Lifeboat Foundation

“For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet. Now I have learned how to walk normal, natural.”

A paralyzed man is walking again thanks to a “digital bridge” researchers created between his brain and a spinal stimulator.

“For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet,” the 40-year-old Dutch man, Gert-Jan Oskam, told reporters on May 23. “Now I have learned how to walk normal, natural.”

Continue reading “Paralyzed man walks again using only his thoughts” »

Globally, the number of people living with, or dying from, neurological conditions such as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and meningitis has risen substantially over the past 30 years due to the growth and aging of the global population as well as increased exposure to environmental, metabolic, and lifestyle risk factors. In 2021, 3.4 billion people experienced a nervous system condition, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021, published in The Lancet Neurology.

The analysis suggests that worldwide, the overall amount of disability, illness, and premature death —a measurement known as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)—caused by neurological conditions increased by 18% over the past 31 years, rising from around 375 million years of healthy life lost in 1990 to 443 million years in 2021.

The absolute number of DALYs is increasing in large part due to aging and growing populations worldwide.

The recently approved drug motixafortide may help improve stem cell transplants for people with multiple myeloma. Learn more about this treatment:

However, Dr. Schulz cautioned, this finding is not definitive because the two drugs were not tested head-to-head in a randomized trial. A randomized clinical trial comparing the drugs “would have been a better and fairer comparison,” he said, since plerixafor and motixafortide both work by blocking a chemical signal that tells stem cells to stay in the bone marrow.

Finally, Dr. Crees and his colleagues did a series of experiments looking at the different types of blood-forming stem cells mobilized by G-CSF plus placebo, motixafortide, or plerixafor.

Continue reading “Motixafortide and Stem Cell Transplants for Multiple Myeloma” »

Researchers describe a newly observed role for the protein Cyclin Dependent Kinase 9 (CDK9) in regulating DNA repair during cellular division, where errors can become the origin of cancerous tumor growth. Through a process called phosphorylation, the experiment simulated the interaction of CDK9 with the other proteins and genes involved in cell division and cancerous tumor growth.

Femoral head avascular necrosis (AVN) is a debilitating condition that prevents the thighbone from repairing itself at the portion closest to the hip, leading to possible collapse.

In a new study in Arthoplasty Today, a team including Yale Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation’s Daniel Wiznia,…

In a paper published in the journal Arthroplasty Today, Daniel Wiznia, MD, assistant professor of orthopaedics & rehabilitation and co-director of Yale Medicine’s Avascular Necrosis Program, presents a new surgical technique designed to prevent or delay hip collapse in patients with femoral head avascular necrosis (AVN). Thanks to 3D innovations and novel applications of intraoperative navigation technology developed at Yale, Wiznia is leading a multidisciplinary approach to optimizing clinical outcomes.

Continue reading “Minimally Invasive Avascular Necrosis Treatment Is Developed at Yale, Combining 3D Modeling With Computer Navigation” »

There’s a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIs help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs. In recent years, the devices have even gone wireless. If mind-reading computers become part of everyday life, we’ll need doctors to install the tiny electrodes and transmitters that make them work. So if you have steady hands and don’t mind a little blood, being a BCI surgeon might be a job for you.

Shahram Majidi, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, began operating in clinical trials for a BCI called the Stentrode in 2022. (That’s “stent” as in a tube that often sits inside a vein or artery.) Here he talks about a not-too-distant future where he’s performing hundreds of similar procedures a year.

Brain-computer interfaces have been around for a few decades, and there are different kinds of implants now. Some have electrodes attached to your brain with wires sticking out of your head and connecting to a computer. I think that’s great as a proof of concept, but it requires an engineer sitting there and a big computer next to you all the time. You can’t just use it in your bedroom. The beauty of a BCI like the Stentrode, which is what I’ve worked with, is that nothing is sticking out of your brain. The electrodes are in blood vessels next to the brain, and you get there by going through the patient’s jugular. The receiver is underneath the skin in their chest and connected to a device that decodes the brain signals via Bluetooth. I think that’s the future.

Stanford researchers devised a small, soft skin-like wearable device to monitor health. They are hoping to commercialize their product soon.

Artificial intelligence has delivered a major win for pathologists and researchers in the fight for improved cancer treatments and diagnoses.

A study led by Daniel Spratt, M.D., Vincent K. Smith Chair in Radiation Oncology at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center demonstrates the safety and efficacy of a novel oral hormone therapy, relugolix, in conjunction with radiation therapy for treating men with localized and advanced prostate cancer. This work is published in JAMA Oncology.