#medicine

This Old Cough Medicine May Be The Cure For Parkinson’s DiseaseA cough medicine that was used since the late 1970s is now being tested to see if it can combat Parkinson’s disease. A placebo-controlled Phase III trial in the UK will test if the drug, called ambroxol, can slow down the progression of the condition. Additionally, researchers will check if it can also improve the quality of life of those afflicted with the disease.For reference, ambroxol can thin out mucus, which allows people with colds and coughs clear phlegm easily from their airways. It can also reduce inflammation, which can soothe those with sore throats. As a potential drug for Parkinson’s, experts looked at how ambroxol can raise the levels of glucocerebrosidase, or GCase.This protein is responsible for helping the brain’s waste-clearance systems. Researchers also noticed that the levels of GCase seem to go down as levels of abnormal alpha-synuclein (a driving force in killing or impairing the neurons that provide the brain with dopamine) rise in those with Parkinson’s. Scientists in the lab hope that ambroxol can indirectly lower levels of abnormal alpha-synuclein in people with Parkinson’s as it raises the levels of GCase. The trial for the drug will utilize 330 people with Parkinson’s, who will be randomized into either a placebo or treatment group. Learn more about the trials and the drug here!Image credit: cottonbro studio#medicine #Parkinsons #neurological #disorders #research #clinicaltrials #UK #UCL #ambroxol

Labs Are Using AI To Invent New Drugs This new development is all thanks to artificial intelligence. Well, to be specific, thanks to the explosion of text-to-image models, also known as diffusion models (such as the OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 diffusion model) are being used to create new types of drugs.For reference, this kind of generative AI is used to create new designs for proteins that have never been seen before. This is done by providing the model with a random mess of pixels, which it will try to turn into an image.Multiple biotech labs have announced their embarkment into using these models. One of them is the Boston-based startup Generate Biomedicines which created a new diffusion model called Chroma. According to the company, their program is the “DALL-E 2 of biology.” So we expect that it sort of operates the same way as the mentioned diffusion model. But why are these establishments focused on protein creation for drugs? Well, it’s because these components are in charge of a lot of bodily functions. They digest food, contract muscles, detect light, drive the immune system, and so much more. Proteins also play a big part in driving ailments out of the body. The promise in finding new protein structures that can help the body is immense, according to Gevorg Grigoryan, CEO of Generate Biomedicines. He also hopes that AI can help them discover more in minutes, which can speed up the production and creation of new medicine.Image credit: Generate Biomedicines#medicine #drugs #biotech #laboratories #research #artificialintelligence #computers #diffusionmodels #DALLE #OpenAI

Common Arthritis Drug May Treat Alopecia and Let Patients Regrow HairAlopecia, also known as Alopecia areata, is an autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks hair follicles. Alopecia can cause people to fully lose their hair. This condition usually occurs in people aged 40 years old and below and has no FDA-approved treatment.It seems that there is now new hope for Alopecia treatment, thanks to a new study that showed one in three patients were able to regrow hair after taking a common arthritis drug. The medicine is baricitinib, a Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor that is used for arthritis. “Alopecia areata is a crazy journey, marked by chaos, confusion, and profound sadness for many who suffer from it,” Lead author Brett King said. “It will be incredible to have a medicine to help people emerge on the other side, normalcy restored, recognizable again to themselves and those around them.”Image credit: King et.al #alopecia #treatment #research #medicine #barincitinib

10 Minutes with a Dog Helps Reduce Pain in Emergency Room PatientsWe’ve known all along that dogs are man’s best friend. And apparently, a doctor’s best friend too. A new study shows that the presence of a therapy dog in the emergency room has positive effect for patients."There is research showing that pets are an important part of our health in different ways. They motivate us, they get us up, (give us) routines, the human-animal bond," said lead study author Colleen Dell, the research chair in One Health and Wellness and professor at the University of Saskatchewan.The study asked 200 patients in the ER to rate their pain from 1 to 10 (with 10 as the highest level of pain). One control group is left to their own devices, meanwhile the other group was given 10 minutes to spend with therapy dogs. Afterward, they were asked again to rate their pain levels. In the end, the group visited by the dogs recorded less pain.The result simply reinforces what many have suspected all along : dogs' affection cures all ills. With this discovery, Dell hopes to quell the debate about whether therapy dogs are truly medically helpful and start a movement to better incorporate them into healthcare practices.Image: Ryan Stone/Unsplash#pain #PainManagement #dog #EmergencyRoom #medicine #therapydog

Chimpanzees Apply Insects to Heal WoundsResearchers from Osnabrück University and the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project observed chimpanzees applying insects to their wounds. The team, led by Dr. Tobias Deschner and Prof. Dr. Simone Pika, investigated the behavior of a group of chimpanzees. The team aimed to record and observe the social relationships, hunting behavior, tool use, and cognitive and communicative skills of the animals.This is the first time that chimpanzees were observed to apply animal matter on open wounds. "Our observations provide the first evidence that chimpanzees regularly capture insects and apply them onto open wounds. We now aim to investigate the potential beneficial consequences of such a surprising behavior," said Dr. Deschner.The authors of the study who documented this behavior have suggested that the insects might have anti-inflammatory or antiseptic properties. Another proposed explanation for this behavior is that it could be part of the local chimpanzee culture.Image credit: Tobias Deschner/ Ozouga chimpanzee project#animals #behavior #chimpanzees #medicine #externalapplication #insects #research #animalbehavior

