources.

Advances in tiny models of the human brain bared new details about the biology of autism and provided possible platforms for testing therapies. Studies of heart rate put a spotlight on the autonomic nervous system as a potential wellspring of autism traits. And others forged a controversial connection between the gut microbiome and autism.

A few studies revealed important information about the time points at which different forms of autism are amenable to therapy. This year also saw scrutiny of tests used for screening and diagnosis, revealing gaps and limitations in the system for identifying autistic children.

Here are the years top five topics in autism research.

Brain organoids start as mere clusters of stem cells, which then are coaxed to mature into brain cells. This year, the life span of these brains-in-a-dish grew to one year and then nearly two, enabling them to mature and mimic some aspects of the human brain. In the longest-lived organoids, researchers tracked changes in the expression of autism genes. Organoids derived from the skin cells of autistic people have a shortage of cells that suppress brain activity, they found. The finding supports the signaling imbalance theory of autism, which holds that the brains of autistic people are hyper-excitable.

This year, scientists also built tiny replicas of two brain areas bridged by a long fiber tract that might reveal how long-range connections are altered in the brains of people with autism.

Brain organoids spun from people with fragile X syndrome may help explain why some experimental fragile X drugs work in mice but not in people and generate leads for effective therapies. Organoids could provide a platform for testing treatments, too, as researchers can now churn out hundreds of these brain-like blobs in parallel and make them uniform in shape and composition.

More distant applications include studies of consciousness and the effects of microgravity on the brain. In a fledgling sign of the former, brain organoids showed synchronized neuronal firing patterns, some aspects of which look like those in preterm infants.

New evidence emerged tying autism to the workings of the autonomic nervous system, which controls breathing, heart rate and digestion. Differences in the system could explain a range of autism traits, including social difficulties and sensory sensitivity, as well as heart problems and digestive issues.

Many of these differences show up in the heart rate. Heart rate remains steady in autistic people as they breathe instead of the typical pattern of slowing slightly on exhale and quickening on inhale. This discrepancy arises after 18 months of age, around the same time that the conditions core traits emerge. Children with Rett syndrome also have unusual heart-rate patterns.

These differences may persist beyond childhood. One study showed that autistic adults resting heart rates rarely vary; an even heart rate suggests a lack of flexibility in responding to environmental changes.

Autistic children are unusually prone to gastrointestinal problems. This association may not be a coincidence: Certain genetic mutations or alterations in the microbiome the mix of microbes in the intestines may contribute to both autism and gut problems.

Four mouse studies in 2019 offered up fresh evidence some of it controversial to support this idea. In one study, researchers replaced the gut microbes in mice with those from autistic boys. The mice have repetitive behaviors, make fewer vocalizations and spend less time socializing than controls do, providing the first evidence that gut microbes contribute to autism traits.

But within hours of the studys publication, several experts criticized its small sample size and highly variable results. Others found a possible statistical error.

In an unrelated study, researchers revealed that oral doses of Lactobacillus reuteri, a type of gut bacteria found in yogurt and breast milk, boost social behavior in three mouse models of autism. And two other sets of findings suggested that mutations in NLGN3, a high-confidence autism gene, alter gut function. One of them showed that a mutation in this gene disrupts the mices microbiome.

Drugs for autism may be most effective when given during a critical period of brain development. Researchers delineated the windows for treating autism traits in mouse and rat models of the condition.

One study revealed that by the time mice reach adulthood, they have lost their ability to learn from social experiences. Giving adult mice an injection of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), the active ingredient in ecstasy, reopens the critical window for learning.

In another study, researchers fed the cholesterol drug lovastatin to rat models of fragile X syndrome. The treatment, if given at 4 weeks of age (the rat equivalent of childhood), prevents cognitive problems, the researchers found.

The timing of treatments may be more important for some forms of autism than for others. A study of mice missing UBE3A, the gene mutated in Angelman syndrome, showed that the earlier in life the gene is restored, the more the mice improve.

By contrast, a mutation in the autism gene SCN2A has many of the same effects on neurons when introduced into adolescent mice as it does when it is present from conception. And unpublished results show that correcting an SCN2A mutation in adulthood reverses these problems.

A series of studies this year called into question the accuracy of early screening and revealed racial disparities in autism diagnoses.

Some studies cast doubt on the utility of a widely used screening tool, the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers: The test identifies less than 40 percent of autistic children, and 85 percent of those it does flag do not have autism.

Of the toddlers the test flags, most do not receive follow-up evaluations. And for those who are seen again, a definitive diagnosis may not be possible right away. Some children who screen negative at age 3 meet the diagnostic criteria for autism only after age 5.

Not all children have equal access to autism evaluations, with black and Hispanic children at a disadvantage in several U.S. states. In New Jersey, black children are half as likely as white children to receive an autism assessment by age 3.

About 9 percent of autistic children may outgrow an autism diagnosis but still have other conditions that require support, highlighting the need for continued observation to adapt to their evolving needs.

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Five hot topics in autism research in 2019 - Spectrum

Humans may be Able to Regrow Teeth in the Future – NullTX

Scientific developments can have a major impact on society. It now appears that human teeth can simply be regrown through a relatively simple medical procedure.

When an adult human loses a tooth, it will never come back.

The only option to fill the gap is by using a fake tooth, or implant.

Unfortunately, those problems only grow bigger as humans grow older.

Addressing the loss of teeth has proven challenging, albeit a solution may have been discovered.

Gaining the ability to regrow teeth would certainly be beneficial to society as a whole.

Research into this matter is underway, resulting in some promising options to explore.

It appears the patients own stem cells can be used to regrow lost or damaged teeth.

That is the working theory, at least, as human trials have not been conducted yet.

When human trials will officially begin, has not been announced at this time.

A lot more research and development is needed to deem such trials safe.

Until then, tooth loss will need to be remedied with implants.

That solution has worked well for several decades, as they can serve as genuine teeth.

The downside is how the healing process associated with implants is rather lengthy, and the costs remain relatively high.

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Humans may be Able to Regrow Teeth in the Future - NullTX