Pills hailed as the first real “anti-aging” drugs inched a little closer to the market after a study found they cut the number of respiratory infections in the elderly by half.
The drugs: The pills act on an aging-related pathway called TORC1. Inhibiting this pathway “has extended life span in every species studies to date,” according to Joan Mannick, who led the study for drug giant Novartis. Those species include mice and worms.
Using CERN technology, Mars Bioimaging has created the first 3D, color X-ray images of the human body.
Medical X-ray scans have long been stuck in the black-and-white, silent-movie era. Sure, the contrast helps doctors spot breaks and fractures in bones, but more detail could help pinpoint other problems. Now, a company from New Zealand has developed a bioimaging scanner that can produce full color, three dimensional images of bones, lipids, and soft tissue, thanks to a sensor chip developed at CERN for use in the Large Hadron Collider.
Mars Bioimaging, the company behind the new scanner, describes the leap as similar to that of black-and-white to color photography. In traditional CT scans, X-rays are beamed through tissue and their intensity is measured on the other side. Since denser materials like bone attenuate (weaken the energy) of X-rays more than soft tissue does, their shape becomes clear as a flat, monochrome image.
A radical new wearable magneto encephalography (MEG) brain scanner under development at the University of Nottingham allows a patient to move around, instead of having to sit or lie still inside a massive scanner.
Currently, MEG scanners* weigh around 500 kilograms (about 1100 pounds) because they require bulky superconducting sensors refrigerated in a liquid helium dewar at -269°C. Patients must keep still — even a 5mm movement can ruin images of brain activity. That immobility severely limits the range of brain activities and experiences and makes the scanner unsuitable for children and many patients.
From the explosion of ADHD meds to the economic crisis to the Trump presidency, this dangerous trend didn’t come out of nowhere.
It’s not exactly breaking news that Xanax has been having something of a moment. Famous musicians, at least until prominent voices like Lil Xan (yes, even him!) and Chance the Rapper began swearing off the stuff, have long been inclined to hype it. And Xanny bars have been touted across social media and even in old-school graffiti for some time now. The number of adults prescribed drugs in the class that includes Xanax (alprazolam)—known as benzodiazepines—rose by 67 percent between 1996 and 2013. Over the same period, the amount of these drugs that was actually dispensed more than tripled, according to a 2016 study.
While gastric-bypass, or bariatric, surgery can be a very successful weight-loss treatment option for those suffering from obesity, it has also been seen to be extraordinarily effective in reversing type 2 diabetes. An exciting new study from a team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital has now demonstrated an oral agent that can potentially mimic the effects of bariatric surgery to reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes.
For some years, researchers have identified a connection between gastric-bypass surgery and the reversal of type 2 diabetes. The exact mechanism at play is still unclear, but it seems to operate independently of the weight loss that comes as a consequence of the procedure. One recent study comprising 20,000 patients found that gastric bypass surgery completely cured 84 percent of patients with type 2 diabetes.
Monthly spending on certain cancer patients in Washington was $12,345 vs. $6,195 in British Columbia
Despite paying double, Americans died slightly faster than Canadians in the study
(CNN)Americans paid twice as much as Canadians for health care, but they didn’t get twice the benefit, according to a new study of patients with advanced colorectal cancer who lived, in some cases, mere miles from each other.
… and microscale robot exoskeleton muscles from graphene and glass.
A cross section of a muscle fiber grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, showing muscle cells (green), cell nuclei (blue), and the surrounding support matrix for the cells (credit: Duke University)
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have grown the first functioning human skeletal muscle from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). (Pluripotent stem cells are important in regenerative medicine because they can generate any type of cell in the body and can propagate indefinitely; the induced version can be generated from adult cells instead of embryos.)
Viruses attached to a fragment of a bacterial cell wall. “Viruses modulate the function and evolution of all living things,” scientists wrote last year. “But to what extent remains a mystery.”
Since its debut six years ago, Redwood City-based startup Auris Health has quietly raised $500 million to develop a series of tools designed to innovate surgical robotics technology.
The company’s latest product, Monarch, is a controller-operated robotic camera that allows physicians to visualize the inside of the human body.
The technology, which was approved by the FDA earlier this month, could become a key tool in helping physicians diagnose lung cancer early on.
