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Medicineworld.org: Archives of rheumatology news blog
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Archives Of Rheumatology News Blog From Medicineworld.Org
Spinal Cord Stem Cell Transplantation is Safe
Hans Keirstead
UCI neurobiologist Hans Keirstead and his colleagues at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center observed that rats with either mild or severe spinal cord injuries that were transplanted with a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells suffered no visible injury or ill effects as a result of the therapy itself. Furthermore, the study confirmed prior findings by Keirstead's lab - since replicated by four other laboratories around the world - that replacing a cell type lost after injury improves the outcome after spinal cord injury in rodents. The findings appear in the current issue of Regenerative Medicine. "Establishing the safety of implanted embryonic stem cells is crucial before we can move forward with testing these therapys in clinical trials," said Keirstead, an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology and co-director of UCI's Stem Cell Research Center. "We must always remember that a human clinical trial is an experiment and, going into it, we need to assure ourselves as best as we can that the therapy will not cause harm. This study is an important step in that direction"......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source New Way To Fix Painful Broken Ribs
"Historically, physicians have been taught that nothing can be done to fix a rib fracture," said John Mayberry, M.D., principal investigator of the study and associate professor of surgery in the OHSU School of Medicine. "My colleagues and I have long thought that wasn't true, but we have yet to prove it. With this study, we hope to identify subsets of people who respond better to surgical repair than nonsurgical treatment, then develop a standard criteria for therapy". Traditionally, people with rib fractures, some 300,000 a year, are discharged from the hospital with large doses of oral narcotics and anti-inflammatory painkillers, explained Mayberry. They are advised to use a liberal amount of these agents to control pain; to cough and breathe deeply to prevent pneumonia; and to expect several weeks to pass before the ribs heal and become pain-free......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Medication Use And Farmers' Injuries
A case review of farmers aged 66 and older in Alberta, Canada, revealed some previously unknown relationships may exist between the use of pain medications and subsequent injury. For instance, when farmers stopped taking prescribed pain or anti-inflammatory medications within the 30 days previous to the date of injury, there was a higher risk of getting hurt while working on the farm. The injuries included falls, being struck by an object, or wounds inflicted while working with farm machinery or livestock. By linking data from various health and agricultural registries, the scientists identified 8,129 male farmers aged 66 or older. In that group, 282 suffered farm-related injuries correlation to how they used their pain medication. Scientists were able to identify several possible reasons for this, said Dr. Don Voaklander, one of the study's authors and a professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Queens University also worked on the study. "The first is that pain, unmasked when they stop using medication, distracts the farmer when he's doing his work. This means less attention to the task at hand. A second possibility involves limitations on mobility for farmers who are in pain or who are guarding their movements as a result of pain." Third, those who use pain medicine may be experiencing withdrawal symptoms that again may be distracting in a dynamic work environment......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Heat Stops Pain Inside The Body
Image courtesy of Amazon
Dr Brian King, of the UCL Department of Physiology, led the research that found the molecular basis for the long-standing theory that heat, such as that from a hot-water bottle applied to the skin, provides relief from internal pains, such as stomach aches, for up to an hour. Dr King said: "The pain of colic, cystitis and period pain is caused by a temporary reduction in blood flow to or over-distension of hollow organs such as the bowel or uterus, causing local tissue damage and activating pain receptors. "The heat doesn't just provide comfort and have a placebo effect - it actually deactivates the pain at a molecular level in much the same way as pharmaceutical painkillers work. We have discovered how this molecular process works." If heat over 40 degrees Celsius is applied to the skin near to where internal pain is felt, it switches on heat receptors located at the site of injury. These heat receptors in turn block the effect of chemical messengers that cause pain to be detected by the body......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Taij Benefit Older Adults
Image courtesy of achinatravel.com
Qigong (chee-kung) and Taiji (tye-chee) - or Tai Chi, as it is more usually known in the U.S. - combine simple, graceful movements and meditation. Qigong, which dates to the middle of the first millennium B.C., is a series of integrated exercises believed to have positive, relaxing effects on a person's mind, body and spirit. Tai Chi is a holistic form of exercise, and a type of Qigong that melds Chinese philosophy with martial and healing arts. "Traditional Tai Chi training includes Qigong, but most contemporary Tai Chi scientists have omitted Qigong from their research," said visiting kinesiology professor Yang Yang. "As a result, prior scientists may not have documented all of the health benefits possible from traditional Tai Chi training". Yang, a Tai Chi master with three decades of experience, said Tai Chi and Qigong are relatively simple, safe and inexpensive, and require no props or special equipment, making them easily adaptable for practice by healthy senior citizens. In two studies - one quantitative, one qualitative - presented recently at the North American Research Conference on Complementary & Integrative Medicine, lead researcher Yang found that healthy seniors who practiced a combination of Qigong and Tai Chi three times a week for six months experienced significant physical benefits after only two months......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Cherry Juice May Prevent Muscle Damage Pain
