Narcolepsy and Cataplexy Sleep Disorder Linked To Eating Disorder
The majority of patients with narcolepsy / cataplexy sleep disorder experience a consist of of symptoms of eating disorders, with an irresistible craving for food and binge eating as the most prominent features, according to a novel study.
The study, authored by Hal Droogleever Fortuyn, MD, and Sebastiaan Overeem, MD, of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in The Netherlands, focused on 60 patients with narcolepsy/cataplexy who were recruited from specialized sleep centers and 120 healthy controls.
According to the results, 23.3 percent of the narcolepsy/cataplexy patients fulfilled the criteria for a clinical eating disorder, because opposed to none of the control subjects. Half of the patients reported a persistent craving for nutrition, during the time that well as binge eating. Twenty-five percent of patients even reported binging at least twice a week.
"These facts make it clear that narcolepsy is not just a sleeping disorder, but a hypothalamic disease with a much broader symptom profile," said Dr. Fortuyn. "Hypocretin, the neurotransmitter that is lost in narcolepsy, has been implicated in the regulation of feeding through animal studies. Earlier studies in narcolepsy found a clear increase in body weight. However, we did not attain to a correlation between binge eating and increased influence. Binge eating is apparently not the direct cause of the obesity in narcolepsy, and this suggests that metabolic alterations may be involved. Nevertheless, our study shows that the loss of hypocretin function makes narcolepsy patients not only struggle with staying awake, but in like manner destabilizes their eating pattern, which makes it harder to stay away from the candy jar."
Narcolepsy is a sleep disarrangement that causes people to fall asleep uncontrollably during the day. It also includes features of dreaming that occur while awake. Other common symptoms include sleep paralysis, hallucinations and cataplexy. About one out of every 2,000 people is known to have narcolepsy. It affects the same number of men and women.
The article, entitled, "High Prevalence of Eating Disorders in Narcolepsy with Cataplexy: A Case-Control Study", was published in the March 1 issue of the journal Sleep.
No commentsUseful Screening Tool Provided By Zebrafish For Genes, Drugs That Protect Against Hearing Loss
A small striped fish is helping scientists understand what makes people susceptible to a common form of hearing disadvantage, although, in this matter of inquiry, it’s not the fish’s ears that are of interest. In a study published in the Feb. 29 issue of the journal PLoS Genetics, researchers at the University of Washington have developed a research method that relies on a zebrafish’s lateral line - the faint line running down cropped land side of a fish that enables it to sense its surroundings - to without delay screen for genes and chemical compounds that protect against hearing loss from some medications. The study was funded in part by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health.
“The fish’s lateral line contains sensory cells that are functionally similar to those found in the inner ear, except these are on the surface of the fish’s body, making them more easily accessible,” said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. “This means that scientists can very efficiently analyze the sensory structures under different conditions to find out what is likely to cause damage to these structures and, conversely, what can protect them from damage.”
When people are exposed to some antibiotics and chemotherapy agents, the sensory structures in the inner ear, called hair cells, can be irreversibly damaged, resulting in hearing damage and balance problems. Such medications are called ototoxic. People vary widely in their susceptibility to these agents as well as to damage caused by other chemical agents, loud sounds and aging.
To find out why this is so, senior scientists Edwin Rubel, Ph.D., David Raible, Ph.D. and their research team developed a screening military science that uses hair cells in the lateral line of zebrafish larvae to eminent how hair cells in a person’s internal ear might respond under similar conditions. Hair cells are named for small bristly extensions, or stereocilia, jutting from their tops. Movement of fluid (triggered by sound vibrations in the inner ear or changes in water pressure in the fish’s environment) causes the stereocilia to tilt to one side, generating an electrical impulse that travels to the brain.
The researchers first set out to identify genes that may be involved in how hair cells respond to ototoxic medicines. Using a chemical that causes random mutations in zebrafish, the researchers bred various fish families, through each family exhibiting a different set of mutations. The researchers then exposed five-day-old larval issue to the drug neomycin, a type of antibiotic that damages these hair cells as well of the same kind with those in the human inner ear. The larvae were then stained to determine if the hair cells were still intact. Fish that were resistant to loss were quickly identified as were those that were especially vulnerable.
Using genetic techniques, the group then examined the larvae’s DNA, searching for segments that were closely tied to the desired property. In doing so, they zoomed in on five mutations - each located on different genes - that, when inherited from each parent, protected against hair cell damage. Further examination revealed that one of the identified genes corresponds to a gene that is also found in other vertebrates, including humans. Another five mutations were identified that offer protection under more complex genetic conditions.
Next, the team investigated whether they could identify chemical compounds that protect hair cells against ototoxic medicines. Using the same screening technique - exposing five-day-old zebrafish larvae to neomycin and later applying extraordinary stains to the hair cells - the researchers screened more than 10,000 compounds and narrowed them from a thin to a dense state to two similar chemicals that produce robust protection of hair cells against the neomycin. One of the compounds was later found to protect hair cells from a mouse’s inner ear against the drug, indicating that the same compound may be protective for other mammals as well.
“One of the pluses about working with zebrafish is that, like other fish, they produce hundreds of offspring. We can look at lots of animals and we can look at many hair cells per animal, which means that we can get good quantitative data,” said Dr. Raible.
The authors suggest that their research technique, which combines chemical screening with traditional genetic approaches, offers a fast and efficient way to identify potential drugs and drug targets that may one day provide therapies for people with hearing squandering and balance disorders.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Other sponsors of the study include the American Academy of Otolaryngology - head strong and Neck Surgery Foundation, the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund and the V.M. Bloedel Hearing Research Center.
NIDCD supports and conducts research and research training on the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, be tinctured, voice, speech and language and provides health information, based upon scientific discovery, to the public. For more information about NIDCD programs, diocese the Web site at http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation’s Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a ingredient of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency during conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
Source: Jennifer Wenger
NIH/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
With The Help Of Short RNA Strand Exposed Skin Cells Protect Body From Bacteria, Dehydration And Even Cancer
Every minute, 30,000 of our outermost skin cells die so that we can live. When they do, new cells migrate from the inner layer of the skin to the surface of it, where they form a tough protective barrier. In a series of fine experiments in mice, researchers at Rockefeller University have now discovered a tiny RNA molecule that helps create this barrier. The results not only yield new discernment into how derm first evolved, but in like manner suggest how healthy cells be able to turn cancerous.
