Health

Creating 3-D Mini Brains

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Researchers at the Houston Methodist Research Institute are making 3-D mini brains from human stem cells. They hope that such models can help with research on repairing the nervous system after injury or disease of the brain. The researchers have developed a way to reduce the time required to grow these brain models which will allow for faster testing of drugs and study of disease-causing mutations. For the first time when the researchers put the cells together, they dramatically changed their morphological complexity, size, and shape. They believe they look like cells you would see in the human brain. Cells traditionally grown in lab cultures are put on a flat petri dish where they are often manipulated and thus their interactions are disturbed. The form, structure, and developmental growth of the brain’s cells are thus not able to be reproduced … Read more

Informed Consent in Dentistry: Can Change Impact Personal Injury Cases?

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An excellent article appears in the Spring 2017 edition of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol. 45, pp. 77-94) written by Kevin I. Reid titled “Informed Consent in Dentistry.” The article discusses how informed consent is respecting the ethical right of an individual to make decisions about one’s body and only have actions undertaken on their body with authorization without undue influence. In order for informed consent to be considered valid in dentistry the following must occur: (1) the patient is competent and has the ability and capacity to understand and decide, (2) the dentist discloses material information, (3) the patient understands, (4) the patient is voluntarily entering the arrangement, and (5) the patient provides authorization to go ahead. Every patient however comes to a different degree of understanding to authorize treatment based on their prior dental experiences, education, motivation, attention, … Read more

Resolvin E1 may help treat gum disease and atherosclerosis

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Researchers have shown that Resolvin E1 which is a molecule naturally produced in the body from an omega 3 fish oil, prevents and treats gum disease and decreases the likelihood for advanced arterial atherosclerotic plaques to rupture and form a thrombus or blood clot. Inflammation occurs with atherosclerosis and may play a role in the development of heart attacks and stroke. There is evidence from research groups that chronic inflammatory diseases such as diabetes, colitis, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, kidney and pulmonary diseases, and cancer can benefit from the use of the pro-resolving lipid mediators such as resolvins and lipoxins. Researchers from Boston University and The Forsyth Institute used two groups of an experimental model that possessed highly inflamed advanced atherosclerosis. The first group was treated with a solution applied on gum tissues that contained an inflammation-lowering lipid … Read more

Chronic fatigue syndrome and Gulf War illness are distinct syndromes

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Researchers at Georgetown University have found two distinct molecular signatures in the brain disorders chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and Gulf War Illness (GWI). In the past many doctors have told patients suffering from these syndromes that the disorders are psychological in origin so this news may come as useful to patients. The work also showed two variants of GWI. The two brain disorders share have many of the commonalities, such as fatigue, pain, exhaustion after exercise, and cognitive dysfunction. According to the National Academy of Medicine, chronic fatigue syndrome affects between 836,000 and 2.5 million Americans. The disorder was believed to be psychological in origin until a 2015 review of 9,000 articles pointed to unspecified biological causes.  Gulf War Illness has developed in more than one-fourth of the 697,000 veterans in the U.S. who were in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. Gulf War … Read more

Gut Microbes can Worsen Neurodegenerative Conditions

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Research has shown that microbial organisms in the gut can influence health and disease in many ways. More recent research has shown that gut microbes may cause or worsen neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Now researchers at the University of Louisville and University of Michigan have proposed a new term to describe an interaction between gut microbiota and the brain. The term “mapranosis” has been coined for the process by which amyloid proteins produced by microbes (bacteria, fungi and others) alter the structure of proteins (proteopathy) and enhance inflammation in the nervous system, thereby initiating or augmenting brain disease. The researchers hope that by giving the process a name a greater sense of awareness of the process will occur and help with additional research needed for therapeutic opportunities. The researchers feel it is important to define the ways … Read more