The new miracle cure for injuries?

Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie has flown to Serbia for a novel form of treatment – placenta fluid is to be dripped on his injured ankle. Why is he doing this and will it work?

It is not unusual for sports starts to look for super cures for their injuries.

England footballer Wayne Rooney used an oxygen tent prior to the 2006 World Cup to help him recover from a broken foot and six years ago runner Paula Radcliffe rubbed oil from the belly of an emu to ease injuries sustained in a collision with a cyclist.

But the news that Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie is heading to Serbia to get placenta fluid applied to an ankle injury has astonished many.

The 26-year-old hurt his ankle while playing for the Dutch national side in a match against Italy.

He was left with torn ankle ligaments after a challenge 10 minutes into the contest.

Scans revealed a partial tear would keep him out of action for six weeks.

Rapid recoveries

But a Dutch journalist close to the national squad said he could be back in as little as four weeks if the treatment works.

TV and radio reporter Rob Fleur said a woman who specialises in the treatment had been recommended to Van Persie by former team-mates Dutch midfielder Orlando Engelaar and Serbian forward Danko Lazovic.

They both claim to have had rapid recoveries from similar injuries after travelling to Belgrade to see the specialist. …

via BBC News – The new miracle cure for injuries?.

Corn DNA decoded, more genes than humans

In recent years, scientists have decoded the DNA of humans and a menagerie of creatures but none with genes as complex as a stalk of corn, the latest genome to be unraveled.

A team of scientists led by The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published the completed corn genome in the Nov. 20 journal Science, an accomplishment that will speed efforts to develop better crop varieties to meet the world’s growing demands for food, livestock feed and fuel.

“Seed companies and maize geneticists will pounce on this data to find their favorite genes,” says senior author Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., director of Washington University’s Genome Center, who led the multi-institutional sequencing effort. “Now they’ll know exactly where those genes are. Having the complete genome in hand will make it easier to breed new varieties of corn that produce higher yields or are more tolerant to extreme heat, drought, or other conditions.”

Corn, also known as maize, is the top U.S. crop and the basis of products ranging from breakfast cereal to toothpaste, shoe polish and ethanol. The corn genome is a hodgepodge of some 32,000 genes crammed into just 10 chromosomes. In comparison, humans have 20,000 genes dispersed among 23 chromosomes.

The $29.5 million maize sequencing project began in 2005 and is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. departments of agriculture and energy. The genome was sequenced at Washington University’s Genome Center. The overall effort involved more than 150 U.S. scientists with those at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and Iowa State University in Ames playing key roles. …

The genetic code of corn consists of 2 billion bases of DNA, the chemical units that are represented by the letters T, C, G and A, making it similar in size to the human genome, which is 2.9 billion letters long.

But that’s where much of the similarity ends. The challenge for Wilson and his colleagues was to string together the order of the letters, an immense and daunting task both because of the corn genome’s size and its complex genetic arrangements. About 85 percent of the DNA segments are repeated. Jumping genes, or transposons, that move from place to place make up a significant portion of the genome, further complicating sequencing efforts.

A working draft of the maize genome, unveiled by the same group of scientists in 2008, indicated the plant had 50,000-plus genes. But when they placed the many thousands of DNA segments onto chromosomes in the correct order and closed the remaining gaps, the researchers revised the number of genes to 32,000.

via Amaizing: Corn genome decoded.

Your Own Stem Cells Can Treat Heart Disease

The largest national stem cell study for heart disease showed the first evidence that transplanting a potent form of adult stem cells into the heart muscle of subjects with severe angina results in less pain and an improved ability to walk. The transplant subjects also experienced fewer deaths than those who didn’t receive stem cells.

In the 12-month Phase II, double-blind trial, subjects’ own purified stem cells, called CD34+ cells, were injected into their hearts in an effort to spur the growth of small blood vessels that make up the microcirculation of the heart muscle. Researchers believe the loss of these blood vessels contributes to the pain of chronic, severe angina.

“This is the first study to show significant benefit in pain reduction and improved exercise capacity in this population with very advanced heart disease,” said principal investigator Douglas Losordo, M.D., the Eileen M. Foell Professor of Heart Research at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a cardiologist and director of the program in cardiovascular regenerative medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the lead site of the study.

