Medicine

When repairing severed or damaged motor nerves with a donor nerve graft, surgeons have traditionally used a sensory nerve from another area of the patient's body. However, these patients often do not fully regain function in the injured area. But now a team of surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Barnes-Jewish Hospital has found that repairing a motor nerve in rats with an intact motor nerve yields better results than using a sensory nerve. The research appeared in the March issue of the journal Microsurgery. Motor nerves control movement in the muscles,…

A 'broken heart' is not just a period of emotional sadness. In some cases it is a traumatic physical event. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is informally known as 'broken heart syndrome' because it often occurs due to an emotional or physical shock. It almost always happens to women and patients are typically in a critical state during the first 48 hours. "These patients can be difficult to manage for emergency physicians and cardiologists alike," says Brown University cardiology fellow Richard Regnante, M.D. "They may be in cardiac arrest, cardiogenic shock, or severe heart failure. They may…

In the past, the newborns' umbilical cord was not clamped right after birth, thus allowing the blood flow to stop naturally. This practice, known as "late clamping", was replaced by "early clamping", that is, cutting the cord immediately after the infant is expelled. However, this new practice lacks studies corroborating its benefits. In fact, recent studies on the importance of when clamping should be done have shown contradictory results. A doctoral thesis carried out at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada [http://www.ugr.es])…

It is highly unlikely that older women generate new eggs, report researchers at the University of South Florida in collaboration with a center in China. The USF study counters the controversial findings of reproductive endocrinologist Jonathan Tilly, PhD, and his team of Harvard scientists. Tilly's work, published in 2004 in Nature with a follow-up study a year later in Cell, challenged the biological dogma that mammals, including women, are born with a limited lifetime supply of eggs. Tilly reported the discovery of stem cells capable of migrating from bone marrow to mouse ovaries and…

Implanted pumps improved heart function enough in a small percentage of patients awaiting a heart transplant that they were able to leave the hospital without a pump and without a new heart, according to a study in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. The heart-assist devices also significantly improved the cardiac function in many other heart failure patients. "This suggests that, while the devices alone may not be sufficient to allow a meaningful number of patients to come off the heart pump instead of having a heart transplant, there may be other therapies that can be…

Scientists have found that sperm from diabetic men have greater levels of DNA damage than sperm from men who do not have the disease. They warn that such DNA damage might affect a man’s fertility. In the first study [1] to compare the quality of DNA in sperm from diabetic and non-diabetic men, the researchers from Belfast, Northern Ireland showed that the DNA in the nuclei of the sperm cells had greater levels of fragmentation in diabetic men (52%, versus 32% in non-diabetic men), and that there were more deletions of DNA in the tiny, energy-generating structures in the cells called…

A new study from the University of Michigan Health System suggests that a compound in green tea may provide therapeutic benefits to people with rheumatoid arthritis. The study looks at a potent anti-inflammatory compound derived from green tea. Researchers found that the compound -- called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) -- inhibited the production of several molecules in the immune system that contribute to inflammation and joint damage in people with rheumatoid arthritis. The compound from green tea also was found to suppress the inflammatory products in the connective tissue of people…

A newly-identified virus may be responsible for the deaths of three Victorians who received organs from the same donor in December. Victoria's Acting Chief Health Officer Dr John Carnie said there was no evidence the virus represented a public health risk and its presence in these Victorian recipients is thought to be a world-first occurrence. "Scientists working on both sides of the world have collaborated to find a likely cause of the deaths and had discovered a previously unknown virus," Dr Carnie said. "The discovery of this new virus is of national and international significance. Much…

Using a new type of drug that targets a specific genetic defect, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, along with colleagues at PTC Therapeutics Inc. and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, have for the first time demonstrated restoration of muscle function in a mouse model of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (DMD). "This new class of treatment has the potential to help a large number of patients with different genetic diseases that have the same type of mutation," says senior author H. Lee Sweeney, PhD, chair of the Department of Physiology at Penn.…

People who significantly cut back on the amount of salt in their diet could reduce their chances of developing cardiovascular disease by a quarter, according to a report on bmj.com today. Researchers in Boston also found a reduction in salt intake could lower the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by up to a fifth. Cardiovascular disease refers to the group of diseases linked to the heart or arteries, for example a stroke or heart disease. While there is already a substantial body of evidence showing that cutting back on salt lowers blood pressure, studies showing subsequent levels…