Hundreds of these tiny RNA molecules, called microRNAs, are expressed in skin, “But there was something curious about one in particular, microRNA-203,” says Rui Yi, a postdoc who works with Elaine Fuchs, head strong of the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development. “As an embryo develops, the expression of microRNA-203 jumps surpassingly quickly over just two days. From being barely detectable at day 13, this microRNA becomes the most abundant expressed in skin,” says Yi, whose toil will be published as an advance online publication in Nature March 2. MicroRNAs, which were discovered in mammals in 2001, regulate genes outside of the cell’s nucleus.
Yi and Fuchs, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor at Rockefeller, found that during the 13th day of development, mouse skin is primarily composed of undifferentiated stem cells. Two days later, these stem cells exit the inner layer of the pelt and begin to differentiate into cells that form the outermost, protective layer. MicroRNA-203’s expression skyrockets precisely during this period, suggesting that it plays some key role in the barrier’s development.
In order to figure out its role, Yi and Fuchs needed to pinpoint exactly where microRNA-203 is expressed. Other microRNAs have been found to be specific to heart and muscle tissues; more last almost exclusively in the brain. However, this microRNA was found and nothing else in very specific types of skin — stratified epithelial tissues, to be exact — and only in this skin type’s outer layers. What’s more, this expression pattern is identical to that found in humans, zebrafish, chickens and the like — in other words, vertebrates that evolved other thing than 400 million years apart.
“If it has been expressed in this very specific tissue for a long time and across several species, it means that it probably plays an important role there,” says Yi. To find disclosed its function, Yi, in one set of experiments, used a genetic technique to precociously express microRNA in the inner layer of the skin, where stem cells proliferate at a swift clip. In a second set of experiments, he blocked microRNA-203 from functioning in the outer layer using an antagomir, a molecule that binds directly to microRNA-203 and shuts down its ability to carry out its function.
In the first set, he found that the stem cells proliferated significantly less than they did when microRNA-203 wasn’t expressed, and, as a result, the mice formed very thin skin — hardly a protective layer at all. The stem cells, the researchers saw, lost their ability to proliferate not because microRNA-203 killed them off but because it suppressed the activity of a molecule called p63, whose piece of work is to endure cells, primarily stem cells, proliferating. In the second set of experiments, Yi found that the cells in the outer layer proliferated significantly more than they did when microRNA-203 was expressed. The reason: because microRNA-203 wasn’t available to shut down p63’s busy work.
“We found that microRNA-203 acts to stop the translation of the p63 protein,” says Fuchs. “The result is a swift transition from proliferating leading position cells within the innermost layer of the epidermis and terminally differentiating cells as they exit this layer and put in motion outward to the skin surface.”
The findings be seized of intriguing implications for cancer, since p63 is found in excess in cancer cells. “As a next step, we are going to examine whether low expression of microRNA-203 is associated with squamous cell carcinomas,” says Fuchs, “and whether by putting back microRNA-203 we can inhibit the expansion of these cancer cells.”
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original crush release.
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Source: Thania Benios
Rockefeller University
Researchers ID Promising New Cancer Drug
Researchers have tardy searched for a novel cancer drug that activates a infallible protein to kill tumor cells. But finding a drug that kills the cancer without causing damage to normal cells has stymied researchers.
Now, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have designed a moderate molecule that is highly effective in cell cultures at inhibiting the interaction between this protein, called p53, and another protein that inactivates p53 in cancer. The new molecule is ideal for drug development as it can be given orally as a pill and it appears to be safe for use in animals.
“For more than 10 years scientists have searched for ways to block p53 inhibition, but with little success. Our study clearly shows that this can be done,” says study author Shaomeng Wang, Ph.D., Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor in Medicine at the U-M Medical School and co-director of the molecular therapeutics program at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.
If clinical trials prove out the drug’s promise, it could have potential for treating many different types of cancer. Results of the study appear the week of March 3 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The protein p53, which normally helps suppress tumors, is inactivated in almost all human cancers. About half the time, p53 does not do its job because the gene that holds the protein is mutated or missing altogether. The other half of the time, another protein, called human MDM2, is the culprit. It binds to p53 and inhibits the tumor suppressor function of p53, promoting cancer development.
Using a computer-assisted approach, U-M researchers designed a small molecule, called MI-219, that is highly effective in blocking the interaction of MDM2 and p53. MI-219 specifically kills tumor cells by harnessing the power of p53. In animal models of of man cancer, MI-219 completely inhibited tumefaction growth and appeared to bring into being no toxicity to animals.
“Many traditional cancer drugs also activate p53 but they do so by causing DNA damage. They kill not only tumor cells but also normal cells, thus having severe side effects. MI-219 is unique in that it is designed to activate p53 without causing DNA damage, specifically killing tumor cells. Indeed, MI-219 is highly effective in inhibiting tumor growth, and even inducing tumor regression, but it has caused none toxicity to animals at efficacious doses,” says Wang, professor of internal medicine and pharmacology at the U-M Medical School and professor of medicinal chemistry at the U-M College of Pharmacy.
In addition to its effectiveness at killing cancer cells without toxic side effects, MI-219 can be developed as a pill that patients could take orally, rather than the traditionary chemotherapy drugs that sourness be given intravenously at a hospital or cancer center.
“While promising in preclinical studies, MI-219 needs to be evaluated in human clinical trials for its safety and efficacy for cancer treatment since it is a brand new drug,” Wang cautions.
“We are very excited about the therapeutic potential of MI-219 for the treatment of many types of human cancer. Ascenta is committed to advancing MI-219, which we have designated AT-219, into human clinical trials,” says study author Dajun Yang, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president of research and a co-founder of Ascenta Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that has licensed the technology related to MI-219 from U-M and plans to aggressively advance it into human clinical trials.
MI-219 is in preclinical studies and not yet ready for human trials in cancer patients. For questions about currently available cancer treatments, call the U-M Cancer AnswerLine at 800-865-1125 or visit http://www.mcancer.org.
The lead author without ceasing the study was Sanjeev Shangary, Ph.D., research investigator at the U-M Medical School. Other authors were Dongguang Qin, Donna McEachern, Meilan Liu, Rebecca Miller, Su Qiu, Zaneta Nikolovska-Coleska, Ke Ding, Guoping Wang, Jianyong Chen, Denzil Bernard, Jian Zhang, Yipin Lu, Qingyang Gu, Rajal Shah, Kenneth Pienta and Yi Sun, all from the University of Michigan; and Xiaolan Ling, Sanmao Kang, Ming Guo, and Dajun Yang from Ascenta Therapeutics Inc.
