Archive for the ‘Medical Science’ Category
It has succeeded in developing a gelatinous material, used a new method for treating burns, seems to be able to help regenerate tissue without scarring stops the process, at least in the experiments performed so far in mouse skin damaged by severe burns.
The new treatment, developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in the United States has not yet been tested in human patients. But researchers believe the procedure, which stimulates the formation of new blood vessels and skin, including hair follicles, could lead to a better healing process in people who have suffered severe burns, third degree. Read the rest of this entry »
Among the causes of development of heart disease, smoking is one of the most important. Smokers have an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes in general, and death from such diseases, although the risk varies between individuals. So far, there has been no simple method to measure sufficiently detailed so the different effects of smoking on heart disease.
A team of researchers at Southwestern Medical Center, part of the University of Texas, has determined that a blood test may one day quantify the degree of toxicity to the lungs of a person and their risk of heart disease. The lung protein levels in the blood of smokers may indicate the risk of excessive accumulation of atheromatous plaques in blood vessels. Read the rest of this entry »
The effects of obesity on our bodies are well known, and now scientists have made a breakthrough that provides insight into how the disease progresses, and clues for developing future treatments.
In this new study, researchers at Monash University in Australia, in collaboration with U.S. colleagues, have obtained new data on how it develops resistance to the hormone leptin, a fundamental causal component of obesity.
Our bodies produce leptin in response to the growth of lipid reserves. Acting on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, leptin tells the body to increase energy and reduce food intake, and thus helps us maintain a healthy body weight. The body’s response to leptin is impaired in people with overweight or obese, so this is where this problem is referred to as “leptin resistance”. Read the rest of this entry »
Researchers at the Laboratory of Visual and Cognitive Neuroscience (LNVC), Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Neuroscience of the University of Granada, Spain, are implementing a new technique, called multifocal electroretinography (mfERG), to make progress on the study of the retinitis pigmentosa, a retinal pathology considered rare disease and for which there is still no treatment or cure.
A team of researchers from the Laboratory of Visual and Cognitive Neuroscience (LNVC), Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Neurosciences at the University of Granada have started applying a new technique to achieve progress in the study of retinitis pigmentosa, a retinal disease for which there is still no treatment or cure. Read the rest of this entry »
In a recent study has concluded that estrogen significantly regulates energy expenditure, appetite and body weight, and that an insufficient amount of estrogen receptors in specific parts of the brain can lead to obesity.
So far, did not consider that sex hormones may play an important role in regulating food intake and body weight regulation.
The team of Dr. Deborah Clegg, professor of internal medicine at Southwestern Medical Center, part of the University of Texas, has found in her study with mice that estrogen, acting through two neural centers in the brain hypothalamus, kept under control body weight in females in regulating hunger and energy expenditure. Read the rest of this entry »
Every six seconds died in the world a person because of a stroke. “One in six” is the motto of the World Stroke Day this year, which refers to the fact that one in six people suffer a stroke over their lifetime. As stated by the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 85% of cases are due to preventable risk factors.
“Stroke is not an inevitable consequence of aging. By identifying and modifying risk factors can reduce the incidence and associated mortality rate”, says Freek Verheugt, a researcher at the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (OLVG) of Amsterdam hospital in Netherlands. International forecasts indicate that the incidence of fatal stroke will continue to grow and will spend 6 billion per year in 2010 to nearly 8 million per year in 2030. Read the rest of this entry »
Science has been working for quite some time in the laboratory culture of tissues and organs. Currently, tissue engineering and artificial tissue allows for the construction of some classes, but not yet achieved any success with larger structures such as organs.
Now, a group of researchers from the Fraunhofer Society is using new techniques and materials to create artificial blood vessels in the BioRap project. If all goes well, this technology will in future be able to provide even more complex tissues and artificial organs.
In early 2011, there were over 11,000 people on the waiting list for organ transplants in Germany, although the average is performed only half that number of transplants. Read the rest of this entry »
In many of the patient visits his doctor, the pain is the protagonist and sometimes the only significant symptom of the problem which leads them to the office. In such cases, physicians must be guided by the level of pain the patient describes. But it is not always easy to express in a reasonably objective manner the degree of physical pain, or separate nervousness or fear.
This is evident especially in babies or very young children, and also in the elderly with diminished mental faculties. It is clear for a long time needed a better way to measure pain, and not has to rely so heavily on words or other manifestations that uses the patient to describe his feelings. Read the rest of this entry »
The people who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes tend to have something in common: obesity. The exact mode in which an inadequate diet and obesity trigger diabetes has been for a long time subject of intense scientific research.
A new study led by Jamey D. Marth, director of the Center for Nanomedicine, a collaboration between the University of California at Santa Barbara and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in the U.S., has revealed a biochemical pathway that links high-fat diets with a sequence of molecular events responsible for the occurrence and severity of diabetes. Read the rest of this entry »
A recent finding may help design drugs to treat autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and diabetes.
Dr David Sansom and his team at the Centre for Immune Regulation Medical Research Council, University of Birmingham have discovered how a protein called CTLA-4, remains calm the immune system and prevents T cells, which are the “command center” of our immune response, to adopt an inappropriately aggressive behavior.
Only when we are actually infected by invading microbes is allowed to activate the alarm system properly, which leads it to mobilize all the strength of our immune system in the right place and time. Read the rest of this entry »