Medical glue ‘can fix broken heart’

A medical superglue has been developed that has the potential to patch heart defects on the operating table or stop bleeding on the battlefield.

The new adhesive may eventually replace stitches and staples in heart, gut and blood vessel surgery, says a US team.

Tests on pigs show it can seal cardiac defects in seconds and withstand the forces inside the heart.

The glue, inspired by the sticking abilities of slugs, could be available for human use in two years.

Skin glue is a special type of medical adhesive used to join the edges of a wound together, while the wound starts to heal.

Medics may use skin glue to close wounds, instead of other methods such as stitches or staples.

_72145227_c0090590-hole_in_the_heart_treatment-spl

However, until now medical glue has not proved strong enough to withstand the forces inside the pumping chambers of the heart or major blood vessels.

Inspired by slugs
The new glue, developed by Harvard Medical School, can provide a waterproof seal that is bonded in a few seconds with a shine of UV light.

Study co-author Prof Jeffrey Karp, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, told. “We have developed a surgical glue that can be used in open and more invasive procedures and seal dynamic tissues such as blood vessels and the heart, as well as the intestines.

“We think that our glue could augment stitches or staples or possibly replace them.

“More importantly, this should open the door to a greater adaptation of minimally invasive procedures.”

The polymer adhesive, which is both blood and water repellent, is inspired by the ability of animals, such as slugs, to cling to surfaces using sticky secretions that work in the wet.

The researchers tested the glue on the hearts of pigs, which resemble human hearts, during surgery, and found that it could effectively repair heart defects in the animals.

They say further studies testing the safety of the glue in humans are needed, but the results suggest the new surgical glue could be used for sealing open wounds quickly in trauma.

Prof Karp said he expected the glue to be available in two to three years, after undergoing human testing.

Dr Sanjay Thakrar from the British Heart Foundation said: “The cardiovascular system is a dynamic environment where there is continuous blood flow and tissue contractions and existing glues often don’t work well in these conditions.

“These researchers seem to have found an innovative way to overcome these issues, which could be especially useful during minimally invasive procedures.”

“As the scientists only measured the effectiveness of the glue over a short time period, it is important to see how the glue performs for longer durations.”

The research is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine

Source: BBC news

Utah Mom to Give Birth to Daughter’s Daughter

A 58-year-old Utah woman is set to give birth in a few weeks — to her first grandchild.

Julia Navarro is serving as a gestational surrogate for her daughter and son-in-law after the couple struggled with fertility problems.

Navarro’s daughter Lorena McKinnon said she began trying to have a baby with her husband, Micah McKinnon, three years ago.

The 32-year-old Provo woman said she’s had about a dozen miscarriages, with the longest pregnancy lasting 10 weeks.

After several tries, the couple began looking for a surrogate. McKinnon said a friend and sister both considered carrying her baby, but ultimately decided against it.

That’s when her mother offered to step in.

Navarro had to undergo hormone shots for three months before an embryo fertilized by her daughter and son-in-law could be implanted. Because of her age, doctors had warned there was only a 45 percent chance the implantation would be successful.

But the procedure was a success, and Navarro said she’s had a smooth pregnancy carrying a developing baby girl.

As with other surrogacy arrangements, the couple and Navarro needed three months of counseling.

“The psychologists wanted to make sure we knew what we were getting into — that we were mentally prepared,” McKinnon said. “Mostly, surrogacy contracts are with people you don’t know. It was weird to have a contract with my mom.”

It’s unclear how rare it is for a woman to carry her own grandchild, but recent news reports have detailed similar relationships.

Last year, a 53-year-old Iowa woman gave birth to her twin granddaughters. And in 2012, a 49-year-old woman in Maine gave birth to her grandson.

McKinnon said she was grateful and overwhelmed by her mother’s offer, which eases some of the obstacles and financial burdens for parents using a gestational surrogate.

According to Utah law, surrogates must be 21 or older, financially stable and must have already given birth once.

Couples must be married and are allowed to offer a reasonable payment to a surrogate.

On average, a couple can spend about $60,000 on procedures and paying the surrogate, but McKinnon said her mother’s offer to help is saving the couple about half of that.

Both she and her daughter said they’ve bonded over the experience.

The baby girl is due in early February.

Source: abc news

Woman finds bird skull inside package of frozen spinach

Sarasota, Florida woman who claims she found a bird’s skull inside her package of frozen chopped spinach. And it’s not the kind of thing that maybe looks sort of like a bird skull. It’s the kind of thing that absolutely can’t be confused for anything other than a bird’s skull.

she was making appetizers for a New Year’s Eve party when she discovered the bird’s noggin. She had microwaved the bag and drained it. When Brogan noticed a big chunk, she figured it was just some leftover greens that hadn’t properly defrosted, so she put it aside and didn’t think twice. It wasn’t until the next day that Madeline realized what it really was.

