This Bandage Glows Green When You're Infected. Your Doctor Does Not Give a Crap About Your Fitness Tracker Data. Doctors use virtual reality imaging to treat blocked coronary artery. WARSAW, Poland, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Doctors in Poland used a virtual reality system combining a custom mobile application and Google Glass to clear a blocked coronary artery, one of the first uses of the technology to assist with surgery.
The imaging system was used with a patient who had chronic total occlusion, a complete blockage of the artery, which doctors said is difficult to clear using standard catheter-based percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI. The system provides three-dimensional reconstructions of the artery and includes a hands-free voice recognition system allowing for zoom and changes of the images. The head-mounted display system allows doctors to capture images and video while also interacting with the environment around them. In patients with chronic total occlusion, the standard procedure is not always successful, at least partially because of difficulty visualizing the blockage with conventional coronary tomography angiography, or CTA, imaging.
Related UPI Stories. Snake venom helps hydrogels stop the bleeding. Editor’s note: Links to images for download appear at the end of this release. David Ruth 713-348-6327david@rice.edu Mike Williams 713-348-6728mikewilliams@rice.edu HOUSTON – (Oct. 26, 2015) – A nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may be the best material to stop bleeding quickly, according to Rice University scientists. The hydrogel called SB50 incorporates batroxobin, a venom produced by two species of South American pit viper. It can be injected as a liquid and quickly turns into a gel that conforms to the site of a wound, keeping it closed, and promotes clotting within seconds. Rice chemist Jeffrey Hartgerink, lead author Vivek Kumar and their colleagues reported their discovery in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering. “It’s interesting that you can take something so deadly and turn it into something that has the potential to save lives,” Hartgerink said.
SB50 will require FDA approval before clinical use, Hartgerink said. Standing Desks Are Mostly Bullshit. Vitamins and Herbal Supplements Are Sending 23,000 Americans to the Hospital a Year. Why We Haven't Cured Cancer. A Disturbing Number of Americans Are in Pain. Botched Robotic Surgeries Have Been Linked to 144 Patient Deaths. Wsides comments on Children who received general anesthesia for surgery before age 4 had diminished language comprehension, lower IQ and decreased gray matter density in posterior regions of their brain, according to a new study. LoveOfProfit comments on Alzheimer's breakthrough: Scientists may have found potential cause of the disease in the behaviour of immune cells. Why ResearchKit Is the Most Exciting Thing Apple Announced Yesterday. Cockroaches, Alligators & Other Weird Sources of New Drugs. Novel non-stick material joins portfolio of slippery surface technologies. Harvard researchers have demonstrated a powerful, long-lasting repellent surface technology that can be used with medical materials to prevent infections caused by biofilms.
(Image courtesy of Joanna Aizenberg.) Cambridge/Boston, Mass. – February 10, 2015 – More than 80 percent of microbial infections in the human body are caused by a build-up of bacteria, according to the National Institutes of Health. Bacteria cells gain a foothold in the body by accumulating and forming into adhesive colonies called biofilms, which help them to thrive and survive but cause infections and associated life-threatening risks to their human hosts. These biofilms commonly form on medical surfaces including those of mechanical heart valves, urinary catheters, intravenous catheters, and implants. The technology leverages the molecular structure of polymers, which makes them highly capable of taking up and storing considerable volumes of lubricating liquids in their molecular structure, like sponges. Promising compound rapidly eliminates malaria parasite -- ScienceDaily. An international research collaborative has determined that a promising anti-malarial compound tricks the immune system to rapidly destroy red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite but leave healthy cells unharmed.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study, which appears in the current online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The compound, (+)-SJ733, was developed from a molecule identified in a previous St. Jude-led study that helped to jumpstart worldwide anti-malarial drug development efforts. Malaria is caused by a parasite spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. The disease remains a major health threat to more than half the world's population, particularly children.
