Exploding cells captured on film for first time-shedding light on how our immune system works A key component of the body defence against disease has been captured on film for the first time.
If a disease or infection causes white blood cells to die, they can then warn others nearby to mount an immune response.
'It could be that we've identified the mechanics of how dying white blood cells go about alerting neighbouring cells to the presence of disease
or infection. lternatively we may have discovered the transportation mechanism for a virus to infect other parts of the body.
could now help scientists develop new ways of harnessing the power of the immune system to fight off disease.
#Medical cannabis DOESN'T ease pain, nausea, vomiting, sleep disorders or Tourette's By Lizzie Parry for Mailonline Published:
14:51 GMT, 24 june 2015 There is very little evidence to suggest cannabis can help ease the symptoms of a raft of illnesses,
Medicinal cannabis has been legalised in 23 US states as a therapy to treat disease or alleviate symptoms,
500 volunteers, found the evidence supporting the use of medical cannabis is weak. It found moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids-chemical compounds that are the active principles in marijuana-for the treatment of chronic pain.
And weaker evidence still that the drug eased nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients, sleep disorders,
and Tourette syndrome. Dr Penny Whiting, from the University of Bristol, and her team evaluated the evidence for benefits and adverse events, related to medicinal cannabis use.
Researchers found most studies they examined suggested cannabinoid use was associated with an improvement in symptoms.
Moderate-quality findings suggest that cannabinoids may be beneficial for the treatment of chronic neuropathic or cancer pain,
and muscle contractions due to multiple sclerosis. But researchers discovered weak evidence that medical marijuana was associated with improvements in nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy
weight gain in HIV, sleep disorders and Tourette syndrome. And there was very-low quality evidence the drug eased anxiety.
In addition, Dr Whiting and her team found weak evidence to support the claim that medicinal cannabis has no effect on psychosis,
and very little evidence in defence of the idea it had no effect on depression.
Meanwhile, the drug was linked with several adverse effects. Notably, cannabinoids were found to cause dizziness, dry mouth, nausea, fatigue, euphoria, vomiting, disorientation, drowsiness, confusion, a loss of balance and hallucination.
The study authors said:''Further large, robust, randomised clinical trials are needed to confirm the effects of cannabinoids, particularly on weight gain in patients with HIV/AIDS, depression, sleep disorders, anxiety disorders, psychosis, glaucoma,
and Tourette syndrome are required.''Further studies evaluating cannabis itself are required also because there is very little evidence on the effects and adverse effects of cannabis.'
'In an editorial linked to the study, Dr Deepak Cyril and Dr Mohini Ranganathan, of Yale university, said:'
'Since medical marijuana is not a lifesaving intervention, it may be prudent to wait before widely adopting its use until high-quality evidence is available to guide the development of a rational approval process,
'they add.''Perhaps it is time to place the horse back in front of the cart. r
a cough-suppressant that may also fight cancer, as well as improved plant strains with higher yields of morphine.
The collaboration between the University of Leicester and Medical center revealed how a neuron in the brain instantly fired differently
'The scientists hope that understanding how this type of memory is formed could someday help patients suffering from certain neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease e
'says Dr. Barbara Sherman, a clinical professor of behavioural medicine. Much of the technology comes off the shelf
'We're also very interested in addressing stress in working dogs, such as guide dogs for the blind,'sayssean Mealin,
and mitigate stress for the dogs, improving the length and quality of a dog's life,
and trained not to display signs of stress in their behavior.''In addition to disaster response research, the research team has done already work that uses the platform to assist in dog training.
and improving the physiological sensors for use in animal shelters and hospitals.''This platform is an amazing tool,
#Have scientists found a cure for deafness? Gene therapy that restores hearing in mice could be used on humans in just five years By Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail. com and Reuters Published:
01:22 GMT, 9 july 2015 Gene therapy to treat hereditary human deafness could be available within five years.
Research revealed today shows the revolutionary technique is capable of fixing faulty DNA to let genetic deaf mice hear again.
Separately, a similar Novartis gene therapy trial is under way to help restore hearing in people who have become deaf through damage or disease.