She told the station, “”I picked it up and started pulling the spinach off it and realized there were two eyeholes, and it was a little skull. I ate that eye, or someone did.” Barf.

Brogan says she’s not angry over the matter. On their part,“We did receive communication from the customer through our customer care department, which was shared with our corporate quality assurance team. They are working through the details with the customer and the supplier. We have not received any additional complaints and believe this is an isolated incident.”

Source: Yahoo news

Tech-infused bed called x12 monitors heart rate, eases snoring

If you think a bed that adjusts how firm or soft the mattress is is innovative, get this—now your bed can monitor your heart rate and sleep patterns, too.

If you think a bed that adjusts how firm or soft the mattress is is innovative, get this—now your bed can monitor your heart rate and sleep patterns, too.

Select Comfort, maker of the Sleep Number bed, revealed their latest product at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Time.com reported.

The x12 bed has a wireless connection that allows built-in sensors to track your sleep patterns, monitor your heart rate and study your sleep movement. If you have a partner who snores, you can hit the Partner Snore button to tilt the head section of your partner’s side of the bed upward by six degrees – just enough to help them stop snoring.

You can also review your data in the morning with the connected app to see your sleep score – and compare it to your partner’s score.

This tech-savvy bed goes on sale February 8 for $8,000 for the queen-size version.

Source: news.nom

MCI asked to consider introducing PG level course in Gerontology

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Wednesday asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) and the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to explore the possibility of introducing a new postgraduate level course in ‘Gerontology’ in medical colleges.

This is in keeping in view the problems in old age and the requirement for providing dedicated facilities to senior citizens as required under Section 20 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, the NHRC said in a statement.

The NHRC also observed that with the passage of time, the percentage of aged persons in the country is liable to go up considerably. “To deal with their problems, it is necessary that the healthcare system in the country should be well equipped,” it said.

The Commission in its notice to the Secretaries, Medical Council of India and the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare sought their response within eight weeks.

Source: India Medical times

The truth behind baby carrots

Baby carrots have become a lunch box staple. Parents love them for their convenience and because they’re seen as a healthy food choice. Kids love them because they’re sweet and fun to eat.

But what’s the real deal behind baby carrots?

After all, they’re not like regular carrots. They’re perfectly shaped with rounded edges; they don’t have the same thick core; and, even peeled, they’re bright orange. And a quick Google search of baby carrots turns up some frightening information on how they’re made and whether they’re really “soaked in chlorine.” What’s up with that?

We decided to dig up the truth on baby carrots, and here’s what we found.

Most baby carrots sold in U.S. supermarkets are really what the industry calls “baby cuts” – made from longer carrots that have been peeled and cut into a smaller size. These carrots have been specifically bred to be smaller in diameter, coreless and sweeter than regular carrots.

Bob Borda, a spokesman for Grimmway Farms, the world’s largest carrot grower (it ships 10 million pounds every day), says that over the years the company has developed a hybrid that combines the best qualities from over 250 known commercial varieties.

But baby carrots didn’t start out that way. Prior to the mid-1980s, broken and misshaped carrots were discarded, leaving some farmers with as little as 30 percent of their crop to take to stores. Tired of throwing away perfectly good food, California carrot farmer Mike Yurosek took the carrots and used a potato peeler to reshape them into small pieces more suitable for quick munching. Yurosek purchased an industrial green bean cutter to quickly whittle the carrots into the familiar 2-inch portions we still see today — and their popularity took off.

Baby carrot products have been the fastest growing segment of the carrot industry since the early 1990s and are among the most popular produce items in the supermarket aisle – more than potatoes and celery, according to a 2007 USDA report.

While Yurosek’s baby cut carrots have evolved, there has remained a persistent concern from some consumers over how they’re grown and processed.

In order to create thinner vegetables, baby carrots are planted closer together than traditional carrots. In as little as 120 days from planting, the carrots are dug up and trucked to the processing house to be cut and peeled. But before packaging, all carrots receive a brisk scrub accompanied by a chlorine bath.

Wait, what? Chlorine, you say, as in the same chemical you put in your pools?

Borda says Grimmway Farms, whose labels include Cal-Organic, uses a chlorine solution on all its carrots – organic and non-organic — to prevent food poisoning, before a final wash in water. Grimmway says the chlorine rinse is well within limits set by the EPA and is comparable to levels found in tap water.