In this study, researchers determined that (+)-SJ733 uses a novel mechanism to kill the parasite by recruiting the immune system to eliminate malaria-infected red blood cells. The Rise of a Vaccine Resistant strain of Polio. Health. Skin-Penetrating Ionic Liquids Synergize With Antibiotics For Efficient Microbial Killing | Neomatica. Humanity Is Now Officially Ready For Suspended Animation. ‘Mississippi Baby’ Now Has Detectable HIV, Researchers Find. The child known as the “Mississippi baby”—an infant seemingly cured of HIV that was reported as a case study of a prolonged remission of HIV infection in The New England Journal of Medicine last fall—now has detectable levels of HIV after more than two years of not taking antiretroviral therapy without evidence of virus, according to the pediatric HIV specialist and researchers involved in the case.
“Certainly, this is a disappointing turn of events for this young child, the medical staff involved in the child’s care, and the HIV/AIDS research community,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “Scientifically, this development reminds us that we still have much more to learn about the intricacies of HIV infection and where the virus hides in the body. The NIH remains committed to moving forward with research on a cure for HIV infection.” The baby continued on antiretroviral treatment until 18 months of age, when the child was lost to follow up and no longer received treatment. Here Is the Deal With the Bionic Pancreas.
Outpatient Glycemic Control with a Bionic Pancreas in Type 1 Diabetes. Measles. Broad-Spectrum Anti-biofilm Peptide That Targets a Cellular Stress Response. Abstract Bacteria form multicellular communities known as biofilms that cause two thirds of all infections and demonstrate a 10 to 1000 fold increase in adaptive resistance to conventional antibiotics. Currently, there are no approved drugs that specifically target bacterial biofilms. Here we identified a potent anti-biofilm peptide 1018 that worked by blocking (p)ppGpp, an important signal in biofilm development. At concentrations that did not affect planktonic growth, peptide treatment completely prevented biofilm formation and led to the eradication of mature biofilms in representative strains of both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterial pathogens including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter baumannii, Klebsiella pneumoniae, methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella Typhimurium and Burkholderia cenocepacia.
Low levels of the peptide led to biofilm dispersal, while higher doses triggered biofilm cell death. Author Summary Figures Introduction. The Milk-Industrial Complex. Are Artificial Sweeteners Harmful? Researchers demonstrate amazing new hepatitis C treatment. A new treatment cured hepatitis C infection in more than 90 percent of patients with liver cirrhosis, according to researchers from the UT Medicine San Antonio, the Texas Liver Institute and their colleagues.
Historically, hepatitis C cure rates in patients with liver cirrhosis have been lower than 50 percent. Interferon previously was the only agent to demonstrate influence against hepatitis C, but patients frequently relapsed and the treatment led to numerous side effects. Hep reports that during hepatitis C virus treatment in which pegylated interferon is needed, the drug is administered by weekly injections, at a much greater quantity than what the body generates naturally, resulting in numerous side effects. According to the U.S. The new treatment is interferon-free and consists of several agents — ABT-450/ritonavir, ombitasvir, dasabuvir and ribavirin. “These are out-of-the-ballpark response rates, not on the same planet as interferon,” said lead author Dr. This Woman Invented a Way to Run 30 Lab Tests on Only One Drop of Blood - Wired Science. Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos 10 years ago. The company is now bringing its medical testing technology to market—and it’s a game changer.
Mathew Scott (hair and makeup by Raina Antle) Phlebotomy. Even the word sounds archaic—and that’s nothing compared to the slow, expensive, and inefficient reality of drawing blood and having it tested. That was a decade ago. The implications are mind-blowing. None of this would work if Theranos hadn’t figured out how to make testing transparent and inexpensive.
What was your goal in starting a lab-testing company? We wanted to make actionable health information accessible to people everywhere at the time it matters most. There are a billion tests done every year in the United States, but too many of them are done in the emergency room. What was your motivation to launch Theranos at the age of 19? I definitely am afraid of needles. You’re not alone in your fear of needles. Phlebotomy is such a huge inhibitor to people getting tested. Exactly. Angry Scientist Finds Uneducated Internet Comment And Delivers Badass Response. Aging Successfully Reversed in Mice; Human Trials to Begin Next : Futurology. Here's how city life is actually affecting your health. My apologies in advance for this somewhat long-winded, meandering, and less-than-polished response. In short, my point is that while spatial awareness is good for research, empty categories like rural and urban seem too deterministic and simplistic, given the ways that we arrive at the division.
