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Category: biotech/medical – Page 594

Superficial Temporal Artery-to-Middle Cerebral Artery Bypass in Ischemic Stroke With Blood Pressure-Dependent Symptoms

Discover a fascinating case study on Superficial Temporal Artery-to-Middle Cerebral Artery Bypass for Ischemic Stroke with Blood Pressure-Dependent Symptoms! 🧠

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The efficacy of extracranial-intracranial (EC-IC) bypass in preventing ischemic stroke progression and recurrence is controversial. As per the current hypothesis, EC-IC bypass is most beneficial for patients with persistent hemodynamic insufficiency. Hence, various approaches have been used to evaluate hemodynamic insufficiency, including repeated single photon emission CT (SPECT) imaging or continuous monitoring of cerebral flow with transcranial Doppler ultrasound (TCD). However, both modalities are time-and resource-intensive. In this report, we discuss how EC-IC bypass turned out to be beneficial for a patient presenting with blood pressure-dependent severe aphasia and right hemiparesis due to middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion that failed thrombectomy. CT perfusion (CTP) scan at admission demonstrated a persistent volume of delayed perfusion without core infarct.

Semaglutide Can Cut Diabetic Kidney Disease Progression

The blockbuster weight loss drug semaglutide can cut the progression of diabetic kidney disease, according to its manufacturer Novo Nordisk, adding to growing evidence that the medication has beneficial effects beyond treating Type 2 Diabetes and obesity.

Semaglutide — which is marketed under the name Ozempic for diabetes treatment and Wegovy for weight loss — managed to also reduce death from kidney disease and cardiovascular issues by 24 percent versus a placebo.

The results came from a Novo Nordisk clinical trial that had 3,533 participants with both diabetes and chronic kidney disease. High blood sugar from diabetes can damage kidneys and ultimately lead to chronic kidney disease, in which the organ has trouble filtering toxins from the blood.

Scientists Think They’ve Found a New Cause of Type 2 Diabetes

Year 2023 face_with_colon_three

More than half a billion people worldwide are affected by type 2 diabetes, and yet researchers still don’t know what’s behind the condition’s breakdown in insulin functionality.

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University in the US have now pulled back the molecular curtain and figured out why insulin, the hormone that maintains stable blood sugar, often stops working at its full effect.

The principal investigator, Jonathan Stamler, is widely acclaimed for the discovery of S-nitrosylation, which is the process that turns nitric oxide (NO) into a ubiquitous messenger molecule capable of sharing information between cells. It’s kind of like putting a stamp on a letter.

Stanford’s 3D printer can now print million dust-sized particles a day

These small particles that look like dust to the naked eye are highly detailed and can be customized to suit a wide variety of needs ranging from microfluidics to vaccine delivery and even microelectronics, a press release has said.

3D printing or additive manufacturing at a macroscale level has matured at the market level, where items like shoes, hearing aids, and even household goods can be made using this technique.

Novel Lensless Light Diffraction Method Detects Viral Infection

“Viruses, infections, and pandemics have become recurrent features in our lives, profoundly impacting human existence and even extending their reach to animals. Despite this, accessible, rapid, and affordable virus detection methods have been lacking,” said Xingcai Zhang, PhD, researcher, Harvard University, told GEN. “Our study aims to visualize viral infection states, predict infection duration, unravel the infection process, explore inhibition methods, and contribute to understanding viral disease transmission and pathogenesis.”

Viral infection of cells causes stress resulting in cell morphology differences over time. This study leveraged those known morphological changes to discern between infected and non-infected cells in culture. The standard practice for identifying infected cells, the methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay, requires the use of reagent treatments and chemical reactions which can take upwards of 40 hours per sample, which is destroyed in the process.

The method proposed in this paper uses a lensless light diffraction platform to detect diffraction patterns, which can be used to extract information such as contrast and inverse differential moment which are used to create diffraction fingerprints. The fingerprints can be monitored continuously in the same samples as there is no inherent damage to cells.

Scientists are growing animals in artificial wombs. Humans might be next

A person who lost their uterus to cancer, for example, could have an embryo created in the lab, like in IVF, but implant it in an artificial womb for gestation, rather than using a human surrogate, which is an ethically fraught practice.

By eliminating the need for surrogacy, artificial wombs could also make it easier for gay couples to have biological children. Further on the horizon, if scientists can replicate their success creating embryos from the DNA of same-sex mice in people, any two people might one day be able to have biological children related to both of them.

Artificial wombs would fill in the critical gap between IVF and incubators. They don’t yet exist outside of science fiction, but they’re getting closer to reality.

‘Dramatic’ inroads against aggressive brain cancer

A collaborative project to bring the promise of cell therapy to patients with a deadly form of brain cancer has shown dramatic results among the first patients to receive the novel treatment.

In a paper published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Mass General Cancer


Cutting-edge therapy shrinks tumors in early glioblastoma trial.