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futurity_medicine 00231.txt

#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

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