The Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute of Northwestern Memorial Hospital recently implanted a patient with two of the smallest experimental ventricular assist devices (VADs) currently available for study in humans. VADs are designed to assist either the right (RVAD) or left (LVAD) ventricle, or both (BiVAD) at once. This is the first time that two Heartware™ VADs have been implanted in the left and right ventricles anywhere in North America—a "game changer" in the realm of heart assist devices according to Patrick M.
Body
James "Jimmy" Armstrong hadn't missed a "Mac" in 28 years. At 44, he's one of the youngest "goats" in the Chicago Yacht Club. Sailors receive the designation of "goat" once they've completed 20 or more "Macs", the 333-mile boat race from Chicago to Mackinac, Mich. Armstrong has sailed the race every year since he was 16. But, he wasn't among the sailors this past July. Instead, he was in intensive care awaiting heart transplant following a harrowing experience spurred by severe case of myocarditis—a little-known condition causing inflammation of the heart muscle.
CHAPEL HILL – An imbalance of salt and water in patients with cystic fibrosis makes their lungs clog up with sticky mucus that is prone to infection. The cause of the offending imbalance is a well-known genetic error, one that blocks the molecular expressway for tiny chloride ions to move across the surface of the lungs.
Gadonanotubes (GNTs) developed at Rice University are beginning to show positive results in a study funded by a federal stimulus grant through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) last year.
The study has determined GNTs are effective in helping doctors track stems cells through the body by making them 40 times better than standard contrast agents used in magnetic resonance imaging. Contrast agents help doctors spot signs of disease or damage in MR images.
PHILADELPHIA - The potential for harmful side effects associated with anti-psychotic medications for treating schizophrenia is a frustration for mental-health professionals who must balance this with the positive benefits of drugs. For example, the issue of the antipsychotic drug ziprasidone lengthening the QTc interval, a possible indicator of life-threatening heart arrhythmias, has demanded much attention among clinicians since the drug was introduced in 2001.
COLLEGE STATION -- A virus that normally deforms or kills plants like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants isn't all bad: A gene within the virus has been found useful for allowing foreign genes to be introduced into a plant without harmful effects, according to Texas AgriLife Research scientists.
The technology ultimately could lead the way toward a "cheap, green alternative" for pharmaceutical development, said Dr. Herman Scholthof, AgriLife Research virologist.
Chemical reactions are happening all over the place all the time--on the sun, on the Earth and in our bodies. In many cases, enzymes help make these reactions occur. One family of enzymes, called cytochrome P450s (P450), is important because they help us eliminate toxins.
We know P450s are important to life of all kinds because they have been found in animals, plants, fungi and bacteria, but they are of special interest to humans because they are responsible for metabolism of about 75 percent of known pharmaceuticals.
Powdery mildew is a fungus that infects both crop and ornamental plants. Each year, powdery mildew and other plant pathogens cause immense crop loss. Despite decades of intense research, little is known of the plant molecules that allow fungal hyphae to invade the host's epidermal cells. A European research group lead by Ueli Grossniklaus, a plant geneticist at the University of Zurich, now published a study in Science shedding a new light on mildew susceptibility in plants and its surprising link to reproduction.
The American Heart Association should develop a comprehensive hospital certification program with policies and evidence-based criteria for cardiovascular disease and stroke care in the United States, according to an American Heart Association Presidential Advisory published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
NEW YORK (Nov. 11, 2010) -- The liver's unique ability among organs to regenerate itself has been little understood. Now Weill Cornell Medical College scientists have shed light on how the liver restores itself by demonstrating that endothelial cells -- the cells that form the lining of blood vessels -- play a key role.
The results of their study are published today in the online edition of the journal Nature, with a companion study in the Oct. 24 issue of Nature Cell Biology describing how endothelial cells are activated to initiate organ regeneration.
This year, governments, foundations, businesses, multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations and health care professional associations publicly pledged more than $ 40 billion* to improve maternal and child health and save million of lives.
How do you ensure that they will live up to these commitments?
One way is to bring all of the stakeholders together -- from government to civil society to academia to health professionals to the UN -- to develop concrete strategies for action on financing, policies and service delivery.
Leatherback turtles are remarkably versatile divers. Routinely diving to depths of several hundred meters, leatherbacks are occasionally known to plunge as deep as 1250m. The animals probably plumb the depths to avoid predators, search for prey and avoid heat in the tropics. However it wasn't clear how these mammoth reptiles regulate their buoyancy as they plunge down. Sabrina Fossette from Swansea University explains that no one knew how the turtles descended so far: do they swim down or become negatively buoyant and plummet like a stone?
Any parent that takes their kid out for a walk knows that children tire more quickly than adults, but why is that? Do kids and small adults walk differently from taller people or do they tire faster for some other reason? Peter Weyand from Southern Methodist University, USA, is fascinated by the effect that body size has on physiological function. 'This goes back to Max Kleiber's work on resting metabolic rates for different sized animals.
New research has revealed up to 16,000 endangered turtles are being caught each year by villagers in just one region of Madagascar, despite a government ban.
Researchers from the University of Exeter and Blue Ventures Conservation say the figure, thought to be a conservative estimate, is the first direct assessment of turtle exploitation on the island.
The presence of certain markers in the urine might be a red flag for acute kidney injury (AKI), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The results suggest that a simple urine test could help prevent cases of kidney failure.