Category: Bk-Bl

Plastic surgery on the eyelids. Blepharoplasty may be done to correct ptosis (sagging eyelids), remove fatty bulges around the eyes, and eliminate hanging skin from the eyelids, often times a cosmetic procedure to improve appearance but may be medically necessary as when the sagging is blocking the field of vision.

Horizontal narrowing of the palpebral fissures (eye slits).

Inflammation of the eyelids. Blepharitis occurs in two forms, anterior and posterior. Anterior blepharitis affects the outside front of the eyelid, where the eyelashes are attached. The two most common causes of anterior blepharitis are bacteria (Staphylococcus) and scalp dandruff. Posterior blepharitis affects the inner eyelid (the moist part that makes contact with the eye) and is caused by problems…

An extraordinarily important experiment in 1952 that helped to convince the world that DNA was the genetic material. Alfred Hershey (1908-1997) and his assistant Martha Chase (1923-2003) at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory showed that the DNA, not the protein, of the phage virus contains the phage genes. After a phage particle attaches to a bacterium, its DNA…

A bladder-like structure more than 5 mm in diameter with thin walls that may be full of fluid. Also called a bulla.

Immature blood cells. Leukemic blasts do not grow and age normally; they proliferate wildly and fail to mature.

Infection with a fungus called Blastomyces dermatitidis. The infection causes symptoms in about 50% of cases. It usually presents as a flu-like illness with fever, chills, productive cough, myalgia, arthralgia and pleuritic chest pain. Some patients fail to recover and develop chronic pulmonary infection or widespread disseminated infection (affecting the skin, bones, and genitourinary tract). It occasionally affects the meninges which cover the brain…

The fungus that causes a disease called blastomycosis.

A tumor thought to arise in embryonic tissue. This term is commonly used as part of the name for a tumor, as in glioblastoma and medulloblastoma (types of brain tumors), hepatoblastoma (a liver tumor), nephroblastoma (a Wilms tumor of the kidney), neuroblastoma (a childhood tumor of neural origin), osteoblastoma (a bone tumor), and retinoblastoma (a tumor of the retina in the eye).

A protein that is induced by progesterone and binds it and that inhibits the enzyme phospholipase A2 (PLA2). Uteroglobin was first found to be secreted by the lining of the uterus in rabbits. The gene for uteroglobin is on chromosome 11 in region 11q12.3-q13.1. It is also called blastokinin.