Funding for the study is from the National Cancer Institute, a U-M Prostate Cancer SPORE grant, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Ascenta Therapeutics Inc. and the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The University of Michigan has filed a patent application for MI-219 and its related molecules. The technology has been licensed by dint of. Ascenta. U-M and Wang have equity in Ascenta. Wang is a scientific founder of Ascenta and serves as its chief scientific adviser and is the principal investigator on a research contract from Ascenta to U-M.
Reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online week of March 3, 2008
University of Michigan Health System
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http://www.med.umich.edu
South Korean Scientist Falsified Data In Groundbreaking Research
Just three years after the groundbreaking stem cell research of Hwang Woo Suk was found to be based on fabricated data, another Korean scientist’s research is in question. KAIST (the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) announced last Friday that researcher Kim Tae Kook has been suspended for fabricating data in two breakthrough studies published in the renowned journals Science and Nature Chemical Biology.
The papers in question are “A magnetic nanoprobe technology conducive to detecting corpuscular interactions in live cells” published in Science in July, 2005 and “Small Molecule-Based Reversible Reprogramming of Cellular Lifespan” which appeared in Nature Chemical Biology in July, 2006.
The 2005 study describes an innovative technique named MAGIC, short for magnetic-based interaction capture, that can be used in living cells to determine which cellular molecules interact with drugs. In the 2006 study, Kim and colleagues draw how the MAGIC technology was used to identify a small molecule adapted of reversing cellular senescence.
Both studies garnered Kim much public attention due to the potential medical application of his investigation. KAIST’s president Suh Nam Pyo even suggested that he was the most likely Korean scientist to win the Nobel Prize.
The problems with the data were identified by one of Kim’s doctoral students who was unable to replicate the results of the studies after repeating the experiments numerous times.
The chief of the biological sciences department at KAIST has informed both Science and Nature Chemical Biology about the false data in Kim’s studies. Science had to retract the two fraudulent papers by Hwang Woo Suk in 2006.
KAIST (the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Written by - Carolyn Matthews
Freelance Journalist
Seoul, South Korea
carolynmmatthews@gmail.com
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
Black Teen Mothers With Depression More Likely Than Non-Depressed Teen Moms To Have Subsequent Pregnancy, Study Finds
Black teen mothers who have depression after giving birth are at higher risk of a subsequent pregnancy than teen mothers who are not depressed, according to a reflect upon in the Archives of Pediatric and growing Medicine, Reuters reports.
For the study, Beth Barnet and colleagues at the University of Maryland School of Medicine looked at 245 mostly black females ages 12 to 18 who received prenatal care at five community centers. According to Reuters, the teenagers were mostly from low-income families.
Teenage mothers are more than twice as likely as adult mothers to become depressed, Reuters reports. Further, previous research has shown that black teenage mothers have depression at twice the rate of white teen moms. According to Barnet, the racial disparity is likable associated with poverty. Barnet also said that exposure to violence and a deaden with narcotics culture are additional factors for disparities within the study group.
The study found that 46% of the teenagers had symptoms of depression at the beginning of the study. Those who showed such symptoms of depression had a 40% higher risk of a subsequent pregnancy than teenagers who showed not one signs of depression.
According to Barnet, depression mixed teen mothers could cause feelings of fatigue and helplessness that then lead to less use of birth control. In addition, teen mothers with depression might “seek outright enhancer with additional sexual relationships,” Barnet said.
Of all the teenagers in the study, 120 had another pregnancy within two years of giving birth. The average time span between the pregnancies was slightly more than 11 months, according to the investigation.
Barnet said, “Teens having a subsequent pregnancy were more likely to be school dropouts; not use condoms consistently at follow-up; and report a relationship with their baby’s father, who tended to be older.”
She added, “This study provides evidence that depression may be an important independent risk factor for rapid subsequent pregnancy in African-American adolescent mothers” (Conlon, Reuters, 3/3).
An abstract of the study is available online.
Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can behold the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up as antidote to email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published in quest of kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.
Therapeutic Effects Of Injectable Drugs Enhanced By Engineered Nanomedicine System
In an article featured on the cover of the March issue of Nature Nanotechnology, Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D., of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston presented a proof-of-concept study on a new multistage delivery universe (MDS) for imaging and therapeutic applications. This discovery could go a long way almost making injectable drugs more effective. The study is included in the March 2 Advance Online Publication on Nature Nanotechnology’s Web site (http://www.nature.com/nnano/index.html)
“This is next stock nanomedicine,” said Ferrari, the senior author. “Now, we’re engineering sophisticated nanostructures to elude the corpse’s natural defenses, locate tumors and other diseased cells, and release a payload of therapeutics, contrasting agents, or both over a controlled period. It’s the difference between riding a bicycle and a motorcycle.”
The study - “Mesoporous silicon particles as a multistage delivery system for imaging and therapeutic applications” - was conducted with researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University.
Nanotechnology offers just discovered and powerful tools to design and to engineer novel drug delivery systems and to predict how they will work once inside the body. “The field of therapeutic nanoparticles began with tiny drug-encapsulated fat bubbles called liposomes, now commonly used in cancer clinics worldwide. Targeting molecules were later added to liposomes and other nanovectors to take part with in directing them to diseased cells,” Ferrari said.
Getting intravenous agents to their intended targets is no easy task. It’s estimated that approximately one of each 100,000 molecules of agent reaches its desired destination. Physicians are faced with the quandary of increasing the dosage, which can lead to side effects or reducing the dosage, which can limit the therapeutic benefits.
The multistage approach, according to Ferrari, is needed to circumvent the body’s natural defenses or biobarriers, which deed as obstacles to foreign objects injected in the blood stream. “To overcome this problem, we hypothesized and developed a multifunctional MDS comprising boards 1 mesoporous particles loaded with one or more types of stage 2 nanoparticles, which can in turn carry either active agents or higher-stage particles. We wish demonstrated the loading, controlled release and simultaneous in vitro delivery of quantum-dots and carbon nanotubes to human vascular cells,” the authors write.
In addition to circumventing biobarriers, Ferrari’s team is working on the biochemical modifications required to efficiently deliver the MDS to a specific cancer lesion. “We have preliminary data that publish that we can localize a payload of diagnostic agents, therapeutic agents or combination of both to target cells. Once on site, the molecules can be released in a controlled way and then the MDS will degrade in 24 to 48 hours, be transformed into orthosilicic acid and leave no trace in the material substance,” Ferrari said.
Lead author Ennio Tasciotti, Ph.D., senior postdoctoral fellow in the NanoMedicine Research Center at the UT Health Science Center at Houston, said the proof-of-concept study would have not been possible without a multidisciplinary effort including contributions from mathematicians, physicists, engineers, chemists and biologists.
