#Doctors can now put drugs straight into brains Doctors can now inject drugs straight into people brains,
A team from the Canadian National Research Council has made carrier molecules that help disease-fighting ones break through,
and grown in a lab. Those drugs can eventually be used to treat brain diseases, doctors hope,
#'Brain training'game helps people with schizophrenia live a normal life Patients who played the game regularly for a month were four times better than non-players at remembering the kind of things that are critical for normal, day-to-day life,
People recovering from schizophrenia suffer serious lapses in episodic memory which prevent them from returning to work
Schizophrenia affects about one in every hundred people and results in hallucinations and delusions (Rex) his kind of memory is essential for everyday learning
and everything we do really both at home and at work. We have formulated an ipad game that could drive the neural circuitry behind episodic memory by stimulating the ability to remember where things were on the screen,
Schizophrenia affects about one in every hundred people and results in hallucinations and delusions it is estimated to cost the NHS about £2bn a year in treatment alone,
with wider costs for society such as lost work. Although the main symptoms can be treated with antipsychotic drugs,
which has led scientists to find ways of training the brain through computer-based games. e need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory,
The study, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, involved 22 schizophrenia patients who played the game for eight hours over a period of four weeks
Importantly, the patients with schizophrenia enjoyed playing the game and were motivated to continue. The group that played the game was approximately four times better in terms of their memory than the group that did not,
this could help people with schizophrenia minimise the impact of their illness on everyday life. i
Dr John Coates, a fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge who specialises in the biology of risk taking and stress, said he is now getting bout one call a weekfrom financial institutions,
A firm called Equivital makes a chest-mounted wearable sensor that measures heart rate, stress, breathing, skin temperature and body position.
what it takes to cope with stress in much the same way that a sports star medical information might be handed over
#Patients Will Swallow 3d printed Tadpole Endoscope That Provides Diagnosis of Cancers A team from the Institute of Precision Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong kong has developed 3d printed tadpole-like devices that can improve diagnosis
of various cancers by entering the patient stomach and wirelessly transmitting images of what it sees.
and relatively noninvasive solution that could improve cancer diagnosis. Developed to be swallowed just like a large pill (it is a bit bigger than a small coin),
On back-to-back days in late September, a specialty tuberculosis drug saw its price raised 2, 600 percent,
while a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for life-threatening infectious diseases experienced a 5, 000 percent overnight increase.
acquired the infectious disease drug Daraprim in August. Turing then raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13. 50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
non-life threatening issues (think Viagra) rather than common illnesses like high blood pressure and asthma. The pharmaceutical industry seems to be caught between a rock
The cost of medications for asthma, high blood pressure and diabetes went up more than 10 percent each,
the asthma drug Albuterol sulfate went up more than 3, 400 percent and the antibiotic Coxycycline jumped 6, 300 percent.
because they are the best medication to serve the population or illness. They will get the premium from that so they don have to gauge consumers.
Additionally, the number of diabetes drugs in development jumped from 34 to 142, and 29 arthritis drugs in the pipeline became 92.
Thorpe insists that prescription drugs are not just about price. he most useful way to look at whether we are getting value for our dollar is the actual treatment.
With diabetes or hypertension, it important to look at the total medical care costs of treating those conditions,
by helping seniors manage their chronic illness, Part D has saved Medicare $12 billion annually in costly hospitalizations and nursing home stays.
such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. The app then displays the refractive powers, axis of astigmatism,
and pupillary distance required for eyeglasses prescriptions. In July, the startup launched Blink, an on-demand refractive test service in New york,
According to the World health organization, uncorrected refractive errors are the world second-highest cause of blindness. Eyenetra originally invented the device for the developing world specifically
If the glasses shift, for instance, optical aberrations disrupt the viewing, potentially causing headache, fatigue, and nausea.
and Genistein, the compound found in soybean which has been suggested to play a role in prevention of steroid-hormone related cancers, particularly breast cancer.
and Genistein, the compound found in soybean which has been suggested to play a role in prevention of steroid-hormone related cancers, particularly breast cancer.
