Month: December 2013

Nightclub fire survivor thriving after hand transplant

It’s no struggle for most people to make a fist or lift a coffee mug. But for Joe Kinan of Lakeville, Mass., getting to that point has taken resilience, strength – and advancements in medical science.

On February 20th, 2003, Kinan was among a crowd of people trapped in a fire that occurred in The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. The fast-moving blaze claimed 100 lives and left more than 200 people injured.

Severely burned, Kinan has undergone more than 120 surgeries including a hand transplant. The procedure, performed just over a year ago, was the first of its kind for surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Now there (are) quite a few things that I don’t have to ask for help for, which is very empowering,” Kinan said.

With his fiancée Carrie Pratt at his side, Kinan has completed a full year of physical therapy, doing drills to strengthen his new hand and gaining a new sense of independence.

“Just freedoms of every sort. To be able to come out here in the morning and pour my own cup of coffee without dragging Carrie out of bed for it speaks for itself,” Kinan said .

Kinan and Pratt, a fellow burn survivor, met several years ago at the World Burn Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

“From the get-go he’s been working hard at this,” Pratt said. “Every chance he gets, he’s moving his hand. He’s picking stuff up. He’s squeezing a tennis ball. He wants to make every moment count. He even wiggles his fingers in his sleep.”

Kinan’s new hand was donated by 18-year-old Troy Pappas, a freshman and star athlete at Bates College in Maine, who died last October after an accidental fall. When Pappas got his driver’s license at age 16, he signed up to be an organ donor.

The first successful hand transplant was performed in the late 1990s, but the procedure remains very rare. It’s estimated that fewer than 90 people have undergone a hand transplant worldwide.

Dr. Curtis Cetrulo Jr. led the team that spent fifteen hours attaching Kinan’s new left hand.

“You have to choose your patient right,” said Cetrulo, offering praise for Kinan’s perseverance. “People were coming out of the woodwork all over the hospital who had cared for Joe and knew how tenacious he was and what a fighter he was and how compliant he would have been with the regimen post-operatively in taking his medications and working hard to get a good functional outcome, so his personality was almost a no-brainer.”

While Kinan’s spirit was never in doubt, the long surgery was particularly difficult because he is a burn survivor.

“There was skin graft only down to his fascia on his arm so we had to sort of come up with a creative technical solution to that problem and when we procured the allograft we took extra veins and extra tissues from the donor hand to allow the blood to flow out of that hand and back up his upper arm,” said Cetrulo. “So, while he was a perfect patient from a social perspective, he was a difficult patient technically. But we were able to surmount those obstacles and it turned out for the best.”

Cetrulo credits Kinan’s dedication and tenacity, citing him as an inspiration.

“Really at the end of the day it’s for his life, so he can do some of the things that he couldn’t previously,” said Cetrulo. “He always sends me new videos, popping up in my inbox, washing his car for the first time in 10 years or holding a cup of coffee or holding hands with Carrie, his fiancée, and these are the things that make it worthwhile to me.”

It’s been a long journey – one of fortitude, medical miracles and generous gifts – but soon that hand will hold new life.

Kinan and Pratt are expecting a baby.

Source: Top news today

Claims of virgin births in U.S. near 1 percent: study

Nearly 1 percent of young women in a U.S. study who have become pregnant claim to have done so as virgins, according to a report in the Christmas edition of Britain’s BMJ medical journal.

The authors of “Like a virgin (mother)” – whose prose is devoid of irony – say such scientifically impossible claims show researchers must use care in interpreting self-reported behavior. Fallible memory, beliefs and wishes can cause people to err in what they tell scientists.

Based on interviews with 7,870 women and girls ages 15 to 28, 45 of the 5,340 pregnancies in this group through the years – 0.8 percent – occurred in women who reported that they conceived independent of men. The figure does not include pregnancies that result from in vitro fertilization or other assisted reproductive technology.

Each year, the BMJ Christmas edition publishes untraditional science papers. In addition to the report on virgin pregnancies, the latest BMJ includes papers on whether there is a local baby boom nine months after home sports teams triumph (only a small one, but statistically significant) and whether an apple a day would keep the British doctor away (yes, saving about 8,500 lives in the United Kingdom each year, about as many as would expanding the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs to everyone over 50).

For the study of putative virgin pregnancies, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed data from the thousands of teenage girls and young women who took part in the long-running National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

The girls were 12 to 18 years old when they entered the study in the 1994-95 school year and were interviewed periodically about their health and behavior over 14 years, including via computer as a way to encourage them to be candid when answering questions about their sexual history.

