clinical

The researchers stress the importance of further studies, especially randomised controlled clinical trials, to better understand the mechanisms behind the findings.

"Being able to have adults with cerebral palsy participate in more clinical research will contribute immensely to our understanding of the natural history of cerebral palsy as people age," said Peterson.

Chronic stress can inflict more serious damage to the immune system and make people more vulnerable to heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, infertility, clinical anxiety, depression and other ailments.

"We accept that opportunities were missed to deploy a clinical team leader to this incident," she said.

More and better information was needed to refine Chiari type-1 diagnoses so doctors could reliably determine which cases call for which clinical interventions, if any.