#Snake Venom-infused Hydrogel Stops Bleeding A nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may be the best material to stop bleeding quickly, according to Rice university scientists.
and quickly turns into a gel that conforms to the site of a wound, keeping it closed,
It has been used in various therapies as a way to remove excess fibrin proteins from the blood to treat thrombosis and as a topical hemostat.
This is important because surgical bleeding in patients taking heparin can be a serious problem. The use of batroxobin allows us to get around this problem
and injected at the site of a wound, where they reassemble themselves into a gel.
Tests showed the new material stopped a wound from bleeding in as little as six seconds, and further prodding of the wound minutes later did not reopen it.
The new work builds upon the Rice lab's extensive development of injectable hydrogel scaffolds that help wounds heal
""We think SB50 has great potential to stop surgical bleeding, particularly in difficult cases in
and respond to toxic injury in ways that are similar to kidney tubules in people.
To re-create human disease, researchers used the gene-editing technique called CRISPR. They engineered mini-kidneys with genetic changes linked to two common kidney diseases:
polycystic kidney disease and glomerulonephritis. The organoids developed characteristics of these diseases. Those with mutations in polycystic kidney disease genes formed balloon-like, fluid-filled sacks, called cysts, from kidney tubules.
The organoids with mutations in podocalyxin, a gene linked to glomerulonephritis, lost connections between filtering cells. utation of a single gene results in changes kidney structures associated with human disease,
thereby allowing better understand of the disease and serving as models to develop therapeutic agents to treat these diseases,
says Joseph Bonventre, senior author and chief of the renal division at Brigham and Women Hospital. hese genetically engineered mini-kidneys,
Freedman says, ave taught us that human disease boils down to simple components that can be re-created in a petri dish.
This provides us with faster, better ways to perform linical trials in a dishto test drugs
and therapies that might work in humans. Genetically matched kidney organoids without disease-linked mutations showed no signs of either disease,
Freedman says. RISPR can be used to correct gene mutations, explained Freedman. ur findings suggest that gene correction using CRISPR may be a promising therapeutic strategy.
In the United states, costs for kidney disease are about 40 billion dollars per year. Kidney disease affects approximately 700 million people worldwide.
a drug used to treat hepatitis C, while other individuals did not. A side effect of ribavirin is that it causes anemia--a condition characterized by a decrease in red blood cell levels--in approximately 8 to 10 percent of patients."
"A goal of our predictive model is to pinpoint specific regions in the red blood cell that might increase susceptibility to this side effect
microbiologists and infectious disease specialists led by Eric A. Franzosa of Harvard's School of Public health and the Massachusetts institute of technology's Broad Institute.
The ban, instated in 1985 in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, has long been criticized by members of the medical community
According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men who have sex with men make up only 7%of the U s. male population,
the lab-based manufacturing approach wouldn't be vulnerable to weather and disease, the way poppy crops are--allowing millions of people around the world who do not have sufficient access to painkilling drugs to get the medications they need.
to help those with spinal cord injuries learn to walk again. After a fall out of a second-story window caused Pollock's catastrophic spinal cord injury in 2010,
physicians told him any return of sensation or function below his waist was out of the question. Pollock, who has been blind for 16 years,
Pollock's injury was broken so extensive bones had nicked and pierced his spinal cord in two places--that he was,
"After the injury there a lot of functional capability that remains,"Edgerton said.""But it has to do some relearning"--a process that appears to be started jump by electrical stimulation,
Whether that process leads a paralyzed patient to walk again depends on the extent and location of his or her spinal cord injury
As a result, these subjects were increased at risk of developing high blood pressure and suffering heart attacks and strokes.
The study's lead author, Caitlin Dow, said the findings were particularly important for people who cannot exercise because of injury or physical limitations."
"If we can improve different measures of risk for disease without changing weight, it takes a little bit of the pressure off some people,
The most common complaints with high doses of Vitamin c are diarrhea, nausea, abdominal cramps and other gastrointestinal disturbances.
which has not be replicated, has found that in postmenopausal women with diabetes, taking a daily 300-mg Vitamin c supplement was associated significantly with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.
