#Drug combo heals wounds fast with less scarring Johns hopkins university rightoriginal Studyposted by Vanessa Mcmains-Johns Hopkins on August 28 2014doctors have stumbled onto a potential new use for two approved medications.
When used in combination they heal wounds more quickly with less scar tissue. In mice and rats injecting the two drugs in combination speeds the healing of surgical woundsâ#by about one-quarter
and significantly decreases scar tissue. If the findings published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology hold up in future human studies the treatment might also speed skin healing in people with skin ulcers extensive burns and battlefield injuries.##
##The findings mean that wound healing is accelerated not only but also that real skin regeneration is occurring##says Zhaoli Sun director of transplant biology research at Johns Hopkins School of medicine.##
##These animals had more perfect skin repair in the wound area.####The wound healing potential of the two drugs was discovered incidentally
while the researchers were working to prevent rejection of liver transplants. One of the drugs AMD3100 is used generally to move stem cells from bone marrow to the bloodstream to be harvested
and stored for patients recovering from cancer chemotherapy. The other tacrolimus tamps down immune response. Researchers noticed that
in addition to successfully preventing liver graft rejection in their study the drugs when used together seemed to improve wound healing in animals.
Focusing on just the wound healing##side effect##the scientists launched the rodent study to determine what the mechanism behind its therapeutic effects might be.
Some of the mice received injections of just AMD3100. Others received injections of tacrolimus in doses just one-tenth of what is given usually to prevent organ and tissue rejection.
Another group received injections of both AMD3100 and low-dose tacrolimus. A group of control animals received saline injections.
Animals that received only saline healed completely in 12 days while those that received both drugs healed in nine days a reduction of 25 percent.
Those that received only one drug or the other recorded just a modest one-day improvement in healing time.
Additionally they found that the wounds in animals that received the drug combination healed with less scar tissue and regrew skinâ##s hair follicles.
Though the study tested the drug combination only on surgical excisions the researchers say the beneficial effects also apply to burn injuries
and excisions in diabetic rats in studies that are now under way. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Alcohol abuse and Alcoholism participated in the study.
Johns hopkins university School of medicine s Transplant Biology Research center and a gift from the family of Francesc Gines supported the research.
#Simple alerts can cut infections from catheters University of Pennsylvania rightoriginal Studyposted by Lee-Ann Landis Donegan-Penn on August 26 2014simpler automatic alerts in electronic health
records can cut the number of urinary tract infections in patients with urinary catheters report researchers. The alerts help physicians decide
Approximately 75 percent of urinary tract infections acquired in the hospital are associated with a urinary catheterâ##a tube inserted into the bladder through the urethra to drain urine.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 15 to 25 percent of hospitalized patients receive urinary catheters during their hospital stay.
As many as 70 percent of urinary tract infections in these patients may be preventable using infection control measures such as removing no longer needed catheters resulting in up to 380000 fewer infections and 9000 fewer deaths each year.##
##Our study has two crucial applicable findings##says lead author Charles A. Baillie an internal medicine specialist and fellow in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Penn Medicine.##
##First electronic alerts do result in fewer catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Second the design of the alerts is very important.
##Fewer catheters means fewer infections fewer days in the hospital and even fewer deaths. Not to mention the dollars saved by the health system in general.##
The study also found that catheter associated urinary tract infections decreased from an initial rate of. 84 per 1000 patient days to. 70 per 1000 patient-days following implementation of the first alert and. 50 per 1000
The study was conducted among 222475 inpatient admissions in the three hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania Health System between March 2009 and May 2012.
The study appears in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Source: University of Pennsylvaniayou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license t
because they don t receive their vaccinations on time. Researchers are developing a new system that scans a child sâ#fingerprints to track
when vaccinations are due which means parents will need no longer to keep paper documents. In developing countries keeping track of a baby s vaccine schedule on paper is largely ineffective says Anil Jain professor of computer science and engineering at Michigan State university.##
##Paper documents are lost easily or destroyed##he says.####Our initial study has shown that fingerprints of infants
and become a part of the vaccine registry system. Once the electronic registry is in place health care workers simply re-scan the child s fingers to view the vaccination schedule.
They know who has been vaccinated for what diseases and when additional booster shots are needed. The new electronic registry system will help overcome the lack and loss of information
which is the primary problem in the vaccine delivery system in developing countries Jain says.