Losordo, also director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute, said this study provides the first evidence that a person’s own stem cells can be used as a treatment for their heart disease. He cautioned, however, that the findings of the 25-site trial with 167 subjects, require verification in a larger, Phase III study.

He presented his findings Nov. 17 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2009. …

via Your Own Stem Cells Can Treat Heart Disease : Northwestern University Newscenter.

Scientists find molecular trigger that helps prevent aging and disease

“We discovered that CBP predicts lifespan and accounts for 80 percent of lifespan variation in mammals,” said Dr. Mobbs. “Finding the right balance is key; only a 10 percent restriction will produce a small increase in lifespan, whereas an 80 percent restriction will lead to a shorter life due to starvation.”

The team found an optimal dietary restriction, estimated to be equivalent to a 30 percent caloric reduction in mammals, increased lifespan over 50 percent while slowing the development of an age-related pathology similar to Alzheimer’s disease….

researchers found that when dietary restriction was maintained throughout the worms' adulthood, lifespan increased by 65 percent and the Alzheimer's disease-related paralysis decreased by about 50 percent.

“We showed that dietary restriction activates CBP in a roundworm model, and when we blocked this activation, we blocked all the protective effects of dietary restriction,” said Dr. Mobbs. “It was the result of blocking CBP activation, which inhibited all the protective effects of dietary restriction, that confirmed to us that CBP plays a key role in mediating the protective effects of dietary restriction on lifespan and age-related disease. “

In the second part of study, Dr. Mobbs and his team looked at the other end of this process: What happens to CBP in a high-calorie diet that has led to diabetes, a disease in which glucose metabolism is impaired? Researchers examined mice and found that diabetes reduces activation of CBP, leading Dr. Mobbs to conclude that a high-calorie diet that leads to diabetes would have the opposite effect of dietary restriction and would accelerate aging.

Dr. Mobbs hypothesizes that dietary restriction induces CBP by blocking glucose metabolism, which produces oxidative stress, a cellular process that leads to tissue damage and also promotes cancer cell growth. Interestingly, dietary restriction triggers CBP for as long as the restriction is maintained, suggesting that the protective effects may wear off if higher dietary intake resumes. CBP responds to changes in glucose within hours, indicating genetic communications respond quickly to fluctuations in dietary intake.

“Our next step is to understand the exact interactions of CBP with other transcription factors that mediate its protective effects with age,” said Dr. Mobbs. “If we can map out these interactions, we could then begin to produce more targeted drugs that mimic the protective effects of CBP.”

via Scientists find molecular trigger that helps prevent aging and disease.

New on-off ’switch’ triggers and reverses paralysis in animals with a beam of light

This tiny worm became temporarily paralyzed when scientists fed it a light-sensitive material, or “photoswitch,” and then exposed it to ultraviolet light.

In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, scientists in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off “switch” that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). It reports the first demonstration of such a light-activated switch in animals.

Neil Branda and colleagues point out that such “photoswitches” — light-sensitive materials that undergo photoreactions — have been available for years. Scientists use them in research. Doctors use light-sensitive materials and photoreactions in medicine in photodynamic therapy to treat certain forms of cancer. Those light-sensitive materials, however, do not have the reversibility that exists in photoswitching.

The JACS report describes development and successful testing of a photoswitch composed of the light-sensitive material, dithienylethene. The scientists grew transparent, pinhead-sized worms (C. elegans) and fed them a dithienylethene. When exposed to ultraviolet light, the worms turned blue and became paralyzed. When exposed to visible light, the dithienylethene became colorless again and the worms' paralysis ended. Many of the worms lived through the paralyze-unparalyze cycle. Scientists were not sure how the switch causes paralysis. The study demonstrates that photoswitches may have great potential in turning photodynamic therapy on and off, and for other applications in medicine and research, they indicate.

via New on-off ’switch’ triggers and reverses paralysis in animals with a beam of light.

Think they will get this to work in humans as well as nematodes? Who would you paralyze and why?

 

Frigid Antarctica Loaded with Viruses

Antarctica’s icy lakes are home to a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously unidentified.

At first glance, Antarctica’s freshwater lakes don’t seem very hospitable to life. They remain frozen for a good nine months out of the year, and they contain very few nutrients. Some of these lakes have little animal life and are dominated by microorganisms, including algae, bacteria, protozoans and viruses.

