Archive for the ‘medicine’ Category

Brainwave drug monitoring

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
One problem faced by anaesthetists is balancing the various drugs that keep their patients "under" during an operation. For example, they have to monitor not only the amount of sedative, but also of painkiller that the patient requires.

Now Steven Kern and colleagues from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, US, say it is possible to monitor the effects of different drugs on unconscious patients by studying brainwaves in different areas of their brains.

Kern and colleagues suggest this monitoring could be done using an EEG device during an operation. For example, pain signals tend to appear in the temporal lobes, while anaesthetic effects show up in the frontal lobes.

The team points out that various anaesthetics do their work in different parts of the brain and suggest it may even be possible to monitor the effect of several anaesthetics at the same time.

Read the full brainwave drug monitoring patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

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Immune system in a jar

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies against a specific "foreign" trigger called an antigen, for example a virus.

But nobody wants to be first to test a vaccine. Trying it on animals such as mice is one option, but their immune systems may differ from humans' in some important way. That risks unforeseen effects when eventually tested in people, like the disastrous leukaemia drug trial in 2006 .

Now virologist George Lewis, at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, US, says he has found a way to grow a simple replica immune system in the lab.

Lewis and colleagues culture some of the white blood cells involved in the immune system in the presence of an antigen or vaccine. The culture responds by producing white blood cells that make antibodies specifically against the antigens.

The researchers say the technique could be useful for testing the effectiveness of vaccines by determining whether they trigger production of required antibodies in the test tube, without having to inject them into real humans.

Read the full immune system in a jar patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Posted in biotechnology, medicine | Comments Off

Nanotube X-ray enhancer

Friday, February 1st, 2008
While X-ray images easily show up the difference between bone and soft tissue, there's not enough contrast between the soft tissues to tell them apart.
Contrast agents containing strongly X-ray-scattering substances like iodine must be used to show up abnormal tissue. These accentuate areas where there is strong blood flow, such as in cancer tumours.

However, current contrast agents are quickly flushed through the body by the blood and cannot be targeted at specific cell types.

Now a better way to improve X-ray images of soft tissues has been proposed by chemist Lon Wilson, at Rice University, Houston, US, and colleagues. Their idea was inspired by the ease with which carbon nanotubes embed themselves into living cells.

The team's proposal is to fill carbon nanotubes with iodine, coat them with a film of protein that bonds with specific types of cell, and allow the tubes to become embedded in the cells of interest.

As well as giving a greater choice of targets for analysis, this should allow images to be taken over a longer periods of time because the nanotubes are buried in situ rather than only passing through in the blood.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Read the full nanotube X-ray imaging patent application.

Posted in medicine, nanotubes | Comments Off

Startling tinnitus test

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
More than 7 million people in the US suffer severe, disabling tinnitus – the perception of noise in the ears or head when no external sound is present.

Nobody knows what causes tinnitus or how to treat it effectively. Worse, the only test for tinnitus is to play various sounds to the patient and ask him or her to identify the one that most closely matches the noise in their heads.

This test is open to abuse by those wishing to fraudulently claim disability benefit, says Jeremy Turner, a surgeon at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, US.

Turner has come up with an objective way of measuring tinnitus by subjecting patients to sudden loud noises and measuring their startle reflex. His thinking is that if the noise matches the sound of the tinnitus, the patient will be less likely to hear it and the startle reflex will be less noticeable. Turner says the technique works on rats with damaged hearing.

Read the full tinnitus test patent application.

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Reducing inflammation

Friday, October 19th, 2007
Bacterial infections can usually be treated with antibiotics but sometimes the resulting inflammation can do more damage than the bacteria. In eye infections, for example, inflammation of the cornea can cause scarring that leads to blindness. Inflammation in other parts of the body can also hide a bacterial infection from the body's immune system allowing it to spread unchecked and leading to blood poisoning – a condition that affects 750,000 people in the US each year.