The 45 women and girls who became pregnant despite, according to what they told interviewers, being virgins at the time of conception differed in several ways from peers who acknowledged that men had had a role in their procreation.

Of those who said they became pregnant as virgins, 31 percent also said they had signed chastity pledges; 15 percent of nonvirgins who became pregnant said they had signed such pledges, in which a girl vows not to have sex until she marries.

The 45 self-described virgins who reported having become pregnant and the 36 who gave birth were also more likely than nonvirgins to say their parents never or rarely talked to them about sex and birth control. About 28 percent of the “virgin” mothers’ parents (who were also interviewed) indicated they didn’t have enough knowledge to discuss sex and contraception with their daughters, compared to 5 percent of the parents of girls who became pregnant and said they had had intercourse.

The ostensibly chaste mothers were also less likely to know how to use condoms, according to the report. UNC biostatistician Amy Herring and public health expert Carolyn Halpern led the group.

The researchers found that although the mothers in question were more likely to have boys than girls, and to be pregnant during the weeks leading up to Christmas, neither similarity to the Virgin Mary was statistically significant.

Source: Reuters

Scientists create ‘robotic’ sperm to fight infertility

Researchers in Germany say they have created remote-controlled sperm that could be used to help with fertilization.

These “spermbots” are made by catching sperm cells in nanotubes and fabricating them onto a wafer or “chip.” The tubes are narrower at one end and guided by a magnet to the egg, increasing a patient’s chance of getting pregnant.

How are they doing this?
The method for this technology, is simply using the tail of the sperm to do the electrical work then using a magnetic field to direct the sperm. Think of it like a compass needle aligning with the Earth’s magnetic field. It is far easier to control a single cell (like the sperm) that propels itself through fluid with its whip-like tail.

Until now, researchers had only managed to persuade groups of cells to cooperate, with the help of mathematical measurements over a distance and magnetic fields. To create the “spermbots,” the research team builds the nanotubes from using iron and titanium nanoparticles. They then add the tubes to fluid containing sperm. The nanotubes are designed with one end of each tube slightly narrower than the other. The sperm that swims into the wider end becomes trapped, headfirst, with their whip-like tail propelling it toward the egg.

What is the future of this technology?
If this technology works, you will start to see the use of this method being applied to all fields of medicine. For example, chemotherapy works by stopping or slowing the growth of cancer cells, which grow and divide quickly. However, this can harm healthy cells that separate quickly, such as those that line your mouth and intestines. During chemotherapy treatment the patient will typically suffer from damaged healthy cells which can cause serious side effects.

How will this help improve chemotherapy treatment?
With this cutting-edge technology, doctors will be able to deliver chemotherapy and guide the treatment to the specific target. While in the process, eliminating organs and cells from being over exposed to toxicity from the chemotherapy agent. Overall, this method will give physicians and patients a less toxic form of cancer treatment and protect their healthy cells from being over exposed or even killed off.

Source: viral news chart

Apple a Day Could Save Thousands of Lives: Study

The 150-year-old proverb “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” stands the test of time, say Oxford University researchers, and would be effective today in preventing heart disease among people over 50.

Using mathematical models, the researchers calculated that prescribing an apple a day to all adults aged 50 and over in the U.K. would prevent around 8,500 deaths from heart attacks and strokes every year.

They say this is similar to the 9,400 fewer heart deaths that would be seen if everyone over 50 who was not already taking them was given statins – modern cholesterol-lowering heart drugs.

This last figure uses the results of recent large study led by a different Oxford group which found that statins can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, including in people with low risk of heart problems.

Lead researcher Dr Adam Briggs of the BHF Health Promotion Research Group at Oxford University says: “The Victorians had it about right when they came up with their brilliantly clear and simple public health advice: ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.'”

He adds: “It just shows how effective small changes in diet can be, and that both drugs and healthier living can make a real difference in preventing heart disease and stroke.”

Although apples are more expensive than statins, the researchers conclude that an apple a day is able to match the more widespread use of modern medicine.

The researchers stress that no-one currently taking statins because they are at high risk of heart disease should stop, although they add: “by all means eat more apples.”

Maureen Talbot, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, an organization which funds the research group, agrees: “The ‘apple a day’ message has survived for over a century, though now we encourage people to eat five different fruits and vegetables a day, not just one apple.

“However, while fruit is undoubtedly good for you, it shouldn’t replace vital heart medicines, such as statins, prescribed by your doctor.

“This study reiterates that statins save lives. They are one of the safest medicines available and their benefits far outweigh any risks of side effects. If you’re unsure about your medication, speak to your doctor as there are often different types or doses you could try.”

