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A new study shows that women who take the epilepsy drug valproate while pregnant may significantly increase their child's risk of developing autism. The preliminary research is published in the December 2, 2008, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The ongoing study involves 632 children, nearly half of whom were exposed to epilepsy drugs during gestation.

Devaux and Gow demonstrate how a tight junction protein called claudin 11 makes the neuronal myelin sheath a snug fit. The study will be published in the December 1, 2008 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology (http://www.jcb.org).

Morgan Stanley Children's hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian is one of only a few hospitals in the country to offer spinal stapling, a new treatment alternative for young people with scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that is painful and can restrict breathing. The Center for Early Onset Scoliosis, led by Dr Michael Vitale, sees about 400 patients per year under the age of 5 with the condition. Spinal stapling is one of a number of new techniques that promise improved outcomes.

Cognitive neuroscientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet (KI) have succeeded in making subjects perceive the bodies of mannequins and other people as their own. The findings are published in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, December 3. In the first experiment, the head of a shop dummy was fitted with two cameras connected to two small screens placed in front of the subjects' eyes, so that they saw what the dummy "saw.

Two studies, presented this week at the 94th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), concluded a novel technique can improve outcomes for patients with vertebral compression fractures (VCF) caused by malignant tumors in the spine.

Utilizing the design input of some of the industry's leading surgeons in spine stabilization procedures, VERTICOR's new Patent Pending VClipseTP Cervical Plating System is currently in the final stages of testing. Scheduled for an estimated release to the industry in early 2009, this scalable system was designed from its inception to offer an efficient, easy-to-use new option for cervical fusion procedures.

New york - patients with medication-refractory temporal lobe epilepsy may benefit substantially from surgery, researchers here affirmed.

CHICAGO (MedPage Today) -- Bringing the CT to the stroke patient, rather than the other way round, dramatically reduced door-to-scan time in a community hospital, researchers said here.