As we know, more than 60% of our body is made from water. However, some people will have an allergic reaction to water. Can you believe that? Of course, they can drink water or they cannot survive. However, when their skin comes in contact with water, regardless of its temperature, the itchy urticaria (hives) will develop rapidly. This is a rare medical condition which is known as aquagenic urticaria. The cause of this condition is still unknown due to the rarity and there is very limited data regarding the effectiveness of treatments. Scientists speculate that it might be some substance dissolved in water that triggers the toxic response from the immune system. It also can be that the patients' skin will generate some toxins when touching water. Although there is no cure for this kind of condition, some medications such as Antihistamines which can be used to treat all forms of urticaria, can be used to relieve the symptom. Also, some cream can be used to help isolate patients' skin with water. It is also reported that ultraviolet light therapy can work well on some patients.
Foreign accent syndrome is another medical mystery which we still do not have a clue how it forms. Imagine this scenario. When you wake up one day, you may find yourself talking with a special accent from a foreign country. The strange part is that you may never have been to that country before. This condition was first discovered in 1907 and there is a well-known example about this condition. In 1941, a Norwegian young woman suffered a head injury from an air-raid. After she recovered from the injury, other people around her found that she was talking with a strong German accent which surprised everybody. Although the cause of this condition is still unknown yet, most scientists believe that it should come with some brain conditions such as stroke, tumor or some kinds of head trauma, which cause damage to the part of the brain that controls the rhythm and melody of speech. Foreign accent syndrome is a very rare disorder, and there were only 62 cases reported between 1941 and 2009. So, there are not many effective treatments today. Currently, most treatments are based on intense speech therapies which will be on a patient by patient basis. Those therapies are designed to let patients remember how they used to talk before the conditions.
Compared with the previous two conditions, human chimera is more common. It refer to a person composed of two genetically distinct types of cells. The name Chimera is from Greek mythology, which represent a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion and the body of a goat. Those people will have two different set of DNA, and lots of them occur naturally instead of from a man-made process. Regarding the cause of Human chimera, scientists believed that the following ones might be the reason. For those who get it natually, it is very possible that he or she absorb its twin. This means if one embryo dies very early in pregnancy, and some of its cells might be absorbed by the other twin. Human chimera can also happen after a bone marrow transplant. Because the role of bone marrow is to make blood cells. After the donor's healthy marrow is transplanted into patient's body, it will still keep making blood cells having the donor's DNA, result in the recipient becoming a chimera.