Ashley Bade, nutritionist and founder of Honest Mom Nutrition, says the chlorine bath is a standard practice in many pre-cut food items. “The chlorine-water solution is a needed step in the process to limit the risk of food-borne illnesses such as E.coli,” she says.

Yet the controversy over chemical rinsing has caused a minor uproar among organic communities and concerned parents wanting to rid their children’s lunchboxes of potentially dangerous chemicals.

In fact, when FoxNews.com contacted Bolthouse Farms, the nation’s second largest carrot producer, spokeswoman Kathleen Corless said the company didn’t want to be interviewed for this story. “We don’t want to keep perpetuating the myth that baby carrots are dyed or bleached,” she said.

“I have had clients bring up concerns regarding baby carrots after some rumors about the processing of baby carrots involving ‘soaking them in chlorine or bleach,’” Bade said, adding that the carrots are safe to eat.

The truth is that baby carrots are no different from packaged lettuce or any other prepared produce — like bagged lettuce—you find in the grocery store.

Nutritionists say consumers concerned about the chlorine can just buy whole, unprocessed carrots and wash, peel and cut them themselves.

But Dr. Aruna Weerasooriya, researcher and professor of agricultural sciences at Prairie View A&M University, says a perhaps larger, less known health concern is how the manipulation of certain vegetables degrades their nutritional value.

“When you look at wild carrots, they have high levels of Thymol, a phyto-chemical that is essential for the body to control bacteria and ward off viral infections,” he said. “Now, when you look at some of these new carrot breeds, this type of phytochemical just isn’t there.”

Weerasooriya believes that carrot companies are trading in nutritional value for increased convenience to the customer – and profit for themselves. “Research should focus on how to retain some of these nutrients, but instead companies are probably more concerned about a longer shelf life.”

Source: fox news

Unexpected diagnosis: Some medical tests may be harmful to your health

Everyone’s heard a story: Someone got an MRI for a sports injury or dizziness and the radiologist found a tumor, just in the nick of time. Or maybe it was an aneurysm, just about to burst. Lives were saved. It was great luck.

Some of the stories are dramatic. Joan Rachlin of Boston got what seemed to be a routine Pap smear 27 years ago. Like most Pap smears, it was deemed normal. “I got a call something like seven months later from a gynecological pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston,” Rachlin told NBC News.

“He was doing research on Pap smear tissue and he had come across mine. He discovered that my Pap smear had been misread and that, in fact, I had a cancerous lesion.”

It’s what’s called an incidental finding — the researcher, who Rachlin says does not wish to be named, was studying something else and in fact had to go to some trouble to match the sample to a real person. “He thought my Pap smear had really been so poorly interpreted that my life was in danger,” said Rachlin, who is executive director of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research. “I am alive today because a very, very conscientious researcher had read my Pap and decided to break the code and find me.”

Joan Rachlin found out she had cancer 27 years ago, purely by accident. There were no guidelines at the time for telling her.
Courtesy of Joan Rachlin
Joan Rachlin found out she had cancer 27 years ago, purely by accident. There were no guidelines at the time for telling her.
There were no guidelines — the researcher just went rogue. More checks showed Rachlin did indeed have cancer, but it was early stage and surgery took care of it.

Today whole industries are building up around the possibility that a test will find a medical problem that was just about to kill you. The latest entry — whole genome tests that promise to detail your medical future in a drop of spit.

But it’s starting to become clear that not all these findings are lifesaving, and some can be downright harmful. Take the case of the elderly woman whose chest lung X-ray showed what looked like lung tumors. She had a biopsy done — a tricky procedure that involves poking a long needle through the chest wall, or sending a bronchoscope down into the delicate lungs. Her lung collapsed and she died. The tumor, it turned out, was harmless. Were it not for the scan, she would have still been alive.

Her case is outlined in a report issued last month by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

As more and more tests become available and standard, from MRIs to CT scans, to genetic tests and ultrasounds, these issues will come up more often. There’s even a name for these often harmless tumors that get discovered — they’re called incidentalomas.

For instance, 10 percent of brain scans and more than 30 percent of abdominal CT scans turn up something that doctors weren’t looking for and that may need more tests, says Dr. Stephen Hauser, who heads the neurology department at the University of California, San Francisco and who helped lead the Bioethics Commission panel in its report on the issue.

Source: Nmc news

Diet and exercise: cancer benefits in huge study of women’s health

In a large study of women’s health, postmenopausal women who followed a healthy lifestyle were at a third lower risk of death, including a 20% smaller chance of dying from cancer, than women who did not follow guidance on diet, weight, physical activity, and alcohol intake.