The latest study found that mice with genetic hearing loss could sense noises after receiving healthy copies of their faulty genes.
Scientists say the mice mutated genes are similar to those responsible for some hereditary human deafness
The technique has had positive clinical results recently in conditions ranging from blood diseases to blindness.''We are somewhat late in the auditory field but
'said Tobias Moser of the University Medical center Gottingen, Germany, who was involved not in the new research.'
In the case of deafness, this involves injecting a gene-carrying engineered virus into the inner ear.
There are currently no approved disease-modifying treatments for disabling hearing loss, which affects some 360 million people,
while cochlear implants turn sounds into electrical signals for the brain to decode, but these devices can't fully replicate natural hearing.
Much of the hearing loss in older people is noise-induced or age-related but at least half of deafness that occurs before a baby learns to speak is caused by defects in one of more than 70 individual genes.
It is these infants Swiss and U s. researchers hope to help, after showing that replacing a mutated gene improved the function of hair cells of the inner ear and partially restored hearing in deaf mice.
Scientists from The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Lausanne and the Boston Children's Hospital, tested hearing in newborn mutant mice by seeing how high they jumped
when startled by a noise. The team focused on a gene called TMC1 which is a common cause of human genetic deafness, accounting for 4 to 8 percent of cases.
They injected viruses containing healthy genes into an engineered virus called adeno-associated virus 1,
or AAV1, This virus infected the hair cells in ears of deaf baby mice, giving them working genes.
Scientists say other forms of hereditary deafness could also be fixed using the same strategy. Work at Novartis is advanced more,
disease or exposure to certain drugs, including some antibiotics. But it will not help the one to three babies per 1
000 born with severe genetic hearing loss in both ears.''There are a big range of deafness types needing different approaches,
'said Moser
#Behold the PENTAQUARK! Large hadron collider discovers new particle that has eluded scientists since the 1960s A new particle called the pentaquark has been discovered by scientists at the Large hadron collider (LHC).
ran at a low'injection'energy of 450 giga-electron volts (Gev) when it restarted, but its power has now been increased to a record-breaking 13 tera-electron volts (Tev)- up from 7 Tev at the time it managed to detect the Higgs boson in 2013.
beating heart-and say it could revolutionise medicine. The new hearts will allow new drugs to be tested,
who is co-senior author of the study with Dr. Bruce Conklin, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease and a professor of medical genetics and cellular and molecular pharmacology at UC San francisco.'
'This technology could help us quickly screen for drugs likely to generate cardiac birth defects, and guide decisions about
a drug known to cause severe birth defects. They found that at normal therapeutic doses, the drug led to abnormal development of microchambers, including decreased size,
problems with muscle contraction and lower beat rates compared with heart tissue that had not been exposed to thalidomide.'
'We chose drug cardiac developmental toxicity screening to demonstrate a clinically relevant application of the cardiac microchambers,
The most commonly reported birth defects involve the heart, and the potential for generating cardiac defects is of utmost concern in determining drug safety during pregnancy.'
and other UC Berkeley researchers publicly debuted a system of beating human heart cells on a chip that could be used to screen for drug toxicity.
cells along the edge experienced greater mechanical stress and tension, and appeared more like fibroblasts,
which is an imperfect model for human disease
#Lexus builds car with human HEARTBEAT in connection between driver and vehicle Lexus has built a car that pulsates with light in time with the driver's heartbeat in order to display the connection between the driver and the car.
#UK scientists invent BIONIC EYE to save Ray Flynn's sight A revolutionary bionic eye implant has restored the sight of a British Man ray Flynn, 80, from Audenshaw,
Surgeons at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital implanted a chip at the back of Mr Flynn eye in a four-hour procedure last month.
Surgeons will now insert the Argus II retinal implant into more patients over the coming months to demonstrate that it can work for a variety of patients.
000 people in Britain, 85 per cent of them with the dry form of the disease.
Professor Paulo Stanga, consultant ophthalmologist at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, said: r Flynn progress is truly remarkable.
and his brain now needs to get use to interpreting it. he Argus II retinal implant was used previously on 130 patients with the rare eye disease retinitis pigmentosa.
developed by US firm Second sight Medical Products, might be used for patients with other vision problems.
that are shipped as liquids in pods that are placed into the machine prior to each job. the team consists of marcus foley, aaron rowley both biomedical/mechanical engineers and joseph white,
which is known as Stargardt disease. For Kathy, a blind spot takes up the majority of her vision.
and to read him stories at bed time. eing a person with a disability who has two children of her own,
Incredible Technology Our glasses are packed with sophisticated technology designed to support people with legal blindness. esight is hands-free, mobile,
The device uses a method called electro-acupuncture (EAV), a traditional technique for measuring vitamin and mineral levels.
EAV is a form of acupuncture where a small electric current is passed between pairs of electrodes.
it like going to the dentist and having your mouth numbed. It very hard to speak without somatosensory feedback,
#Imec Milab medical game-changer Imec and John Hopkins University of Baltimore have delivered a ame-changer in healthcarewith a chip-based technology called Milab
and blood cells. ilab will bring a revolution in medical diagnostics, says Imec CEO Luc van den Hove,
It replaces expensive medical testing equipment which can take days to deliver results. The technology will be commercialised by a company called Midiagnostics backed by Flemish investors Marc Couke and Michel Akkermans, Flemish investment company PMV and Imec.
am I at risk of heart disease? One day soon your mirror might actually be able to give you the answer.
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. 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. Facing the consumer 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
This means (cue maniacal laughter) attorneysfees accountantsfees and compliance costs. Raising $50 million under Regulation A is going to require your company to invest money in the process.
He believes cognitive technologies could eventually automate everything from reviewing medical X-rays to commodities trading. he potential goes way beyond automating repetitive tasks,
or complete eradication of all diseases and poverty is up for debate. But the fact is this is going to have an impact bigger than any other impact that man has seen before.
#This MIT Grad Is Changing Medicine With a Needle-Covered Pill While medical injections are unpleasant and inconvenient, theye also necessary for people with illnesses like diabetes.
But that might not be true for too much longer. Carl Schoellhammer, 28, has created a pill that would render syringes unnecessary.
if administered via injection. Although an image of the pill that was used in testing might remind people of a cactus or a porcupine,
freeing the needles to introduce the medicine. Once the drugs are delivered, the capsule can pass through the body safely.
and he hopes to market it as a diagnostic technology that can be used for a wide range of injections such as insulin and growth hormones.
pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced this week that it testing similar technology through a collaboration with a startup called Rani Therapeutics.
a handheld device inserted suppository-style that uses ultrasound waves to push medicine into the tissues of the GI TRACT.
This allows the body to absorb the medicine faster. Schoellhammer sees this being helpful for the 1 million people in the United states who have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as well as other conditions.
While he wants to advance the uprobe further and conduct more animal testing, he estimates the product can be on the market in five years.
and his data is sent to his hospital and medical team, if there is any indication of a problem the doctors identify it
and take appropriate action. Mr Youngman says the technology is reassuring: ou have more faith and trust.
Professor Martin Cowie is a Cardiologist ith some patients it very tricky to get the balance right.
The device allows those suffering from heart complaints to remain at home knowing that doctors can keep an eye on them n
#Powerful MRI SCANNERS could predict diseases Cutting-edge technology, designed to delve deeper into the human body, has arrived at a research centre in Portugal.
The ultra-high field MRI SCANNERS are around ten times more powerful than current models. hese new machines will allow scientists to make a very early diagnosis of cancer
In the future, diseases could be predicted in advance. n the normal scanners, the spinal cord is too blurry and we don distinguish too many fine details.
Champalimaud Foundation. here are some very important diseases of the spinal cord, like multiple sclerosis. So when the diseases begin,
there are some microstructural changes in the spinal cord. For example, the diameter of the cell can change,
if the person is going to have a disease or not, or if he is in an early stage.
to carry out comprehensive analysis of some brain diseases, the brain has to be cut and examined after death.
during depression. epression is a widespread disease. It one of the major causes of disability worldwide.