Historically, many approaches to prevent exercise-induced muscle pain and damage have been examined, but few have been effective. Declan Connolly, associate professor of education and director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Vermont and his colleagues at New York's Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma and Cornell University, evaluated the efficacy of a fresh, highly-concentrated, specially- processed tart cherry juice blend in preventing the symptoms of muscle damage in a randomized, placebo-controlled study in 14 male college students. "The anti-inflammatory properties of cherry juice have been examined before, but the focus of this research was on a new area - muscle damage repair," said Connolly. "Only two species of mammals suffer this type of muscle damage - horses and humans". The study participants were asked to either drink a bottle of the cherry juice blend twice a day for three days before exercise and for four days afterwards, or to drink a placebo juice containing no cherries. The 12-ounce bottle of juice contained the liquid equivalent of 50 to 60 tart cherries blended with commercially available apple juice......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Suggest your News Item To Medicineworld
We are looking for quality news items that would be interesting to our readers. Now you may suggest the news item from your site to be included at Medicineworld.org. Inclusion of news item at our site get instantaneous attention since the item is illustrated from various blog posts. Addition of pictures to the item adds additional attraction to your news item. Inclusion in the Medicineworld.org site brings quality links and visitors to your site. If you have an interesting news item related to health, share it with Medicineworld.org and we share it with the world. Suggest your News Item To Medicineworld........ Posted by: Janet Permalink Pine Bark Extract Relieves Muscle Cramp And Pain
Image courtesy of vitalifecenter.com
"With the millions of athletes worldwide, this truly is a profound breakthrough and extremely significant for all individuals interested in muscle cramp and pain relief with a natural approach. These findings indicate that Pycnogenol can play an important role in sports by improving blood flow to the muscles and hastening post-exercise recovery," said Dr. Peter Rohdewald, a lead researcher of the study. Scientists at L'Aquila University in Italy and at the University of Würzburg in Gera number of studied the effects of Pycnogenol on venous disorders and cramping in two separate studies. The first study consisted of 66 participants who had experienced normal cramping at some point, had venous insufficiency, or were athletes who suffer from exercise-induced cramping. The first two weeks of the study was an observation period and participants did not supplement with Pycnogenol. Symptoms correlation to venous disorders, and the number of cramping episodes each participant experienced over the two observation weeks was recorded......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Acupuncture Relief For Fibromyalgia
Typically fibromyalgia is a disorder considered disabling by a number of, and is characterized by chronic, widespread musculoskeletal pain and symptoms such as fatigue, joint stiffness and sleep disturbance. No cure is known and available therapys are only partially effective. Mayo's study involved 50 fibromyalgia patients enrolled in a randomized, controlled trial to determine if acupuncture improved their symptoms. Symptoms of patients who received acupuncture significantly improved compared with the control group, as per the study reported in the recent issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. "The results of the study convince me there is something more than the placebo effect to acupuncture," says David Martin, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the acupuncture article and a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist. "It affirms a lot of clinical impressions that this complementary medical technique is helpful for patients." Increasingly, patients are interested in pursuing complementary medicine techniques in conjunction with their mainstream medical care, Dr. Martin says. But often, such techniques lack scientific evidence to justify a patient's expense and time......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Switch For Skeletal-Muscle Atrophy
Amber Pond, a research scientist at Purdue University's School of Veterinary Medicine, tests skeletal muscle and heart tissue as Xun Wang, a graduate student in basic medical sciences, takes notes. The two are part of a research team investigating treatments that arrest the muscle atrophy caused by cancer and other diseases. (Purdue photo/David Umberger)
The findings might eventually benefit people who have been injured or suffer from diseases that cause them to be bedridden and lose muscle mass, or sometimes limbs, due to atrophy, said Amber Pond, a research scientist in the school's Department of Basic Medical Sciences. "The weight loss and muscle wasting that occurs in patients with cancer or other diseases seriously compromises their well-being and is correlated with a poor chance for recovery," Pond said. "In addition, muscle weakness caused by atrophy during aging can lead to serious falls and bone loss. Exercise is the most beneficial strategy to treat atrophy. However, a number of individuals are too ill to adequately participate in exercise programs. "We've found a chemical 'switch' in the body that allows us to turn atrophy on, and, from that, we also have learned how to turn atrophy off." Findings based on the research, funded in large part by the American Heart Association, are detailed in a study available online today (Wednesday, May 24) in The FASEB Journal, published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. The study will be in the journal's print edition in July......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Older Blog Entries 1 2
Did you know?
A recently identified path of inflammation once thought to be wholly independent of other inflammatory systems has now been linked to another major pathway. The findings by neuroresearchers at Johns Hopkins are likely to point researchers to novel drugs that significantly reduce the risks of taking COX-2 inhibitor pain relievers, the researchers report.
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