Posted by Ron Grosserode on June 07, 1999 at 23:32:54:
You may already be aware of the federal government’s program to increase access to information. One gem is the *free* access to the National Library of Medicine. This asset used to cost $$$ for time spent searching. Recently, the service is available to
everyone for free. This is a collection of medical research, reports, trials and review articles that may contain the answer to all of our’s CH problem. The initial site is..http://www.nlm.nih.gov/. I prefer to use the Grateful Medline Search http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/doler?account=++&password=++&datafile=medline
I feel that as more people become involved in medical research, even on an individual level, great things may occur. Has anyone seen the movie Lorenzo’s Oil?
Here’s an interesting abstract from an Italian researcher about the increasing numbers of
women CH suffers that correlates with increased employment, smoking and coffee use.
TITLE: Gender ratio of cluster headache over the years: a possible role of changes
in lifestyle.
AUTHORS: Manzoni GC
AUTHOR AFFILIATION:Headache Centre, Institute of Neurology, University of Parma, Italy.
SOURCE: Cephalalgia 1998 Apr;18(3):138-42
ABSTRACT: Changes in the male-to-female (M/F) ratio of cluster headache (CH)over the years were investigated through a comparative analysis of the distribution
of the disease by sex and decade of onset in 482 patients (374M and 108F).Variations over the last few decades were also investigated in the employment rate,
level of school education, smoking habit, and coffee and alcohol intake of the population living in the same area as the CH patients. The M/F ratio has fallen from 6.2:1 for patients with CH onset before 1960, to 5.6:1, 4.3:1, 3.0:1, and 2.1:1 for patients with CH onset in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, respectively. Correspondingly, in those same decades, the M/F ratio has fallen from 2.6:1 to 2.4:1,2.2:1, and 1.7:1, respectively, for the employment rate, and from 8.6:1 to 7.8:1, 3.3:1, 2.5:1, and 1.9:1 for the smoking habit. Such a close correlation suggests that the significant changes that have occurred over the last few decades in the lifestyle of
both sexes--and particularly that of women--may have played a major role inaltering the gender ratio of CH.
I apologise for the long post. But this is a valuable resource that should be taken advantage of by anyone with the need to know.
Ron Grosserode
El Paso