“We are dealing with objects that are in the billionth of a meter size range and to study similar objects we used cutting edge technologies,” Tasciotti said. “The characterization of the particles was performed using scanning electron and atomic force microscopy, dynamic daylight scattering, fluorimetry and flow cytometry. The interaction of particles with cells was studied using fluorescence and confocal microscopy as well as a series of assays intended to determine cell viability and internalization rate of the nanoparticles.”
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original enjoin release.
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Ferrari heads the 40-person NanoMedicine Research Center in the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM), a part of the UT Health Science Center at Houston, during the time that well as the Alliance for NanoHealth, a consortium made up of UT Houston and six other institutions. Ferrari serves as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the UT Health Science Center at Houston, professor of Experimental Therapeutics at the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, professor of bioengineering at Rice University and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Collaborators include Ashley Leonard, Katherine Price and James Tour, Ph.D., all with Rice University, and Fredika Robertson, Ph.D., of UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Ferrari’s coauthors from the NanoMedicine Research Center include: Xuewu Liu, Ph.D., Rohan Bhavane, Ph.D., Ming-Cheng “Mark” Cheng, Ph.D., Kevin Plant and Paolo Decuzzi, Ph.D.
Source: Robert Cahill
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
PET/CT Planning Beneficial For Head And Neck Cancer Patients - Combining Imaging Modalities Provides Excellent Clinical Outcomes
Using a combination of positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography for radiation therapy treatment planning in head and neck carcinoma patients provides for excellent, local and regional disease control when compared to CT alone, according to a study in the March 1 issue of the International Journal for Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.
CT has been the traditional choice for staging and radiation therapy treatment planning for head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, which account for approximately 5 percent of malignancies worldwide; but PET has been shown to have advantages over CT and other imaging modalities in detecting primary tumors, involved lymph nodes and distant metastatic disease not clearly otherwise identified. PET alone does have several disadvantages though, such as poor correlation to precise anatomic structures, but these negative impacts are significantly reduced when PET and CT are combined by fusing the separate scans taken on a hybrid scanner.
While it has been proven in several studies that PET/CT imaging is feasible for head and neck radiation therapy planning, very few studies own been done to determine the clinical outcomes. So, researchers in the departments of Radiation Oncology, Radiology, Neoplastic and Related Disorders, and Otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee conducted this study to evaluate the clinical outcomes, including overall survival, disease-free survival and the incidence of recurrence of patients receiving PET/CT-guided radiation therapy and the correlation of the clinical outcomes to the greatest criterion uptake value obtained put on the PET scan.
Between December 2002 and August 2006, 42 patients with a median age of 55, who were diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, were given PET/CT imaging as part of their radiation therapy planning. All patients were observed for at in the smallest degree six months following their treatment, through a mean follow-up time of 32 months.
Overall survival of the 42 study patients was 82.8 percent at two years and 74.1 percent at three years, superior to the survival rate that was found in a Radiation Therapy Oncology Group study in which patients received standard fractionation or accelerated fractionation with concomitant boost. That study was the largest randomized trial of radiation therapy in locally advanced head strong and neck cancer.
Disease free survival for the 42 study patients was 71 percent and 66.9 percent at two and three years respectively. The cumulative incidence of recurrence was 18.7 percent. The study also cast that standard uptake value is not a good predictor of local recurrence and that dose escalation based on standard uptake value is unlikely to be a fruitful treatment strategy.
“PET/CT provides a higher level of confidence that we are not missing tumors as we attempt to lessen treatment side personal estate by delivering radiation therapy that tightly conforms in three dimensions to a given tumor volume,” said Christopher Schultz, M.D., professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Most importantly the PET/CT guided conformal radiotherapy was clearly in no degree worse, and based on our early results may in fact lead to superior clinical outcomes as compared to CT only planned radiotherapy.”
ASTRO is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with 9,000 members who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. As the leading organization in radiation oncology, biology and physics, the Society is dedicated to improving patient care through education, clinical practice, advancement of science and advocacy.
http://www.astro.org
Risk Of Death From Acute Kidney Failure Reduced By ‘Renal Assist Device’
For patients with acute kidney injury (AKI), an external device containing human kidney cells promotes recovery of the injured kidneys and significantly reduces the risk of death, according to a preliminary clinical study published in the May Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
The experimental renal tubule relieve device (RAD) appears safe and effective for desperately ill patients with AKI. “Deployment of the RAD was associated with surprisingly better outcomes for these patients - speeding recovery of kidney function and reducing risk of death by half,” comments Dr. H. David Humes of University of Michigan, one of the study authors.
Patients with AKI have sudden loss of kidney function, resulting from a wide range of possible causes (such at the same time that blood disadvantage or toxic injury). The goal of treatment is to replace lost kidney form through dialysis and related techniques until the kidneys have time to recover. However, even with treatment, the risk of death during an incidental narrative of AKI is 50 percent or higher.
In the new study, 40 of 58 patients with AKI were randomly assigned to treatment with the RAD, in addition to standard renal replacement therapy. The RAD is a conventional royal line filter device lined with human renal tubule cells, grown from donor kidneys. “The cells are made available to carry out sly metabolic and endocrine functions that the patient’s failing kidneys can no longer perform, thereby staunching a cascading decline in the patient’s soundness and allowing time for the patient’s be in possession of organs to recover,” Dr. Humes explains.
Outcomes were significantly better for AKI patients treated with the RAD. After one month, 33 percent of patients in the RAD group had died, compared to 61 percent of those treated with renal replacement therapy only. Patients who received the RAD were likewise more in a fair way to be alive after six months. With adjustment for other factors, the risk of death was about 50 percent lower in the RAD group.
Patients in the RAD group also had a shorter time to return of kidney function. Overall, kidney function recovered in 53 percent of patients with RAD, compared to 28 percent without RAD. In both groups, about 20 percent of patients survived but never recovered kidney function, requiring chronic dialysis.
Although the initial results are encouraging, the benefits of RAD treatment need to be confirmed in larger studies. In addition, the researchers need to study the movables of changes in the design of the RAD, which are needed to accommodate mass production.
In addition to improving the outcomes of AKI, the results may point the way toward entirely new classes of cell-based and tissue-engineered therapies. “The ability to harness vital processes of cells, to target their living corpuscular machinery on restoring critical substances which have become disordered by disease, has vast implications for the future of medicine,” says Dr. Humes. “Particularly, we are encouraged that we have power to develop a related device to treat chronic renal failure - a wearable kidney that performs natural functions unachievable through man-made technology alone.”
