Chem Lab 3

Beatrice Markovaite

Bio Lab Report

TA: Timo Friedrich

Rashi Report

Medicine has been evolving for ages and it never stops till this day. The human race went from not knowing what is wrong with a person to being able to double a person’s lifespan with all of the resources we have accomplished, such as a great variety of medications and knowledge.

Last week in lab my partners and I used the Rashi program, and were presented with a case of a young 21-year-old female. Janet Stone (the patient) came to see us with a 6-month history of nervousness, heart palpitations, irritability, and heat intolerance. The patient complained that over the past 6 months the she had “lost 20 pounds, despite of a good appetite”. Janet also complained that she used to run and does not anymore since she “does not feel like it”. After hearing Janet Stone’s symptoms my colleagues and I brain stormed with three hypotheses that could potentially be the reason of her symptoms.

The first hypothesis we came up with was that Janet Stone has a parasite. Her rapid weight loss despite a good appetite, lead us to think that there could be a parasite inside her. We figured that the parasite is using Janet’s nutrients causing fatigue, lack of energy to exercise even though she still eats normally. We were trying to discover other symptoms that the patient might not have mentioned through further research, so we could ask the patient about it during an interview. On the Medline plus website we learned that some of the symptoms for the pinworm include insomnia, irritability, restlessness, and a complication of the condition might result in rapid weight loss.

For our second hypothesis we have developed, we considered that the patient’s problem is actually a mental disorder. Janet’s rapid weight loss, and some of her neurological symptoms could be explained by bulimia nervosa. The patient used to exercise excessively which is one of the common symptoms and the lack of the desire to exercise...