ECG-gated MDCT appears to be logistically feasible and shows promise as a comprehensive method for evaluating cardiac and noncardiac chest pain in stable emergency department patients. Further hardware and software improvements will be necessary for adoption of this paradigm in clinical practice.

In this urban population, acute diverticulitis occurred more frequently in patients 20-50 years old than previously recognized. This group had significantly greater abdominal obesity than the older group. Severe disease requiring hospital admission, surgery, or percutaneous drainage (or both surgery and percutaneous drainage) was common in all age groups.

The physiological functioning of the brain is not well-known in current day medicine and the pathologies of many neuropsychiatric disorders are still not yet fully understood. With our aging population and better life expectancies, it has become imperative to find better biomarkers for disease progression as well as receptor target engagements. In the last decade, these major advances in the field of molecular CNS imaging have been made available with tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and neuroreceptor-targeted positron emission tomography (PET). These tools have given researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and clinical physicians a better method of understanding CNS dysfunctions, and the ability to employ improved therapeutic agents. This review is intended to provide an update on brain imaging agents that are currently used in clinical and translational research toward treatment of CNS disorders. The review begins with amyloid and tau imaging, the former of which has at least three [(18)F] agents that have been recently approved and will soon be available for clinical use for specific indications in the USA and elsewhere. Other prevalent PET and SPECT neurotransmitter system agents, including those newly US FDA-approved imaging agents related to the dopaminergic system, are included. A review of both mature and potentially growing PET imaging agents, including those targeting serotonin and opiate receptor systems, is also provided.

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Heat has been reported to exert variable effects on people with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS). At age 24 years, a 32-year-old right-handed man with TS experienced a marked reduction in tics for two years after undergoing dehydration by entering a hot tub at 103°F (39.4°C) to 104°F (40.0°C) for 3 to 4 hours. On the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS) he scored 55 seven months before dehydration and 13 one month after dehydration. An intense heat exposure and dehydration led to an apparent remission in tics. The remission continued without the use of prescribed or nonprescribed medications or substances for two years until tics returned in the worst ever exacerbation after a tetanus immunization. The heat exposure may have altered at least temporarily his thermostat for normal heat-loss mechanisms through dopaminergic pathways from the anterior hypothalamus to the basal ganglia and the substantia nigra. Whether or not that mechanism or some other mechanism relevant to the heat exposure and/or dehydration is at play, the sudden and marked improvement in his tics needs further attention. Prospective testing of the heat and dehydration effect on tics should be pursued.