With few animal and microbial predators around, viruses likely play an important role in controlling the abundance of other microorganisms, the researcher say. However, these viruses have been historically hard to study since many cannot be grown in a laboratory. But thanks to new genome sequencing technology, scientists can identify viruses without needing to grow them.

“We are just starting to uncover the world of viruses, and this is changing the way we think about viruses and the role they play in microbial ecosystems,” said Antonio Alcami, a researcher from the Spanish Research Council.

A virus is little more than a package of DNA surrounded by a capsule structure. To survive, viruses must hijack, or infect, living cells and use the host’s equipment to replicate.

Alcami and his colleagues analyzed DNA from viruses found in water samples collected from Antarctica’s Lake Limnopolar, a surface lake on Livingston Island. They found nearly 10,000 species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified. In total, the viruses were from 12 different families, some of which may be completely new to science, the researchers suggest.

The results reveal this Antarctic lake supports a virus community that’s more diverse than most aquatic environments studied in the world so far – a surprising find considering that the polar region is generally thought to have low biological diversity due to the extreme environmental conditions. The scientists speculate the newly discovered viruses may have adapted specifically to thrive in such harsh conditions.

The team also found the community of viruses changed dramatically depending on the season. When the lake was ice-covered in the spring, the liquid water under the ice was inhabited by mostly small viruses, but in the summer months when the ice melted, the lake was home to mostly larger viruses.

via Frigid Antarctica Loaded with Viruses – Yahoo! News.

Weird. When I found this photo, I swear I did NOT see a man in the photo. I thought he was a brown break in the ice. I guess since I did not expect to see anyone diving in Antarctica my brain rejected what it saw.

Ice retreat creates new CO2 store

It is like finding a forest the size of Wales that nobody knew was there before…

Retreating ice in Antarctic has allowed tiny aquatic plants to flourish and absorb 3.5 million tonnes of carbon from the ocean and atmosphere annually.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey say the new “carbon sink” of phytoplankton is equivalent to discovering a forest the size of Wales.

However, the authors added, the discovery would only have a “minuscule effect on climate change”.

The findings have been published in the journal Global Change Biology.

“What we are talking about are are large ice shelves the size of an English county,” explained lead author Lloyd Peck, a marine biologist for the British Antarctic Survey.

“When they disappear, we are getting new pieces of sea,” he explained.

“In the past, you could not have had life where the ice was because it was perhaps 500m thick and stopped all light coming in. Once it had gone, then you have new areas for light to colonise.”

Writing in the paper, Professor Peck and his colleagues observed: “A range of feedback mechanisms affecting climate change have been identified.

“These feedbacks are almost universally positive, enhancing rates of climate warming.”

These included the warming of sea and air that led to a loss of ice cover, which in turn had reduced the amount of solar energy being reflected back into space by ice (the albedo effect).

Current major carbon sinks – forests and oceanic phytoplankton blooms – were also under threat, they added.

“The loss of glaciers and ice shelves is also thought of as a factor that will predominantly increase warming of the Earth because of changes in albedo and heat take-up in newly uncovered ground and ocean.

But, they said, the loss of ice cover resulted in the “opening up of new areas for biological productivity”.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Ice retreat creates new CO2 store.

Sea Star Swells With Tides

A species of sea star has figured out a novel way of keeping cool on rocky shorelines. The animal literally soaks up chilly water during high tides to protect itself from the blazing temperatures that persist when the tide goes out, scientists announce today.

Sea stars live at the ocean edge on rocky shorelines, and so they endure rapid changes in temperature as the tide comes in, covering them with chilly water, and then recedes to leave them bare to the sun’s rays.

“Sea stars were assumed to be at the mercy of the sun during low tide,” said the lead study researcher Sylvain Pincebourde of François Rabelais University in Tours, France. “This work shows that some sea stars have an unexpected back-up strategy.”

Until now, scientists were not sure how the stars beat the heat. But Pincebourde suspected that perhaps fluid-filled cavities in the star’s arms might play a role.

So they placed so-called ocher sea stars, or Pisaster ochraceus, into aquariums kept at different temperatures and changed the water level to mimic tides. The animals exposed to higher temperatures were essentially bigger, or had a larger body mass, after the following high tide. The researchers figured that since the stars hadn’t eaten, the mass must have been from the water.

“This reservoir of cool water keeps the sea star from overheating when the tide recedes again the next day,” Pincebourde said.

