Research

Stem cells may help cure bladder issues

Scientists have now managed to produce tissue from human stem cells that could be transplanted into patients with defective or diseased bladder, says a study.

For the first time, scientists have succeeded in coaxing laboratory cultures of human stem cells to develop into the specialized, unique cells needed to repair a patient’s defective or diseased bladder.

The breakthrough was developed at the University of California’s (UC) Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures and published in the scientific journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

It is significant because it provides a pathway to regenerate replacement bladder tissue for patients whose bladders are too small or do not function properly, such as children with spina bifida and adults with spinal cord injuries or bladder cancer, reported Science Daily.

“Our goal is to use human stem cells to regenerate tissue in the lab that can be transplanted into patients to augment or replace their malfunctioning bladders,” said Eric Kurzrock, professor and head of the division of paediatric urologic surgery at UC Davis Children’s Hospital and lead scientist of the study.

Another benefit of the UC Davis study is the insight it may provide about the pathways of bladder cancer, which is diagnosed in more than 70,000 Americans each year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Source: business standard

New lens design improves kidney stone treatment

Duke engineers have devised a way to improve the efficiency of lithotripsy — the demolition of kidney stones using focused shock waves. After decades of research, all it took was cutting a groove near the perimeter of the shock wave-focusing lens and changing its curvature.I’ve spent more than 20 years investigating the physics and engineering aspects of shock wave lithotripsy,” said Pei Zhong, the Anderson-Rupp Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. “And now, thanks to the willingness of Siemens (a leading lithotripter manufacturer) to collaborate, we’ve developed a solution that is simple, cost-effective and reliable that can be quickly implemented on their machines.”

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The incidence of kidney stones in the United States has more than doubled during the past two decades, due at least in part to the expanding waistlines of its citizens. The condition has also been linked to hot, humid climates and high levels of stress—a combination of living environments that seems to have led to a rise in kidney stone rates of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the past two decades, lithotripter manufacturers introduced multiple changes to their machines. Rather than having patients submerged in a bath of lukewarm water, newer machines feature a water-filled pouch that transfers the shock wave into the flesh. An electrohydraulic shock wave generator used in the past was replaced by an electromagnetic model that is more powerful, more reliable and more consistent.

The new designs made the devices more convenient and comfortable to use, but reduced the effectiveness of the treatment. After years of research, Zhong and his colleagues have determined why.

The increased power in some third-generation shock wave lithotripters narrowed the wave’s focal width to reduce damage to surrounding tissues. But this power jump also shifted the shock wave’s focal point as much as 20 millimetres toward the device, ironically contributing to efficiency loss and raising the potential for tissue damage. The new electromagnetic shock wave generators also produced a secondary compressive wave that disrupted one of the primary stone-smashing mechanisms, cavitation bubbles.

“We were presented with the challenge of engineering a design solution that mitigated these drawbacks without being too expensive,” said Zhong. “It had to be something that was effective and reliable, but also something that the manufacturer was willing to adopt. So we decided to focus on a new lens design while keeping everything else in their system intact.”

The solution was to cut a groove near the perimeter of the backside of the lens and change its geometry. This realigned the device’s focal point and optimized the pressure distribution with a broad focal width and lower peak pressure. It also allowed more cavitation bubbles to form around the targeted stone instead of in the surrounding tissue.

In laboratory tests, the researchers sent shock waves through a tank of water and used a fibre optic pressure sensor to ensure the shock wave was focusing on target. They broke apart synthetic stones in a model human kidney and in anaesthesized pigs and used a high-speed camera to watch the distribution of cavitation bubbles forming and collapsing—a process that happens too fast for the human eye to see.

The results showed that while the current commercial version reduced 54 per cent of the stones into fragments less than two millimetres in diameter, the new version pulverized 89 per cent of the stones while also reducing the amount of damage to surrounding tissue. Smaller fragments are more easily passed out of the body and less likely to recur.