And one of the main problems of depression is that currently there is no way for clinicians to guide a treatment selection,
Potentially in the future it will be useful for clinicians to select treatments and better diagnosis depression. ore precise diagnosis,
and at a faster speed, would make a big difference in medicine. Targeted treatments could come sooner
That upgrade may be a headache but system requirements on Windows haven budged in nine years.
#21st-century medicine: Gauss guns, magic bullets, and magnetic millibot surgeons Sometime around the turn into the 20th century,
medical extraordinaire Paul Ehrlich coined the word zauberkugel or agic bulletto describe new drugs he was working on to cure syphilis and cancer.
In theory, such drugs would leave healthy tissue intact while targeting only the diseased. Psychologists later appropriated this term to describe the phenomenally widespread panic that ensued
when H. G. Well epic 1938 thriller The War of the Worlds was broadcast to an unsuspecting American public.
for example, and would have immediate applications in conditions like hydrocephalus, where proper flow through these chambers is disrupted.
The operators don even sit in the surgical amphitheater, but rather run the show from a separate control room.
remote robotic surgery will have entered a new era. Some time ago, we discussed some of the finer points of installing
#Terapio autonomous medical robot can assist nurses Japan has a rapidly aging population, along with the longest life expectancy in the world.
And while a worldwide shortage of nurses means Japan isn the only country facing this problem,
the country is nonetheless leading the way in developing robots that can assist nurses with the enormous workloads they handle on a daily basis. The latest example is from researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology,
a medical robotic assistant that relieves nurses from some of the mundane tasks of collecting patient data and vital signs.
This allows the nurses to give more personal attention to the patient. Electronic Medical records (EMR) have been implemented in most Japanese medical facilities,
Terapio is programmed to follow a nurse as he or she makes the rounds. There a touch display panel on the top to input collected data straight into the patient EMR.
Terapio can recognize possible allergies and potentially dangerous medication interactions. And naturally, when not displaying data,
rackinglets Terapio automatically follow the nurse around, avoiding any objects or collisions on its own; and ounds,
A camera would allow for remote viewing by the medical staff. Toyohashi University professor Ryosuke Tasaki says,
#New antibody fights several flu strains at once, could make flu shot obsolete Influenza is no longer the scourge it once was thanks to modern medicine,
and specifically, annual vaccination efforts. The flu vaccine isn perfect, though. Influenza mutates rapidly, which means a new vaccine formulation is needed every year.
An international team of researchers has identified a new antibody that might give us the edge in this yearly arms race.
It bypasses the constantly changing surface markers and attacks a different part of the virus membrane.
So why is influenza such a tricky virus to vaccinate against? The virus has a jumble of proteins on its surface called hemagglutinin
and neuraminidase that is uses to enter cells. The pattern of these proteins is different in every strain of influenza,
which allows it to evade your immune system even if youe been infected with the flu before. Basically, you don have antibodies that recognize the new patterns on the virus (known as antigens) until youe encountered the new strain.
When your body has become sensitized to a pathogen, it can prepare an adaptive immune response.
Each antibody can only detect a single antigen. But when it does find its match
the alarms are sounded: The antibody binds to the surface of the virus particle, marking it for destruction by the immune system,
and also preventing it from entering your cells. As the immune response picks up, more antibodies are pumped out and other immune cells swing into action to clear virus-infested cells and combat the infection.
A vaccine provides a template of antigens to train the immune response to recognize the new strains of influenza each year.
There a certain amount of guess work involved, though. Doctors have to predict which strains will be most prevalent in the upcoming flu season to formulate the vaccine
and sometimes they get it wrong. The newly isolated antibody, known as CT149, could vastly improve treatment.
It bypasses the mixed-up pattern of proteins on the surface of virus particles. Instead, CT149 binds to the hemagglutinin stem region,
which is identical on multiple strains of the virus, and it doesn mutate every year. This antibody was isolated from the blood of patients infected with the pandemic H1n1 influenza virus in 2009.
To test its activity, researchers injected mice with doses of CT149, and then exposed them to four powerful strains of the flu.
