Joomla! site syndication http://medicine.science-tips.org Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:21:54 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://medicine.science-tips.org/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://medicine.science-tips.org Joomla! site syndication http://medicine.science-tips.org/news/latest-news/latest-additions---25.02.07-14-new-articles.html 14 new articles are added to the "Diseases and Conditions" category of the "Health" section. The list of added are are availabe below and you can access the newest articles by following this link (http://medicine.science-tips.org/health/diseases-and-conditions/). The Treatment of Chagas Disease Ways of Treating Chancroid Chancroid and its Symptoms The Treatments Used for Chalazion Chalazia and its Symptoms Chagas Disease and Its Symptoms Watch the Symptoms of Cardiac Arrest The Treatment of Cardiac Arrest How to Treat Candidiasis The Symptoms of Candidiasis The Treatment Used for Campylobacter Infection The Symptoms of the Campylobacter Infection The Treatment of the Calculi Symptoms of Calculi News - Latest News Sun, 25 Feb 2007 02:01:34 +0100 http://medicine.science-tips.org/news/latest-news/new-baldness-treatment.html A British company Intercytex has developed a method of removing the hair follicles from the back of the neck, making them multiply and then re-implanting them successfully on the head. This will be a dramatic breakthrough in the treatment of male pattern baldness, they are hoping to discover a method to make the hair follicles multiply automatically, which will allow the hair follicles, or the derma papilla, to be sold commercially. The treatment has been tested on seven men with male pattern baldness, five of whom grew hair. The next test is to be on twenty men with male pattern baldness. During a 30-minute operation, hair follicles are taken from the back of the neck, then they are grown in a culture until there are thousands of them. They are then injected into the scalp where the baldness occurs, and each hair follicle then sprouts a new hair. The most common form of baldness is triggered by the male hormone dihydrotestosterone, which causes follicles to shrink and hair to thin, and later the hair follicle stops producing a hair. However hair at the back of the neck is not covered by the effect of this hormone. "The clever bit is we don't want to give the wrong person the wrong hair back." Said a spokesman for the group. Any treatment that will result for alapaecia will not be available for three years. Dr Nigel Hunt, psychologist at the University of Nottingham and spokesperson for Alopecia UK, said hair loss was traumatic, especially for women. "I'd want to see some results but if this is shown to work it will change things dramatically," he said. "At the moment there's very little that works. "Hair loss affects people quite badly when it happens but the other thing is that people will try absolutely any treatment they can get their hands on, which in itself is difficult. "It's important to make sure that people taking part in the trials are aware it may not work." He added that it would be interesting to see if the treatment worked for alopecia because hair follicles that may appear to be functioning could have something wrong with them. News - Latest News Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:37:20 +0100 http://medicine.science-tips.org/news/latest-news/stuttering-traced-to-brain-and-a-drug-in-the-offing-to-cure-it.html The News: Indevus Pharmaceuticals of USA announced this May, some encouraging results from the largest ever clinical trial of a drug for stuttering. However, still larger trials stretching over two to three years are needed. The bright side of it all is that, if the trials succeed, the drug. pagoclone, could become the first ever medical treatment approved for stuttering. Background: Know the Stuttering: Also known as the Stammering; Stuttering, as we know is disruption of speech by frequent repetitions, prolongations of sounds, syllables or words or inability to start a word. People who stutter would usually exhibit rapid eye blinkings, tremors of the lips and / or jaw or other responses of struggle in face or torso. Also, presence of many people, talking on the telephone, public speech etc., tend to increase stuttering, whereas being alone, often improve fluency of speech or singing. Stutter Facts: Over three million Americans stutter. Stuttering affects individuals of all ages but frequently in young children of 2 and 6 years. About 80% of adult stutterers are men and about 20% are women. Stuttering, usually decreases with age, and it is estimated that only less than 1 percent of adults stutter. Many people who stutter have succeeded in careers requiring public speaking. Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Willis, Jimmy Stewart, and singers Carly Simon and Mel Tillis, are a few luminaries to mention here. How is stuttering treated now? There are a variety of treatments available for stuttering which may improve stuttering but till now, there is no cure. However, it may help prevent developmental stuttering from continuing. Parents must consult a speech therapist/ speech pathologist, for a speech evaluation if children stutter for more than six months or when stuttering is accompanied by struggle responses. Developmental stuttering in children is often treated by counseling their parents. They are encouraged to provide relaxed environment at home, remove fear form children, engage them in unihibiting pleasant conversation in a deliberately slow manner, desisting from forcing them to speak in public, comparing with others. How did it Happen? Dr Gerald Maguire, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Irvine, trying to find a cure for stuttering from which he suffers himself. He is organising clinical trials and even testing treatments on himself. Indications are there that the trials are getting closer to the goal. For long the medical fraternity viewed the stuttering as a nervous or emotional condition to a neurological one that is at least partly genetic. Now, a total transformation is taking place over the last decade. Our medical education also taught us almost nothing on stuttering and there is much more to learn about stutter, researchers said. Imaging studies on the brain conducted by scientists revealed much hitherto unknown information. They found that the brains of stutterers and non-stutterers behave differently during speech processing. In latter’ case, the speech is largely processed in human brain by the left hemisphere but in formers case the right side also getting unusually active. Dopamine, the neuro transmitter is found in excess in stutterers’ brain. Also, the brains’ auditory cortex is more active in them. Genetic studies on persons from family trees with a large number of stutterers are also conducted by the researchers to lay their scrutiny on culprit genes and it is still in labs. So, the researchers took to trials with schizophrenia drugs for stuttering and found some results. but others, the speech and language pathologists, who consider and treat it more as a developmental problem, object to treating stuttering as a medical problem. News - Latest News Thu, 02 Nov 2006 03:37:36 +0100 http://medicine.science-tips.org/news/latest-news/a-bionic-prosthetic-arm-that-can-be-controlled-by-mind.html The News: Claudia Mitchell, a U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan war and lost her left arm, became first bionic woman of the world when she successfully received a bionic arm. She received this two years after losing her arm to a motorcycle. Bionic arm is a mechanical arm fitted to an amputee, that can be controlled by the mere thoughts of the recipient! This not the first time to read mind but the level of success in functionality of this thought controlled arm is remarkable. Background: The term Biomechanics has many meanings and synonyms. Basically, it is the application of biological principles and systems of nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. ‘Bionics’ is its short form, derived from the words biology and electronics, by Jack E. Steele in 1960 at a conference in Dayton. Such an adaptation of nature’s ways to man’s mechanical devices is not new. Knowledge of the neural networks in human brain inspired produced cybernetics, artificial neurons, artificial neural networks, and swarm intelligence. Our radars imitate bats’ echolocating technique, so was the case with sonars and dolphins. The toughness of silky strings of spiders’ webs spurred new thoughts for scientists researching on new age materials. As engineers and biologists benefit from each other’s knowledge, two different versions of bionics cropped up depending on the direction of flow of knowledge. However, in medicine, ‘Bionics’ refers to the replacement or enhancement of limbs or other organs of body. Well, a bionic implant is not the same as a prosthesis. It differ from a prosthesis in terms of functionality by mimicking the original orgon very closely, or even surpassing it. Now, the news making arm can even be controlled by thoughts! What they did now? The bionic arm is controlled by rerouting nerve, in Mitchell’s shoulder to healthy muscles in her chest. This targeted muscle reinnervation redirects the original signals meant to the amputated arm to the robotic arm through surface electrodes. These electrodes are key engineering, in that they respond to Mitchell’s thoughts detected in nerve messages! “Before the surgery, I doubted that I would ever he able to get my life back.” Ms. Mitchell