High Vitamin c intakes also may contribute to the formation of kidney stones, especially in individuals with renal disorders i
#Cancer Tech: New Devices Could Speed up Treatment Treating cancer is sometimes a process of trial and error,
because any given drug or drug combination does not work the same for all patients.
while doctors seek the right chemicals to beat back a tumor. Now, two research teams say they have found ways to speed up the process by allowing doctors to try multiple treatments at once:
In Seattle, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research center and the company Presage Biosciences designed a device called CIVO that includes up to eight needles arranged in an array.
The device can be used to inject multiple drugs into tumors that are close to the surface of a person's skin.
First, the needles are loaded with drugs, pressed into the tumor and then withdrawn, with each needle leaving behind a columnlike trail of a drug that spans the full depth of the tumor.
one to three days later, researchers can remove a piece of the tumor and examine the cells to see the effect of each drug
whether it killed the tumor cells, slowed their growth or had no effect. That analysis can tell doctors
if the cancer is resistant"to the drug that's being prescribed, said Dr. James Olson,
Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods With CIVO, doctors"can compare drug A to drug B,
The four human patients all had lymphomas, which are cancers of the lymph system, and had enlarged lymph nodes.
The patients said they had very little pain with the injections, according to the report. Meanwhile, researchers at MIT have built a cylindrical device the size of a rice grain that is riddled with microscopic tubes.
the cylinder is designed to be implanted into the tumor, and then diffusion allows the drugs to move from the tubes into the surrounding cancerous tissue.
A biopsy of the tumor is taken a day or two later a doctor removes the cylinder
and a small amount of the cancer tissue around it. As with CIVO, the aim is to let doctors look at the cancerous tissue,
But the implant offers a way to attack cancers that are deeper in the body and thus less accessible to injections.
and the patient would avoid enduring the side effects of drugs that wouldn't end up treating the cancer."
and the MIT researchers'work was funded by the National Cancer Institute and Massachusetts-based biotech company Kibur Medical.
Health Threats Loom Over Survivors The aftermath of the Nepal earthquake brings a risk of disease outbreaks including measles and diarrheal diseases among the survivors,
Such a large congregation of people living out in the open can increase not only the risk of diseases spreading,
"If you have people living in very close proximity to each otherhen diseases can spread much faster,
Diarrheal and respiratory diseases are some of health experts'main concerns in the earthquake's aftermath."
"You're more at risk for something like a measles outbreak,"under these conditions, Tidey said.
and zinc supplements to help prevent diarrheal diseases. The rehydration salts are added to water and provide electrolytes to help people hydrate,
if people may need to be vaccinated to prevent measles spread, Tidey said. One challenge after disasters like the Nepal earthquake is just providing people with the care they would normally need in their daily lives."
"You're going to have a lot of secondary spikes in illness, because people reliant on medical care can't get it,
"Today, we see a way to cure a disease that has been killing children for generations,
The three infant boys who were implanted with the new device all had the same life-threatening condition a severe form of a disease called tracheobronchomalacia,
The disease causes the windpipe to regularly collapse preventing normal breathing. There was no cure, and at the time these children received their implants,
"This is the first time 3d printing has been used to create a medical implant for treating a life-threatening disease,
narcotics or paralytics to keep them breathing.""Holidays are spent not in the hospital anymore, "Green said."
and their windpipes eventually will have no signs of the disease that nearly killed them as newborns.
#Simple Chemical Stops Prion Disease Mad cow, scrapie and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease are all diseases of the brain that debilitate before they kill,
But now, researchers in Switzerland say it's possible to block the misfolded proteins called prions that cause these diseases,
and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD) affects people. In the new study, Aguzzi's team used chemicals called luminescent conjugated polythiophenes,
The team first infected mice with a prion disease, then injected them with polythiophenes. They found that some polythiophenes extended the mice's survival by more than 80 percent,
This meant some mice survived up to 140 days after infection if they got the polythiophene before being infected with prions,
and give the brain the"spongy"appearance that is characteristic of prion diseases (the diseases are called formally transmissible spongiform encephalopathies).