But Fu-Shin X Yu and colleagues at Wayne State University in Michigan, US, have found an exotic way to combat the condition.

They note that inflammation is often caused by the body's reaction to flagellin – a protein produced by common bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. So the inflammation can be reduced by treating it with the polypeptide building blocks of flagellin in addition to antibiotics.

The body then becomes conditioned to handle the polypetides and is less likely to become inflamed. The team says that in addition to eye infections, the technique could be used to tackle the inflammation associated with cystic fibrosis and asthma.

Read the full patent application for reducing inflammation

Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor

Posted in infection, medicine | Comments Off

Cellular energy booster

Thursday, October 4th, 2007
All living cells are powered by a molecule called adenosine triphosphate or ATP. It is a mobile power store that carries energy from the breakdown of nutrients in the form of double bonds within its structure. Its energy can be released when and where the cell needs it by breaking these bonds.

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.

Posted in atp, biology, heart attack, heart disease, medicine | Comments Off

Brain radiator

Thursday, October 4th, 2007
In severe epileptic fits, over-excited brain cells fire at such a rate they can raise the brain's temperature in that area. This causes more nerves to fire in a feedback mechanism that makes the fit even worse. One way of preventing such escalating fits is to cool the area of the brain that is susceptible.

So Takashi Saito and colleagues at Yamaguchi University in Japan have developed a heat pipe that is surgically implanted into the affected region of the brain and then connected to a heat sink on the outside of the skull. This device carries heat away from the affected area, keeping it cool and reducing the chances of severe epileptic fits in future.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor

Read the full brain radiator patent application.

Posted in brain, engineering, epilepsy, medicine, radiator | Comments Off

Electrospraying drugs

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
Medical implants can be vastly improved by coating them with substances that release drugs over a period of time. For example, coating the stents used for keeping veins and arteries open with a substance that releases an anti-inflammatory drug over a period of months can help the body accept the stent more easily.

But creating an even coating on the stent that contains a specific dose of drug is not easy. When the coating is applied by dipping or spraying, some surfaces get a thicker coating and hence a higher dose than others. And drugs that don't end up on the stent are often wasted.

Now Robert Hoerr and colleagues at the University of Minnesota have come up with a way of delivering an even coating that contains a specific dose. The idea is to mix the drug with a dielectric solvent and then atomise the mixture to create an aerosol in which the droplets are charged. Then, by generating the opposite charge on stent, the droplets are attracted to its surface forming an even coating. Hoerr has formed a start up called Nanocopaeia to commercialise the idea.

Drug coated stents have shown themselves to be vastly superior to the uncoated variety. As a result they have become a hugely popular way of opening partially blocked blood vesssle. Hoerr's idea offers a way to reduce the cost of these implants, something that could benefit many people.

Read the full electrospraying patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor

Posted in heart disease, medicine, stents | Comments Off

Lung cancer test

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the world. The disease can be cured if caught and removed early enough, but the 10-year survival rate in the US is less than 5 per cent, much lower than in many other forms of cancer.

Ruth Katz, a cancer specialist at the University of Texas in Houston, says this is mainly because physicians lack the tools to spot lung cancer in its earliest stages, unlike cancers of the breast, colon and prostate, for which early diagnosis is much easier.

One way to spot the disease in its early stages is to screen people at risk: smokers, for example, who have long been known to be predisposed to lung cancer. But smoking, by itself, doesn't always trigger the disease.

Now Katz and colleague Feng Jiang have identified a number of genes that predispose smokers to lung cancer. They propose screening smokers for the presence of these genes, and if a person has those genes as well as other indications of early stage cancer, they can be treated and advised to give up smoking.

More controversially, Katz and Jiang suggest that a similar a set of tests could indicate that a smoker is not predisposed to cancer and may therefore be able to continue their habit safely.

See the full lung cancer predisposition test patent application.

Posted in cancer, disease, lung, medicine | Comments Off