[ noun ] abnormally high body temperature; sometimes induced (as in treating some forms of cancer) <noun.state>
hyperthermia \hyperthermia\, hyperthermy \hyperthermy\n. abnormally high body temperature.
Syn: hyperthermy. [WordNet 1.5]
"I am totally flabbergasted," he said, adding that the report, carrying the weight of the institute and its parent National Institutes of Health, would almost certainly scare off any research institution or hospital from doing hyperthermia tests.
Regulatory problems unrelated to the hyperthermia treatments had cropped up at Atlanta Hospital, the small medical center where the experiments were performed, but Logan said another hospital would soon take on the project.
The hyperthermia treatment consists of microwaves traveling through plastic bags filled with saline that are placed in the abdominal cavity.
Alonso and Logan determined that the patient's sarcoma might respond to heat treatment, then performed the hyperthermia process at Atlanta Hospital.
That suggests the gene is either responsible for malignant hyperthermia, or that it lies very close to the reponsible gene on the threadlike structure called chromosome 19, MacLennan of the University of Toronto said in a telephone interview.
One medical school mentioned as a site for Logan's hyperthermia trials was Mercer University in Macon.
In the new study, scientists suggest that malignant hyperthermia comes from a defective version of a gene that normally tells muscle cells how to make a structure called the ryanodine receptor, which plays a key role in muscle contraction.
Given the normal function of the gene, it makes "excellent sense" that a defective form could trigger malignant hyperthermia, he said.