quoted as saying, “But this arm and the Rehahilitation Institute of Chicago have allowed me to return to a life that is more rewarding and active than I ever could have imagined. This arm allowed the recipient a signilicantly higher level of functionality like being able to open jars, reach up to high shelves, dressing them selves with more ease, feeling the heat and the pressure of a handshake. Interestingly, Ms. Mitchell read about Mr. Sullisan of the Centre in Popular Science magazine a and contacted the institute. She is reported to have underwent the surgery on her 25th birthday and took an year to successfully accustom to it. What Next? Though, six people received such implants at this centre sine 2002, only Mitchell managed to successfully control the limb by thoughts. It all looks like science fiction, giving much needed confidence and independence to the amputees and can greatly help the war and accident victims to deal with their rest of life. We may one day see Cyborgs and “Six Million Dollar Man” in reality too, what with the fully functional mechanical hearts and cochlear implants for the deaf etc., are already available. News - Latest News Thu, 02 Nov 2006 03:29:07 +0100 http://medicine.science-tips.org/news/latest-news/india-is-yaws-free.html “Yaws, a chronic infectious disease, has been eliminated from India”, said Mr. Anbumani Ramadoss, Union Health Minister of India, in New Delhi on September19, 2006. “However, it will be two years before the disease is eradicated,” he added. The Background: Elimination means no case has been reported for the past three years, whereas elimination means no incidence for two more years or for the last five years. It is learnt that the disease was originally noticed earlier in remote areas of 49 tribal districts, particularly in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chattisgarh in East Central region of India. There are other diseases like leprosy which are eliminated from India. There are other diseases like Polio and Kala Azar (Black Fever) which are on the verge elimination. India took up the Yaws eradication Programme (YEP) in sensitive areas in the year 1996-97 covering even states like Assam, Jharkhand, GUJARAT, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. YAWS - Introduction: The word ‘yaws’ might owe its origin to Caribbean word ‘yaya,’ means ‘a sore.’ Also, because the lesions of yaws look like berries, the disease is also called frambesia or frambesia tropica (from French ‘framboise,’ meaning ‘raspberry’). Yaws is also called as granuloma tropicum, polypapilloma tropicum, and thymiosis. frambesia is a Modern Latin word inspired by the French word framboise ("raspberry"). This infectious disease is caused by the infection with spirochete bacteria entering body through an existing cut or damage. Yaws papilla occur on skin of the face, hands, feet, and genital area It is transmitted by direct contact with infected individuals or eye gnats. In a few weeks after infection, a painless, distinct, 10-50 mm sized raspberry like ulcerous papule, called 'mother yaw' appears on the skin at the point of infection (inoculation). This ancient disease, thought to have plagued humans for some 1.5 million years, usually affects children aged below 15 years in the warm, humid tropics of Caribbean, Latin America, West Africa, Southeast Asia, India and Oceania among poor rural populations living in overcrowded environment with poor sanitation. This disease do not have sex predilection and do not cause fatalities and progresses in stages: Primary stage: Initial yaws lesion develops at inoculation site and may persist for up to nine months. Secondary stage: As the ‘mother yaw’ heals, widespread secondary growths results in multiple 'raspberry' like skin lesions similar to primary yaws lesion. But these are smaller and ulcerous, exuding a thin, highly infective fluid which attracts flies. If untreated, lesions may merge together into thick fissured plaques. When they form on the feet gait is affected. These secondary growths are irreversible but there can be relapsing lesions and asymptomatic periods. Latent stage: Usually, no symptoms are present, but skin lesions can relapse. Tertiary stage: Bone, joint, and soft tissue deformities may occur. In this stage, the lesions are not contagious. In some cases, it may take a decade or more to reach this stage! Diagnosis and Treatment: The diagnosis involves blood tests or visual examination of lesion sample under a microscope. It can be treated by a single dose of broad spectrum antibiotics like penicillin, erythromycin or tetracycline. The relentless campaigns by WHO between 1954 and 1963 greatly helped to reduce the incidence of the disease world wide but it still raises its head now and then. News - Latest News Thu, 02 Nov 2006 03:25:14 +0100