“While it is well recognized that tobacco cessation is the lead behavioral change to reduce cancer risk,” the authors write, they analyzed the effect of other cancer prevention recommendations.

The researchers used data gathered by the observational study in the women’s health initiative of the US National Institutes of Health, which was launched in 1992 with a $140 million, 15-year contract: “the largest coordinated study of women’s health ever undertaken.”

Cynthia Thomson PhD and her colleagues analyzed data from 65,838 postmenopausal women age between 50 and 79 years.

The participants were enrolled in the women’s health initiative between 1993 and 1998 at 40 clinical centers across the country, and the team’s analysis represents the “largest study of postmenopausal women in the US.”

Those women who adhered most to lifestyle recommendations had a 22% lower risk for breast cancer and a 52% lower risk for colorectal cancer, compared with women who did not closely follow guidance.

The recommendations being followed were the American Cancer Society (ACS) guidelines on nutrition and physical activity, which have four central planks:

“Achieve and maintain a healthy weight throughout life”
“Be physically active”
“Eat a healthy diet, with an emphasis on plant foods”
“If you drink alcohol, limit your intake.”
Dr. Thomson, professor of public health at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says:

“The message is simple and clear: If you want to reduce your risk for cancer, even later in life, eat a healthy diet, be active daily, avoid or limit alcohol, and don’t smoke.”

“Our results support the ACS guidelines for cancer prevention,” Thomson adds, but she calls for more support for other factors that can reduce the risks further, “because diet and activity alone do not account for the majority of risk.”

The researchers scored women’s adherence to the lifestyle advice on cancer prevention.

Zeroes were given for “behaviors least consistent with the recommendations” and scores of one or two were given for healthy lifestyle actions, adding these up to a maximum level of compliance represented by a total score of eight.

Most of the women in the study had final scores between three and six. Fewer than 1% of the women scored eight after following all of the recommended lifestyle choices.

Analysis of almost 9,000 cancers
Data on the women were collected over an average of 8.3 years, a period that witnessed the diagnosis of 8,632 cancers and 2,356 cancer-related deaths.

The women whose lifestyles were rated the healthiest (a score of seven or eight) showed a lower risk of overall cancer compared with those given low scores (from zero to two).

This included a reduction by a fifth in their risk for breast cancer, and by half for colorectal cancer.

The healthier lifestyles were also associated with a lower risk of death from other causes not related to cancer.

The authors note that guidelines for healthy lifestyle in the prevention of cancer have been based on evidence from few such prospectively identified associations.

The researchers’ conclusions are drawn from the women’s health initiative, which was a study designed at the outset to track future health changes over time.

Such prospective studies result in comparisons that are controlled and more reliable than can be drawn retrospectively, by looking back on data that was not collected for the purpose.

Lifestyle effect was greater in some groups of women
The analysis found an even lower incidence of cancers and lower overall death rate among women from certain ethnic groups as a result of the lifestyle measures, and the paper calls for more research into this difference.

Dr. Thomson says:

“We found that the association was stronger for Asian, African-American, and Hispanic women, compared with non-Hispanic white women.

It is possible that different ethnic groups may have differential disease course with varied response to environmental and/or behavioral exposures.”

Source: medical news today

H5N1 bird flu death confirmed in Alberta, 1st in North America

Alberta health officials have confirmed an isolated, fatal case of H5N1 or avian influenza, federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose said Wednesday.

But officials repeatedly emphasized that there is no risk of transmission between humans.

The infected person, an Alberta resident who recently travelled to Beijing, China, died Jan. 3.

The case was confirmed in a lab test last night. It’s the first such case in North America.

The person first showed symptoms of the flu on a Dec. 27 flight from Beijing to Vancouver aboard Air Canada flight 030. The passenger continued on to Edmonton on Air Canada flight 244, after spending a few hours in the Vancouver airport, and was admitted to hospital Jan. 1. The symptoms of fever, malaise and headache worsened and the patient died two days later. The Public Health Agency of Canada was notified Jan. 5.

There were no respiratory symptoms, said Dr. James Talbot, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health.

The diagnosis at the time of death was an inflammation of the brain and the linings that cover the brain. “That is one of the ways that H5N1 patients die,” Talbot said.

It is not known how the patient contracted the disease. The patient did not leave Beijing, did not travel to farms and did not visit any markets.

“Virtually every case has a pretty strong link to a close contact with birds,” Talbot said, though he noted there are other settings in which a person might catch H5N1, such as a restaurant that kept live birds for slaughter.

