First Ever iPS-Cell Trial a Go The Japanese government will allow a study of stem cell therapy using patients’ own cells, reprogrammed to be stem cells, to treat vision loss. WIKIMEDIA, SHELOVESGHOSTSResearchers in Japan will conduct a small clinical trial of a stem-cell treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which causes blindness in older people, after receiving the Japanese government’s permission last week to commence the study, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Scientists at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology and the Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation Hospital will take adult skin cells from six AMD patients and reprogram them to into a stem-like state, before injecting them back into the subjects’ retinas to treat the disorder. Six stubborn myths about cancer | David Robert Grimes | Science There are few illnesses as terrifying in the public consciousness as cancer. With up to a third of us getting cancer at some stage in our lives, it is almost impossible to remain untouched by the disease. As an ominous reminder of our mortality, cancer scares us to the point that discussions about it are often avoided and the language we use is couched in euphemisms. The recent Channel 4 documentary "You're killing my son" told the story of Neon Roberts, a young boy whose treatment for a brain tumour was halted by his mother Sally, who remained convinced that radiotherapy would cause long-term harm and wanted to try alternative medical treatments. After a difficult court battle, Neon received radiotherapy, leaving his mother somewhat unimpressed. The Neon Roberts case is tragic and reveals the quagmire of misinformation that surrounds the disease, but Ms Roberts's comment should not be completely dismissed. Cancer rates are rising Sharks don't get cancer Cancer is a modern disease
'Star Trek' tricorder becomes the real McCoy | Cutting Edge The small handheld medical reader used by Dr. Leonard McCoy in "Star Trek" has been replaced by a smartphone. The real-life tricorder is a sleek, square device called a Scanadu Scout that works with your phone. The Scanadu can read your vitals in 10 seconds, measuring heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, blood pressure, ECG, and emotional stress. You hold it to your forehead and the information is wirelessly transmitted to your smartphone. Founder and CEO Walter De Brouwer explained the Scanadu Scout is not just for doctors. "People need something cool, that they immediately understand and that they can have a relationship with their doctor." The device has 106 unique components, including an infrared thermometer, three accelerometers, and a microphone. While De Brouwer is a "Star Trek" fan -- he recently met Rod Roddenberry, son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry -- the real inspiration for the Scanadu was his son, who was hospitalized for a year after an accident.
Drug-resistant bacteria: 'We're facing a catastrophe' For the first time, the US government is estimating how many people die from drug-resistant bacteria each year - more than 23,000, or about as many as those killed annually by flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the number on Monday to spotlight the growing threat of germs that are hard to treat because they've become resistant to drugs. Finally estimating the problem sends "a very powerful message," said Dr. Antibiotics like penicillin and streptomycin first became widely available in the 1940s, are considered one of the greatest advances in the history of medicine, and have saved countless lives. But as decades passed, some antibiotics stopped working against the bugs they previously vanquished. In a new report, the CDC tallied the toll of the 17 most worrisome drug-resistant bacteria. Of those, the staph infection MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, kills about 11,000, and a new superbug kills about 600.
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. The CDC director announced that 23,000 Americans per year die of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. How the Test Works Dr. Learn More
Human Experimentation: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. 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. 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:
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. 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. Artificial dyes are made from chemicals derived from PETROLEUM, which is also used to make gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, and TAR! Emphasis is in the original, of course. Number Two: Olestra Ay.
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. Because it employs commercial lasers and low-cost, mass-production techniques, the researchers believe it will set the stage for new generations of "tabletop" accelerators. Particles are generally accelerated in two stages.
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.
The End of Antibiotics? In recent years, the public health community has sounded increasingly louder alarms about the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections, or superbugs. A recent Frontline documentary quoted associate director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Arjun Srinivasan saying that we’ve reached “the end of antibiotics, period.” It made for an attention-grabbing headline, but what Srinivasan meant was we’re at the beginning of the end of antibiotics: people are dying from bacterial infections, and if we don’t make changes, we could see life-threatening infections become the norm instead of the exception. “We’re not at the end of antibiotics for all organisms or all conditions, but there are organisms that people get infections with for which we truly have no antibiotics that are effective, and people can die from those infections,” Lisa Winston, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California in San Francisco, told Singularity Hub. So how did we get into this mess?
Microparticles Deliver Oxygen Researchers have developed fast-dissolving particles that may one day prevent organ damage or death by instantly infusing oxygen into the blood. Red blood cellsWikimedia Commons, MDougM Red blood cellsWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, MDOUGM Scientists have crafted an injectable foam containing oxygen-carrying microparticles that could potentially be used to resuscitate patients undergoing severe oxygen deprivation. The team of researchers, most of whom work at Children's Hospital Boston, demonstrated that the microparticle solution could rapidly oxygenate the blood of rabbits struggling to breath in low oxygen conditions. They report their findings in the latest issue of Science Translational Medicine. "This is a potential breakthrough," Peter Laussen, cardiac intensive care doctor at Children's Hospital Boston who was not involved in the work, told ScienceNOW. A body deprived of oxygen is a body in trouble.
HIV Remission for 14 Patients The virus was largely stomped out in adults who started treatment soon after infection. Fourteen adults are nearly rid of HIV following aggressive treatment soon after contracting the virus, according to a paper published in PLOS Pathogens earlier this week (March 14). The news follows an announcement earlier this month (March 4) that an infant had been functionally cured of HIV by very early treatment. While many people who contract HIV do not know they are infected so soon, the 14 patients all started anti-retroviral therapy within 10 weeks of getting the virus, BBC News reported. They took the drugs for around 3 years, at which point the virus would come back in most patients who stop taking drugs. The scientists believe the anti-retroviral drugs knocked down the virus before it could fully establish itself in reservoirs in the body where it can hide from the immune system, but that early treatment likely only has these dramatic results in a small subset of patients.
Donor livers kept alive outside the body for 24 hours - health - 15 March 2013 Video: Device keeps liver alive outside the body Donated livers can survive for at least a day outside the body thanks to a new device which keeps the organ ticking over as if it hadn't been removed. The machine is likely to more than double the availability of livers for transplant. The device was unveiled today in London by its developer Peter Friend, professor of transplantation surgery at the University of Oxford. In the US and Europe, 2000 livers get discarded each year because they deteriorate in transit, damaged by the ice packs and solutions that, for the past 40 years, have been the usual way to preserve them. The new device can keep a donated liver at body temperature, supplying it with blood, sugar, oxygen and nutrients. Whereas most frozen livers become unusable after about 14 hours of cold storage, the new device keeps them alive and in perfect condition for at least 24 hours. Buying time Video footage shows Friend plumbing a donated liver into the device. Clinical pilot