The study was published in the Christmas edition of the BMJ medical journal.

Source: News Max health

3-year-old Tampa boy survives rare 5-organ transplant

A little boy from Tampa has survived a five-organ transplant. Tuesday, his mother and doctors shared their medical miracle with the world.

Three-year-old Adonis Ortiz was born with his intestines outside his abdominal wall.

“Four hours after he was born, he had his first surgery,” said his father Eximer Ortiz.

Adonis had “short gut syndrome,” which meant he did not have enough intestine to absorb nutrients.

It means he has had to be fed intravenously all his life, and has never been able eat.

Then, his liver started to fail.

So in October, doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami did a rare, multi-transplant surgery. Adonis got a new liver, pancreas, stomach, and small and large intestines.

All the organs came from the same donor.

The surgery took six hours, and Adonis pulled through remarkably well.

Source: News whip

‘The girl with half a face’: Teen with rare facial deformity

Surviving adolescence can be difficult for anyone – but for Sarah Atwell, navigating her teenage years was an especially harsh struggle.

Since birth, Sarah has suffered from a rare disease called neurofibromatosis – a condition that triggered a massive tumor to develop on half of her face. Over time, Sarah’s deformity steadily grew worse, causing the right side of her face to dramatically droop downward.

The condition – which is mostly cosmetic – made Sarah the target of intense bullying for many years.

“It was really hard; I used to get bullied a lot,” Sarah, now 18, told FoxNews.com. “They used to call me ‘fat face’ and say I had diseases. As a little kid hearing it, it didn’t feel very good.”

But finally, after years of suffering through negative comments, Sarah made the decision to undergo risky reconstructive surgery in order to remove part of her tumor. Her journey is chronicled in a new one-hour special called “The Girl With Half a Face,” which premieres Wednesday 10 p.m., ET on “Discovery Fit & Health.”

Living with neurofibromatosis

A very rare genetic disorder, neurofibromatosis is characterized by a disturbance of cell growth in the nervous system, prompting tumors to develop on some of the body’s nerve tissues. These tumors can grow in almost any area of the body, but in Sarah’s case, the tumor was concentrated on the entire right side of her face.

“It’s an unusual congenital condition,” Dr. Steven Morris, Sarah’s surgeon, told FoxNews.com. “In [Sarah’s] particular presentation, it basically involves a large growth of nerve elements in the face. It’s usually benign, but it grows over a period of time and creates deformities. It may be a fairly small and isolated lesion, but in her case, it was one big mass.”

Because of her tumor’s size, Sarah said she felt incredibly self-conscious growing up and became reluctant to socialize with others. After enduring school days filled with name calling and hurtful comments, she would mostly come home and just stay in her room.

Fortunately, Sarah had one important outlet growing up: working with children. She enjoyed babysitting younger kids in her neighborhood or helping children through specialized programs at her high school.

According to Sarah, the children she worked with didn’t care about her tumor.

“If I was having a bad day, a smile or hug from them turned everything around,” Sarah said.

Yet the bad days often outweighed the good, and Sarah eventually became fed up with all of the bullying and teasing from her classmates. Finally, she decided enough was enough and that it was time to take a stand. One night, when her parents weren’t home, Sarah made a video in which she told her story on a series of note cards.

And when she posted it online, the response was incredible.

Life changing surgery

Not only did Sarah receive tons of support from online viewers, her viral video also led her to Dr. Steven Morris, in the division of plastic surgery at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“When she first came to see me, the lesion really occupied the whole of her right face; it was growing all around her eye,” Morris said. “She’d had a couple of previous de-bulking procedures, but [the tumor] went from her nose to the ear on the right, and the skin hung down off of her jawbone. It was an enormous overgrowth of abnormal tissue.”

After assessing the true size of the tumor, Morris agreed to operate on Sarah – though he warned her that it could be a very dangerous procedure. Since they would be reconstructing her face, there was a risk that they could sever a blood vessel and she could suffer too much blood loss.

“The principle of our surgical approach is to maintain normal tissue so the skin is fairly normal,” Morris said. “The nerves are very abnormal, so [in typical cases] there might be a fine wisp of a nerve fiber, but when it grows in neurofibromatosis, it might be as big as a pencil. So we’re trying to maintain normal nerve function and trying to preserve normal structure.”

Despite the inherent risks, Sarah agreed to undergo the operation – and after four hours of intensive reconstructive surgery, the procedure was finished. Once her facial swelling went down, Sarah decided to look into the mirror for the first time.

