Heart scans only useful in prescribing statins under certain conditions
As long as inexpensive statins, which lower cholesterol, are readily available and patients don
As long as inexpensive statins, which lower cholesterol, are readily available and patients don
Following ischemic stroke, the integrity of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which prevents harmful substances such as inflammatory molecules from entering the brain, can be impaired in cerebral areas distant from initial ischemic insult. This disruptive condition, known as diaschisis, can lead to chronic post-stroke deficits, University of South Florida researchers report.
In experiments using laboratory rats modelling ischemic stroke, USF investigators studied the consequences of the compromised BBB at the chronic post-stroke stage.
‘Following ischemic stroke, the pathological changes in remote areas of the brain likely contribute to chronic deficits,’ said neuroscientist and study lead author Svitlana Garbuzova-Davis, PhD, associate professor in the USF Health Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair. ‘These changes are often related to the loss of integrity of the BBB, a condition that should be considered in the development of strategies for treating stroke and its long-term effects.’
Edward Haller of the USF Department of Integrative Biology, the co-author who performed electron microscopy and contributed to image analysis, emphasised that ‘major BBB damage was found in endothelial and pericyte cells, leading to capillary leakage in both brain hemispheres.’ These findings were essential in demonstrating persistence of microvascular alterations in chronic ischemic stroke.
While acute stroke is life-threatening, the authors point out that survivors often suffer insufficient blood flow to many parts of the brain that can contribute to persistent damage and disability. Their previous investigation of subacute ischemic stroke showed far-reaching microvascular damage even in areas of the brain opposite from the initial stroke injury. While most studies of stroke and the BBB explore the acute phase of stroke and its effect on the blood-brain barrier, the present study revealed the longer-term effects in various parts of the brain.
The pathologic processes of stroke-induced vascular injury tend to occur in a ‘time-dependent manner,’ and can be separated into acute (minutes to hours), subacute (hours to days), and chronic (days to months). BBB incompetence during post-stroke changes is well-documented, with some studies showing the BBB opening can last up to four to five days after stroke. This suggests that harmful substances entering the brain during this prolonged BBB leakage might increase post-ischemic brain injury.
In this study, the researchers used laboratory rats modelling ischemic stroke and observed injury not only in the primary area of the stroke, but also in remote areas, where persistent BBB damage could cause chronic loss of competence.
The primary focus for therapy development could be restoring endothelial and/or astrocytic integrity towards BBB repair, which may be ‘beneficial for many chronic stroke patients,’ senior authors Cesar V. Borlongan and Paul R. Sanberg suggest. The researchers also recommend that cell therapy might be used to replace damaged endothelial cells.
‘A combination of cell therapy and the inhibition of inflammatory factors crossing the blood-brain barrier may be a beneficial treatment for stroke,’ Garbuzova-Davis said.
University of South Florida
For the millions of people forced to rely on a plastic tube to eliminate their urine, developing an infection is nearly a 100 percent guarantee after just four weeks. But with the help of a little bubble-blowing, biomedical engineers hope to bring relief to urethras everywhere.
About half of the time, the interior of long-term urinary catheters become plagued by biofilms
Plasma medicine is a new and rapidly developing area of medical technology. Specifically, understanding the interaction of so-called atmospheric pressure plasma jets with biological tissues could help to use them in medical practice. Under the supervision of Sylwia Ptasinska from the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, USA, Xu Han and colleagues conducted a quantitative and qualitative study of the different types of DNA damage induced by atmospheric pressure plasma exposure. This approach, they hope, could ultimately lead to devising alternative tools for cancer therapy as well as applications in hospital hygiene, dental care, skin diseases, antifungal care, chronic wounds and cosmetics treatments.
To investigate the DNA damage from the so-called non-thermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet (APPJ), the team adopted a common technique used in biochemistry, called agarose gel electrophoresis. They studied the nature and level of DNA damage by plasma species, so-called reactive radicals, under two different conditions of the helium plasma source with different parameters of electric pulses.
They also identified the effect of water on DNA damage. To do so, they examined the role of reactive radicals involved in DNA damage processes occurring in an aqueous environment. They then compared them to previous results obtained in dry DNA samples.
The next step would involve investigating plasma made from helium mixtures with different molecular ratios of other gases, such as oxygen, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and steam, under different plasma source conditions. The addition of another gas is expected to increase the level of radical species, such as reactive oxygen species and reactive nitrogen species, known to produce severe DNA damage. These could, ultimately, help to destroy cancerous tumour cells.
Springer
Investigators at the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute have discovered eye abnormalities that may help reveal features of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Using a novel laboratory rat model of Alzheimer’s disease and high-resolution imaging techniques, researchers correlated variations of the eye structure, to identify initial indicators of the disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia, which is characterised by loss of memory and a progressive decline in cognitive function. To date, more than 26 million people are estimated to suffer from the disease and the number is expected to quadruple by 2050. Despite the disease being described over a century ago, treatment and understanding of the disease remain rather limited.
‘Detecting changes in the brain that indicate Alzheimer’s disease can be an extremely challenging task,’ said Shaomei Wang, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the Regenerative Medicine Institute and Department of Biomedical Sciences. ‘By using the eye as a window to brain activity and function, we may be able to diagnose patients sooner and give them more time to prepare for the future. Options may include earlier enrolment in clinical trials, developing support networks and dealing with any financial and legal matters.’
Using both animal models and post-mortem human retinas from donors with Alzheimer’s disease, researchers found changes in the retinal pigment epithelial layer, which harbours the supportive cells located in the back of the eye, and in the thickness of the choroidal layer that has blood vessels providing nutrients to the retina. Changes in these two regions were detected using sophisticated, state-of-the-art imaging and immunological techniques.