MIT Engineers Developed Sticky Medical Dressing that Works Like a Surgical Duct Tape to Seal Internal WoundsInternal wounds are tricky business, especially when they involve gastrointestinal injuries and carry the risk of leaking gut bacteria to other tissues in the body.Xuanhe Zhao and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a dressing that solves this issue. This special dressing is degradable, transparent and acts like a duct tape. It is sticky on one side and forms a flexible hydrogel that molds onto the shape of the wound and helps it heal. It is essentially an adhesive wound dressing that works well in the wet environment of the internal body.The dressing has proven to help gut wounds heal faster and better in rats and pigs. Zhao and colleagues published their findings inScience Translational Medicine. They hope to develop a similar dressing for use in humans via their newfound company SanaHeal.#InternalWounds #DuctTape #Medicine #MedicalDressing #surgery

Robots Successfully Performed Surgery Without Any Human HelpLaparoscopy (also known as keyhole surgery) is a procedure performed in the abdomen or pelvis. Compared to open surgery which involves making large incisions, laparoscopy is less invasive and less painful. This is made possible thanks to the laparoscope (the camera inserted in the tiny incisions. However, this procedure is much more difficult from the surgeon's perspective.Fortunately, it seems that doctors don't need to do complex surgeries such as this one in the near future, as robots will do it for them.One such robot is the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot — STAR for short. According to The Guardian, scientists say that this robot performed "significantly better" results than humans.Now, this is a medical breakthrough.(Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University/PA)#Surgery #Medicine #Laparoscopy #KeyholeSurgery #robot

Pill Containing Bacterial Spores From Human Feces Could Help Treat Clostridium difficile InfectionsFor people who suffer from C. difficile infection (CDI), fecal microbiota transplant or FMT is an effective treatment. However, said treatment may be described as not for the faint of heart because the procedure involves the transfer of fecal bacteria from a donor's stool to the intestinal tract of the recipient via colonoscopy.For some, this method may be too gross to consider.Several companies are currently looking for other treatments that are less invasive and more standardized. One such treatment is a pill called made by Seres Therapeutics called SER-109, as explained in this article over at Science. This pill is derived from bacterial spores isolated from human feces, and scientists say that this could be safer than FMT.The SER-109 pill has succeeded in its phase 3 trial, a big milestone in the long and cumbersome drug approval process. Seres Therapeutics plans to apply for FDA approval of the pill sometime this year.If SER-19 pill succeeds, the methods of treating C. difficile infection would be less gross.(Image Credit: Biomedical Imaging Unit/ Southampton General Hospital/ Science Source)#clostridiumdifficile #FMT #Microbiology #CDI #Medicine #feces

A Cancer-Quashing Microbe Emerges from the DeepWhile we often think of them as life-threatening, bacteria are so numerous and so varied that these microbes have saved countless people from death. Through several decades in the 20th century, scientists harnessed bacteria to produce natural but specific chemical compounds that could be used to prevent and/or treat disease, particularly the useful class called Actinomycetes. The more exotic the bacteria's habitat, the more specific these chemicals turned out to be. But it's hard to find new bacteria. Oceanographer Paul Jensen and chemist William Fenical teamed up to look into the ocean depths for marine bacteria that were different from their landlocked cousins, in order to study their potentially useful chemical talents.At the time, says Fenical, the consensus among pharmaceutical microbiologists was that actinomycetes lived only on land, and therefore “nothing was important in the oceans.” But Fenical suspected that a sampling bias drove that conclusion, and in June 1989, he and Jensen traveled to the Bahamas to see for themselves, collecting vials of ocean-floor sediment from 15 different locations at depths of up to 33 meters. Back at the lab, it didn’t take long for the two scientists to prove the naysayers wrong. When they cultured their samples, they found 289 separate actinomycete colonies. Some of these bacteria, members of a new genus that they later named Salinispora, had never been documented on land. Moreover, they were most abundant in the deeper samples, suggesting that they hadn’t simply washed into the ocean with terrestrial runoff. And then there was the kicker: Salinispora grew only in salt water.Working with a team of colleagues, Jensen eventually identified two different species of Salinispora bacteria from the Bahamian samples, both of which produced unique active compounds. One of these species, S. tropica, made a molecule that would change the course of their careers. When Fenical tested it on a line of difficult-to-kill human colon cancer cells, the compound passed with flying colors. He then sent it to labs at the National Cancer Institute to be tested against a panel of 60 different cancer cells. The results were exactly what Jensen and Fenical wanted to see: the compound, which they named salinosporamide A, was especially active against some cancer cell lines, but not others.“You want that selectivity, because if it kills all cancer cells equally, then it’s probably also going to equally kill noncancerous cells,” Jensen explains. It seemed they had the makings of a viable drug on their hands: a compound that could target a tumor without killing the person it afflicted.Read how salinosporamide A, also called marizomib, went from a bacterial product to a life-saving medicine at Hakai magazine. The article is also a look into how networks of scientists in the field, the lab, and in patient care have to work together to advance medical science. -via Real Clear Science#medicine #bacteria #cancer

Needle-Free Injection DeviceAfraid of needles? If Bobby Dyer, Chief Device Architect at Portal Instruments, has anything to say about it, you'll be able to say goodbye to syringe needles in the future.The company is developing a needle-free injection device that shoots a tiny jet of liquid that pierces the skin, without the use of a syringe needle. The jet of liquid is sixteen times smaller than a traditional needle and travels at about the speed of an airplane or 500 mph (800 kph)Alie Ward of The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation interviews Dyer about the invention in this YouTube clip: