http://antidepressionguide.org depression symptoms - depression treatment - depression help - Depression Causes, Symptoms, Types, Signs, Facts, Medication Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:31:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/09/10/heart-repair-pump/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/09/10/heart-repair-pump/#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:10:00 +0000 Tom Growing numbers of people are waiting for heart transplants. And engineers are developing miniature pumps known as ventricular assist devices to help.

Small enough to fit inside the patient's body, these pumps act like a second heart, boosting blood circulation and taking some of the load off the ailing organ.
But David Bull, a surgeon at the University of Utah's school of medicine says the pumps could help repair hearts too.

Cardiac stem cells capable of regenerating heart tissue are naturally found in the blood stream in small numbers. Bull and colleagues have designed a pump able to capture and culture those cells, and inject them into the heart to stimulate repairs.
The hope is that this would regenerate the heart sufficiently for the pump to eventually be removed.

Read the full heart-repair pump patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/09/10/heart-repair-pump/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/09/02/pre-diabetes-test/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/09/02/pre-diabetes-test/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:34:00 +0000 Tom Over 170 million people suffer from diabetes – just under 3% of the world's population – and experts say that number will double by 2030.

Most cases are type II diabetes, linked to obesity and lifestyle factors. But that condition can be prevented if it is caught in the early stage, called "pre-diabetes". That phase seems to last over a period of months or years before the full-blown condition develops.

Now Gerald Hart, a chemist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and colleagues say they know how to reliably spot pre-diabetes.

They claim these early stages of the disease are characterised by increased reaction rates between sugars called hexosamines and proteins in the body.

The results can be seen in the blood as raised levels of a particular sugar, known as O-linked ?-N-acetylglucosamine. Hart and colleagues have developed a test to measure levels of that compound and say this can be used to diagnose pre-diabetes.

In this way, they hope that people with pre-diabetes can be made aware of their condition and advised to take steps such as changes of diet to prevent the development of full-blown diabetes.

Read the full pre-diabetes test patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/09/02/pre-diabetes-test/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/19/performance-enhancing-peel-pills/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/19/performance-enhancing-peel-pills/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:21:00 +0000 Tom
A team funded by the US Army Natick Soldier System Center in Massachusetts, US, says plant metabolites called polymethoxylated flavones found in the peel of sweet oranges such as the Valencia and Hamlin varieties can decrease post-exercise recovery time.

In tests on horses, the team measured the time it took for post-exercise oxygen consumption levels to return to normal.

The inventors claim that in a test where horses not given any treatment took about 110 seconds to recover, those that were treated with the flavones were ready to go again after about 85 seconds – 23% quicker.

The group says that the extract could also be used to delay the onset of fatigue in sporting competitions in a way that does not require banned performance enhancing drugs. Their patent covers products made from one or more flavones packaged to enhance recovery.

The same orange-peel compounds are being studied by other groups for their potential anti-inflammatory and anti-tumour properties.

Read the full performance-enhancing orange peel patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/19/performance-enhancing-peel-pills/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/11/antibody-adapters/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/11/antibody-adapters/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:26:00 +0000 Tom
However, many antigens such as HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – seem impervious to this kind of attack and no known antibody is able to bind to them.

Peter Kwong at the National Institutes of Health Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center in Washington, DC, US, thinks it may be possible to trick the immune system into latching onto these untouchable antigens.

His idea is to design a kind of protein "adapter" that can bind to the antigen on one end and an existing antibody at the other, allowing the antigen to be neutralised.

Kwong and his colleagues have come up with a method of designing these structures on computer and say the approach could provide a new way to fight diseases, such as HIV, that have resisted other approaches.

This will not be an easy process, though – the shapes of antigens and antibodies are hugely complex. Even calculating what they look like requires cutting-edge computer-modelling tools. Predicting what kind of protein could modify that shape is even harder.

Read the full antibody adapter patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/11/antibody-adapters/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/04/supergrass-for-superlawns/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/04/supergrass-for-superlawns/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:13:00 +0000 Tom bahiagrass (Paspalum notatutri).

It is popular because it flourishes in poor-quality soil, is resistant to many insects and tolerates conditions of drought and heat.

It may sound ideal, but Fred Altpeter and colleagues at the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, think they can improve it.

Bahiagrass grows 60cm seed heads during the summer, so it must be mowed regularly. It also has a low-density growth pattern that allows weeds to invade.