With high-resolution, microscopic imaging and visual acuity measurements, investigators were able to monitor tissue degeneration in the cell layer and vascular layer at the back of the eye, as well as decline in visual function, that were strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
‘Greater magnitude in these eye abnormalities may mean a greater chance of a patient having Alzheimer’s disease,’ said Alexander Ljubimov, PhD, director of the Eye Program within the Regenerative Medicine Institute and co-author of the study. ‘We found that a rat model showed similar signs to the human ailment in the eye. If true in a larger number of humans, these findings may be used to study Alzheimer’s disease mechanisms and test potential drugs.’
Though additional research is needed to investigate the mechanisms of these ocular changes in relation to changes in the brain, investigators hope to ultimately aid early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by studying the most approachable part of the central nervous system: the eye. Cedars-Sinai has been at the cutting edge of studies on the eye and Alzheimer’s disease with a previous report showing amyloid plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, also build up in the eye using a similar animal model of the disease.
‘It is fascinating that the eye may provide such a window to the brain and eventually predict diseases such as Alzheimer’s, although more human studies are now needed to confirm this animal work,’ said Clive Svendsen, PhD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute and a co-author on the study. Other members of the Regenerative Medicine Institute Eye Program, include Yu Chun Tsai, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow; and Bin Lu, MD, PhD, and Sergey Girman, PhD, both project scientists.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Nanoparticles have a great deal of potential in medicine: for diagnostics, as a vehicle for active substances or a tool to kill off tumours using heat. ETH Zurich researchers have now developed particles that are relatively easy to produce and have a wide range of applications.
If you put your hand over a switched-on torch in the dark, it appears to glow red. This is because long-wavelength red light beams penetrate human tissue more effectively than short-wavelength blue light. ETH Zurich researchers exploit this fact in a new kind of nanoparticles: so-called plasmonic particles, which heat up when they absorb near-infrared light. This could enable them to kill tumour tissue with heat, for instance.
Gold is a popular material for nanoparticles used therapeutically, as it is well tolerated and does not usually trigger any undesirable reactions. In the characteristic ball or sphere shape of nanoparticles, however, gold does not have the necessary properties to work as a plasmonic particle that absorbs sufficiently in the near-infrared spectrum of light to heat up. To do so, it needs to be moulded into a special shape, such as a rod or shell, so that the gold atoms adopt a configuration that starts absorbing near-infrared light, thereby generating heat. Producing such nanorods or nanoshells in sufficient amounts, however, is complex and expensive.
A team of researchers headed by Sotiris Pratsinis, Professor of Particle Technology at ETH Zurich, has now discovered a trick to manufacture plasmonic gold particles in large amounts. They used their existing know-how on plasmonic nanoparticles and made sphere-shaped gold nanoparticles that display the desired near-infrared plasmonic properties by allowing them to be aggregated. Each particle is coated with a silicon dioxide layer beforehand, which acts as a placeholder between the individual spheres in the aggregate. Through the precisely defined distance between several gold particles, the researchers transform the particles into a configuration that absorbs near-infrared light and thus generates heat.
‘The silicon dioxide shell has another advantage’, explains Georgios Sotiriou, first author on the study and, until recently, a postdoc in Pratsinis
‘Today, we
Obese people who have stomach surgery to help them lose weight will halve their risk of heart attack according to new research from a team of doctors at the University of East Anglia, University of Manchester and University of Aberdeen.
The procedures, known as bariatric surgery, involve techniques such as gastric banding, which are available on the National Health Service (NHS), UK for selected patients.
New research published today in the International Journal of Cardiology reviewed data from 14 studies involving more than 29,000 patients who underwent bariatric surgery. It reveals that death rates were reduced by 40 per cent, and that heart attacks in particular were reduced by half
Scientists have moved a step closer to being able to preserve fertility in young boys who undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer. The new research addresses the safety of an option scientists are developing for boys who aren
A new angiographic analysis of the CHAMPION PHOENIX trial examined the incidence and impact of stent thrombosis (ST) in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
CHAMPION PHOENIX was a prospective, double-blind, active-controlled trial which randomised 11,145 patients to receive intravenous cangrelor or oral clopidogrel administered at the time of PCI. In a previous analysis presented at TCT 2013 and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, cangrelor significantly reduced periprocedural and 30-day ischemic events in patients undergoing PCI.
In this new analysis, an independent core laboratory (CRF) blinded to the treatment performed the angiographic analysis of 10,939 of the randomised patients. Stent thrombosis was defined as the occurrence of either intraprocedural ST (IPST) or ARC defined ST (definite or probable). Adverse events were adjudicated by an independent clinical events committee.
ST occurred in 120 patients (1.1 percent) at 48 hours and in 175 patients (1.6 percent) at 30 days. The occurrence of ST at 48 hours and 30 days was associated with a marked increase in 30-day mortality (OR [95%CI] = 15.3 [8.6, 27.2], p<0.001; and 55.2 [36.6, 83.3] p<0.001, respectively). IPST, ARC acute ST (=24 hrs), and ARC subacute ST (1-30 days) occurred in 89 (0.8 percent), 32 (0.3 percent), and 60 (0.5 percent) patients respectively. Each type of ST was also associated with an increase in 30-day mortality (IPST: 17.4 [8.4, 36.1], p<0.001, ARC acute ST: 43.3 [18.1, 103.5], p<0.001, ARC sub-acute ST: 189.1, [107.9, 331.4], p<0.001). 'Regardless of the exact type of stent thrombosis, it remains associated with a high rate of death,' stated Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, Executive Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women
April 2024
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