Collecting fingerprints from fidgety infants isn t easy. Another challenge is their small fingerprint patterns have low contrast between ridges and valleys.##
##The process can still be improved but we have shown its feasibility##Jain says.####We will continue to work on refining the fingerprint matching software
in addition to tracking vaccinations says Mark Thomas executive director of Vaxtrac a nonprofit organization supporting Jain s research.##
##Solving the puzzle of fingerprinting young children will have far-reaching implications beyond health care including the development of civil registries government benefits tracking and education recordkeeping.##
#X-rays show live changes in cystic fibrosis New X-ray technology is allowing doctors to see almost instantly
if treatments for cystic fibrosis are working. Cystic fibrosis affects many of the body s systems but most severely the lungs and currently it can take several months to measure how effective treatment is for the early-fatal lung disease.
Lead researcher Kaye Morgan from Monash University says the imaging method allows doctors to look at soft tissue structures for example the brain airways
and lungs which are effectively invisible in conventional x-ray images. At the moment we typically need to wait for a cystic fibrosis treatment to have an effect on lung health measured by either a lung CT SCAN
or breath measurement to see how effective that treatment is Morgan says. However the new imaging method allows us for the first time to non-invasively see how the treatment is working live on the airway surface.
Morgan says this x-ray imaging method would enable doctors and researchers to measure how effective treatments are
and progress new treatments to the clinic at a much quicker rate a key goal of co-authors Martin Donnelley and David Parsons of the CF Gene therapy group at the Women s and Children s Hospital and the University
of Adelaide s Robinson Research Institute. Because we will be able to see how effectively treatments are working straight away we ll be able to develop new treatments a lot more quickly
and help better treat people with cystic fibrosis Morgan says. The new imaging method which was developed using a synchrotron x-ray source may also open up possibilities in assessing how effective treatments were for other lung heart and brain diseases.
The research appears in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Source: Monash University You are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e
#This protein may explain why Ebola is so deadly Washington University in St louis rightoriginal Studyposted by Michael Purdy-WUSTL on August 14 2014discovery of a protein that makes the Ebola virus so effective at evading the immune systemâ
##We ve known for a long time that infection with Ebola obstructs an important arm in our immune system that is activated by molecules called interferons##says senior author Gaya Amarasinghe assistant professor of pathology
##Coauthor Christopher Basler professor of microbiology at Mount sinai Hospital was the first to show that VP24
##It makes a variety of responses to viral infection possible including the self-destruction of infected cells and the blockage of supplies necessary for viral reproduction.##
& Microbe Amarasinghe and Daisy Leung assistant professor of pathology and immunology show that VP24 tightly binds to a nuclear transporter a protein that takes molecules into
The group includes researchers at the Icahn School of medicine at Mount sinai Washington University the University of Texas Southwestern Medical center Howard University and Microbiotix Inc. a Massachussetts biopharmaceutical company Source:
Leukemia patients have been treated successfully using HSC transplants but medical experts believe blood stem cells have the potential to be used more widely.
Lead researcher Peter Currie a professor at Monash University says that understanding how HSCS self-renew to replenish blood cells is a##Holy grail##of stem cell biology.##
##HSCS are one of the best therapeutic tools at our disposal because they can make any blood cell in the body.
and diseases but only if we can figure out how they are generated in the first place. Our study brings this possibility a step closer##he says.
but we know very little about how these microbial communities assemble##says senior author Phillip I. Tarr professor of pediatrics.##
and development immune function resistance to infection and predisposition to inflammatory and metabolic disordersâ##yet until now little has been known about how the microbes get there.
The babies who were patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at St louis Children s Hospital ranged from 23 to 33 weeks in gestational age
and at other times they weren t##says Tarr who is also director of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.##
##Armed with the knowledge of what occurs in the digestive systems of preemies in a controlled environment the researchers next aim to discern what happens in the systems of preemies who don t fare as well particularly those suffering from necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). NEC is a devastating disorder in premature infants that causes tissue death in the lining
The syndrome occurs in up to 10 percent of premature infants and is fatal 25 to 35 percent of the time.
Scientists believe gut microbes play a part in the disease.####Research has made not an impact in either prevention
or treatment of NEC##says co-first author Barbara Warner a professor of pediatrics who treats patients at St louis Children s Hospital.##
and help us target therapies.####Warner says she and her colleagues don t yet know the significance of the three bacterial classes that dominated the preemies gut microbiota.
