No hunger or thirst for over a year

Why has 12-year-old Landon Jones not felt hungry or thirsty since October, 14, 2013? Landon from Waterloo, Iowa, US, had gone to bed on a full stomach of pizza and ice cream the night before.

And when he woke up the next day he was a completely different person. He had simply lost his appetite and thirst. From then on he had not felt hungry or thirsty and the once child who was full of energy became sick and suffered dizziness ever since.

His parents are still baffled by his curious condition and had taken him to many medical specialists in Iowa, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Madison and the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Mi Minnesota, but no one was able to give them any satisfactory answers. Dr. Marc Patterson, a child neurologist at the Mayo Clinic said Landon’s case might be the only one of its kind in the world.

Experts have speculated that the boy might be suffering from a malfunctioning hypothalamus - the portion of the brain responsible for regulating hunger, thirst, body temperature, blood pressure and sleep cycles, but there isn’t any conclusive evidence to suggest this. “They could do bloodwork, they could do all these tests, and those are all going to come back normal. But they cannot do a test for the hypothalamus,” Jones said.

The Jones also suspect that the cause of Landon’s illness might be the treatment he received three years ago for absence seizures. At nine, he would sit and stare into space, oblivious to the world around him. He was put on a drug called Depakote, which is commonly used to treat such seizures, for a year. Doctors are now wondering if there is a link between the drug and the suppression of his appetite. But that isn’t the most likely explanation because Depakote is typically linked to increased hunger and weight gain.

Landon’s next appointment will be at the National Institutes of Health, where they only examine the rarest of cases. Lack of nourishment has caused his weight to drop from a healthy 104 lbs to 68 lbs. And he continues to lose two pounds a week.

While his parents try their very best to encourage him to eat, he is simply unable to eat more than a bite of his sandwich.

Let’s just hope that the family gets some answers soon so that young Landon can go back to being a normal child again.

Return of the vampire deer

Despite the ghoulish appearance with two distinct vampire-like fangs the Kashmir musk deer is a harmless animal which had been roaming the rugged forested slopes of northeast Afghanistan.

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Kashmir musk deer or Moschus Moschiferus is an endangered species which has been spotted for the first time in over 60 years.

The Kashmir musk deer is a native to the Himalayas of northern India, Pakistan's Kashmir region and northern Afghanistan. Only the male deer have fangs and they use them during mating season to compete for females.

A team of researchers from the United States, UK and Afghanistan led by Dr Stephane Ostrowski of the WCS scoured Afghanistan's Nuristan province in 2008 and 2009 and recorded five sightings of the animal. This was the first time the species had been spotted since 1948.

The sightings were described from the United States, UK and Afghanistan led by Dr Stephane Ostrowski of the WCS this month's edition of Oryx.

During the survey, the researchers spotted a single male Kashmir musk deer near the same area three separate times. The researchers also recorded one female and her baby and saw a second single female that they think may have been the same deer, without her baby. The researchers also found the carcass of a poached female deer.

“The musk deer were discrete, cryptic, difficult to spot and could not be photographed,” Dr Ostrowski and his colleagues said.

They bound with amazing agility over the steepest ground and are wonderfully sure-footed over the most rocky hills.

The animals are 0.8 to 1 m long and weigh between seven and 17 kg. They rut in winter, produces one or two young, which are driven off in about six weeks’ time by the mother to fend for themselves.

They are commonly hunted for meat or their musk glands.

The musk is highly valued for its cosmetic and alleged pharmaceutical properties and can fetch 45,000 USD per kg on the international market. Although this musk can be extracted from live animals, most ‘musk-gatherers’ kill them to remove the entire sac.

“Musk deer are one of Afghanistan’s living treasures,” co-author of the WCS report Dr Peter Zahler said.

“Targeted conservation of the species and its habitat are needed for it to survive in Afghanistan,” the scientists said.

Boy inhales fish into his lungs

Swallowing a fish can be believed but inhaling a fish is a weird and unbelievable story. But that is what actually happened to 12-year-old Anil Barela of Khargone district,Madya Pradesh, India. What you see here is apparently an x-ray image of the live fish trapped inside Anil’s lung.

Anil was playing a fish swallowing game with his friends when he accidentally inhaled the creature.

Instead of going the usual smooth passage of alimentary canal the fish went into the wind pipe and blocked the breathing passage. Anil soon started to struggle to breathe and when he was taken to hospital, medics discovered that levels of oxygen in his blood had gone down.

Anil survived a 45-minute emergency operation, but the fish was not so lucky. Dr, Pramod Jhawar, chest specialist and bronchoscope expert said, "The X-ray displayed the left lung completely opaque due to the presence of a foreign object.

“The fish was live and taking its last breath when the bronchoscopy was done, restricting the functioning of both the lungs resulting in low intake of Oxygen”

“It is the first case of this sort that we have come across in 20 years,” he said. According to Dr Jhawar, the operation lasted 45 minutes while they removed the fish from Anil’s lung.