Altpeter says that adding just one gene to bahiagrass from every geneticist's favourite plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, fixes both those problems.

That gene, Arabidopsis ATHB 16 protein, suppresses the formation of seed heads and encourages bahiagrass to spread out more underground.

The modified plant has performed well in tests but whether people will want GM grass along their roadsides and on the lawns is another matter.

Read the full GM supergrass for superlawns patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/06/04/supergrass-for-superlawns/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/05/22/bird-killing-foam/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/05/22/bird-killing-foam/#comments Thu, 22 May 2008 16:33:00 +0000 Tom avian influenza outbreaks in 25 countries, which resulted in the slaughter of more than 132 million birds.

With more outbreaks likely, killing such large numbers of poultry in a humane and efficient way that prevents any further spread of the disease is a significant problem.

One common method is to flood the birds' living areas with carbon dioxide. But although it is an avian anaesthetic, CO2 also endangers humans. Now Eric Benson and colleagues at the University of Delaware in Newark have a potential answer.

They say that covering the birds with a blanket of CO2-infused foam should quickly and humanely kill the birds with a minimal amount of manpower. And since the CO2 is trapped within the foam, it should be relatively safe for humans.

Read the full humane bird-killing foam patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/05/22/bird-killing-foam/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/05/02/plastic-red-blood-cells/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/05/02/plastic-red-blood-cells/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 16:41:00 +0000 Tom
Because of the small size of red blood cells and the demanding work they do, nobody has succeeded in making artificial versions to help people with such conditions.
Now though Joseph DeSimone, a chemical engineer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US, thinks he knows how.

He has created tiny sacks of the polymer polyethylene glycol just 8 micrometres across – in the range of human red blood cells – that are capable of deforming in a way that allows them to pass through the tiniest capillaries.

Polyethylene glycol is biologically benign, but binds easily with other substances, which makes it ideal for carrying cargo through the blood, says DeSimone.

For example, a haemoglobin-type molecule carried inside the bag could deliver oxygen to the body and carry away carbon dioxide. The bags could also deliver drugs instead, or help as contrast agents for scans such as magnetic resonance imaging, PET or ultrasound.

DeSimone has injected the particles into mice with "no adverse side effects", but there is no news yet of more extensive tests.

Read the full plastic red blood cells patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/05/02/plastic-red-blood-cells/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/04/30/genital-herpes-vaccine/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/04/30/genital-herpes-vaccine/#comments Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:17:00 +0000 Tom
However, many infections have resisted all attempts at producing vaccines.
One of these is the herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), which is usually the cause of genital herpes.

Now Michal Margalith at Vical, a biopharmaceutical company based in San Diego, says he and colleagues have developed an HSV-2 vaccine using the emerging technology of DNA vaccines.

This involves injecting the patient with a circular piece of DNA called a plasmid that programs their cells to produce HSV-2 proteins that trigger an immune response. That should train the vaccinated person's immune system to fight off the real virus.
The team says that the technique has successfully produced an immune response in mice. However, DNA vaccines are still highly experimental in humans.

Read the full genital herpes vaccine patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2008/04/30/genital-herpes-vaccine/feed/ 0 http://antidepressionguide.org/2007/10/04/cellular-energy-booster/ http://antidepressionguide.org/2007/10/04/cellular-energy-booster/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:28:00 +0000 Tom
However, when the blood flow is stopped to a region of the body, during a heart attack, for example, the supply runs out. Researchers have tried to get around this problem by injecting ATP directly into the bloodstream. But this has had limited success, because the ATP rarely makes it to the inside of the cells. Now William Ehringer from the School of Medicine at the University of Louisville, US, plans to deliver ATP by encapsulating it within a wrapper of fatty lipid molecules.

The resulting tiny containers, or vesicles, are then injected into the bloodstream and distributed around the body. Importantly, the lipids are similar to those in the membranes of cells within the body. As a result, the vesicles will be partially absorbed into the cells, ensuring that the ATP is delivered directly where needed.

Ehringer has tested the technique with cells from human umbilical cords and says it works well. However, more tests will be needed to see whether it has a clinically valuable role to play in humans.

The method of using vesicles to carry biomolecules directly to cells within the body is not limited to ATP alone, and might have other useful applications in the future.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor

Read the full cellular energy booster patent application.]]> http://antidepressionguide.org/2007/10/04/cellular-energy-booster/feed/ 0