Controlling a robotic arm with a patient’s intentions
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
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Portable stimulator being tested on Parkinson patients
Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy have shown that a weak electric
Potential new painkiller provides longer lasting effects
Medications have long been used to treat pain caused by injury or chronic conditions. Unfortunately, most are short-term fixes or cause side effects that limit their use. Researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered a new compound that offers longer lasting painkilling effects, and shows promise as an alternative to current anaesthetics.
Study finds no harm from hospital policies that let families observe CPR
When a hospital patient
High-pressure oxygen can effectively treat fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is almost impossible to diagnose. The chronic pain syndrome strikes an estimated 1 in 70 Americans, most of them women. The disorder is often triggered by head trauma, a neurological infection, or severe emotional stress, and is characterized by symptoms such as musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, memory loss and mood swings. Fibromyalgia is often mistaken for other culprits and most patients suffer months, even years, of unrelenting pain before being properly diagnosed. And once diagnosed, patients enjoy little respite because few therapies have been found to be effective in assuaging its symptoms.
A new study by Tel Aviv University researchers may turn the tide. The research found that women with fibromyalgia were able to drastically reduce, or even eliminate, their use of pain medication following hyperbaric oxygen treatment. The study was led by the late Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy and Rice University’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Dr. Shai Efrati of TAU’s Sagol School of Neuroscience and Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, and Prof. Dan Buskila from Soroka Medical Center, and was conducted by a team of scientists from TAU, Rice University, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, Ben-Gurion University, and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
The TAU researchers believe they have also identified the primary factor causing fibromyalgia: the disruption of the brain mechanism for processing pain. ‘As a physician, the most important finding for me is that 70 percent of the patients could recover from their fibromyalgia symptoms,’ said Dr. Efrati. ‘The most exciting finding for the world of research, however, is that we were able to map the malfunctioning brain regions responsible for the syndrome.’
Hyperbaric oxygen chambers expose patients to pure oxygen at higher-than-atmospheric pressures and are commonly used to treat patients with embolisms, burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, and decompression sickness.
The clinical trial, which exposed participants to two months of hyberbaric oxygen therapy, found significant changes in the brain activity and symptoms of 70 percent of participants. The trial involved 60 women who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia at least two years earlier. Half of the 48 patients who completed the therapy received 40 hyperbaric oxygen treatments
Scientists identify a potential new treatment for osteoporosis
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a new therapeutic approach that, while still preliminary, could promote the development of new bone-forming cells in patients suffering from bone loss.
The study focused on a protein called PPARy (known as the master regulator of fat) and its impact on the fate of stem cells derived from bone marrow (
Proton therapy has fewer side effects in oesophageal cancer patients
New research by scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found that oesophageal cancer patients treated with proton therapy experienced significantly less toxic side effects than patients treated with older radiation therapies.
Working with colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Dallas, Texas, Michael Chuong, MD, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the school, compared two kinds of X-ray radiation with proton therapy, an innovative, precise approach that targets tumours while minimizing harm to surrounding tissues.
The researchers looked at nearly 600 patients and found that proton therapy resulted in a significantly lower number of side effects, including nausea, blood abnormalities and loss of appetite.
‘This evidence underscores the precision of proton therapy, and how it can really make a difference in cancer patients’ lives,’ said Dr. Chuong.
Patients with oesophageal cancer can suffer a range of side effects, including nausea, fatigue, lack of appetite, blood abnormalities and lung and heart problems. Proton therapy did not make a difference in all of these side effects, but had significant effects on several.
The results have particular relevance for the University of Maryland School of Medicine; this fall the school will open the Maryland Proton Treatment Center (MPTC). The centre will provide one of the newest and highly precise forms of radiation therapy available, pencil beam scanning (PBS), which targets tumours while significantly decreasing radiation doses to healthy tissue. This technique can precisely direct radiation to the most difficult-to-reach tumours. EurekAlert
Early physical rehabilitation in the ICU leads to better patient outcomes
In a pre- and post-evaluation study, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers found that quality improvement processes for delivering early physical rehabilitation in an intensive care unit (ICU) were sustained five years later
Clinicians ap Watson to accelerate DNA analysis
IBM Watson Health has announced that it is collaborating with more than a dozen leading cancer institutes to accelerate the ability of clinicians to identify and personalize treatment options for their patients. The institutes will apply Watson’s advanced cognitive capabilities to reduce from weeks to minutes the ability to translate DNA insights, understand a person
Optical resonance-based biosensors designed for medical applications
A telecommunications engineer of the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre, has designed optical resonance-based biosensors for use in medical applications like, for example, the detecting of celiac disease. Besides achieving greater resolution and sensitivity, the materials used in these devices are much cheaper and more versatile than the ones used in current technologies (mainly gold and noble metals) so they could offer a potential alternative in the design of biomedical sensors.
A biosensor is an instrument that uses biological molecules (bioreceptors) to detect other biological or chemical substances. In this thesis the bioreceptors have been antibodies, biological molecules that the body produces specifically to fight off antigens. An antigen is a substance foreign to the human body; our immune system recognises it as a threat and in the presence of it the body reacts by producing antibodies to identify and neutralise it. What is more, the biosensor is made up of a substrate (where the physical phenomenon that translates the biological reactions into intelligible information takes place) and the immobilisation layer which causes the antibodies to become attached to the substrate.
‘One of the unique features,’ says the author, ‘is that for the substrate we use silicon waveguides on which we generate a specific type of resonance.’ The biosensors designed are based on the movement of the wavelength of the resonances generated on the basis of the quantity of antigens detected. ‘When the antibodies come together with the antigens, there is a minimum change in the wavelength that our biosensors are capable of picking up.’ This is possible thanks to the resolution achieved by these biosensors and their sensitivity, ‘which enables us to see how much resonances shift on the wavelength as the antibody-antigen links increase.’
The work carried out by Abi