New Treatment for Knee Injuries

MIT engineers have built a new tissue scaffold that can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into knees and other joints, potentially offering a more effective, less expensive – and painful – option to more conventional therapies.
The scaffold developed by MIT has two layers, one that mimics bone and another that mimics cartilage. When implanted into a joint, the scaffold can stimulate mesenchymal stem cells in the bone marrow to produce new bone and cartilage.
The researchers demonstrated the scaffold's effectiveness in a 16-week study involving goats. In the study, the scaffold successfully stimulated bone and cartilage growth after being implanted in the goats' knees. Although the technology is still limited to small defects, using scaffolds roughly 8 mm (0.3-inches) in diameter, the scaffold offers a potential new treatment for sports injuries and other cartilage damage, such as arthritis.

Anti-microbial Paint Kills Superbugs

Scientists in South Dakota have developed the first antimicrobial paint, a material that can simultaneously kill not just disease-causing bacteria but mold, fungi, and viruses.
The paint is especially effective at fighting "superbugs," the antibiotic-resistant microbes that infect hospital surfaces and cause an estimated 88,000 deaths annually in the US.
The researchers developed a new antimicrobial polymer which has no undesirable effects on the quality of latex paints. Laboratory tests showed that the new polymer kills a wide range of disease-causing microbes including those resistant to multiple antibiotics. The paint can be easily "recharged" with a simple chlorination process.

Hand Exerciser Helps Arthritis Patients

This "hand fitness trainer" strengthens your muscles and joints, resisting repetitive stress injuries and slowing the progression of osteoarthritis.The device, which was a recipient of the Medical Design Excellence Award, fits over your hand like a glove. As you open up your fingers, the adjustable elastic bands that extend from the palm to your finger tips offer resistance, strengthening the muscles of the hand, wrist, and elbow.

Artificial Blood Vessels

Researchers have developed artificial blood vessels made using a person's own skin cells which could dramatically improve the results of organ transplants.

These new blood vessels are made from a patient's own tissues, which lowers the chance of a harmful immune reaction.

Normally, doctors typically harvest a piece of a vein from a patient to make a bypass called a shunt, but over time, these shunts often fail, forcing doctors to use shunts made with plastics and other synthetic materials that can trigger immune reactions or blood-flow problems.

Researchers led by Cytograft Tissue Engineering of Novato, California, came up with a method for growing replacement vessels using a patient's own cells. They start by harvesting skin cells growing these in a sheet. They then roll up the sheet into the shape of a tube.

Swine Flu

OVERVIEW

An outbreak of swine flu in Mexico has raised concerns worldwide that the disease could be emerging as a global pandemic. On April 26, 2009, American officials declared a public health emergency after 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in the United States; by the next day, the number had doubled.

The virus in the American cases looked identical to the A (H1N1) swine flu in Mexico that is believed to have killed 149 people and sickened about 1,600. Health officials in the United States and at the World Health Organization urged the public not to panic, noting that the cases confirmed outside of Mexico had been mild, and that the virulence of the virus remained unknown.

Still, they urged Americans to forego nonessential travel to Mexico, where many schools and public venues had been shut. On April 27, the European Union's health commissioner urged Europeans to avoid nonessential travel to the United States or Mexico. The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Richard Besser, responded that the advisory was unwarranted.

Officials said that 28 of the 50 confirmed cases in the United States were diagnosed in New York City, all among students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens. Officials said they had also confirmed cases in California, Kansas, Texas and Ohio. Diagnoses have also been made in Canada, Spain, Scotland and New Zealand.

Mexican officials said they had traced the origins of the outbreak to a rural area known as La Gloria in the southeastern state of Veracruz, the site of several major pig farms.

SWINE FLU QUESTIONS

The new swine flu cases are caused by an influenza strain called H1N1, which appears to be easily passed from person to person. Doctors have little information yet on the mortality rate, as there is no reliable data on the total number of people infected.

The central question every flu expert in the world would like answered, Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview, is how many mild cases Mexico has had.

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The Most Popular Causes of Death In 2030

At the end of 2008, a list with a prognostic of the most "popular" causes of mortality in the year 2030 was published by the World Health Organization. Nowadays, these are: tumors, ischemic disease of heart and disturbances of the cerebral blood circulation.

According to this list, the 3 causes will still keep their positions in future; more than that, the frequency of these diseases will increase. Other frequent causes of mortality today are infarctions and heart attacks in an older age. Besides, in such cases, the patient's life often depends on the extreme measures taken in the first minutes or hours, which is a problem for doctors both in big cities, and in villages, because of the distance that may separate them. By 2030 the situation is less likely to change.

The number of deaths in car accidents will also increase. It isn't surprising since the number of cars is in a continuous growth and, in the history of humanity, technical development has always outrun culture evolution.

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Pills Against Insomnia Cause Sleepwalking

Ambien and Lunest are often prescribed sleeping pills. These pills, however, cause the most strange side effects. The Food and Drug Administration reported yesterday such strange behavior as eating or driving while asleep.

These reports have provoked the F.D.E. to order the drug makers to make certain fliers for such sleeping drugs, where patients could read detailed instructions on how to use them.

The investigation of such side effects was caused by, but limited to numerous reports from the users of Ambien (the most prescribed sleeping drug). Their complaints ranged from harmless sleepwalking and hallucinations to eating while asleep, violent outbursts and driving, which is the most disturbing.

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