How exactly do you define rural and urban? And the researchers? What do we make of the fact that cities and countrysides are intimately connected by trade and labor, among other linkages? Commuting seems to me to vastly blur the division. And the health of cities, relative to countrysides, needs historical context, too. We need to think about institutional arrangements, i.e. NYU undergrad invents gel to instantly stop mass bleeding. New York University junior Joe Landolina, 20, has invented a gel that instantly stops mass internal and external bleeding. Available for veterinary practices this summer, Landolina first pitched the concept in 2011 as the sole freshman in a NYU business competition against MBA and PhD candidates. He won. Connective plant and synthetic tissue that grow and hold organisms' structure, called the extracellular matrix (ECM), compose Veti-Gel. Such a configuration solidifies and sticks blood platelets together to close and begin healing wounds without applying pressure, Landolina says.
Landolina says he didn't know how the process would work to create the gel, called Veti-Gel. But this perspective allowed him to develop Veti-Gel faster and in an unconventional order, says Marisa Tricarico, 30, an associate at the NYU Innovation Venture Fund. "Naiveté really helped us move forward," Landolina says. It was a gradual research process based on trial and error. Cardiovascular surgeon Dr. This is a “ghost organ.” It has been decelluralized, leaving only connective tissue. The organ can then be reseeded with a patient’s own cells to regenerate it so it can be transplanted without fear of tissue rejection. This is experimental. : pics.
A Cybernetic Implant That Repairs Brain Damage. How a car mechanic's invention could save thousands of women's lives. It Looks Like Something You Should Never See. Meet A Medical Advancement That Is Hard To Forget. Alzheimer's breakthrough hailed as 'turning point' Media playback is unsupported on your device The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a neurodegenerative disease has been hailed as the "turning point" in the fight against Alzheimer's disease.
More work is needed to develop a drug that could be taken by patients. But scientists say a resulting medicine could treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and other diseases. In tests on mice, the Medical Research Council showed all brain cell death from prion disease could be prevented. Prof Roger Morris, from King's College London, said: "This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer's disease. " He told the BBC a cure for Alzheimer's was not imminent but: "I'm very excited, it's the first proof in any living animal that you can delay neurodegeneration.
"The world won't change tomorrow, but this is a landmark study. " Cells starve 'Very dramatic' Side effects are an issue. Accelerator on a chip: Technology could spawn new generations of smaller, less expensive devices for science, medicine. In an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine, researchers used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice. The achievement was reported today in Nature by a team including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. "We still have a number of challenges before this technology becomes practical for real-world use, but eventually it would substantially reduce the size and cost of future high-energy particle colliders for exploring the world of fundamental particles and forces," said Joel England, the SLAC physicist who led the experiments.
"It could also help enable compact accelerators and X-ray devices for security scanning, medical therapy and imaging, and research in biology and materials science. " Today's accelerators use microwaves to boost the energy of electrons. Eight Toxic Foods: A Little Chemical Education. Update: You'll notice in this post that I refer to some sites that the original BuzzFeed article I'm complaining out sends people to, often pointing out that these didn't actually support the wilder claims it's making.
Well, the folks at BuzzFeed have dealt with this by taking down the links (!) The article now says: "Some studies linked in the original version of this article were concerning unrelated issues. They have been replaced with information directly from the book Rich Food, Poor Food". But as you'll see below, the studies weren't unrelated at all. So when you read about links to the American Cancer Association or NPR, well, all I can say is that they used to be there, until someone apparently realized how embarrassing they were. Many people who read this blog are chemists. But that's what we have the internet for. That doesn't mean that we just have to sit back and let it wash over us, though.