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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The American Society of Nephrology (ASN) is a not-for-profit organization of 10,500 physicians and scientists dedicated to the study of nephrology and committed to providing a forum for the promulgation of information regarding the latest research and clinical findings on kidney diseases. ASN publishes JASN, the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN), and the Nephrology Self-Assessment Program (NephSAP).
Source: Shari Leventhal
American Society of Nephrology
Nano Magnets Made By Bacteria Could One Day Target Tumours
A new study by scientists in the UK and France has shown it is possible to fine tune the magnetic properties of tiny “nano” magnets made by bacteria, and this technology could some day be developed to target cancer tumours.
The study is the work of Dr Sarah Staniland of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, and colleagues, including Dr Andrew Harrison who is based at the The Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, and is published in the early online issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Some bacteria have the dexterity to digest iron into tiny nanoparticles of magnetite (Fe3O4) that are enclosed in lipid vesicles or membranes. These “magnetosomes” as they are called, have considerable potential for medical use because of their greater biocompatibility and convenient scanty and uniform shape compared to manmade versions.
Bacteria use them like tiny compasses to help them search for environments rich in oxygen.
For use in medicine, a important advantage could exist gained if the attractive properties of magnetosomes could be controlled, for instance by chemically doping them, but until this study, that had not been demonstrated very successfully.
Staniland and colleagues showed they could dope the magnetosomes of three types of Magnetospirillum bacteria with cobalt.
The presence of cobalt in the magnetosomes increases their ability to stay magnetised when they are removed from a magnetic field. Measuring the coercive field necessary to reverse their magnetisation showed that the increase in magnetic field strength conferred through the cobalt was between 36 and 45 per cent, depending upon the type of bacteria and the amount of cobalt absorbed.
Using a range of measuring techniques such as elemental analysis, X-ray absorption and magnetic circular dichroism (this looks at the effect of magnetic field on polarized light), Staniland and colleagues estimated the cobalt content of the magnetosomes to be between 0.2 and 1.4 per cent.
They concluded that their findings:
“Provide an important advance in designing biologically synthesized nanoparticles with useful highly tuned attractive properties.”
The researchers speculated that magnetosomes that can stay magnetised longer could one day be used to target and destroy cancer cells, reported BBC News.
They could be guided to the tumour using magnetic force, and once there, through reversing the magnetic field they could be heated up and kill the cells. Another application could be to use them to transport drugs to the precise site of the tumour.
Staniland told the media that:
“For nanoparticles to be used in physic you need them to be a very uniform size and shape and bacteria are real good for that.”
“You would persuade them with a normal magnetic field and then heat them with the opposing scope,” she explained in the BBC News report.
Cancer experts say nanotechnology like this is an exciting new field that could lead to new medical treatments, however the research is still very abundant at an early stage.
“Controlled cobalt doping of magnetosomes in vivo.”
Sarah Staniland, Wyn Williams, Neil Telling, Gerrit Van Der Laan, Andrew Harrison and Bruce Ward.
Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 02 March 2008.
DOI:10.1038/nnano.2008.35.
Click hither because Abstract.
Source: BBC News, diary abstract.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
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Interface Bridging Mind And Body: The Wiimote
The Nintendo Wii is an immensely popular source of videogame entertainment, but more recently, it has been adapted for a number of different uses, in the same state as a tool for physical therapy and as a form of exercise for geriatrics. New research from the University of Memphis, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, has found a different use: psychological experimentation. By integrating the Nintendo Wiimote with a laboratory computer, psychologist Rick Dale and his student collaborators were able to extract rich information about a person’s reaching movements while they performed a learning task.
The authors were biassed in by what means the dynamic characteristics of arm manner of moving modify as people become better at a task. Data from the Wiimote permitted the researchers to demonstrate that body movements change systematically along with change in mental processing (in this case, learning). These results provide new evidence that cognition and action systems, still thought by many to be relatively separate subsystems in the human mind, are actually deeply intertwined.
“The Wiimote is in fact the perfect interface to perform these kinds of experiments,” Dale remarked. “As the game itself is already designed to absorb a person’s body into the videogame actual trial, we just acquire to hook the Wiimote into a lab computer, and we can enjoy the rich streaming data that videogames typically use, but this time track them in experiments.”
Dale and his students continuously tracked the position and acceleration of participants’ choices as they learned to match unfamiliar symbols into pairs. As people learned, their bodies reflected the confidence of that learning. Participants moved the Wiimote more quickly, more firmly, and also pressed adhering it more firmly as they became familiar with the symbols. While everyone knows that you get better at moving in tasks that require intricate movement (such as learning to use chopsticks), these results suggest that your body movements are related to learning other information as well.
Their results suggest that when the dead body accompanies more complex learning experiences in school or at work, it can magnificently reflect that underlying performance of learning. The authors suggest that this idea may lend aid adaptive computer interfaces and learning technologies extract information about a user or learner - by paying come to close quarters attention to their body dynamics.
The authors note that using the Wiimote now provides psychologists with a very affordable and immersive environment to study the relations between cognition and action. Existing technology to track three-dimensional movement typically costs many thousands of dollars, but the use of the Wiimote may provide an accessible and enjoyable alternative.
“One reason the Nintendo Wii is so wildly successful is that it integrates natural bodily movements with the mental processing involved in gaming,” Dale notes, “our results offer more remote testament to this. Your body and your mind are really one system, naturally changing with each other in all our daily learning and other cognitive experiences.”
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Citation: Dale R, Roche J, Snyder K, McCall R (2008) Exploring Action Dynamics as an Index of Paired-Associate Learning. PLoS ONE 3(3): e1728. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001728
Link to the published article.
Disclaimer
The following press release refers to an upcoming article in PLoS ONE. The release has been provided by the article authors and/or their institutions. Any opinions expressed in this are the personal views of the contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of PLoS. PLoS expressly disclaims any and all warranties and liability in connection with the information found in the release and article and your use of like information.
Source: Rebecca Walton
Public Library of Science
Deficits Found In Frontal Brain Activation Of Children At Risk Of Developing A Substance-Use Disorder
Children and adolescents at high risk for developing a substance-use produce disease in (SUD) tend to show deficits in executive cognitive function (ECF). A study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess eye movements in adolescents has found a connective between brain functioning and risk by reason of developing an SUD.
Results are published in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
“ECF is basically the control center for governing other cognitive processes,” explained Rebecca Landes McNamee, assistant study professor of radiology and bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh and answering. author for the study. “For example, in reprove, ECF would be engaged in the planning and manage process required in answering a question; formulating your response, raising your hand, waiting until you are called upon, and stating your answer. A person with with little elevation levels of ECF might blurt out the answer. Another example could be interacting with someone on the playground who upsets you. A someone with good ECF will think through the actions and consequences of their behavior rather than responding rashly. A person with low levels of ECF may respond with violence.”