#Coated cells act like camo for deadly brain tumors Brain tumors are able to go undetected by the immune system
The discovery, made in mice and rats, shows the key role the protein galectin-1 plays in some of the most dangerous brain tumors, called high grade malignant gliomas.
They had actually been trying to study how the extra production of galectin-1 by tumor cells affects cancer ability to grow
the tumors were eradicated. That because the irst respondersof the body immune systemalled natural killer or NK cellspotted the tumor cells almost immediately and killed them.
But when the tumor cells made their usual amounts of galectin-1, the immune cells couldn recognize the cancerous cells as dangerous.
That meant that the immune system couldn trigger the body second line of defensealled T cellsntil the tumors had grown too large for the body to beat.
Published online in the journal, Cancer Research, the findings open the door to research on the effect of blocking galectin-1 in patients with gliomas,
says team leader Pedro Lowenstein, professor of neurosurgery at University of Michigan. his is an incredibly novel and exciting development,
and shows that in science we must always be open-minded and go where the science takes us;
no matter where we thought we wanted to go. TUMOR TENDRILS n this case, we found that over-expression of galectin-1 inhibits the innate immune system,
and this allows the tumor to grow enough to evade any possible effective T cell response.
By the time it detected, the battle is lost already. The NK-evading tealthfunction of the extra-thick coating of galectin-1 came as a surprise,
because glioma researchers everywhere had assumed the extra protein had more to do with the insidious ability of gliomas to invade the brain,
Gliomas which make up about 80 percent of all malignant brain tumors, include anaplastic oligodendrogliomas, anaplastic astrocytomas,
and glioblastoma multiforme. More than 24,000 people in the US are diagnosed with a primary malignant brain tumor each year.
The tiny tendrils of tumor that extend into brain tissue from a glioma are what make them so dangerous.
Even when a neurosurgeon removes the bulk of the tumor, small invasive areas escape detection and keep growing, unchecked by the body.
Helping the innate immune system to recognize early stages of cancer growth, and sound the alarm for the body defense system to act
while the remaining cancer is still small enough for them to kill, could potentially help patients.
EARLY WARNING SENTINELS While the new discovery opens the door to that kind of approach, much work needs to be done before the mouse-based research could help human patients,
Galectin-1 may help other types of tumor evade the innate NK cells, too. The new research suggests that in the brain unique environment,
galectin-1 creates an immunosuppressive effect immediately around tumor cells. The brain cancer cells seem to have evolved the ability to express their galectin-1 genes far more than normal
to allow the tumor to keep growing. Most brain tumor immune research has focused on triggering the action of the adaptive immune systemhose cells control the process that allows the body to kill invaders from outside or within.
But that system take days or even weeks to reach full forcenough time for incipient tumors to grow too large for immune cells to eliminate solid tumor growth.
The new research suggests the importance of enhancing the ability of the innate immune system arly warningsentinels to spot glioma cells as early as possible.
Maria Castro is a co-team leader of the study. Graduate student Gregory J. Baker is the first author.
#Glucose control switch links both types of diabetes Scientists have linked a mechanism in the brain that senses glucose levels in the blood
and kick starts the body insulin response to both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. ee discovered that the prolyl endopeptidase enzymeocated in a part of the hypothalamus known as the ventromedial nucleusets a series of steps
and lead author Sabrina Diano. ur findings could eventually lead to new treatments for diabetes.
and became diabetic. Diano, a professor in the departments of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences,
and her team discovered that this enzyme is important because it makes the neurons in this part of the brain sensitive to glucose.
preventing diabetes. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. ecause of the low levels of endopeptidase,
and the mice developed diabetes. says Diano, who is also a member of the Yale Program in Integrative Cell Signaling and Neurobiology of Metabolism.
and treat type 2 diabetes, she says. The National institutes of health, and the American Diabetes Association supported the research
#See into living brain with lasers and nanotubes By injecting carbon nanotubes into the bloodstream, scientists can use near-infrared lasers to see blood flow in a living animal brain.
and possibly Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases.""The continuity field smoothes what would otherwise be a jittery perception of object features over time,
Some of the most damaging brain diseases can be traced to irregular blood delivery in the brain.
though, the technique provides a new technique for studying human cerebral-vascular diseases, such as stroke and migraines, in animal models.
and Parkinson diseases might elicitr be caused in part byhanges in blood flow to certain parts of the brain.