“I was pretty happy, because I had straight lips,” Sarah said. “I kept looking in the mirror and taking pictures of myself. My mom and neighbors were shocked. We sent my dad pictures, and he was really happy. He said as long as I’m happy, he’s happy.”

While Sarah’s major operation is now complete, there is still more work to be done in order to give Sarah the face she wants.

“The next procedure will be to de-bulk the tumor around her eye,” Morris said. “Her eye had some sight in it, but it wasn’t a great amount of sight. The tough challenge is what to do with eye and reshape the eye socket.”

But no matter what happens, Sarah is confident that she will achieve her dreams in life. While the surgery helped to alter her appearance, she said it hasn’t altered what really matters.

“I don’t think it’s really changed anything,” Sarah said. “Like I said to my mum, I can do anything I put my heart to.”

Source: article

Could lack of sleep cause a fatal mistake?

Behind the controls of the Metro-North train that derailed in New York earlier this week was a tired driver, according to new reports that engineer William Rockefeller fell asleep at the wheel.

Could lack of sleep cause such a fatal mistake?

Biologically speaking, experts said, yes. Sleep deprivation affects the brain in multiple ways that can impair judgment, slow reaction times and increase the likelihood of drifting off during monotonous tasks.

“When you’re sleep deprived, your brain reverts to a teenager — it’s all gas and no brake,” said Michael Howell, a neurologist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. “Suddenly the part of the brain that says, ‘Let’s think through this,’ is not functioning well.”
The purpose of sleep has long mystified scientists, said Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. In an evolutionary conundrum, lying unconscious for hours on end makes people and other animals vulnerable to predators. Yet, not sleeping for long enough can actually lead to dementia and death. Chronic sleep-deprivation can cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other ills.

Studies have shown that exhausted people do worse on tests of memory and have more trouble learning. Tired basketball players sink fewer free throws. Even golfers who fail to get enough shut-eye take more strokes to finish a round.

“Almost everything researchers have looked at,” Howell said, “they’ve demonstrated is impaired if you don’t get enough sleep.”

When it comes to accidents, sleep matters because failure to get enough rest hampers functioning of the brain’s frontal lobes, which are responsible for executive judgment, or the ability to pay attention and make good decisions.

In overtired people, Howell said, imaging studies have shown that there is less blood flow to these areas in the front of the brain and brainwaves there move more slowly.
The result is a compromised ability to respond to things, along with a faulty tendency to do things you shouldn’t have done. When the frontal lobes aren’t working efficiently, people also have more difficulty paying attention during boring tasks, such as driving a car on a highway or operating a morning commuter train.

Early morning hours, like when the Metro-North train crashed, are some of the most vulnerable times for sleepy accidents, Howell said, especially for people whose circadian rhythms favor a later sleeping schedule and make it biologically difficult to function well after waking up with an alarm clock at 5 a.m.

Reports that Rockefeller had been driving for 20 minutes since his last stop and felt zoned out before the accident suggest that he probably fell asleep before the crash, Howell added.

Recently, scientists have begun to piece together an even more nuanced understanding of why sleep is so restorative. In a study published in Science this fall, Nedergaard and colleagues injected mice with a green dye that allowed them to track the movement of cerebrospinal fluid, the liquid that surrounds the brain.

As our brains do their work throughout the day, previous work had shown that cerebrospinal fluid collects the waste products of normal metabolism and functioning. Then, a network of tiny channels works like a dishwasher to regularly flush out the dirty fluid and send it to the liver for detoxification.

The new study found that sleeping facilitated the flushing of this toxic fluid, which was much slower to drain in sleep-deprived rodent brains. Nerve cells are very sensitive to the presence of waste, Nedergaard said. When surrounded by contaminated fluid, communication at the cellular level likely slows down.

Source: mashable

How Viruses Take a Short Trip from London to NYC

Using measures of connectivity between airports, rather than actual distances, makes it possible to better predict where an emerging infectious disease will strike next, the researchers of a new study said.

In the study, the researchers defined an “effective distance” between any pair of airports in the world based on the air traffic between them, rather than the miles. The resulting model predicted when a newly emerged disease could reach any given place, for both simulated future outbreaks and real epidemics of the past — for example, the 2003 SARS epidemic and the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

The model was also able to quickly identify the origin of an emerging pathogen, which is essential for determining a disease’s cause and finding ways to curb its further spread, according to the researchers, whose study will appear tomorrow (Dec. 13) in the journal Science.