Rare in humans

Dr. Gregory Taylor, deputy chief public health officer, said the avian form of influenza has been found in birds, mainly poultry, in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

There have been fewer than than 650 human cases of bird flu in 15 countries over the last decade, primarily among people who have spent time around infected birds, he said.

“The illness [H5N1] causes in humans is severe and kills about 60 per cent of those who are infected,” Taylor said.

“No other illnesses of this type have been identified in Canada since the traveller returned from China. This is an isolated case.”

The officials added that the patient was otherwise healthy and it’s not yet clear how the person contracted H5N1.

Speaking to Evan Solomon, host of CBC News Network’s Power & Politics, Taylor said the patient was relatively young.

“This was a relatively young — well, a young person compared to me, with no underlying health conditions,” he said. Taylor is 58.

Risk of getting H5N1 low

Officials emphasized that this is not a disease transmitted between humans.

There were two people travelling with the infected person, whom officials are following for 10 days to ensure they don’t have any symptoms. They are also going to notify the other passengers from the flights between Beijing and Edmonton, and are following a group of the patient’s “close contacts.”

Talbot said family members of the victim are being monitored and treated with medication, but noted that there’s no sign they are sick.

Officials created confusion by referring to the patient as “him” and “her” in order to avoid identifying anyone. Officials said that they would not identify the sex, age or occupation of the patient. They also refused to say whether the infected passenger was an Edmonton resident or whether the patient went to hospital in Edmonton, although the final leg of the flight ended there.

Talbot said reports that the patient was from Edmonton are erroneous.

Ambrose, who phoned into a news conference in Ottawa, said Canadian officials are working with Chinese authorities on the case, as well as the World Health Organization.

“The risk of getting H5N1 is very low. This is not the regular seasonal flu. This is an isolated case,” she said.

An Air Canada spokeswoman said in a statement the airline is co-operating with officials, but referred any questions on the matter to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Source: CBC news

Roche ‘brain shuttle’ technology offers Alzheimer’s hope

Roche logo_Reuters.jpg

Swiss drug maker Roche has found an efficient way for complex antibody drugs to reach and penetrate the brain, raising the possibility of more effective treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The innovative brain shuttle technology, which has so far been tested in mice, can cross the blood-brain barrier that has been a key obstacle for researchers working on neurological drugs because it acts as a seal against large molecules such as antibodies.

Alzheimer’s is a fatal brain-wasting disease that affects 44 million people worldwide, with the number set to triple by 2050, campaign group Alzheimer’s Disease International says.

Although there is still no treatment that can effectively modify the disease or slow its progression, a number of companies – including Roche, Eli Lilly, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson – are pursuing a variety of approaches to get to the root cause.

It is proving an uphill battle. Over the past 15 years more than 100 experimental Alzheimer’s drugs have failed in tests. Industry analysts believe that the prize for a truly effective drug could be a market worth $10 billion in annual sales.

Roche’s new technology works by hijacking a natural transport mechanism called receptor-mediated transcytosis, which is normally used by the body to transfer proteins inside the brain.

“We have basically designed this module, called shuttle, that binds to this transport mechanism and shuttles a cargo inside the brain,” Luca Santarelli, Roche’s head of neuroscience, ophthalmology and rare diseases, said in a telephone interview.

ANTIBODY BOOST

Results of a study published in the journal Neuron on Wednesday found the technology helped to increase the concentration of antibodies in the brains of mice, reducing the amount of amyloid plaque, which is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s.

Roche tested a precursor of its experimental Alzheimer’s drug gantenerumab in the pre-clinical trials. The amount of antibody that penetrated the brain increased more than fiftyfold.

Santarelli said that the brain shuttle technology is not limited to the memory-robbing disease and could be applied to other neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington’s disease. The drugmaker is in the process of evaluating which therapeutic targets and diseases to prioritize.

Roche has struck a deal with U.S. biotech firm Isis to develop treatments for Huntington’s and aims to engineer a shuttle to increase penetration of drugs into the brain. It is also working on a program with Irish company Prothena in Parkinson’s disease.

Santarelli said that all projects are still in pre-clinical testing and the company needs to undertake a few more steps before it can begin clinical trials.

Turning to Roche’s Alzheimer’s pipeline, he said that its Phase III trial of gantenerumab in patients who have yet to develop dementia is on track, with results expected in the first half of 2016.

Roche has two other drugs in clinical testing, including crenezumab, which has been chosen for a U.S. government-backed trial in a group of Colombians with a genetic mutation that leads to Alzheimer’s in their forties.

Source: health wise daily