NIR-IIA imaging might offer a means of better understanding the role of healthy vasculature in those diseases,
Other coauthors of the study are from Stanford, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical school a
Newfoundlandshose massive, furry, black dogsre all too often afflicted with a potentially lethal congenital disease called subvalvular aortic stenosis,
surgical removal of the ridge or ring below the aortic valve is one option for improving the child health.
thus gradually eliminating the disease from the Newfoundland breed, says Joshua Stern, a veterinary cardiologist at the University of California, Davis,
who led the study. n addition, now that we know one gene responsible for SAS and more about which proteins are involved,
we can move forward to consider novel therapies that may help treat this devastating condition.
This same gene mutation has been associated with the formation of plaque-like lesions in the brains of people with Alzheimer disease,
which only one parent needs to be carrying the gene mutation in order for the offspring to inherit the disease,
and that not all dogs carrying the mutation will develop the disease. SAS shows up in the dog heart as abnormal tissue growthften forming a ridge or ring below the aortic valve,
because the disease may appear in mild to severe forms. The first sign that a dog has SAS may be a collapse,
Veterinarians sometimes discover the disease when they detect a heart murmur and conduct further diagnostic tests such as chest X-rays,
an echocardiogram, or an electrocardiogram. Dogs with the mild form of SAS may have a normal lifespan.
by the time they turn four years old, even with therapeutic drugs. Researchers are now beginning to study why SAS is less severe in some dogs while causing severe symptoms in others.
#Wearable vapor sensor can smell diabetes A wearable vapor sensor could monitor diseases such as diabetes
and hypertension by picking up airborne biomarkers exhaled or released through the skin. ach of these diseases has its own biomarkers that the device would be able to sense,
says Sherman Fan, professor of biomedical engineering at University of Michigan. or diabetes, acetone is a marker, for example.
Other biomarkers it could detect include nitric oxide and oxygen, abnormal levels of which can point to conditions such as high blood pressure, anemia,
or lung disease. Fan is developing the sensor with Zhaohui Zhong an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering,
and Girish Kulkarni, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering. The device is faster, smaller, and more reliable than its counterparts,
Other applications Beyond disease monitoring, the sensor has other applications. It would be able to register the presence of hazardous chemical leaks in a lab,
or a human tumor biopsy? we have to slice the tissue very thin, separately image each slice with a microscope,
especially if you look to map long axons or sparse cell populations such as stem cells or tumor cells,
BIOPSY CANCER The Cell paper focuses on the use of PACT and PARS as research tools for studying disease and development in research organisms.
Using the techniques on a biopsy from a human skin tumor, the researchers were able to view the distribution of individual tumor cells within a tissue mass.
In the future, Gradinaru says, the methods could be used in the clinic for the rapid detection of cancer cells in biopsy samples.
The ability to make an entire organism transparent while retaining its structural and genetic integrity has broad-ranging applications,
discreet way to protect themselves from HIV infection by inserting the drug-loaded materials into the vagina before sex,
showing that the fiber materials can hold 10 times the concentration of medicine as anti-HIV gels currently under development.
Oral pills are used in the US for people who are considered at risk for HIV infection,
and sarin gas Scientists are developing a way to prevent brain damage among people exposed to poisonous chemicals found in pesticides and chemical weapons.
The result is a thermo-stable protein with a longer half-life that retains all the detoxification capabilities. rganophosphates pose tremendous danger to people and wildlife,
Montclare explains that in addition to therapeutic formulations which could prevent nerve damage in the event of a gas attack
Plans are under way to begin developing therapeutic applications. Michelle Zhang a coauthor of the paper and, at the time, a high school intern in Bonneau lab, first broached the idea.
says child psychiatrist Joan L. Luby, who directs Washington University Early Emotional Development Program. ut the good news is that
and potentially change the trajectory of the illness so that it is less likely to be chronic
and to evaluate them for depression and other psychiatric conditions. However, if children were found to be depressed seriously or in danger of self harm
or if their caregivers requested treatment, they were referred to mental health providers. Currently, there are no proven treatments for depression that arises in the preschool years.
they found that 79 children met the full criteria for clinical depression based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders,
Fifth Edition (DSM-V). This manual contains the American Psychiatric Association most up-to-date official guidelines for diagnosing
and treating psychiatric illnesses. More than 51 percent of the 74 children who originally were diagnosed as preschoolers also were depressed as school age kids.
