Drone racing an ambulance shows how drones could speed up medical care.
Posted in biotech/medical, drones
Researchers have identified a previously unknown feature of human anatomy with implications for the function of all organs, most tissues and the mechanisms of most major diseases.
Published March 27 in Scientific Reports, a new study co-led by an NYU School of Medicine pathologist reveals that layers of the body long thought to be dense, connective tissues — below the skin’s surface, lining the digestive tract, lungs and urinary systems, and surrounding arteries, veins, and the fascia between muscles — are instead interconnected, fluid-filled compartments.
This series of spaces, supported by a meshwork of strong (collagen) and flexible (elastin) connective tissue proteins, may act like shock absorbers that keep tissues from tearing as organs, muscles, and vessels squeeze, pump, and pulse as part of daily function.
LONDON (AP) — A cheap daily pill that combines four drugs cut the risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure in a large study, suggesting it could be a good way to help prevent heart problems especially in poor countries.
The pills contained two blood pressure drugs, a cholesterol medicine and aspirin. Many people can’t afford or don’t stick with taking so many medicines separately, so doctors think a polypill might help. A previous study testing one in India found it lowered cholesterol and blood pressure. The new study is much larger and gives stronger evidence because it tracked heart attacks, strokes and other problems — not just risk factors.
It involved about 6,800 people in Iran, ages 50–75, some with previous heart problems and others without them. All got advice on healthy lifestyles and half also were given polypills. After five years, 6% of those in the pill group had suffered a heart attack, stroke or heart failure versus 9% of the others. That worked out to a 34% lower risk with the polypill, and a 22% lower risk after researchers took into account other heart drugs that participants were taking.
A deadly strain of salmonella that has sickened more than 250 people may not respond to the antibiotics commonly prescribed to treat the foodborne infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Thursday, the CDC said that from June 2018 to March 2019, 255 people in 32 states were infected with the strain, with 60 being hospitalized and two dying from the infection.
A blood test which can detect ovarian cancer two years earlier than current methods could be used to screen women, scientists hope.
Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast have found that measuring four proteins together can pick up cancer early, when nine in 10 women will survive.
Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest because symptoms are vague or absent so it is often not diagnosed until later stages, when the chance of surviving for five years is just 22 per cent.
But to generate the kind of long-term data set necessary for breakthroughs in precision medicine — which uses genomic, physiological and other data to tailor treatments to individuals — All of Us must retain these participants, ideally throughout their lives. That’s where genetic counselling comes in.
A firm hired by the National Institutes of Health will work with participants in a research programme that plans to sequence one million genomes.
Researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center have decoded a chain of molecules that are critical for the growth and survival of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)—the most common and also the most lethal form of pancreatic cancer.
They say their findings, published in Developmental Cell, suggest that inhibiting this “Yap” biological network may effectively regress early stage PDAC and could be paired with other drugs to halt more advanced stage tumors. Yap inhibitors have been developed and are moving into clinical trials.
Their study builds upon Georgetown Lombardi research that previously identified Yap as an oncogene central to the initiation of PDAC as well as a variety of other cancers. In the current study employing advanced animal models, they have managed to switch off Yap in pre-established PDAC tumors, and discovered that suppressing Yap blocks the metabolic pathways that provide the fuel and building materials for maintaining the growth of the cancer.
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Scientists have created an image which zooms in to a tiny section inside a cell. This is not a simulation, it is the real thing. As you run the video, you will see the section highlighted in green and then thin yellow tubes inside it. These are strands of the body’s clotting agent ready to be transported to the site of a wound.
Self-assembled materials are attractive for next-generation materials, but their potential to assemble at the nanoscale and form nanostructures (cylinders, lamellae etc.) remains challenging. In a recent report, Xundu Feng and colleagues at the interdisciplinary departments of chemical and environmental engineering, biomolecular engineering, chemistry and the center for advanced low-dimension materials in the U.S., France, Japan and China, proposed and demonstrated a new approach to prevent the existing challenges. In the study, they explored size-selective transport in the water-continuous medium of a nanostructured polymer template formed using a self-assembled lyotropic H1 (hexagonal cylindrical shaped) mesophase (a state of matter between liquid and solid). They optimized the mesophase composition to facilitate high-fidelity retention of the H1 structure on photoinduced crosslinking.
The resulting nanostructured polymer material was mechanically robust with internally and externally crosslinked nanofibrils surrounded by a continuous aqueous medium. The research team fabricated a membrane with size selectivity at the 1 to 2 nm length scale and water permeabilities of ~10 liters m−2 hour−1 bar−1 μm. The membranes displayed excellent anti-microbial properties for practical use. The results are now published on Science Advances and represent a breakthrough for the potential use of self-assembled membrane-based nanofiltration in practical applications of water purification.
Membrane separation for filtration is widely used in diverse technical applications, including seawater desalination, gas separation, food processing, fuel cells and the emerging fields of sustainable power generation and distillation. During nanofiltration, dissolved or suspended solutes ranging from 1 to 10 nm in size can be removed. New nanofiltration membranes are of particular interest for low-cost treatment of wastewaters to remove organic contaminants including pesticides and metabolites of pharmaceutical drugs. State-of-the-art membranes presently suffer from a trade-off between permeability and selectivity where increased permeability can result in decreased selectivity and vice-versa. Since the trade-off originated from the intrinsic structural limits of conventional membranes, materials scientists have incorporated self-assembled materials as an attractive solution to realize highly selective separation without compromising permeability.