Infinite Unknown

A stroke victim has regained the power of speech after doctors placed a device resembling a teabag filled with stem cells in his brain.

Genetically modified stem cells fitted into a kind of ‘tea bag’ are implanted to the patient’s brain where they are supposed to have an anti-inflammatory effect Photo: EPA

Walter Bast, 49, also regained the use of his right arm after the revolutionary treatment, which prevents brain cells from dying.

If further trials of the treatment are successful, it could be on the market in as little as five years, providing fresh hope for the 45,000 Britons each year who suffer a haemorrhagic stroke, where a blood vessel in the brain bursts.

Currently, the only option is surgery, which has a variable success rate. Half of surgery patients will die within a month and just one in 20 patients will recover to the extent of Mr Bast.

The pioneering treatment, called CellBeads, involves cutting away part of the skull to tie off leaking blood vessels and remove blood from the brain.

Surgeons then insert the 2cm by 2cm ‘teabag’ filled with capsules stuffed with around a million stem cells.

The stem cells, taken from bone marrow, have been genetically engineered to make a drug known as CM1 that protects brain cells from dying. This lets the cells rejuvenate and repair the damage done by the stroke.

After around two weeks, doctors at the International Neuroscience-Institute in Hanover, Germany, removed the ‘teabag’, resulting in Mr Bast regaining his speech and the use of his right arm.

Speaking a week after the operation, the first of its kind in the world, Mr Bast, a mechanic, said: “I feel a lucky guy.”

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Tags: Brain, cells, Health, immune system, Medicine, Neuroscience, Science, stem cells, strokes

GROUP psychology involving Buddhist meditation can be as effective at combating depression as medication, a study published today in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology has found.

Fifteen months after an eight-week trial, 47 per cent of people with depression who under-went therapy suffered a relapse, compared with 60 per cent of those taking antidepressants.

Published Date: 01 December 2008

Source: Scotsman

Tags: anti-depressants, Depression, Drugs, Health, Medicine, Meditation, Science

Drinking “heavy water” enriched with a rare form of hydrogen could prolong our lives by up to ten years, it has been claimed.

Mikhail Shchepinov, a former Oxford University scientist, says that the modified drink protects against dangerous chemicals known as free radicals that are known to contribute to conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

He also claims that foods such as steak and eggs could be enriched with the special hydrogen isotope, known as deuterium, raising the possibility of people being able to “eat themselves healthy”.

His research has shown that worms live 10 per cent longer and fruitflies up to 30 per cent longer when fed on heavy water, which is slightly sweeter than normal water.

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Tags: Alzheimer, Cancer, Deuterium, Health, Medicine, Parkinson, Science

Intervention with anti-Aids drugs before symptoms appear could reduce HIV rates to under 1% in 50 years, a study claims. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

A radical new strategy to stop the Aids epidemic in its tracks was proposed yesterday by World Health Organisation scientists but ran into immediate controversy over its implications for human rights.

The plan involves testing everybody for HIV every year in hard-hit areas like sub-Saharan Africa and immediately putting those who are positive on Aids drugs. It could slash dramatically the number of new infections, because Aids drugs lower the levels of virus in the body, making HIV transmission through unprotected sex much less likely.

But the strategy, expounded in a paper published online today by the Lancet medical journal, raises major issues both over implementation and over ethics.

Currently people who are HIV positive are not put on treatment until they need it, because of the toxicity and side-effects of antiretroviral drugs. It raises the prospect of subjecting people to potential medical harm for the public good, rather than their individual benefit. “We wouldn’t do that in the UK,” said John Howson of the International HIV/Aids Alliance. “These are huge issues.”

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Tags: Africa, AIDS, Drugs, Health, HIV, human rights, Medicine, Politics, Science, WHO

(NaturalNews) Herbs from the Lamiaceae family, also known as the mint family have been shown to drastically reduce the infectivity of HIV-1 virions, single infective viral particles. A research team from the University of Heidelberg has found that extracts of lemon balm, sage and peppermint work rapidly to produce their effects in amounts that display no toxicity. The extracts were seen to enhance the density of the virions prior to their surface engagement. They also displayed a strong activity against herpes simplex virus type 2.