The sea stars are likely cued during low tide that it’s a hot day, the researchers say, and that signals them to soak up more water during the next high tide.

“It would be as if humans were able to look at a weather forecast, decide it was going to be hot tomorrow, and then in preparation suck up 15 or more pounds of water into our bodies,” said study researcher Brian Helmuth of the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

via Sea Star Swells With Tides – Yahoo! News.

Ancient Egyptian library rivaled a modern residential university

I have just returned from Egypt where modern medicine established its roots in the fourth century B.C., but where all its ancient grandeur has been shed by the 21st century A.D. With the exception of the Nile Valley, it doesn't appear that anything could take root today as the windswept dry and sandy desert extends forever to the east and to the west.

Modern Egypt is a police state, with police visibly in charge of almost all the functions of life. There are tourist police and museum police and hotel police and airport police — every variation with the notable exception of traffic police. Cairo traffic, for example, almost defies description. There are ever-changing, three lanes of traffic on every well-marked, two-lane highway and the occasional cross-walks and rare traffic lights are paid no heed by motorists and pedestrians alike. I would say the greatest health risk must be being a pedestrian attempting to cross the street!

The visit was absolutely fantastic and no one should go through life without seeing the pyramids.

But back to medicine.

The ancient Egyptians had a great understanding of human anatomy through their practice of mummification. However, this was not adapted to medical practice until the beginning of the great medical school of Alexandria. The city itself was founded by Alexander the Great after he defeated the Persians in the fourth century B.C., and advanced south through modern Lebanon, Israel and Gaza to invade Egypt.

He selected the site for the city that bears his name but never saw it built. After his untimely death, his empire was divided up between his generals. Egypt and Alexandria went to his half brother Ptolemy Soter, a provincial Macedonian warlord.

HOUSE OF MUSES

It was remarkable and extraordinary that this soldier built one of the greatest academic institutions in history. It was called the House of Muses (from which we derive the word “museum”) and contained all the elements of a modern residential university. It comprised four schools — mathematics, letters, astronomy and medicine. The building eventually accumulated the largest library in the ancient world, with hundreds of thousands of volumes. Within just a couple of generations its discoveries included the accurate measurement of the diameter of the earth, the cylinder and piston, the pump and one-way valve, the science of hydraulics and a system of planetary motion.

… At its peak, the Alexandria school conducted hitherto forbidden human dissection, studied and timed the pulse with a portable water clock invented by a physicist and recognized that the heart was a pump. These advances in medicine were breathtaking at the time, but could not be sustained. Toward the end of the second century, things started to fall apart with squabbling and hair-splitting. With its reputation waning and the exodus of scientists from the oppressive local ruler, the school closed.

In 48 B.C., Julius Caesar burned the Egyptian fleet in Alexandria harbor while fighting Pompey. The fire spread to destroy the library, but Caesar did not think to mention the incident in his memoirs. The intellectual gem of antiquity was gone forever.

via Ancient Egyptian library rivaled a modern residential university – SILive.com.

A Second Skin

Despite advances in treatment regimens and the best efforts of nurses and doctors, about 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections. But a revolutionary new wound dressing developed at Tel Aviv University could cut that number dramatically.

Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU’s Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered — fibers that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they’ve done their job. A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research – Applied Biomaterials demonstrates that, after only two days, this dressing can eradicate infection-causing bacteria.

The new dressing protects the wound until it is no longer needed, after which it melts away. “We’ve developed the first wound dressing that both releases antibiotic drugs and biodegrades in a controlled manner,” says Prof. Zilberman. “It solves current mechanical and physical limitations in wound-dressing techniques and gives physicians a new and more effective platform for treating burns and bedsores.”

Not as simple as it sounds

While the concept is simple, the technology is not. Skin, Prof. Zilberman explains, serves a number of vastly different purposes. “Wound dressings must maintain a certain level of moisture while acting as a shield,” she says. “Like skin, they must also enable fluids from the wound to leave the infected tissue at a certain rate. It can’t be too fast or too slow. If too fast, the wound will dry out and it won’t heal properly. If too slow, there’s a real risk of increased contamination.”

Prof. Zilberman’s new wound dressing, which does not yet have a formal name, is designed to mimic skin and the way it protects the body. It combines positive mechanical and physical properties with what medical researchers call “a desired release profile of antibiotics.”

via American Friends of Tel Aviv University: A Second Skin.