The mice were protected from all four one of which was the 2009 H1n1 strain
#New material combines photons for big solar energy gains An innovative new approach to solar energy from University of California Riverside could dramatically increase the amount of light available to contemporary solar panel designs.
and holding them open for a new therapeutic molecule. They could be programmed to grab on to only one sort of marker (say
#India diabetes rate has jumped 123 %since 1990 A global health survey showed that rates of diabetes among Indians has grown at an alarming rate since the early years of the country emergence as a world power.
Between 1990 and 2013, India saw instances of diabetes grow by 123, %with researchers attributing this to the way lifestyles have changed over that time.
The study looked at 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, finding that developing nations like India and China are now mimicking a trend that had began earlier in Western nations.
The biggest increase the researchers observed was in Type 2 diabetes the most common form of the disease which is linked most often to obesity.
Endocrinologist Anoop Misra told Times of India that diabetes was an escalating problem in India
and had major socioeconomic dimensions. apid dietary changes coupled with decreased level of physical activity have resulted in increasing obesity and diabetes in rural and semi-urban areas,
Dr Misra said. Diabetes did no feature in the top 10 of India diseases in 1990,
whereas it is the country eighth-biggest killer. Maggi case should begin new era of food vigilancea leading food safety official has urged India government to view the recent Maggi noodles affair as the beginning of a new era of food safety vigilance.
Thuppil Venkatesh a senior government advisor and expert in lead poisoning, said the ublic clamourthat followed after a state testing allegedly found monosodium glutamate
and lead in Maggi noodles should initiate a campaign against unhealthy food in general. He also called for greater self-regulation by manufacturers and better awareness among the public about how much food safety testing takes place behind the scenes. he heated discussion on the presence of lead in food products,
In medicine you talk of drug delivery-we do flavour delivery."."The sensory profile of Douxmatok is literally the same as sugar."
At the same time, however, the mechanical stress on the products needs to be kept as low as possible,
and stress signals that is otherwise invisible to the human eye. The crop health monitoring imagery utilized by Farmlogs shows information that is actionable
and added that it has found no evidence that that medical information such as insurance claims and test results was targeted
identity or medical and financial fraud, explained Rob Sadowski, director of technology solutions at security specialist RSA,
from oncological research to education. This latest collaboration makes Watson somewhat more tangible to the average person,
to help oncologists find targeted diagnoses. In each of these cases, Watson reads and understands more and more of the published literature
If an individual has a condition like celiac disease Chef Watson can pull up gluten free recipes. While superficially, the app can be used to create interesting, delicious dishes,
and work with prior to surgery, according to the researchers. GHOST researchers are also working with sponges
may one day be used to treat pain, depression, epilepsy, and other neurological disorders in people by targeting therapies to specific brain circuits.
Published online in the journal Cell, the research is a major step forward in pharmacology and builds on earlier work in optogenetics,
it should be possible to manufacture therapeutic drugs that could be activated with light, says co-principal investigator Michael R. Bruchas, associate professor of anesthesiology and neurobiology at Washington University in St louis. ith one of these tiny devices implanted,
we could theoretically deliver a drug to a specific brain region and activate that drug with light as needed.
This approach potentially could deliver therapies that are targeted much more but have fewer side effects. Previous attempts to deliver drugs or other agents
RESS OF A BUTTONOW, we literally can deliver drug therapy with the press of a button,
marijuana use has risen in past decadesarticularly among black teens. ur analysis shows that public health campaigns are workingewer teens are smoking cigarettes,
a long-term ongoing epidemiological study conducted by the University of Michigan. Lanza and her team focused on information reported about the rates of use of three different substanceslcohol, cigarettes,
The National Institute on Drug abuse and the National Cancer Institute supported this work r
#Tiny laresshow when RNA goes off track A new technology called ticky-flaresoffers the first real-time method to track
such as mental disability, autism, and cancer. Sticky-flares have the potential to help scientists understand the complexities of RNA better than any analytical technique to date
and observe and study the biological and medical significance of RNA misregulation. Previous technologies made it possible to attain static snapshots of RNA location
Mirkin is professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering.
which was the first genetic-based approach that is able to detect live circulating tumor cells out of the complex matrix that is human blood.
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin diseases and the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence initiative of the National institutes of health supported the work.
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