“We feel we have exceeded expectations in our evaluation of this new lens design, which is based on solid physics and engineering principles,” said Zhong, who expects the new lens to enter clinical trials in Germany this summer.

“My hope is that this will be a breaking point demonstrating that effective, interactive collaboration between academia and industry can really improve the design of lithotripters that will benefit millions of stone patients worldwide who suffer from this painful disease,” Zhong said.

“Our design, in principle, can be adapted by other manufacturers to improve their machines as well. I would like to see all lithotripsy machines improved so that urologists can treat stones more effectively and patients can receive better treatment and feel more comfortable with the procedure,” he added.

Source: India Medical Times

Cerebrospinal fluid test may detect Alzheimer’s

Researchers at the University of Texas, in Houston, analysed CSF samples from 50 people with Alzheimer’s disease, 37 people with other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, and 39 people with other brain diseases who had normal memory and thinking abilities. They set out to discover whether small fragments of the protein amyloid, which accumulates into clumps in the brain during Alzheimer’s, were present in the CSF of people with the disease.

Their results showed more of these fragments of protein in the CSF of people with Alzheimer’s compared to those with other diseases. The researchers suggest that more research is needed to explore whether the method could detect the disease at its earliest stages.

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, the UK’s leading dementia research charity, said:
“This very small study suggests a potential way to identify people with Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s too early to tell how accurate this method might be or whether it can distinguish people with the disease from healthy people. We need to see further research in much larger groups of people before we can know whether this approach will be successful.

“Diagnosing Alzheimer’s can be difficult, and the ability to give an accurate diagnosis would be a real boost, allowing people access to the right care and existing treatments. The ability to detect Alzheimer’s accurately is also a key goal for research, as it’s important to be able to test potential new treatments in the right people. Investment in research is vital to develop better diagnosis tools and, crucially, for better treatments to be made available to those who desperately need them.”

Source: alzheimers Research

 

New method boon for kidney stone treatment

The expanding waistlines of the citizens, increasing stress and humid conditions may have given rise, at least in part, to rising incidence of kidney stones in the world, but a way to ease the treatment of the disease has eluded the scientists for some time.

This is likely to change soon as engineers from Duke University in Durham have devised a way to improve the efficiency of lithotripsy – the medical procedure of demolishing kidney stones using focused shock waves.

After decades of research, all it took was cutting a groove near the perimeter of the shock wave-focusing lens and changing its curvature, the engineers said.
“We’ve developed a simple, cost-effective and reliable solution that can be quickly implemented on their machines,” said Pei Zhong, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke University.

In laboratory tests, the researchers sent shock waves through a tank of water and used a fiber optic pressure sensor to ensure the shock wave was focusing on target.

They broke apart synthetic stones in a model human kidney and in anesthesised pigs and used a high-speed camera to watch the distribution of cavitation bubbles forming and collapsing – a process that happens too fast for the human eye to see.

During the past two decades, lithotripter manufacturers introduced multiple changes to their machines, but they couldn’t improve effectiveness of kidney stone treatment.

While the current commercial version reduced 54 percent of the stones into fragments less than two millimeters in diameter, the new version pulverised 89 percent of the stones while also reducing the amount of damage to surrounding tissue.

The study appeared in the journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: Yahoo news

ADHD treatment may increase obesity risk

Previous studies have linked ADHD with an increased risk of obesity. Now researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health say the reason may be because of ADHD stimulant medications, rather than the condition itself.

Using the electronic health record data from the Gesinger Health System, the researchers analyzed 163,820 children between the ages of 3 to 18 years. They found that children who had ADHD and were treated with stimulants experienced a fast adolescent BMI growth compared to children with no ADHD history or stimulant use. Also, the earlier children began using stimulants, the stronger these weight effects were.

This research, published in the journal Pediatrics, backs current research indicating a relationship between ADHD and obesity. However, more research is needed to determine the exact reason behind this connection.