McNamee and her colleagues decided to use an antisaccade task to reflect the inhibitory response required in the actions above.
“While this eye-movement task may be more basic in nature than an prohibitory response, it still requires control and response suppression, and is design to use the same basic mechanisms in the brain as those required in more difficult suppression tasks,” she said. “As response inhibition is something that may be deficient in high-risk children, we thought this task would be a beneficial way to study the workings of basic mechanisms in the brain.”
The researchers employed fMRI with 25 adolescents (15 males, 10 females), ages 12 to 19 years, during a task that required inhibition of each initial eye-movement response like well as a voluntary realignment to an perform reciprocally location. The fMRI findings were categorized into regions of activation: aggregate frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobe. Additionally, each subject’s neurobehavioral disinhibition (ND) - their ability to control an immediate impulsive response to a given site - was assessed, and the drug use/histories were determined.
“We found that individuals who exhibit a high amount of ND - that is, work not have a social ability to manage their impulsive responses - have less brain activity in the frontal cortex, the region of the brain responsible for ECF, during the antisaccade task,” said McNamee. “In other words, the regions of the brain responsible for these inhibitory processes engaged less energy in individuals with higher ND scores than those with lower ND scores.”
Normal etc. development involves an increase in the ability to inhibit impulsive responses, which would be reflected in an increase in brain activation in areas associated with inhibition, said McNamee.
“Since some of the children show less ability to inhibit responses - observed as higher levels of ND - along with less brain activity in these areas, we can hypothesize that the reason for this is a delay in the development of brain networks associated by inhibition,” she said. “We cannot say for sure what may cause these deficits, but we suspect it has to do with a combination of genetics inherited from the parents and/or the environment in which the individual was raised.”
One of the key implications of these findings, aforesaid McNamee, is that behaviors and actions are directly related to brain functioning.
“Teachers, caregivers, and other individuals should understand that each in the teens matures at a various rate; they do not always respond like adults because their brains are not at the same level of functioning as an adult,” she said. “Responses and behaviors related to a certain situation are less easy for some adolescents to manage than others.”
McNamee plans to follow these adolescents as they mature. “We would like to better understand whether the brains of subjects with higher levels of ND display increasing amounts of brain activation in the frontal lobe as they mature, or if they will continue to show reduced brain activity when compared to subjects with lower ND scores throughout later adolescence. This type of data may help to indicate whether inhibition centers in the brains of high ND subjects ‘catch up’ to those of the lower ND subjects, or if they will always have differences with respect to these brain centers.”
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Article adapted by dint of. Medical News Today from original press release.
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Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official newspaper of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, “Brain Activation, Response Inhibition, and Increased Risk for Substance Use Disorder,” were: Kathryn L. Dunfee and Ralph E. Tarter of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Beatriz Luna of the Department of Psychiatry, and Duncan B. Clark of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Department of Psychiatry, all at the University of Pittsburgh; as well as William F. Eddy of the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Source: Rebecca Landes McNamee, Ph.D.
University of Pittsburgh
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
Latest Release Of Web-Based Quality Assurance System Assists Nursing Homes In Improving Resident Care And Quality Of Life
Nursing Home Quality, the national choregus in Quality Indicator sight (QIS) based quality conviction solutions for long-term care providers, announced the release of the latest version of abaqisTM, a web-based quality assurance system designed for use by nursing home providers to identify quality concerns and focus quality improvement efforts.
The QIS is a revised long-term care survey process utilized by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that involves two stages of review. In Stage I, preliminary investigations are conducted through structured resident, family, and staff interviews, resident observations, record reviews, and analysis of Minimum Data Set (MDS) data.
These tasks, in combination with structured facility reviews, yield 162 Quality of Care and Quality of Life Indicators (QCIs) that are compared with defined thresholds to identify Care Areas for further investigation in Stage II of the QIS. The sixtieth part of a minute stage involves in-depth quality investigations using Critical Element Pathways that address assessment, care planning, care provident measures, and reassessment.
The latest release of the abaqis TM system encompasses all six assessments conducted on site during Stage I of the QIS, with modules for family, staff, and resident interviews, resident observations, and census and admission record reviews. The system comprehensively guides the quality assurance efforts based on QIS concepts and processes, electronically manages the resident file, and even provides analysis of facility data based on national thresholds.
“I believe that the QIS has rendered the survey process more objective and more resident-centered,” says Andrew Kramer, M.D., CEO of Nursing Home Quality. “However, the QIS software used in the survey process was developed solely for government surveyor exercise. The abaqis TM system is an affordable, user-friendly tool designed specifically for nursing home providers, allowing them to replicate the QIS for quality improvement purposes. At the end of the day, this system enables nursing homes to provide better care and quality of life to their residents.”
Nursing Home Quality assists nursing home operators and staff members in improving the quality of care and life for their residents. Nursing Home Quality trains surveyors and certifies state survey agency trainers in QIS under contract to CMS and provides affordable and reliable QIS training and web-based systems to nursing homes. For more information on Nursing Home Quality, or to set up a demonstration of the abaqis TM system, please contact Ellen Sandler at ellen.sandler@nursinghomequality.com.
Nursing Home Quality
Nurse Cautioned For Taking A Picture Of A Child And Showing It To A Colleague, UK
A registered adult nurse employed in Fife, Scotland, has been given a 12 month Caution Order at a hearing by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in Edinburgh on February 22nd, 2008.
Ms Bernice Brown admitted that she breached patient confidentiality by taking a photograph of a child on an unknown date and showing it to a colleague in January 2006. Ms Brown defended her actions by by-word that she showed the photograph of the child to a work-colleague in her role in the same proportion that a adviser to demonstrate the difference between the tracheotomy connections of the child’s ventilator and another type of ventilator.
The independent panel of the NMC’s Conduct and Competence Committee found that she had overstepped professional boundaries by means of taking and showing the photograph to a colleague but also concluded that there had been no malicious intent. Although Ms Brown’s behaviour did not cause direct harm to the child and there was a genuine expression of regret the panel considered her fitness to practice to be impaired and issued her with a Caution Order.
In determining the appropriate sanction, the panel took into consideration Ms Brown’s previous good history and noted that there had been no repetition of the behaviour. For the next 12 months, future employers will see that she has a Caution Order and she will be required to reveal the details to them.
