described in a study led by researchers in the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at the Icahn School of medicine at Mount sinai,
Assistant professor of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at the Icahn School of medicine at Mount sinai. y identifying this new mechanism of epigenetic regulation,
this work provides a novel conceptual framework for further studies aimed at identifying the molecular underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disease and psychiatric illness. pecifically,
and reacts to changes in the environment can help us to find new ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases and mental illness. ource:
#Detecting Eye diseases With Help of a Smartphone Researchers at the Medical and Surgical Center for Retina developed software that detects eye diseases such as diabetic macular edema using a smartphone.
The system is aimed at general physicians who could detect the condition and refer the patient to a specialist.
The software was developed in collaboration with biomedical engineers from the ITESM and uses the camera of the phone to detect any abnormality in the thickness of the retina. he idea is to detect
and prevent diseases in general practice. We are not replacing the specialist we want to know which patients have a disease
and make an early detection, says Dr. Juan carlos Altamirano Vallejo, medical director of the Medical and Surgical Center for Retina.
He adds that the technology is designed for general physicians, ho support the health system in Mexico and,
even without in depth knowledge of ophthalmology, can, with this tool, detect certain abnormalities and send the patient to the specialist. sing the software will reduce costs
and streamline the Mexican health system. With just having the app on the cell phone
and focusing the camera on the eye, immediate results will be obtained. e start off the fact that it is much cheaper to prevent than to cure blindness. he app also has utility in rural communities,
where expertise areas such as ophthalmology have not arrive yet because equipment to detect these diseases are expensive and so far only the visiting specialist can do this kind of diagnosis. t will help those that
when they go to the eye doctor are already blind, we needed to go a step back,
to know who is at risk and needs to go to a specialist. Not wait for a doctor
says Altamirano Vallejo. Software development has been satisfactory and is expected to soon be marketed and incorporated the basic health system.
and Surgical Center for Retina is a small company with just ten employees dedicated to ophthalmology and retina special medical care.
It it also dedicated to biomedical and pharmaceutical research, to develop diagnostics and equipment, applicable to society. e want to give back to our community everything it gives to us,
#Novel Disease Gene Linked to Neurodegenerative Disorders Identified Researchers at the University of Miami (UM) have discovered
and characterized a previously unknown disease gene linked to the degeneration of optic and peripheral nerve fibers.
cause an optic atrophy spectrum disorderis published in the journal Nature Genetics. Patients with mutations in this gene present symptoms similar to optic atrophy and Charcot-Marie-Tooth Type 2 (CMT2), including vision loss and weakening of the lower leg and foot
muscles beginning in the first decade of life. The novel variants occur in a gene called SLC25A46 that functions in mitochondria
Ph d. student in Neuroscience at the UM Miller School of medicine and first author of the study. lthough we study rare diseases such as CMT2 and optic atrophy,
the implications encompass all forms of neurodegeneration including Lou Gehrig and Parkinson Diseases. Mitochondria constantly undergo fusion
Given the similarities between the diseases caused by mutations in OPA1, MFN2 and SLC25A46, these genes could be involved in common pathological mechanisms of neurodegeneration,
the study says. his finding builds on our discovery of MFN2 as a major disease gene in this area over 10 years ago,
said Dr. Stephan Züchner, professor and chair of the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Department of Human genetics, at UM Miller School of medicine,
#Herpes used in cancer treatment Researchers used a modified herpes virus to successfully treat patients with aggressive skin cancer
and believe the method could pave the way for a new generation of cancer treatments.
and uses biotechnology to convert viruses into therapeutic agents, effectively allowing them to go on seek
said Dr Kevin Harrington, professor of biological cancer therapies at the Institute of Cancer Research London (ICR),
The herpes-based drug is called T-VEC and has already been sent to the US Food
The study was is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and included 436 patients all of whom had aggressive malignant melanoma.
durable benefit for people with melanoma, said Dr Harrington. Professor Paul Workman, Chief executive of the ICR, said in a statement,
and kill human cells that can make them such promising cancer treatments. Australian has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world and according to the Cancer Council,
two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they are 70. While the trials have provided great optimism in regards to future cancer treatments,
the successful results have yet to be replicated. The Australian Cancer Research Foundation refrained from commenting on the story
and are waiting for more clinical trials to be done in the field of virotherapy and cancer.
