http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
In a pioneering new treatment, doctors created a tailor-made new windpipe for a woman out of donor tissue and the woman’s own stem cells, and say the new, transplanted trachea has been accepted by the woman’s immune system as a natural part of her body without the use of powerful immune-suppressing drugs. Martin Birchall, one of the surgeons, said the transplant showed “the very real potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases. We believe this success has proved that we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care” [The New York Times]. Similar treatments could soon be tried on transplants of other hollow organs, like the bowel, bladder, and reproductive tract, he said.
The 30-year-old patient, Claudia Castillo, had failing airways and severe shortness of breath due to a bout with tuberculosis. By March of this year, Castillo’s condition had deteriorated to the point where she was unable to care for her children. Removing a lung was one treatment option, which would have allowed her to live, but seriously impaired her quality of life [Forbes.com]. She opted instead for this experimental treatment, in which doctors took a piece of trachea from an organ donor and transformed it into a structure that now appears native to her body.
As described in the journal Lancet [subscription required], researchers used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen [BBC News]. They then grew colonies of stem cells, taken from Castillo’s bone marrow, and “seeded” the outside of the tissue scaffold with those cells, which began to grow into the cells that normally surround the windpipe. Four days after the seeding, surgeons grafted in the refurbished structure, replacing Castillo’s damaged trachea. http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
Researchers say the surgery was a complete success: Castillo, who lives in Spain, had no complications from the surgery and left the hospital after 10 days. She is returning to normal activities and even called her doctors from a night club to say she had been out dancing all night, the researchers said [Reuters]. Castillo has not taken any immunosuppressant drugs, and doctors say the chance of her new windpipe being rejected is zero percent.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
The enthused surgeon Martin Birchall said that in 20 years time, virtually any transplant organ could be made in this way. US scientists have already successfully implanted bladder patches grown in the laboratory from patients’ own cells into people with bladder disease. The European research team … is applying for funding to do windpipe and voice box transplants in cancer patients. Clinical trials could begin five years from now, they said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Monday, November 24, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
goat 883.goa.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
People began to domesticate wild goats at least 10,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, according to a new study. It indicates that at that time, villagers in the area experimented with ways of controlling herds. These early domesticators primarily slaughtered male goats that had not reached their reproductive prime, leaving mature males to breed with a herd's adult females, say the researchers.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Goats in these early managed herds probably looked much like wild goats, both physically and genetically, say Melinda A. Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and Brian Hesse of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Over time, isolation of managed herds and the introduction of selective breeding produced changes in domesticated goats, the two anthropologists propose.
Some researchers have argued that declines in overall body size of goat skeletons unearthed at two ancient village sites in the Zagros Mountains reflect early domestication.
However, goats from these sites, Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh, fall within the size range of a sample of modern wild-goat skeletons, Zeder found in a preliminary study. The Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh samples contain a large proportion of bones from young males, the scientists report in the March 24 Science. Previous investigators at the sites had excluded these bones—which had not developed fully but still were larger than comparable bones of fully grown females—from body-size estimates for adult goats. Because more females than males reached maturity, these calculations mistakenly portrayed the villagers' animals as much smaller than wild goats, Zeder and Hesse assert.
Evidence that people had primarily killed young male goats came as no surprise to Hesse. He had previously theorized that early herders mainly killed young males for meat and kept most females and a few older males as breeding stock. In contrast, hunters interested in a quicker return on their effort often targeted the largest males in a herd or killed many animals at once, Hesse had proposed. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
The researchers determined that Ganj Dareh was inhabited about 10,000 years ago, for a span of no more than 100 to 200 years. Settlement of Ali Kosh occurred 500 to 1,000 years later and lasted about 500 years. Radiocarbon analyses generated age estimates from tiny fragments of bone and charred seeds found in a range of soil layers at both sites. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Emergence of a warmer, wetter climate in western Asia 15,000 years ago instigated a spread of grasslands and a resurgence of animals such as sheep, goats, and pigs, Zeder holds. Soon, people there took the first steps toward domestication by searching for ways to manage animal herds, in her view.
People began to domesticate wild goats at least 10,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, according to a new study. It indicates that at that time, villagers in the area experimented with ways of controlling herds. These early domesticators primarily slaughtered male goats that had not reached their reproductive prime, leaving mature males to breed with a herd's adult females, say the researchers.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Goats in these early managed herds probably looked much like wild goats, both physically and genetically, say Melinda A. Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and Brian Hesse of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Over time, isolation of managed herds and the introduction of selective breeding produced changes in domesticated goats, the two anthropologists propose.
Some researchers have argued that declines in overall body size of goat skeletons unearthed at two ancient village sites in the Zagros Mountains reflect early domestication.
However, goats from these sites, Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh, fall within the size range of a sample of modern wild-goat skeletons, Zeder found in a preliminary study. The Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh samples contain a large proportion of bones from young males, the scientists report in the March 24 Science. Previous investigators at the sites had excluded these bones—which had not developed fully but still were larger than comparable bones of fully grown females—from body-size estimates for adult goats. Because more females than males reached maturity, these calculations mistakenly portrayed the villagers' animals as much smaller than wild goats, Zeder and Hesse assert.
Evidence that people had primarily killed young male goats came as no surprise to Hesse. He had previously theorized that early herders mainly killed young males for meat and kept most females and a few older males as breeding stock. In contrast, hunters interested in a quicker return on their effort often targeted the largest males in a herd or killed many animals at once, Hesse had proposed. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
The researchers determined that Ganj Dareh was inhabited about 10,000 years ago, for a span of no more than 100 to 200 years. Settlement of Ali Kosh occurred 500 to 1,000 years later and lasted about 500 years. Radiocarbon analyses generated age estimates from tiny fragments of bone and charred seeds found in a range of soil layers at both sites. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Emergence of a warmer, wetter climate in western Asia 15,000 years ago instigated a spread of grasslands and a resurgence of animals such as sheep, goats, and pigs, Zeder holds. Soon, people there took the first steps toward domestication by searching for ways to manage animal herds, in her view.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
disorder ooo.dis.ww3 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Several studies have noted that an inner brain structure, the hippocampus, is unusually small in individuals who, after surviving extraordinary threats, experience flashbacks, nightmares, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US A new investigation, in the November Nature Neuroscience, indicates that some of these people possess an undersized hippocampus before they ever develop PTSD.
This finding challenges the theory that hormonal responses to traumatic events shrink the hippocampus, a brain area implicated in memory and in the learning of fear responses (SN: 6/3/95, p. 340).
Psychiatrist Mark W. Gilbertson of Harvard Medical School in Boston and his colleagues studied 40 pairs of identical twins in which one brother had been a Vietnam combat veteran and the other had stayed at home. After the war, PTSD afflicted 17 combat veterans. None of the veterans' brothers developed PTSD.
Magnetic resonance imaging scans identified a smaller hippocampus, relative to total brain size, in those with PTSD than in other combat veterans. In the PTSD group, the hippocampus reached its lowest relative size in men with the most severe psychiatric symptoms. A comparably small hippocampus appeared in the twin brothers of men with PTSD, but not in brothers of other veterans. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
A small hippocampus may predispose a person to form intense, long-lasting emotional responses to sights, smells, and other stimuli associated with traumatic events, the scientists theorize. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
Trauma-induced atrophy of the hippocampus may still occur and perhaps contribute to PTSD, comments Stanford University biologist Robert M. Sapolsky. For instance, he notes an earlier study of different Vietnam veterans by Gilbertson and his team. They found a small hippocampus in those who survived severe combat trauma, whether or not PTSD later occurred.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
