Harriet Brown, 39, has struggled with panic disorder her entire life.

"I remember going out to lunch with colleagues," she said. "On one level I was fine. On another level, I was absolutely freaking out. I had sweaty palms. It was like play life. That's what it's been like for me, having to carry on when I feel horrible inside."Robert Philibert, MD, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, is developing a blood test that can help people like Brown who live with panic disorder, according to a story carried Sept. 21 by ABCnews.com. The test, which measures the gene expression in lymphocytes in a person's blood, would enable doctors to determine whether a patient has the condition. "Panic disorder will no longer be a purely descriptive diagnosis, but as with cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome and other conditions, a diagnosis based on genetic information," Philibert was quoted as saying.

A USA Today story about Chicago Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee, whose daughter suffers from Leber's Congenital Amaurosis (LCA), describes the Lee family's trip to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. LCA is a genetic disease that affects the retina. The Lees visited Edwin Stone, MD, an internationally known vision researcher and director of the University of Iowa Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration. Then they decided to take the crusade for a cure public even if it meant revealing personal medical information about their child. "Most people spend several months to grieve over the diagnosis," Stone says. "The very same day they came to see me for the first time, they said, ‘Can we go up to see the lab and what can we do to help?’ … I don't think one in 100 people would have been able to do that."

A story carried by Reuters Health notes that patients seeking emergency room care for possible acute coronary syndrome (ACS) need not be held there until there is an available bed in the cardiology unit. Citing a report published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, Reuters noted that patients with suspected ACS who are admitted to a family practice unit have similar outcomes as those admitted to a cardiology unit. "Although patients admitted to a cardiology bed received more aggressive diagnostic testing than those admitted to a non-cardiology service bed in our study, the overall 30-day outcomes were very similar," said David Katz, MD, associate professor of internal medicine in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, and epidemiology in the UI College of Public Health. In addition, the patients on a cardiology unit "were not more likely to receive recommended therapies."