However, the new findings show that there's a pathway to making molecules that could stop the diseases prions cause
If you've lost a healthy bone to an accident or illness, or if you were born with bones that aren't the right shape,
what it sees as a foreign object, leading to infections or defective transplants after these operations.
the late American film critic who lost his jawbone to cancer, is autograft. This is basically a euphemism for cutting a piece of bone out of one part of the body
#Another Fatal Brain Disease May Come from the Spread of'Prion'Proteins A rare and fatal brain disorder called multiple system atrophy (MSA) may be caused by a newly discovered prion, a protein similar to the ones
a progressive disorder that causes symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease and has no cure. What's more, the researchers say that the prion they believe causes MSA,
Eventually, the buildup of misfolded proteins can cause lesions to form in the brain, leading to disease."
Because prion diseases can be transmitted through certain types of contact with infected tissue, the findings suggest a potential concern for doctors
The disease is rare: About three out of 100,000 Americans over age 50 are diagnosed with MSA yearly.
"We conclude that MSA is a transmissible human neurodegenerative disease caused by alpha-synuclein prions,
and even other similar diseases, such as Parkinson's.""We do not yet know whether or not MSA prions exhibit the same ability to stick to surgical instruments,
and that there is no evidence that MSA spreads in the way that other prion diseases do.
Dr. Valerie Sim, of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta in Canada, said that the traditional definition of a prion is an infectious protein that can transmit disease to another host.
because brain tissue from MSA patients did not cause disease in normal mice. Rather brain tissue from MSA patients caused disease only in mice that were engineered genetically to have a mutant alpha-synuclein protein.
In contrast,"true"prions can cause disease in normal mice, Sim said.)""The problem with branding something a prion is it induces fear,
because people have heard of it as a scary transmissible disease, "Sim said. But the new study,
"if anything, shows MSA is not easily transmissible, "she said. Still, the new findings are important to consider in research and treatment of MSA,
"and refers to its ability to bore through a person's intestines and into the liver and other organs, causing ulcers, internal bleeding and chronic diarrhea.
Doctors have only one antibiotic that can treat people with E. histolytica infections, and they fear the parasite will soon develop resistance to it.
"said Dr. William Petri, an expert on parasitic infections and chief of the Division of Infectious diseases & International Health at the University of Virginia.
But a chance meeting between Petri and a bladder cancer expert, Dr. Dan Theodorescu, who is director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center,
or more effective in killing the cancer. Petri merely substituted E. histolytica for a drug.
"This could be the plan B targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease,
and that this could have a broad impact on the field of infectious diseases. The finding was published today (Sept. 8) in the journal Scientific Reports.
or water contaminated with its cysts. The ameba passes into the environment via feces and can survive outside the human body for several weeks in this protective cyst form.
E. histolytica infection is endemic in regions with poor sanitation and improving sanitation has been the primary means to stop infections,
said Chelsea Marie, a postdoctoral fellow in Petri's lab and first author on the report.
The sole antibiotic that is effective in killing E. histolytica is metronidazole, which many patients find hard to tolerate, because of its side effects.
represents an entirely new approach in thwarting E. histolytica infection, Marie said. In the lab, Marie reversed the experiment
and could be targeted specifically to prevent cell death during ameba infection, "she said.""This approach also could be informative for colon cancer chemotherapy,
"What's an ameba have to do with cancer, after all?""Theodorescu said. But recently the two were working together, on a hiring committee,
when blocked, would make cells resistant to the infection. He had the cells ready to go.
"and refers to its ability to bore through a person's intestines and into the liver and other organs, causing ulcers, internal bleeding and chronic diarrhea.
Doctors have only one antibiotic that can treat people with E. histolytica infections, and they fear the parasite will soon develop resistance to it.
"said Dr. William Petri, an expert on parasitic infections and chief of the Division of Infectious diseases & International Health at the University of Virginia.
But a chance meeting between Petri and a bladder cancer expert, Dr. Dan Theodorescu, who is director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center,
or more effective in killing the cancer. The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites Petri merely substituted E. histolytica for a drug.