“With this new theory, we can reconstruct outbreak origins with higher confidence, compute epidemic-spreading speed and forecast when an epidemic wave front is to arrive at any location worldwide,” said study researcher Dirk Brockmann, a theoretical physicist who conducted the research at the Northwestern University. “This may help to improve possible mitigation strategies.”

The researchers calculated the effective distances between cities based on air traffic because such traffic reflects how many people travel a certain path, and how often. With the results, patterns of disease spread that once seemed complex start to look simpler, the researchers said.

“If the flow of passengers from point A to point B is large, the effective distance is small,” said study researcher Dirk Helbing, a professor of sociology at the Swiss university ETH Zurich. “The only thing we had to do was to find the right mathematical formula for this.” In addition to defining effective distances between airports, the researchers also defined the shortest paths for indirect journeys, and included models of local spread of disease within a city.

Infectious diseases have long been spread across borders by travelers. For historical cases such as the spread of the Black Death in Europe, simple, intuitive models that focused on geographical distances between places could show how a disease spread.

Today, however, travelers are just a few hours’ flight from distant destinations, and so physical distance no longer determines how a disease will spread.

Source: Discovery news

Aloo Methi: Healthy recipe

Servings: 7
Total Time: 35 min
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min

Methi is a common ingredient in many North Indian recipes especially during winter months. This dry potato and methi recipe is very simple and easy to cook. It is cooked as part of a main course meal and is eaten with rotis and paranthas. The characteristic aroma of fresh fenugreek leaves is enhanced with the blend of powdered spices used.

Ingredients
1 pound potatoes
3/4 pound picked fresh fenugreek leaves (methi)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
A pinch of asafetida
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon dry mango powder (amchur)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
1 green chili (finely chopped)

Step by Step:

Wash the fresh fenugreek leaves thoroughly under running water multiple times to remove all the dirt. Drain and finely chop the leaves. Keep aside. Peel the potatoes and cut into 1 inch cubes.
Heat olive oil in a heavy non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add cumin seeds and asafetida. Sauté for 2 minutes. When the cumin seeds start cracking add all the powdered spices and stir fry for 1-2 minutes, till a specific aroma comes out.

Now add the potatoes, fenugreek leaves and salt. Mix well so that the potato cubes and fenugreek leaves are coated with the fried masala all over. Cover the pan with a lid. Cook on low- heat for 15-20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. You can cook longer if there is water left from the fenugreek leaves and cook until all the water is fully evaporated.

Serve hot with rotis and parathas.

Source: health

One Week of Junk Food May Be Enough to Damage Your Memory

 

Everyone knows that junk food is bad for the waistline, but new research suggests it can damage memory, too.
Australian researchers found that even a short term diet of junk food can have a detrimental effect on the brain’s cognitive ability.
The study suggests that obesity can trigger rapid changes in the brain.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) showed for the first time that rats fed a diet high in fat and sugar had impaired memory after just a week.

Interestingly, the results were similarly poor for the rats fed a healthy diet that had been given sugar water to drink, according to the study, which was published in the journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity.

The animals found it more difficult to recognise specific places after their junk food diet and showed a lesser ability to notice when an object shifted to a new location.
The mice also had inflammation of the hippocampal region of the brain, which is associated with spatial memory.

‘We know that obesity causes inflammation in the body, but we didn’t realise until recently that it also causes changes in the brain,’ said Professor Margaret Morris from UNSW Medicine, who co-authored the study.

‘What is so surprising about this research is the speed with which the deterioration of the cognition occurred,’ she said.
‘Our preliminary data also suggests that the damage is not reversed when the rats are switched back to a healthy diet, which is very concerning.’

Some aspects of the animals’ memories were spared, regardless of their diets.
All the animals were equally able to recognise objects after eating either the healthy, healthy with sugar or ‘cafeteria’ diets, the latter of which was high in fat and sugar, including cake, chips and biscuits.
The change in the animals’ memory appeared even before the mice eating junk food gained any weight.
Ongoing work will attempt to establish how to stop the inflammation in the brain of animals with the unhealthy diets, which could unlock secrets relating to humans who eat unhealthily.
‘We suspect that these findings may be relevant to people,’ said Professor Morris.
‘While nutrition affects the brain at every age, it is critical as we get older and may be important in preventing cognitive decline. An elderly person with poor diet may be more likely to have problems.’

The research builds on previous work that has implications for obesity.
‘Given that high energy foods can impair the function of the hippocampus, if you eat a lot of them it may contribute to weight gain, by interfering with your episodic memory,’ Professor Morris said.
‘People might be less aware of their internal cues like hunger pangs and knowing when they have had enough,’ she said.

Source: mail online