However Dr Hayley Frend, science information manager at Cancer Research UK said she was excited by the results. sing a virus to both kill cancer cells
and nudge the immune system into attacking them is exciting, she said. While previous testing has shown benefits of such treatments,
Program director for the US NAVY Captain Jeff Dodge likened the upgrade from the MQ-8b based on a smaller airframe to the model aircraft to a brain transplant. e are taking the computer
#Brain implant allows paralysed man to sip a beer at his own pace A brain implant that can decode what someone wants to do has allowed a man paralysed from the neck down to control a robotic arm with unprecedented fluidity
People with similar injuries have controlled previously prosthetic limbs using implants placed in their motor cortex an area of the brain responsible for the mechanics of movement.
Richard Andersen at the California Institute of technology in Pasadena and his colleagues hoped they could achieve a more fluid movement by placing an implant in the posterior parietal cortex a part of the brain involved in planning motor movements."
Neuron control Andersen's team placed two implants measuring 4 millimetres squared into Sorto's posterior parietal cortex.
paper, scissors Next, the team sent information from the implant to a computer, which translated it into instructions to move a separate robotic arm.
but this is not possible for people with a spinal injury because the messages from the nerves cannot reach the brain.
Miguel Nicolelis at Duke university Medical centre in Durham, North carolina, showed that stimulating the somatosensory cortex an area that processes feelings of touch let monkeys feel the texture of virtual objects without physically touching anythingmovie Camera.
people undergoing brain surgery have had their somatosensory cortex stimulated and reported feeling things such as"a wind rushing over my hand
At the conference, Andersen announced that the team has placed an implant in their first volunteer
and proof of principle,"says Harald Ott of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who grew the limb."
"says Daniel Weiss at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington, who works on lung regeneration."
Hand transplants have also been successful, but the recipient needs lifelong immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their body rejecting the hand.
Results of hand transplants show that this happens through the recipient's nerve tissue penetrating into the hand
while muscle cells could come from biopsies from large muscles, such as in the thigh.""If you took about 5 grams, the size of a finger,
"At present, if you lose an arm, a leg or soft tissue as part of cancer treatment or burns,
but what about that time you had measles or was it chicken pox? Your blood knows:
It could also be used to identify links between viral infections and mysterious diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome.
and could help doctors identify hidden infections.""A lot of people have hepatitis C, for example, without realising,"says Elledge.
You could imagine routinely screening people in this way, he says. To develop Virscan, Elledge and his colleagues used an international database to look up all viruses known to infect humans around 1000 strains from 206 viral species. Using this information,
doctors have a pretty good idea of what you've got, "he says. Moreover, the immune system takes a
so you might not find a strong antibody response in the early stages of an infection.
as a result of an infection and those triggered by a vaccine. Instead the technique might be useful in outbreaks of new viruses. Understanding how our immune system responds to other viral fragments might reveal clues as to
For example, Elledge's team will be collaborating with another group to test people with chronic fatigue syndrome,
to see if they might have been infected with any of the same viruses."Multiple sclerosis is wheeled usually out as being linked to a virus,
He envisages screening wild populations of animals thought to be linked to emerging diseases.""You could test the wild bat population to get a good idea of
Wiring friendly bacteria to take out disease Matthew Wook Chang has opened an academy for assassins. His trainees are deadly.
It can wreak havoc in hospital wards, in the lungs of those with cystic fibrosis, and in the guts of premature babies.
In 2013, Chang put his assassins through their paces in a lab flask. They have since been hanging out in the guts of mice
and shell enter a wound. They can also self-amputate if they get too hot,
#Laser'tricorder'can diagnose malaria through the skin It's a weapon that fights malaria a laser scan can give an accurate diagnosis in seconds,
detecting malaria infections in only 20 seconds.""It's the first true noninvasive diagnostic, "says Dmitri Lapotko of Rice university in Houston, Texas,
whose team used the probe to correctly identify which person had malaria in a test of six individuals.
Malaria threatens half the world's population, killing 584,000 people in 2013. Existing tests for malaria are already quick,
taking only 15 to 20 minutes to give a diagnosis, but they could be simpler.