The researchers examined water extracts from the leaves of lemon balm, sage and peppermint for their potency to inhibit infection by HIV-1. They found that the extracts exhibited a high and concentration-dependent activity against the infection of HIV-1 in T-cell lines, primary macrophages, and in ex vivo tonsil histocultures. This effect was produced at extract concentrations as low as 0.004% without affect to cell viability.

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Tags: AIDS, Alternative Medicine, bacteria, Cancer, Health, Herpes, HIV, Lemon Balm, Medicine, Oregano, Peppermint, Sage, Science, skin cancer, Tumors, virus

It works 100% of the time to eradicate cancer completely, and cancer does not recur even years later. That is how researchers describe the most convincing cancer cure ever announced.

The weekly injection of just 100 billionths of a gram of a harmless glyco-protein (a naturally-produced molecule with a sugar component and a protein component) activates the human immune system and cures cancer for good, according to human studies among breast cancer and colon cancer patients, producing complete remissions lasting 4 and 7 years respectively. This glyco-protein cure is totally without side effect but currently goes unused by cancer doctors.

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Tags: breast cancer, Cancer, cancer cells, Citizen’s Council on Health Care, Doctors, Health, immune system, Medicine, Physicians, pneumonia, Science, Tumors

Claudia Castillo, the patient in the ground-breaking operation. Photo: AP

PARIS — Physicians at four European universities have completed what they say is the first successful transplant of a human windpipe using a patient’s own stem cells to fashion an organ and prevent its rejection by her immune system, according to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet. One of the physicians said the surgery could herald a “new age in surgical care.”

The transplant operation was performed on the patient, Claudia Castillo, in June in Barcelona, Spain, to alleviate an acute shortage of breath caused by a failing airway following severe tuberculosis. It followed weeks of preparation carried out at the universities of Barcelona, Spain, Bristol, England and Padua and Milan in Italy.

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Tags: cells, Doctors, Health, Medicine, Physicians, Science, Scientists, stem cells, transplant surgery

Experts say if many physicians stop practicing, it could be devastating to the health care industry.

(CNN) — Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative.

The survey, released this week by the Physicians’ Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.

A U.S. shortage of 35,000 to 40,000 primary care physicians by 2025 was predicted at last week’s American Medical Association annual meeting.

In the survey, the foundation sent questionnaires to more than 270,000 primary care doctors and more than 50,000 specialists nationwide.

Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said they’d consider leaving medicine. Many said they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there’s too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.

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Tags: American Medical Association, Doctors, Health, Medicine, Physicians, Society, U.S.

(NaturalNews) Drugs like Avastin that are used to treat some cancers are supposed to work by blocking a vessel growth-promoting protein called vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF. With VEGF held in check, researchers have assumed tumors wouldn’t generate blood vessels and that should keep malignancies from growing. In a sense, the cancerous growths would be “starved”. But new research just published in the journal Nature shows this isn’t true. Instead of weakening blood vessels so they won’t “feed” malignant tumors, these cancer treatments, known as anti-angiogenesis drugs, actually normalize and strengthen blood vessels — and that means they can spur tumors to grow larger.

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Tags: American Cancer Society, Cancer, Drugs, Health, Medicine, Nature, Science, Tumors

University Medical Center

Medicaid cuts leave no choice, says doctors, hospitals

Budget cuts in the state’s Medicaid program are forcing a major shift in where Nevada’s poor can seek health care.

Cancer patients who had received outpatient treatment at University Medical Center, for instance, will have to seek treatment at other hospitals and clinics because UMC, citing reductions in Medicaid payments, says it can no longer afford to offer cancer treatment.

Low-income children with bone and spine problems may need to leave Las Vegas altogether for treatment, because pediatric orthopedists are no longer accepting payment from Medicaid because of cutbacks to their reimbursements.

And on Tuesday, UMC administrators will tell Clark County commissioners what treatments and programs they may need to drop because Medicaid payments don’t cover the hospital’s costs, and the hospital can’t afford to go in the hole.

Indeed, the Nevada State Medical Association said other pediatric specialists may also stop taking Medicaid patients because the government reimbursements don’t cover the cost of delivering the care.

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Tags: Government, Health, Medicine, Nevada, Politics, U.S.