Source: health central

3,000-year-old skeleton with cancer helps scientists understand disease evolution

A research team from Europe recently discovered a 3000 year old skeleton, which was believed to be a young adult male, inside in a tomb in Sudan, and it showed evidence that the person had metastatic carcinoma. The cancer had spread to various parts of the body, so this made it the oldest cancer sample that had ever been found, stated a Durham University press release.

Cancer had always been thought of as a present day condition and it seemed to have been basically non-existent during most of human history, despite being one of the top causes of death in modern times. The skeleton underwent investigation via radiography and also electron microscope scanning. By using these cutting-edge methods, the scientists were able to find that the skeleton was riddled with lesions and tumors that covered the collar bones, upper and lower arms, shoulder blades, ribs, vertebrae, thigh bones and the pelvis.

The findings might be able to aid researchers receive awareness into what was the cause of cancer in the past and how the disease has evolved. Scientists plan on using DNA studies of ancient remains to try and find cancer mutations. Records of cancer from the past have been extremely uncommon and medical researchers think that the modern way of life is behind why the number of cancer cases has risen so radically.

The cancer might have been caused from environmental pollutants such as parasites and wood fires and parasites, or it may have been inherited. It is also possible that some sort of schistosomiasis infection could have been a trigger, as this can cause bladder cancer and is known to be widespread in that area from about 15,000 B.C.

There is very little known about the evolution of cancer in ancient human populations apart from a few written references and a tiny number of skeletons that have cancer signs. Any understandings that scientists can gather from ancient human remains such as the ones found aid in the understanding of the history and evolution of modern diseases. The researches stated that the smaller lesions located on the bones could only have been caused by some sort of cancer from soft tissues in the body even though the precise origin was impossible to figure out from only the bones.

The male skeleton was thought to have been between the ages of 24 and 35 when he died. After this he was buried inside a painted sarcophagus. Before this discovery, there were only two other examples of possible metastatic cancer and they each dated much younger than this skeleton. Scientists believe that by taking an evolutionary line of attack to cancer, information that is discovered from ancient human remains might provide vital elements in finding different ways to look at one of the world’s biggest health problems.

The World Health Organization states that cancer takes the lives of nearly 14 million individuals each year. It is the hope of many researchers that these brand new findings are able to help scientists disentangle the primary causes of cancer so that the disease can be better treated and also stopped. Insights that are found from such remains really help researchers understand the evolution and history of modern diseases.

The research team found the skeleton, which was believed to be a young adult male, inside in a tomb in Sudan, and it showed evidence that the person had metastatic carcinoma. The cancer had spread to various parts of the body, so this made it the oldest cancer sample that had ever been found, stated a Durham University press release.

Source: Liberty voice

New antibiotic discovered for multi-resistant tuberculosis

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Researchers from EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) and the AN Bach Institute in Moscow have discovered a new and extremely promising antibiotic for tuberculosis, especially effective against multi-resistant strains of the disease, which are on the rise in Eastern Europe. The drug, developed as a European FP7 project, has proven very effective against the disease.

In an article published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, the researchers show that, when combined with other drugs, the new antibiotic, called ‘PBTZ169’, can take down even the most resistant strains of tuberculosis bacteria.

Following the publication, the researchers formed the IM4TB Foundation on their campus. Supported by EPFL, the foundation aims to bring the new treatment to the market. This unusual step was taken because traditionally, technology transfer from academia to the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t work well with tuberculosis: development costs are too high and the affected countries are often barely able to maintain their own healthcare infrastructures.

With the IM4TB Foundation, EPFL intends to pick up the slack in the limitations of the industrial model. “The development of antibiotics is increasingly expensive and the countries most affected by tuberculosis are still emergent,” says Benoit Lechartier, co-author of the PBTZ169 study. “The recent closure of the AstraZeneca research centre in India illustrates the extent to which it is difficult for the pharmaceutical industry to invest in infectious diseases.”

Human trials in 2015

Located on the EPFL campus, the IM4TB Foundation plans to move onto human trials within a year, in collaboration with the University of Lausanne Hospitals (CHUV).

