Fecal colour and consistency are well-known markers of digestive health in both children and adults, but paying attention to a newborn
A new transformative point-of-care diagnostic which gives instant results for the detection of genetic material from the HIV virus is being rolled out across Africa. The small, highly portable machine – known as SAMBA II – will help transform the lives of millions, especially HIV exposed infants who have a one in two chance of early death if HIV infection is not diagnosed within the first six weeks of life and if they are not immediately initiated on treatment.
Already available in Uganda and Malawi, SAMBA II has just received product approval in Kenya, making available for the first time rapid, accurate and cost-effective DNA point-of-care diagnosis in even the most environmentally challenging and resource-limited settings.
Developed by Diagnostics for the Real World, a spin-out company from the University of Cambridge, the new SAMBA II instrument and chemistry has been a decade in the making.
SAMBA II makes use of innovative technology to offer an effective sample-in-results-out test without the need for centralised laboratories or specialist technicians. It integrates the whole testing process within a single instrument using ready-made disposable cartridges. Easy to read results are obtained in less than two hours and indicated by a simple blue line similar to a pregnancy test.
Until now nucleic acid based HIV tests have taken many hours to perform and required specialist facilities and highly-trained personnel. The necessity of transporting samples over long distances to centralised laboratories creates numerous logistical problems including long delays. In the meantime, many patients may be lost before they can be initiated on treatment. By bringing rapid testing to the point-of-care, SAMBA II solves these difficulties.
Dr Helen Lee, Director of Research at the Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge and CEO of Diagnostics for the Real World said:
High-dose statin treatment around the time of cardiac surgery does not reduce the rate of in-hospital complications after cardiac surgery, according to the results of a new study.
The lack of benefit in the Statin Therapy In Cardiac Surgery (STICS) trial is a bit of a surprise, said lead investigator Barbara Casadei, MD, DPhil, from the John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, UK.
For the first time, a minimally invasive transcatheter valve – tested by Baylor Research Institute in Dallas (BRI) – has been shown to save more lives than open-heart surgery, according to new research revealed at the American College of Cardiology
A new study by radiation oncologists at Mayo Clinic comparing the world
Physical therapy after total hip (THR) or total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is standard care for all patients. A new study also found that physical therapy before joint replacement surgery, or
When dealing with acute cardiovascular diseases, a few seconds can make the difference and instant access to the best recommendations can save lives. This led the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association (ACCA) of the ESC to develop a user friendly interactive application, allowing professionals to have immediate access to diagnostics pathways on their mobile devices.
The Toolkit on emergency cardiac care, first published as a pocket-sized manual, is helping practitioners across the globe to make the best decisions in seconds. The Toolkit was created by expert members of ACCA and can be downloaded.
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A stroke therapy using stem cells extracted from patients’ bone marrow has shown promising results in the first trial of its kind in humans.
Five patients received the treatment in a pilot study conducted by doctors at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and scientists at Imperial College London.
The therapy was found to be safe, and all the patients showed improvements in clinical measures of disability. It is the first UK human trial of a stem cell treatment for acute stroke to be published.
The therapy uses a type of cell called CD34+ cells, a set of stem cells in the bone marrow that give rise to blood cells and blood vessel lining cells. Previous research has shown that treatment using these cells can significantly improve recovery from stroke in animals. Rather than developing into brain cells themselves, the cells are thought to release chemicals that trigger the growth of new brain tissue and new blood vessels in the area damaged by stroke.
The patients were treated within seven days of a severe stroke, in contrast to several other stem cell trials, most of which have treated patients after six months or later. The Imperial researchers believe early treatment may improve the chances of a better recovery.
A bone marrow sample was taken from each patient. The CD34+ cells were isolated from the sample and then infused into an artery that supplies the brain. No previous trial has selectively used CD34+ cells, so early after the stroke, until now.
Although the trial was mainly designed to assess the safety and tolerability of the treatment, the patients all showed improvements in their condition in clinical tests over a six-month follow-up period.
Four out of five patients had the most severe type of stroke: only four per cent of people who experience this kind of stroke are expected to be alive and independent six months later. In the trial, all four of these patients were alive and three were independent after six months.
Dr Soma Banerjee, a lead author and Consultant in Stroke Medicine at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said:
Individuals who are squeamish about injections or are looking for a way to let collagen penetrate deeper into the skin may soon have a solution that is faster, more effective and painless. The key lies in a small adhesive patch topped with minuscule needles that is pioneered by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
The research team, led by Dr Kang Lifeng of the Department of Pharmacy at the NUS Faculty of Science, has successfully developed a simple technique to encapsulate lidocaine, a common painkiller, or collagen in the tiny needles attached to an adhesive patch. When applied to the skin, the microneedles deliver the drug or collagen rapidly into the skin without any discomfort to the user.
This innovation could be used clinically to administer painkiller non-invasively to patients, or in home care settings for patients suffering from conditions such as diabetes and cancer. In addition, the novel transdermal delivery system could also be used for cosmetic and skincare purposes to deliver collagen to inner skin layers.
Faster delivery of painkillers is key to effective management of acute and chronic pain conditions. Currently, such drugs are mainly administered through invasive injections, or through the use of conventional transdermal patches, which may have limited efficiency due to variability of drug absorption among individuals.
To address the clinical gap, Dr Kang, together with Dr Jaspreet Singh Kochhar, who had recently graduated from NUS with a doctorate degree in Pharmacy, and their team members, used a photolithography based process to fabricate a novel transdermal patch with polymeric microneedles. The tiny needles are encapsulated with lidocaine, a common painkiller known for its pain-relief property.
Laboratory experiments showed that the novel microneedles patch can deliver lidocaine within five minutes of application while a commercial lidocaine patch takes 45 minutes for the drug to penetrate into the skin. The shorter time for drug delivery is made possible as the miniature needles on the patch create micrometre-sized porous channels in the skin to deliver the drug rapidly. As the needle shafts are about 600 micro-meters in length, they do not cause any perceivable pain on the skin.
The patch also comprises a reservoir system to act as channels for drugs to be encapsulated in backing layers, circumventing the premature closure of miniaturised pores created by the microneedles. This facilitates continued drug permeation. In addition, the size of patch could be easily adjusted to encapsulate different drug dosages.
By delivering painkillers faster into the body through the skin, patients could potentially experience faster pain relief. In addition, enabling a larger amount of lidocaine to permeate through the skin could potentially reduce the time needed to apply the patch and this reduces the likelihood of patients developing skin irritation. National University of Singapore
By 2015, all baby boomers will be 50 or older. In an editorial for the Journal of Addictions Nursing, Savage writes that, unlike members of previous generations, many of these individuals have been using alcohol (and other drugs) for their entire adult lives. There are consequences.
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