Latest Medical Breakthroughs

Scientists have figured out how mice that lose the ability to walk after a spinal-cord injury can regain it, a finding that could someday help human patients, Scientific American reports. When the long nerves that run from the brain to the base of the spine were severed, shorter nerves in the area were repurposed—not regrown, as was previously believed. 

Have you ever tried riding a rollercoaster? You just can’t stop yelling at the top of your lungs because of its challenging ups and downs. One moment you’re up there, the next minute you’ve almost kissed the ground. It may be an adrenaline-pumping experience for many, but for bipolar patients, living life on a constant rollercoaster ride is no fun at all.

People suffering from a bipolar disorder or the so-called manic depression are living life on an emotional rollercoaster. They can be extremely happy for one moment then for the next few hours they can be dreadfully depressed. There seems to be no in between.

It’s sad to know that there is no cure for bipolar disorder but good thing there is a way to treat it effectively. Doctors treating patients with bipolar disorder have been using lithium carbonate for 50 years now however, it’s found not effective for everyone. To solve this problem, doctors
started giving the patients anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs.

For patients with bipolar disorder, life is never easy for it is a series of extremes. But with the advancing medical technologies we can just hope that soon the rollercoaster ride for them will be completely over.

Photo credits: Maciek Sliwinski

Hospitals are turning to technology to cut down on incidents of doctors sewing up surgical patients with sponges and other items left inside, the Chicago Tribune reports. A bar-coding system to ensure what goes in comes back out is one solution; another involves tagging items with chips that allow them to be detected with a radio-frequency wand.

You can llearn more about fibriomyalgia and Lyrica here.

Fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome has long been one of the most complex medical situations that has baffled many doctors. Recent years has shown little improvement in the cure of the disease although the only way doctors dealt with the sickness was through trial and error. Read the rest of this entry »

Not everyone is a fan of needles. In fact, there are probably more people who are averse to having needles stuck into their skins. This isn’t surprising as needles are most always associated with pain, sickness, and medication.

Since it’s a part of many medical procedures however, there’s no way around getting shots until new ways of dispensing specific medicines or vaccines can be found. This might soon change though thanks to the medical researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University who have teamed up to create a flu vaccine that is painless, convenient, and hassle-free.

“We’re developing a technology we like to call microneedles. These are needles that we make by using the technology that’s used to make integrated circuits for computers,” said Georgia Tech Professor Mark Prausnitz.

Prausnitz says microscopic needles are coated with flu vaccine that can be barely seen or felt. It allows the vaccine to get into the body.

“Without those tiny needles, if you put the flu vaccine on your skin, none would go in,” according to Prausnitz.

Emory University’s Dr. Ioanna Skountzou says the technology is promising and easy to use. “This is something we hope to put in practice in the very near future. You can apply the patch yourself like a band aid, keep it on for only a short period of time and then dispose it.”

Learn more about this breakthrough here.

Photo credits: Ruud de Jong

A Harvard Medical School study indicate that it may be possible to stop type 1 diabetes and renew the insulin-producing beta cells that are destroyed by the disease. The scientists used a mix of three drugs designed to tame the out-of-control immune response attacking the pancreas, and an enzyme called alpha 1 anti-trypsin, which is normally produced by the body to ease inflammation.. This has only been tested on mice so far but trials with human patients will be run soon.

At the same time, progress is also being done towards a cure for type 1 diabetes in Sydney, Australia. Scientists from Westmead Hospital transplanted islet cells from a donor’s pancreas into patients’ livers, where the new cells began to produce insulin. This procedure was successfully done on eight patients and the results were very promising: the patients’ need for insulin shots dropped dramatically, to zero in some cases.

The swine flu pandemic came and spread like wildfire making it one of the fastest spreading viruses in human history, thanks to modern air travel that took it to all corners of the world within 24 hours. Now in the pandemic stage, the virus has skipped the containment phase for virologists were caught off guard for it had already crossed borders when it was discovered and identified. As to problems associated with Swine flu, the much used Tami-flu, the anti-viral drug developed during the spread of the bird flu virus is proving to be quite ineffective against the swine flu virus and there has already been a recorded case of reverse infection where swine were infected by an active virus from a human host, first identified in the UK. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the much known swine-flu there was already a problem associated with a strain of the flu virus that crossed the species barrier, bird flu. Now there have been several strains and the spread of this deadly disease (virologists are saying this is virus is more dangerous than swine flu even if it never reached pandemic status). Though Bird flu is known to be more dangerous than swine flu, it has a higher mortality rate compared to the swine flu pandemic that has also seen a lot of deaths yet they are still way lower than bird-flu. There is another problem that has shown up during the course of two pandemics, the evolution of these viruses that are now making them quite immune to the vaccines that are under development. Australian researchers have been hard at work developing a vaccine for all the strains of bird-flu that have been identified yet they have not yet been released for the public to use due to a need for further research and testing as to the effectivity of the vaccine. This fact also gives clue to the utter complexity bird flu has for swine flu already has a viable vaccine under human testing and is expected to come out of the lab by November this year, bird flu has yet to come out with an effective vaccine.

Researchers have found a more effective way of strengthening the bones of elderly women with the use of DHEA, Vitamin D and Calcium supplements that would help curb the debilitating effects of Osteoporosis. As the body ages, the bones tend to lose integrity and slow in their cell production leaving them brittle and weak, prone to injuries. Women are advised to take these three compounds in the form of supplements to help the body regenerate bone tissue as it slows down in middle to late life to promote healthier bones thus not limiting activity due to age. Most elderly women tone down activity due to their bones which have a nasty ability to deteriorate faster than males of the same age. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of today’s super-bugs have evolved resistance to some of our most potent and safest antibiotics mainly due to misuse of such medication that is worrying medical experts. Super-bugs are called such due to their ability to survive attack from previously effective treatment regimens like the new forms of tuberculosis that are resistant to most antibiotics. Penicillin is still one of our most potent forms of antibiotics but not for long, due to resistance and utter ineffectiveness of the drug against some of the newer strains of bacteria. Drug resistant strains of Staphylococcus, Clostridium and Enterococcus are now roaming our bodies, harder to tame than previous strains due to higher tolerance of present antibiotics. Read the rest of this entry »