PBTZ169 shows much promise. It attacks the bacterium’s strong point – the cell wall, which forms an impenetrable shield against antibiotics and the patient’s immune system. “Our molecule makes the bacterium literally burst open,” explains Stewart Cole, director of the study and head of EPFL’s Global Health Institute.

A cheap but formidable weapon against resistant strains

The researchers showed that PBTZ169 is extremely effective in tri-therapy, where it is combined with a standard drug, pyrazinamide, and a more recent one, bedaquiline – and both these drugs have already been approved by the EU and the FDA for multi-resistant strains. “This could be the winning strategy,” says Cole. “These molecules attack different targets in the bacterium. By combining them, we drastically reduce the risk that it will mutate into more resistant forms.”

As a treatment, PBTZ169 has many advantages. It is not expensive to produce, since it is relatively easy to synthesize. Initial tests have shown good compatibility with other anti-tuberculosis treatments and it is expected to be equally compatible with antiretrovirals used to treat AIDS, as HIV-positive individuals are particularly vulnerable to tuberculosis, and cases of cross-infection are on the rise.

This molecule is the culmination of many years of research. The preliminary versions were formidable in the laboratory, where they decimated bacteria in culture. However, their effectiveness in vivo was limited. New technologies like structural biology enabled researchers to redesign the molecule so that it could be more rapidly absorbed. “Thus we were able to improve its pharmacodynamics,” explains Cole. “Tuberculosis is often wrongly considered a disease of the past, but in order to fight it, we needed to employ 21st century technologies.”

More than 1.5 million deaths per year

Tuberculosis still kills more than 1.5 million people every year. It is uncommon in Europe, although certain countries such as the Ukraine are experiencing a resurgence of patients infected with multi-resistant strains. The EU is leading a programme that aims to eliminate the disease. The research team at EPFL that developed PBTZ169 received funding from the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Commission, in the framework of an international collaboration.

Source: India Medical Times

Autism and intellectual disability incidence linked with environmental factors

An analysis of 100 million US medical records reveals that autism and intellectual disability (ID) rates are correlated at the county level with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males, an indicator of possible congenital exposure to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides. Autism rates — after adjustment for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors — jump by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Intellectual disability rates increase 94 percent. Slight increases in autism and ID rates are also seen in wealthier and more urban counties.

The study, published by scientists from the University of Chicago March 13 in PLOS Computational Biology, confirms the dramatic effect of diagnostic standards. Incidence rates for Autism and ID on a per-person basis decrease by roughly 99 percent in states with stronger regulations on diagnosis of these disorders.

“Autism appears to be strongly correlated with rate of congenital malformations of the genitals in males across the country,” said study author Andrey Rzhetsky, PhD, professor of genetic medicine and human genetics at the University of Chicago. “This gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong.”

Although autism and intellectual disability have genetic components, environmental causes are thought to play a role. To identify potential environmental links, Rzhetsky and his team analyzed an insurance claims dataset that covered nearly one third of the US population. They used congenital malformations of the reproductive system in males as an indicator of parental exposure to toxins.

Male fetuses are particularly sensitive to toxins such as environmental lead, sex hormone analogs, medications and other synthetic molecules. Parental exposure to these toxins is thought explain a large portion of congenital reproductive malformations, such as micropenis, hypospadias (urethra on underside of the penis), undescended testicles and others.

The researchers created a statistical baseline frequency of autism and ID across the country. They then looked at the actual rates of these disorders, county-by-county. Deviations from the baseline are interpreted as resulting from local causes. Factors such as age, ethnicity, socioeconomic groups and geopolitical statuses were analyzed and corrected for.

The team found that every one percent increase in malformations in a county was associated with a 283 percent increase in autism and 94 percent increase in ID in that same county. Almost all areas with higher rates of autism also had higher rates of ID, which the researchers believe corroborates the presence of environmental factors. In addition, they found that male children with autism are almost six times more likely to have congenital genital malformations. Female incidence was linked with increased malformation rates, but weakly so. A county-by-county map of autism and ID incidence above or below the predicted baseline for the entire US is included in the study.