Commenting on the panel’s decision to impose a caution order for 12 months, NMC spokesman, Colin Joseph, said: “The registrant retained patient information on her personal movable phone in circumstances where she had no authority to do so and then went without ceasing to disclose the complaint to a third party.”
“We recognise that this was not a malicious act and no harm came to the child. However the Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Professional Conduct requires a registered nurse guard against breaches of confidentiality by protecting information from improper disclosure at all times.”
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the UK regulator for two professions, nursing and midwifery. The primary purpose of the NMC is protection of the public. It does this through maintaining a register of all nurses, midwives and specialist community public health nurses eligible to practise in the limits of the UK and by setting standards for their education, training and conduct. Currently the number of registrants exceeds 682,000. The Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 (The Order), sets out the NMC’s role and responsibilities.
The unrestricted panel is selected from a pool of individuals appointed by means of the Appointments Board. They come from a variety of backgrounds and are not NMC Council members, nor do they sit on any committee of the Council.
Nursing and obstetrics Council
Neural Progenitor Cells As Reservoirs For HIV In The Brain
Impaired brain function is a prominent and distil unsolved problem in AIDS . Shortly after an individual becomes infected with HIV, the venom can invade the brain and persist in this organ for life. Many HIV-infected individuals experience disturbances in memory functions and movement, which can progress to serious dementia. in what plight the virus causes brain disease is still unclear.
Dr. Ruth Brack-Werner and her team at the Institute of Virology of the German Research Center for Environmental Health previously demonstrated that HIV invades not only brain macrophages but also astrocytes. Astrocytes are the most abundant cells in the brain. They perform many important activities that support functions of nerve cells and protect them from harmful agents. HIV-infected astrocytes normally restrain the virus and prevent its production. However, various factors can cause astrocytes to lose mastery over the virus, allowing the virus to replicate and to reach the brain. There HIV can infect other brain cells as well as immune cells that patrol the brain and may carry the virus outside the brain.
Thus astrocytes form a reservoir for HIV in infected individuals and represent a serious obstacle to elimination of the virus from infected individuals. Whether this also applies to other types of brain cells was unclear until now. In a study recently published in AIDS, Dr. Brack Werner, together by Ina Rothenaigner and colleagues present data indicating that neural progenitor cells can also form HIV reservoirs in the brain. Neural progenitor cells are capable of developing into different types of brain cells and have an enormous potential for repair processes in the brain.
Dr. Brack-Werner’s team used a multi-potent neural progenitor cell line, which can be grown and developed to different types of brain cells in the laboratory, for their studies. After exposing these neural progenitor cells to HIV, they examined the cultures for signs of virus contagion for 115 days. HIV was found to persist in these cultures during the entire observation period. The cultures released infectious HIV particles with regard to over 60 days and contained information for production of HIV regulatory proteins- Tat, Rev and Nef- for even longer. Dr. Brack-Werner and her team also examined neural progenitor cell populations cells through persisting HIV for differences from uninfected cells. They found that HIV persistence had an power of impelling on the expression of selected genes and on simplest organism morphology, but did not prevent their development to astrocytes. Thus HIV persistence has the potential to vary neural progenitor cells.
Dr. Brack-Werner’s summarizes, “Our study indicates that neural progenitor cells are potential reservoirs for HIV and that HIV persistence has the potential to change the biology of these cells.” In coming time studies the researchers are planning to investigate the influence of HIV infection on influential functions of neural progenitor cells. These include migration to diseased regions of the brain and development of different types of brain cells. Subsequently they will investigate how HIV changes neural progenitor cells and, importantly, how to protect neural progenitor cells from harmful effects of the virus in HIV infected individuals.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original express release.
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This release is available in German.
Publication:
Rothenaigner, I., Kramer, S., Ziegler, M., Wolff, H., Kleinschmidt, A., Brack-Werner, R. (2007): Long-term HIV-1 infection of neural progenitor populations. AIDS 21:2271-2281.
Source: Ruth Brack-Werner
Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
Arts And Cognition Research Released By Dana Foundation
Learning, Arts, and the Brain, a study three years in the making, is the result of research by dint of. cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities in the United States. In the Dana Consortium study, released today at a news conference at the Dana Foundation’s Washington, DC headquarters, researchers grappled with a fundamental dispute: Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?
conducive to the first time, coordinated, multi-university scientific research brings us closer to answering that question. scholarship, Arts, and the Brain advances our understanding of the effects of music, dance, and drama education on other types of learning. Children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also apply to other subject areas.
The research was led by dint of. Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California at Santa Barbara. “A life-affirming dimension is opening up in neuroscience,” uttered Dr. Gazzaniga, “to discover how the acting and appreciation of the arts enlarge cognitive capacities will be a long step forward in learning how better to learn and more enjoyably and productively to live. The consortium’s new findings and conceptual advances have clarified what now indispensably to be done.”
Participating researchers, using brain imaging studies and behavioral assessment, identified eight key points relevant to the interests of parents, students, educators, neuroscientists, and policy makers.
1. An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition.
2. Genetic studies wish begun to yield candidate genes that may help explain individual differences in interest in the arts.
3. Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links reach out beyond the domain of music training.
4. In children, there appear to be characteristic links between the practice of music and skills in geometrical representation, though not in other forms of numerical representation.
5. Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway.
6. Training in acting appears to lead to memory amelioration through the learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information.
7. Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics is related to a temperamental go-between of openness, which in turn is influenced by dopamine-related genes.
8. Learning to dance by effective observation is closely kindred to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that preserve the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills.
As several of the consortium members stressed at the news conference, much of their research was of a preliminary nature, yielding several tight correlations but not definitive causal relationships.
Although “there is still a catalogue of work to be done,” says Dr. Gazzaniga, the consortium’s research so far has clarified the way forward. “We now have further reasons to believe that training in the arts has positive benefits for more general cognitive mechanisms.”
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Principal investigators, working with their colleagues, were:
1. How Arts Training Influences Cognition
Michael Posner, Ph.D.
University of Oregon
2. Musical Skill and Cognition
John Jonides, Ph.D.
University of Michigan
3. Effects of Music Instruction on Developing Cognitive Systems at the Foundations of Mathematics and Science
Elizabeth Spelke, Ph.D.
Harvard University
4. Training in the Arts, Reading, and Brain Imaging
Brian Wandell, Ph.D.
Stanford University
5. Dance and the Brain
Scott Grafton, M.D.
University of California at Santa Barbara
6. Developing and Implementing Neuroimaging Tools to Determine if Training in the Arts Impacts the Brain
Mark D’Esposito, M.D.
University of California, Berkeley
7. Arts Education, the Brain, and Language
Kevin Niall Dunbar, Ph.D.