This piece really is an education. Number One: Artificial Dyes. Number Two: Olestra. Interactive: Snake Oil Supplements? The scientific evidence for health supplements. See the data: bit.ly/snakeoilsupps. See the static versionSee the old flash version Check the evidence for so-called Superfoods visualized. Note: You might see multiple bubbles for certain supplements. These is because some supps affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition. For example, there’s strong evidence that garlic can lower blood pressure. This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. As ever, we welcome your thoughts, crits, comments, corrections, compliments, tweaks, new evidence, missing supps, and general feedback. » Purchase: Amazon US or Barnes & Noble | UK or Waterstones » Download: Apple iBook | Kindle (UK & US) » See inside For more graphics, visualisations and data-journalism:
Human Experimentation: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. Is Your Illness Viral or Bacterial? A New Rapid Blood Test Can Tell. A blood test developed by researchers at Duke University can predict with tremendous accuracy whether someone with, say, pneumonia has a viral or bacterial infection, even if it's a previously unknown strain. The test, described today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, could someday help stop the unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics to patients who have viral infections. Although the study's authors say the timing of their report is coincidental, on Monday the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told reporters that something must be done to curtail the inappropriate use of antibiotics. The practice has led to emerging bacterial strains that are resistant to all known drugs. “The timing of the CDC report regarding the overuse of antibiotics and our results is really amazing,” said Dr.
Christopher Woods, an infectious disease researcher at the Institute for Genome Sciences at Duke's School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. How the Test Works Dr. Drug-resistant bacteria: 'We're facing a catastrophe' The End of Antibiotics? Why does cannibalism cause disease? : askscience. Transparent skull implant is the next step in body mods (and medicine) Six stubborn myths about cancer | David Robert Grimes | Science. Milestone study probes cancer origin. First Ever iPS-Cell Trial a Go. 'Star Trek' tricorder becomes the real McCoy | Cutting Edge. Microparticles Deliver Oxygen. 3-D Ultrasound Reveals Baby in Color: Photos. A Cure for Ebola, Rabies, & Other Virus Villains? HIV Remission for 14 Patients. Donor livers kept alive outside the body for 24 hours - health - 15 March 2013. New Glasses Help Colorblind To See Normally.
Gene therapy cures diabetic dogs - health - 12 February 2013. Alya Red: A Computational heart. The bizarre psychological syndrome that affects only medical students. Facebook. James Watson Says Antioxidants May Actually Be Causing Cancer. Spray-on Skin Offers Fast Healing for Burns. Charting causes of death in America between 1970 and 2006. Why HIV is More Evil Than We Could Have Imagined. Mysterious Mars News. Preventing Unintended Pregnancies by Providing No-Cost Contraception. - Abstract - Europe PubMed Central. Seeing Things? Hearing Things? Many of Us Do. The same genes that cause cancer in humans paint spots on fruit fly butts.
Home. Cuba Announces Release of the World's First Lung Cancer Vaccine. The LifeStraw makes dirty water clean. The most badass thing you'll see today: a bald eagle with 3D-printed beak. Bad news, everyone: smoking too much pot as a teen could permanently lower your IQ. Folic Acid - Foodskey. Boy Who Received Stem-Cell Trachea Implant Doing Well After Two Years. Scientists use light to control monkey brains. Europe Takes The Lead Toward Approval Of First Gene Therapy Drug. Biomimicry: unintended consequences. Extending People’s Lives – One Artificial Heart At A Time. Scientist Invents World's First Perfectly Healthy Pizza. At long last, MRSA seems to be on the decline. New Bedside Genetic Screen Yields Results In An Hour. Telomerase Gene Therapy Extends Lives Of Mice By Up To 24 Percent. Will we ever have an HIV vaccine? Scientists Make Bird Flu Transmissible Between Humans Then Tell World How To Do It. Chimeric Antigen Receptor–Modified T Cells in Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia.
Extracellular matrix dynamics in development and regenerative medicine. Skin-Printer Looks Promising, Already Successful with Mice.