Blood has to be taken, the test has to be conducted by trained personnel to get reliable results,
"The possibility of diagnosing a malaria infection with the device, without any blood-taking and with results available in seconds will provide a fantastic new tool for the control
and eventual elimination of malaria,"says Umberto D'Alessandro of the UK Medical Research Council Unit in Gambia."
and its capability of identifying infections with low densities of parasites in the blood,"says D'Alessandro,
if a patient has a dark skin a potentially huge pitfall given that children living in Africa account for the majority of malaria deaths.
#Finally, a way to catch symptomless pancreatic cancer in time It's the sneakiest of cancers and as many as 80 per cent of cases are identified too late.
The disease has one of the worst cancer survival rates, with less than 4 per cent of people living for five years or more after diagnosis. A major cause of this is that
by the time symptoms start appearing, pancreatic cancer is advanced often too to treat successfully. The disease is identified only in time for curative surgery in about 15 per cent of people
so early diagnosis is crucial for improving survival rates. Now, researchers have identified a protein that is present in the blood at much higher levels
when a person has the disease, giving us a way to test for it. The protein, glypican-1, sticks out from the surface of exosomes little globules that are thought to bud off from pancreatic cancer cells.
Other cells in the body also produce these exosomes, but they seem to carry much less of this protein.
Raghu Kalluri of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston found that there is so much more glypican-1 in people with pancreatic cancer that a blood test can be used to accurately distinguish them from both healthy controls and people with the disease pancreatitis."
"The margin is always large enough to detect cancer exosomes, "says Kalluri. When to test?"
"says Nell Barrie of the charity Cancer Research UK.""This could, in turn, one day offer a way to spot diseases like pancreatic cancer at a much earlier stage,
although there is much more work to be done to develop this into an actual test, "she says.
and have a family history of the disease. The test could also be used for tracking the progress of therapies
and recovery, says Kalluri. His team found that the concentration of glypican-1 increases with the disease's severity,
potentially providing doctors with a measure for how advanced the cancer is and a way to monitor the effectiveness of treatments.
Former Apple CEO Steve jobs and actor Patrick Swayze both had pancreatic cancer, which is so deadly partly because of its limited treatment options, with few new and effective drugs and therapies available l
#What is artificial blood and why is the UK going to trial it? Artificial blood will soon be tested in the UK for the first time.
In other words, the goal is to find an alternative to oxygen-carrying red blood cells that could be used for transfusions.
Today, the UK National Health service announced it plans to start transfusing people with artificial blood by 2017 the first clinical trials of this kind anywhere in the world.
Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Ocata Therapeutics formerly Advanced Cell Technology-in Marlborough, Massachusetts,
and his colleagues performed the first small transfusion of such lab-grown red blood cells into human volunteers.
with about 50 per cent still circulating in the blood 26 days after the transfusion.
Douay said in 2011 that it will be a big challenge to scale up the technology to generate enough artificial cells for regular transfusion.
Even then, they produced about a twentieth of the number of cells that would be needed for a single transfusion.
may be useful for testing new drugs or monitoring diseases. We've levitated living things using magnets before,
Understanding the varied responses of cells could be a great boon to testing out new drugs and diagnosing diseases,
useful for picking out rare cells needed in a diagnosis. Grover's reservations are echoed by George Whitesides of Harvard university,
Shining red light on skin or cells in a dish gives an instant energy boost that could help heal wounds,
relieve pain and perhaps help male infertility and other medical conditions. The curious healing effect has been known for decades researchers have been investigating its use in eye injuries
since 2002 but why it works has been a mystery. It turns out the explanation could be simple and yet strange:
"Other research groups are investigating this phenomenon as a way to speed up the healing of skin wounds
whether red light shone into mice's heads using fibre optics can help with Parkinson's disease. A better understanding of how red light affects cells should make it easier to expand its medical uses,
says Sommer.""If we start from an incorrect model then everything is trial and error.""One of the next applications could be in helping couples undergoing IVF because of problems with male fertility.
says IVF doctor Friedrich Gagsteiger of the Fertility Centre in Ulm. Gagsteiger has investigated previously other ways of giving sperm more oomph,
#Smart mirror monitors your face for telltale signs of disease Mirror mirror on the wall, am I at risk of heart disease?