University of Toronto at Scarborough
(Formerly at Dartmouth College)
8. Arts Education, the Brain, and Language
Laura-Ann Petitto, Ed.D.
University of Toronto at Scarborough
(Formerly at Dartmouth College)
9. Effects of Music Training on Brain and Cognitive Development in Under-Privileged 3- to 5-Year-Old Children: Preliminary Results
Helen Neville, Ph.D.
University of Oregon
The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic organization with particular interests in neuroscience, immunology, and arts education.
Source: Barbara Rich
DANA Foundation
World-First Stem Cell Screening Facility To Target Brain Tumours, Australia
More effective treatments for brain cancer will be developed at a tumour-cell testing facility opened today at The University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI).
Funded by a $1.14 million grant from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF), the ACRF Brain Tumour Research Centre was officially opened by Queensland Minister for Health, The Hon. Stephen Robertson, MP.
University of Queensland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Greenfield, AO, thanked the ACRF for its $1.14 million boon establishing the centre, acknowledging the Foundation’s almost $8 the masses in individual grants to University research since 1995.
“The QBI, formed as part of the Queensland Government’s Smart State Initiative and building on a long history of neuroscience at The University of Queensland, is the ideal location for this world-first centre,” Professor Greenfield said.
QBI Director, Professor Perry Bartlett, said despite significant advances in treatments, the average the breath of life expectancy of patients with aggressive forms of brain cancer was often less than a year.
“This is the primary time researchers order be able to isolate, enumerate and purify tumour stem cells with such high levels of efficiency,” Professor Bartlett said.
“We know brain cancer occurs in about 10 in each 100,000 people in the Western world. It’s a disease that presents in patients of wholly ages, and is the second-most common tumour type among children and young adults.”
ACRF chairman, Tom Dery, said the centre would be the first automated “high through-put” screening facility designed for testing and identifying stem cells derived from human brain tumours.
“Funding advanced facilities and major equipment, capable of exploring new approaches to achieve better results for cancer patients, is the Foundation’s sole focus,” Mr Dery declared.
Professor Bartlett said there was an emerging view among neuroscientists that cancers in the central nervous universe may contain a population of stem cells responsible for tumour initiation and malignancy.
“Until now, one of the prime difficulties in studying these stem cells was that scientists lacked the tools to identify and collect them,” he said.
The strange screening facility uses a combination of advanced techniques to record molecular changes in neural stem cell assays.
Scientists from QBI, the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Queensland Institute for Medical exploration as well as research clinicians from Brisbane’s leading public hospitals will all have access to the ACRF Brain Tumour exploration Centre.
The ACRF, a particular foundation now in its 24th year of operation, awards grants to leading-edge cancer research programs around Australia.
The Foundation provided funding to Professor Ian Frazer’s cervical cancer vaccine program at a critical period in his research.
“Queensland scientists are among the best in the world and ACRF is proud to have been able to provide almost $10 million to cancer research in Queensland in the past five years,” Mr Dery said.
“Of our three newest grants, just announced, two have come to Queensland - $3.2 million to a cancer genomics program led by Professor Frazer and Professor Tom Gonda, at UQ’s Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, and $2.7 million for each Epigenetics Centre at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, led by Professor Emma Whitelaw, a world leader in the field.”
Established in 2003, the QBI is dedicated to sense the molecular basis of brain function and applying this knowledge to the development of new therapeutics to treat brain and mental health disorders.
University of Queensland
RCN Reacts To Government Decision To Drop Key Amendments On Sex Workers From Criminal Justice And Immigration Bill
Reacting to the Government decision to drop elucidation amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that would lead to the criminalisation of sex workers Dr Peter Carter, RCN General Secretary & Chief Executive said;
“We welcome the removal of these amendments, which would have further criminalised some of the most vulnerable, stigmatised and marginalised people in our society.
“Criminalisation would have driven underground those in need of properly funded and staffed healthcare support. We now hope this is the end of legislation that seeks to further criminalise sex workers. We now urge the Government to look at improving the healthcare and well-being of these workers and begin to provide pathways out for these men and women.”
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is the voice of nursing across the UK and is the largest professional union of nursing staff in the creation. The RCN promotes the interest of nurses and patients on a wide range of issues and helps shape healthcare policy by working closely with the UK Government and other national and international institutions, trade unions, professional bodies and voluntary organisations.
Royal College of Nursing
RCN Response To Lord Mancroft’s Comments About Nursing Care
Reacting to comments made by Lord Mancroft about the standard of nursing care he received recently, Royal College of Nursing General Secretary & Chief Executive Dr Peter Carter related: “These comments are extremely unhelpful and grossly partial on nurses across the UK who work extremely hard to provide patients with the highest standards of care.
“Where needy nursing exists it should eternally be challenged through the proper channels. If any patient has an outlet with their treatment by staff they should raise this with the healthcare provider, rather than make sweeping generalisations about nurses and sexist insults about the behaviour of British women.
“The RCN has contacted the trust concerned over these allegations.”
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is the voice of nursing across the UK and is the largest professional concurrence of nursing staff in the world. The RCN promotes the interest of nurses and patients on a wide range of issues and helps shape healthcare address by means of working closely with the UK Government and other national and international institutions, trade unions, professional bodies and voluntary organisations.
Royal College of Nursing
Yeovil District Hospital Named As A Top UK Employer, UK
Yeovil District Hospital is ‘one of the best organisations in the UK for nurses to work’ according to the Nursing Times.
The NHS Foundation Trust has been rated by its own nurses as an of the first grade broad way to work in the Nursing Times Top 100 awards. Run in association with NHS Employers, the judges analysed questionnaires returned by the Trust and its nurses and compared them with other responses from not just NHS employers but those from the independent health sector, mild organisations, care homes and the armed forces - in fact anywhere nurses work over the UK.
The judging criteria included how valued nurses feel for the jobs they do; how well the employer manages training and development, whether it is a family-friendly employer and has flexible working arrangements to foster staff retention and its policies to promote equality and diversity.
In a letter to Yeovil District Hospital, Rachel Downey, Editor of the Nursing Times said: “This is a tremendous achievement which reflects extremely well on your employment practices and is a reflection of how your employees feel about their place of work. We had a herculean number of entries both from the NHS and the private sector and you can be justly proud to be included in the Top 100.”
Director of Nursing, Alison Moon said: “We are all delighted to have been selected as one of the UK’s top nurse employers. But we are not complacent and are continually listening to what our staff have to say to ensure we continue in the right direction.”
Yeovil District Hospital
Nursing Times