Cardiologists at The Mount Sinai Hospital have begun implanting tiny, state-of-the-art microchip sensors in patients with advanced heart failure to better monitor symptoms and reduce their chances of returning to the hospital. 

The implantable sensor, called the CardioMEMS HF System, developed by St. Jude Medical, is a battery-less, dime-sized device placed directly inside the heart to monitor its pulmonary artery. Implanted through a minimally invasive procedure, the sensor detects increases in pulmonary artery pressure, an early sign of worsening heart failure that can be detected before symptoms arise. Among the symptoms of advanced heart failure is shortness of breath, the kind of frightening experience that sends people racing to emergency rooms.

Once implanted, the device transmits daily pressure readings to a patient’s medical team, who can then proactively provide real-time, personalised feedback before symptoms worsen. The device has been shown in clinical trials to reduce hospital readmissions for advanced heart failure patients by up to 37 percent.

The new microchip technology is designed for advanced heart failure patients who have been hospitalised within the previous 12 months. The goal of Mount Sinai’s heart failure experts is to improve the quality of life in patients with heart failure and reduce the likelihood of hospital readmissions, a growing trend for this high-risk patient population which has become a national priority for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reduce readmissions to curb growing healthcare costs.

‘This new device will enable heart failure patients to live more comfortably, easing their worries as we closely monitor them for the earliest signs of fluid retention, a major cause of the symptoms of breathlessness and tiredness heart failure patients experience,’ says Raymond Bietry, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiology who was the first cardiologist at Mount Sinai to implant the device. Mount Sinai Hospital

St. Louis University scientists led by professor of pharmacological and physiological sciences Daniela Salvemini, Ph.D., discovered that drugs targeting the A3 adenosine receptor can ‘turn off’ pain signals in the spinal cord to provide relief from chronic pain.

Pain is the most common reason that people seek medical attention, but the available treatments–most commonly non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and opioids–are not always successful at relieving pain in patients with chronic pain. For this reason, Salvemini and colleagues teamed up with researchers from the National Institutes of Health, the University of Arizona and two institutes in Quebec, Canada, to investigate a new target for treating chronic pain: the A3 adenosine receptor or A3AR.

In earlier studies, Salvemini’s laboratory demonstrated that two drugs which target the A3AR–IB-MECA and MRS5698–were effective in treating several models of chronic pain, including painful chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, metastatic cancer pain, and nerve injury. More recently, the group sought to uncover the mechanism of A3AR pain relief.

‘Chronic pain can result from the loss of regulatory mechanisms in the nervous system pathway that transmits pain,’ Salvemini said. ‘Adenosine acts as a regulatory signalling molecule in other areas of the nervous system, so we hypothesized that A3AR might also play a role in regulating pain signals during pain processing.’

Indeed, Salvemini and colleagues found that A3AR drugs not only relieved pain, but did so by activating an inhibitory transmitter system known as the gamma amino-butyric acid (GABA) system. In areas of the spinal cord and brain dedicated to pain processing, A3AR activation promoted GABA signalling by preventing the breakdown and removal of GABA from neuronal synapses.

‘In chronic pain, GABA signalling is often lost or diminished. Our A3AR drugs were able to restore GABA signalling in areas that process pain and ‘turn off’ the signals that maintain the pain state,’ Salvemini said.

With A3AR drugs demonstrating good safety profiles in clinical trials as anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agents, Salvemini and colleagues are enthusiastic about the potential of these new drugs to treat chronic pain in patients. EurekAlert

Lightly stimulating the brain with electricity may improve short-term memory in people with schizophrenia, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The procedure, known as transcranial direct current stimulation, involves placing sponge-covered electrodes on the head and passing a weak electrical current between them. It is widely regarded as safe, and the procedure is being studied as a treatment for depression and Alzheimer

Congenital heart experts from Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children