A team of biomedical engineers have developed a prototype of a low-cost portable device that can detect bacterial meningitis in babies replacing the existing painful and difficult lumbar puncture puncture test.

The innovative procedure consists of a simple, non-invasive, high-resolution ultrasound scan of part of the brain, called the fontanelle, through an opening between the cranial bones of babies under 12 months of age. The researchers created algorithms that analyse the image and can indicate, within seconds, whether cellularity, a sign of infection, exists in the cerebrospinal fluid.

The economical procedure, aims to revolutionize the detection of this illness, especially in developing countries where hospitals do not have the facilities to carry out the lumbar puncture. Without the test many children die or suffer serious complications as a result of bacterial meningitis. The procedure can be used without specialized training, and has already been tested on a small number of babies at the La Paz University Hospital (Madrid, Spain).

The research was carried out by the Madrid-MIT M+Visi

New evidence has been gained for the success of faecal microbial transplantation in treating severe Clostridium difficile infection, a growing problem worldwide that leads to thousands of fatalities every year. The findings have important implications for a range of diseases associated with microbial imbalance, or dysbiosis, researchers say.

Research led by Michael Sadowsky, Alex Khoruts, and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in collaboration with the Rob Knight Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, reveals that healthy changes to a patient’s microbiome are sustained for up to 21 weeks after transplant, and has implications for the regulation of the treatment. Findings also demonstrate the dynamic nature of faecal microbiota in FMT donors and recipients.

In FMT, faecal matter is collected from a donor, purified, mixed with a saline solution and placed in a patient, usually by colonoscopy. In contrast to standard antibiotic therapies, which further disrupt intestinal microflora and may contribute to the recurrence of CDI, FMT restores the intestinal microbiome and healthy gut function.
Using DNA samples of healthy individuals from the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) as a baseline, Sadowsky and his team compared changes in faecal microbial communities of recipients over time to the changes observed within samples from the donor. Significantly, the composition of gut microbes in the both donor and recipient groups varied over the course of the study, but remained within the normal range when compared to hundreds of samples collected by the HMP.

According to Sadowsky, the findings have important implications for a range of diseases associated with microbial imbalance, or dysbiosis, and could influence the regulatory regime surrounding FMT, currently treated as a drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA).

‘The dynamic nature of fecal microbiota in both the donor and recipients suggests that the current framework of regulation, requiring consistent composition, may need to be re-examined for faecal transplantations,’ says Michael Sadowsky. ‘Change in faecal microbial composition is consistent with normal responsiveness to shifts in the diet and other environment factors. Variability should be taken into account when comparing microbial composition in normal individuals to those with dysbiosis characteristic of disease states, especially when assessing clinical interventions and outcomes.

Also discovered in the research, the performance of frozen and fresh preparations of faecal material was indistinguishable. Though the sample was limited and warrants further study with a larger cohort, it has several implications for the widespread adoption of FMT. The frozen preparation greatly simplifies the standardization and distribution of the faecal material. It also facilitates long-term storage of donor material for future study and makes FMT accessible to a greater number of physicians and patients. Finally, it offers advantages over fresh material in the testing of faecal samples for pathogens, which in some cases can take several weeks to complete. ScienceDaily

Neural prosthetic devices implanted in the brain’s movement centre, the motor cortex, can allow patients with amputations or paralysis to control the movement of a robotic limb

The acidity of urine

A large-scale, multi-centre study has shown that emergency body cooling does not improve survival rates or reduce brain injury in infants and children with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest more than normal temperature control.

Therapeutic hypothermia, or whole body cooling, can improve survival and health outcomes for adults after cardiac arrest and also for newborns with brain injury due to a lack of oxygen at birth.  But, until now, this treatment has not been studied in infants or children admitted to hospitals with cardiac arrest.

‘Our results show that therapeutic hypothermia is no more effective for treating children after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest than maintaining body temperature within the normal range, ‘ said co-principal investigator Frank W. Moler, M.D., a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. ‘Both treatments help to control fever and result in similar outcomes for patients.’

More than 6,000 children suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the United States each year, according to the American Heart Association’s 2015 heart disease and stroke statistics.  During cardiac arrest, the heart stops pumping effectively, and blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs.  In many cases, the outcome is death or long-term disability.

The study included 295 participants between 2 days and 18 years old who were admitted to children’s hospitals for cardiac arrest, required chest compressions for at least two minutes and remained dependent on mechanical ventilation to breathe.

After their parents or guardians provided consent, children were randomly assigned to one of the two treatment groups. One group received body cooling for two days followed by three days of normal temperature control. Another group received normal temperature control for five days.

During the treatment, study participants lay between special blankets.  Pumps circulate water through tubes in the blankets to maintain specific body temperature ranges: either a lower range of 89.6