"This could be the plan B targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease,
and that this could have a broad impact on the field of infectious diseases. The finding was published today (Sept. 8) in the journal Scientific Reports.
or water contaminated with its cysts. The ameba passes into the environment via feces and can survive outside the human body for several weeks in this protective cyst form.
E. histolytica infection is endemic in regions with poor sanitation and improving sanitation has been the primary means to stop infections,
said Chelsea Marie, a postdoctoral fellow in Petri's lab and first author on the report.
The sole antibiotic that is effective in killing E. histolytica is metronidazole, which many patients find hard to tolerate, because of its side effects.
represents an entirely new approach in thwarting E. histolytica infection, Marie said. In the lab, Marie reversed the experiment
and could be targeted specifically to prevent cell death during ameba infection, "she said.""This approach also could be informative for colon cancer chemotherapy,
"What's an ameba have to do with cancer, after all?""Theodorescu said. Tiny & Nasty: Images of Things That Make Us Sick
when blocked, would make cells resistant to the infection. He had the cells ready to go.
which is implicated in animal models of depression and anxiety.""This will open the door to a range of new experiments to better understand
it will allow experiments with multiple animals in the same space to better understand social interaction in the treatment of chronic pain and mental disorders, for example."
The specific FDA approval is for SPRITAM (levetiracetam) that used as a therapy for epileptics to help control partial onset seizures, myoclonic seizures,
#Use of Ultrasound to Promote Faster Healing of Wounds Sometimes discoveries in science are not about the development of new medical devices or drugs,
Researchers from University of Sheffield have used now ultrasound to reduce healing times of diabetic wounds by 30%.
%The study, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, describes the use of ultrasonic waves to promote wound healing cells called fibroblasts to migrate into the wound through mechanical stimulation.
and delayed wound healing of diabetic and elderly patients. sing ultrasound wakes up the cells
this technique for accelerated wound healing is expected to be in broad clinical use in the next 3-4 years.
Treatment of diabetic and aged mice recruits fibroblasts to the wound bed and reduces healing times by 30,
we discover that the migration defects of fibroblasts from human venous leg ulcer patients can be reversed by ultrasound,
The technology may have significant implication for patients with COPD, cystic fibrosis, and other conditions affecting the lungs by offering the ability for gene therapy to be delivered directly into pulmonary tissue through inhalation.
#Lab-on-a-Disc Device Detects Urinary tract infections in About an Hour UTIS are a common occurrence in hospitalized patients with catheters,
and can lead to sepsis. Currently, a diagnostic test can take hours to provide results.
This may allow clinicians to quickly screen patients for sepsis and begin antibiotic treatment a full day earlier than is now typically possible c
#Implantable Electrical Stimulation Therapy for Treating Scoliosis Some scientists believe that in many people scoliosis develops because of the unequal pressure that muscles on the sides of the spinal column tend to exert.
the technology may be a new way of treating scoliosis at an earl stage in a large percentage of the population with the condition n
#New Blood test Predicts Breast cancer Relapse Months In advance (VIDEO) Researchers from The Institute of Cancer Research in London have developed a new blood test,
The technology, published in journal Science Translational Medicine, measures the level of circulating tumor DNA (ctdna),
the DNA that has been shed by circulating tumor cells, in plasma isolated from blood. By measuring the level of genetic mutations in the ctdna,
the test can predict the nature of metastatic disease and can inform doctors about the potential treatments that could be targeted to address the genetic mutations.
Malaria Diagnosis to Smartphones Researchers at Texas A&m University have developed a novel point-of-care device for field-based diagnosis of malaria using a smartphone.
which is indicative of malarial infection. Despite advances in diagnostic approaches and treatment, malaria remains one of the leading sources of disease and death in developing nations.
The old standardof detection, evaluation of Giemsa-stained blood smears via bright-field microscopy often requires skilled technicians
and successfully did a small cancer gene study using this technique. The group was able to add a few modified cells with the Rasg12v cancer gene in a printed organoid array
and observed how the few mutated cells were able to induce a response from its surrounding tissue.
Zev Gartner, Phd, the paper senior author, stated that he hopes to use this technology to study how changes in the structure of mammary glands can cause the destruction of tissue structure that is associated with tumors that metastasize.
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