Facial recognition software looks for telltale markers of stress or anxiety, while the gas sensors take samples of the user breath looking for compounds that give an indication of how much they drink or smoke.
like heart disease or diabetes. Need for prevention revention is the most viable approach to reduce the socioeconomic burden of chronic and widespread diseases,
such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, they write. Clinical trials of the device will begin next year at three sites in France
and Italy, aiming to compare its readings with those from traditional medical devices. Consumer technology that can read signals from the body to interpret underlying physical
and mental health is on the cusp of becoming part of everyday life. For example, Cardiio, originally developed at the Massachusetts institute of technology
is an app that uses a smartphone camera to monitor blood levels in the face
which could boost our ability to track the spread of diseases such as cancer. Humar and his colleagues developed three ways to get cells to emit visible light.
it can officially take Nigeria off the list of countries where the disease is endemic.
The vaccination drive has been dogged by political corruption rumours the vaccine was contaminated with HIV and violence nine health workers were killed by terrorist group Boko Haram in 2013.
Nigeria has come close to eradicating the disease several times before, only for it to re-emerge. But this is the longest the country has gone without reporting a case,
says Rosenbaum. The road to zero cases The only places where the disease still circulates regularly are Afghanistan and Pakistan,
which have reported 5 and 28 cases of polio respectively this year. For each of these, there will be around 199 other people who are infected but symptomless
but not enough so that the disease would be considered endemic there. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are making progress with their vaccination campaigns,
but too many children are missed, partly due to the difficulties in reaching people in rural areas with poor infrastructure,
A lack of international funding for the vaccination campaigns is also a problem, says Rosenbaum.
and unless we get to zero cases wee not going to finish this disease, says Rosenbaum. igeria will need to keep immunising and protecting the population. i
"I'm interested in solving a worldwide problem of diarrheal diseases, "says Dr. Mark Donowitz,
who runs this lab. He says 800,000 children a year die from these diseases notably cholera, rotavirus and certain strains of E coli."
"We've failed so far to find drugs to treat diarrhea using cell culture models
so they aren't very helpful for studying diseases of the gut. So Donowitz's team is building
what it hopes will be a much better way to study these diseases: the gut-on-a-chip.
whether cells in the ersatz organ react the same way to diseases as do cells in the human gut."
"And in all three of the diseases I mentioned, we've been able to take that first step,
"So we know that these appear to be really good models of the human disease."
one use will be to test potential drugs for the diseases being studied.""We think this could be a real step forward in terms of reducing waste-of-time drug development,
nor is there evidence at this time that medical information such as claims, test results, or diagnostic codes were targeted
One in nine Americans receives coverage for his medical care through Anthem's affiliated plans, according to a statement on its website e
to cut out inherited DNA that can cause serious health problems in children. The House of commons voted to approve the Human Fertilization
The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation estimates that from 1000 to 4000 American children are born each year with a mitochondrial disease e
#Leaky Blood vessels In The Brain May Lead To Alzheimer's Researchers appear to have found a new risk factor for Alzheimer's disease:
But the process is accelerated in those likely to develop Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia.
or prevent Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.""This study gives patients and families hope for the future,
hope that detecting leaky blood vessels early will provide the opportunity to stop dementia before it starts,
The new research grew out of earlier studies of people who died with Alzheimer's disease.""We were looking at brains from autopsies
"There's every reason to think that a lot of Alzheimer's disease does involve vascular damage, "he says. The study also adds to the evidence that amyloid plaques
There are probably several different paths to dementia, Corriveau says, including one that involves leaky blood vessels.
Viruses there contaminated a plant where bacteria were used to make drugs for two rare genetic disorders, Gaucher disease and Fabry disease, cutting off supplies.
#Ebola Vaccine Hailed As'Game Changer'In Fight Against The Virus Doctors Without Borders is calling it a"champagne moment."
"In a small trial, an experimental vaccine protected 100 percent of participants who were at high risk for the virus
and preventing the next epidemic.""It is a game changer because there was nothing that could protect people against Ebola no drug,
vaccine or medicine,"says Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general for health systems and innovation at the World health organization,
"The vaccine, called rvsv-ZEBOV, was developed by the Public health Agency of Canada. Previous studies showed it was safe.