Non-reproductive congenital malformations and viral infections in males were also associated with double digit increases in autism and ID rates. Additionally, income appeared to have a weak effect — every additional $1,000 of income above county average was correlated with around a three percent increase in autism and ID rates. An increased percentage of urban population in a county also showed a weak increase in rates.

The most striking negative effect was state regulation. State-mandated diagnosis of autism by a clinician for consideration in special education was linked with around a whopping 99 percent decrease in the rate of incidence for autism and ID. Certain ethnic backgrounds, such as pacific islanders had significantly lower risk for both diseases.

While the effect of vaccines was not analyzed as part of this study, Rzhetsky notes that the geographic clustering of autism and ID rates is evidence that if vaccines have a role, it’s a very weak one as vaccinations are given uniformly across the US.

Rzhetsky acknowledges there are potential confounders to the study, for example ease of access to data could differ between counties or uneven genetic distribution, beyond the factors they controlled for, could have an effect. The team anticipates future studies could leverage data from the Environmental Protection Agency and other sources to identify links between specific environmental causes and increased rates of autism and ID.

“We interpret the results of this study as a strong environmental signal,” Rzhetsky said. “For future genetic studies we may have to take into account where data were collected, because it’s possible that you can get two identical kids in two different counties and one would have autism and the other would not.”

Source: escience news

 

New vaginal gel could help protect women against HIV

Researchers have revealed that a new after-sex vagina gel can be used by women to protect themselves against HIV.

According to scientists at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, drugs applied three hours after exposure to the virus could protect female monkeys from a type of HIV, the BBC reported.

that this study would require large clinical trials to test any new treatment and that condoms still remain the best defense against HIV.

Scientists found that the gel protected five out of six monkeys from an animal-human laboratory strain of HIV, when it was applied before or three hours after infection.

Dr Charles Dobard, of the division of HIV/Aids prevention, said that the gel used is a promising after-sex vaginal gel to prevent HIV infection and studies still need to look for the window of opportunity.

Dr Andrew Freedman, reader and consultant in infectious diseases at Cardiff University School of Medicine, said that the gel contained a different class of anti- HIV drug, which attacks the virus at a later stage in infection.

The study is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source: Zee news

Scientists discover new obesity gene

Researchers have discovered that the obesity-associated elements within the gene FTO interact with IRX3, a distant gene on the genome that appears to be the functional obesity gene.

Senior study author Marcelo Nobrega, PhD, associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, said that their data strongly suggest that IRX3 controls body mass and regulates body composition, asserting that any association between FTO and obesity appears due to the influence of IRX3.

Hoping to explain these observations, Nobrega and his team mapped the behavior of promoters-regions of DNA that activate gene expression-located within one million base pairs on either side of the FTO gene. In adult mice brains, where FTO was thought to affect metabolic function, they discovered that the promoter that turns on FTO did not interact with obesity-associated FTO introns.

Co-author Jose Luis Gomez-Skarmeta, PhD, a geneticist at the Andalusian Center of Developmental Biology in Sevilla, Spain, said that instead they found that the promoter for IRX3, a gene several hundred thousand base pairs away, did interact with these introns, as well as a large number of other elements across the vast genetic distance we studied. The researchers found a similar pattern of interactions in humans after analyzing data from the ENCODE project , which they confirmed with experiments on human cells.

Using data from 153 brain samples from individuals of European ancestry, they discovered that the mutations to FTO introns that affected body weight are associated with IRX3 expression, but not FTO. Obesity-related FTO introns enhanced the expression of IRX3, functioning as regulatory elements. The FTO gene itself did not appear to play a role in this interaction.

To verify the role of IRX3, the researchers engineered mice without the IRX3 gene. These mice were significantly leaner than their normal counterparts. They weighed about 30 percent less, primarily through reduced fat.

The study has been published online in journal Nature.

Source: ANI