An injection of a patient
As the rate of children with autism in the U.S. continues to grow, a new study shows that medical professionals can
Needles almost too small to be seen with the unaided eye could be the basis for new treatment options for two of the world’s leading eye diseases: glaucoma and corneal neovascularization.
The microneedles, ranging in length from 400 to 700 microns, could provide a new way to deliver drugs to specific areas within the eye relevant to these diseases. By targeting the drugs only to specific parts of the eye instead of the entire eye, researchers hope to increase effectiveness, limit side effects, and reduce the amount of drug needed.
For glaucoma, which affects about 2.2 million people in the United States and is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, the goal is to develop time-release drugs that could replace daily administration of eye drops. A painless microneedle injection made once every three to six months – potentially during regular office visits – could improve treatment outcomes by providing consistent dosages, overcoming patient compliance issues.
In the second disease, corneal neovascularization, corneal injury results in the growth of unwanted blood vessels that impair vision. To treat it, the researchers developed solid microneedles for delivering a dry drug compound that stops the vessel growth.
‘The power of microneedles for treating eye conditions is the ability to target delivery of the drug within the eye,’ said Mark Prausnitz, a Regents’ professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. ‘We are developing different microneedle-based systems that can put the drug precisely into the part of the eye where it’s needed. In many cases, we hope to couple that delivery with a controlled-release formulation that would allow one application to treat a condition for weeks or months.’ EurekAlert
A research consortium headed by Professor Hossam Haick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is developing a product that, when coupled with a smartphone, will be able to screen the user
Oxford University doctors and scientists are starting the first safety trial of an experimental preventative Ebola vaccine regimen being developed by the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen).
The Oxford Vaccine Group, part of the University of Oxford Department of Paediatrics, aims to have vaccinated all 72 healthy adult volunteers by the end of January.
The development of this prime-boost vaccine regimen has been accelerated in response to the current outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa, which has claimed over 6,000 lives. An effective vaccine would be an important step in controlling the spread of disease.
Volunteers for the trial, aged 18
A collaborative effort by scientists has led to the development of an innovative strategy that can considerably improve the capabilities of medical imaging with safer procedures for the patient.
Medical imaging is a significant part of healthcare today, with imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) scanning, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) increasing greatly over the last 20 years. However, continuing problems of image resolution and quality still hinder these techniques because of the nature of living tissue. A solution is hyperpolarization, which involves injecting the patient with substances that can enhance imaging quality by following the distribution and fate of specific molecules in the body but that can be harmful or potentially toxic to the patient.
A team of scientists from Ecole Polytechnique F
New research is challenging what many obstetricians and physician anaesthesiologists believe is the best way to position women during labour. According to a study, the traditional practice of positioning women on their side, with hips tilted at 15 degrees, during labour does not effectively reduce compression of the inferior vena cava, a large vein located near the abdominal area that returns blood to the heart, as previously thought. In fact, not until the degree of tilt reached 30 degrees did blood flow only partially increase in patients, the study found.
Researchers have developed a new device that may result in more comfortable mammography for women. According to a study standardizing the pressure applied in mammography would reduce pain associated with breast compression without sacrificing image quality.
Compression of the breast is necessary in mammography to optimize image quality and minimize absorbed radiation dose. However, mechanical compression of the breast in mammography often causes discomfort and pain and deters some women from mammography screening.
An additional problem associated with compression is the variation that occurs when the technologist adjusts compression force to breast size, composition, skin tautness and pain tolerance. Over-compression, or unnecessarily high pressures during compression, is common in certain European countries, especially for women with small breasts. Over-compression occurs less frequently in the United States, where under-compression, or extremely low applied pressure, is more common.
‘This means that the breast may be almost not compressed at all, which increases the risks of image quality degradation and extra radiation dose,’ said Woutjan Branderhorst, Ph.D., researcher in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Physics at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam.
Overall, adjustments in force can lead to substantial variation in the amount of pressure applied to the breast, ranging from less than 3 kilopascals (kPa) to greater than 30 kPa.
Dr. Branderhorst and colleagues theorized that a compression protocol based on pressure rather than force would reduce the pain and variability associated with the current force-based compression protocol. Force is the total impact of one object on another, whereas pressure is the ratio of force to the area over which it is applied.
The researchers developed a device that displays the average pressure during compression and studied its effects in a double-blinded, randomized control trial on 433 asymptomatic women scheduled for screening mammography.
Three of the four compressions for each participant were standardized to a target force of 14 dekanewtons (daN). One randomly assigned compression was standardized to a target pressure of 10 kPa.
Participants scored pain on a numerical rating scale, and three experienced breast screening radiologists indicated which images required a retake. The 10 kPa pressure did not compromise radiation dose or image quality, and, on average, the women reported it to be less painful than the 14 daN force.
The study’s implications are potentially significant, Dr. Branderhorst said. There are an estimated 39 million mammography exams performed every year in the U.S. alone, which translates into more than 156 million compressions. Pressure standardization could help avoid a large amount of unnecessary pain and optimize radiation dose without adversely affecting image quality or the proportion of required retakes.
‘Standardizing the applied pressure would reduce both over- and under-compression and lead to a more reproducible imaging procedure with less pain,’ Dr. Branderhorst said.
The device that displays average pressure is easily added to existing mammography systems, according to Dr. Branderhorst. EurekAlert
Research suggests team-based care is most effective way to control hypertension
Patients diagnosed with high blood pressure are given better control of their condition from a physician-pharmacist collaborative intervention than physician management alone, according to new research.
Pharmacists can play a key role in communicating with physicians to address suboptimal therapy, helping physicians to provide counselling on lifestyle change and performing patient follow-up.
The research was carried out to evaluate the individual care processes of the physician-pharmacist collaborative intervention in treating hypertension, a major cause of heart disease, strokes and aneurysms of the arteries.
In a study combining two randomised controlled clinical trials, the team of researchers led by Brunel University London found that, resulting from the physician-pharmacist team, each antihypertensive medication alone led to systolic blood pressure (SBP) reduction of 7.19mm Hg, and each session of counselling about lifestyle change alone resulted in a SBP reduction of 5.30mm Hg.
The six-month data was taken from two US studies in 2008 and 2009, in which a total of 496 patients were treated.
Puttarin Kulchaitanaroaj, Research Fellow at Brunel University London
A team of investigators at Children
April 2024
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