In April, WHO and Doctors Without Borders started testing its effectiveness in Guinea. The trial is ongoing,
The vaccine stops Ebola in its tracks, Kieny says.""When we talked with our colleagues who are responding to Ebola cases,
And we vaccinate, and the cases seem to disappear.'"'"In fact, there are so few cases in Guinea right
now that Kieny and her team couldn't use the standard method for testing a vaccine.
The strategy uses what's called ring vaccination. When a case crops up, the team rushes to scene andgives the vaccine to people who are close to the sick person those who are at high risk of getting the virus."So this can be the neighbors, the family, the coworkers,
"Kieny says.""This forms what is called a ring. These are the people that form the community around the case."
000 people in these so-called rings who were eligible for vaccination. They divided them up into two groups.
About half got vaccinated immediately, and the others had to wait three weeks for the shot.
In the group that got the vaccine immediately, no one got Ebola.""No cases at all. Zero,"Kieny says."
The problem is there were only 16 cases of Ebola in the group that didn't get the vaccine immediately.
That's way too small of a number to say how well the vaccine works,
But statistical analyses suggest the vaccine's efficacy is at least 70 percent, Kieny says which is still good enough to stop the spread of the disease."
"I think it is very encouraging to see these very positive, preliminary results of this vaccine trial from Guinea,"says Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University, who once led vaccine development at the U s. Food and Drug Administration.
Goodman says we need to be cautious about the study. More data are needed to nail down the vaccine's efficacy.
And there were a few issues with the design of the experiment that could have skewed the results."
"the strength of the difference between the groups that were vaccinated early and late suggests strongly to me that this vaccine is working. i
#The Future Of Cardiology Will be shown In 3-D How can you tell the difference between a good surgeon and an exceptional one?
You could start by looking for the one who has the rare ability to visualize a human organ in three dimensions from little more than a scan."
"The handful of the top surgeons in the world are said like sculptors Dr. Deepak Srivastava, a director at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease in San francisco."
"When cardiovascular surgeons go in to repair a defect in the heart, their success is so often dependent on an ability to see the anatomy in 3-D in their minds,
"said Srivastava.""That's more difficult for younger, less experienced surgeons.""But recent advancements in the field of computer-based modeling may make it easier someday for good surgeons to be great.
One such technology comes from Dassault systèmes, a French company that specializes in 3-D software to help engineers who design cars
and planes avoid potentially fatal outcomes. Earlier this week, Dassault released its highly realistic digital model of the human heart,
"Doctors wear 3-D glasses and use a joystick to zoom in to a ventricle or valve,
and test all the possibilities before a heart surgery,"said Dr. Steve Levine, chief strategy officer and director for the Living Heart Project.
The technology hasn't received regulatory approval for doctors to use it in making medical decisions.
But hospitals can buy it for research and educational purposes, such as exploring triggers that cause heart attacks.
Dassault hopes that medical device makers will also use the Living Heart Project's technology for research and development.
The software is free to organizations that agree to conduct research and share their findings with the project.
Recruiting Partners in Health care For the Living Heart Project, Levine has recruited so far 45 partners,
including the Mayo Clinic, Stanford university and the University of Oxford. Levine said the Food and Drug Administration initially wanted to take a"watch
"Challenges to greater adoption of computer-modeling include a lack of data for some medical conditions,
At the University of California, San francisco, a team of researchers in the cardiology division are hoping to use the Living Heart Project to figure out the best time to replace patients'heart valves.
Surgeons have to strike the right balance between swapping out too early, when a valve is still working reasonably well,
But he isn't convinced it will transform how are surgeries are performed.""Is this a hammer looking for a nail?"
"Or will this change how we practice medicine?""He said he hopes advanced technology can fill some gaps,
where surgeons are still making educated guesses, such as the timing of valve replacements. But he also said he hasn't seen a convincing study yet that proves the simulation can improve patient outcomes.
Olgin said he fears that doctors could come to rely too heavily on this technology and medical device makers could pull the plug on promising research
if the simulation shows a negative result.""The technology doesn't offer the same level of evidence as medical research on animals or small pilot human trials,
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