But neither a mother with depression nor a conduct disorder in preschool increased the risk for later depression as much as a diagnosis of depression during preschool years. reschool depression predicted school age depression over and above any of the other well-established risk factors,
WHAT CAN DOCTORS DO? Luby says her findings continue to contradict doctors and scientists who have maintained that children as young as three
or four could not be depressed clinically. She advocates including depression screenings in regular medical checkups for preschoolers,
The National Institute on Mental health of the National institutes of health, the CHADS Coalition, and the Sidney Baer Foundation supported the work.
The study appears in The American Journal of Psychiatry h
#Gel fights breast cancer with fewer side effects A tamoxifen gel applied to the breast may work as well as a pill form of the drug to slow the growth of cancer cells.
potentially minimizing dangerous side effects such as blood clots and uterine cancer. The gel was tested on women diagnosed with noninvasive cancer ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in
which abnormal cells multiply and form a growth in a milk duct. Because of potential side effects
many women with DCIS are reluctant to take oral tamoxifen after being treated with breast-saving surgery
says lead author Seema Khan, professor of surgery and professor of cancer research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of medicine.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE or breast cancer prevention and DCIS therapy effective drug concentrations are required in the breast.
which should avoid potential blood clots as well as an elevated risk for uterine cancer. Women who have completed surgery
and radiation are given oral tamoxifen for five years to reduce the risk of the DCIS recurring at the same place
Tamoxifen is an anti-estrogen therapy for a type of breast cancer that requires estrogen to grow.
For a new study published in Clinical Cancer Research, researchers conducted a phase II clinical trial to compare the effects of the gel, 4-OHT, with oral tamoxifen.
The National Cancer Institute of the National institutes of health and BHR Pharma, LLC supported the research
#Test eliminates need for second thyroid surgery A new test increases the odds by 30 percent that people with thyroid cancer will undergo the correct initial surgery. efore this test,
about one in five potential thyroid cancer cases couldn be diagnosed without an operation to remove a portion of the thyroid,
says Linwah Yip, assistant professor of surgery in the University of Pittsburgh School of medicine. Yip says without the test a second surgery to remove the thyroid was required often
if the portion removed during the first surgery came back positive for cancer. he molecular testing panel now bypasses that initial surgery,
allowing us to go right to fully removing the cancer with one initial surgery. This reduces risk
and stress to the patient, as well as recovery time and costs, adds Yip, lead author of the study published in the Annals of Surgery.
Cancer in the thyroid, which is located in the dam applearea of the neck, is now the fifth most common cancer diagnosed in women.
Thyroid cancer is one of the few cancers that continues to increase in incidence, although the five-year survival rate is 97 percent.
Previously, the most accurate form of testing for thyroid cancer was a fine-needle aspiration biopsy
where a doctor guides a thin needle to the thyroid and removes a small tissue sample for testing.
However, in 20 percent of these biopsies, cancer cannot be ruled out. A lobectomy, which is a surgical operation to remove half of the thyroid,
is needed then to diagnose or rule out thyroid cancer. In the case of a postoperative cancer diagnosis, a second surgery is required to remove the rest of the thyroid.
Researchers have identified certain gene mutations that are increased indicative of an likelihood of thyroid cancer, and the new molecular testing panel can be run using the sample collected through the initial,
minimally invasive biopsy, rather than a lobectomy. When the panel shows these mutations, a total thyroidectomy is advised.
Yip and her colleagues followed 671 patients with suspicious thyroid nodes who received biopsies. Approximately half the biopsy samples were run through the panel,
and the other half were not. Patients whose tissue samples were tested not with the panel had a 2. 5-fold higher statistically significant likelihood of having an initial lobectomy
and then requiring a second operation. ee currently refining the panel by adding tests for more genetic mutations,
thereby making it even more accurate, says coauthor Yuri Nikiforov, a professor in the pathology department. hyroid cancer is usually very curable,
and we are getting closer to quickly and efficiently identifying and treating all cases of thyroid cancer. a
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