Bone research that grows on you
Rapid and guided healing of bones has moved a step closer with research by two biomedical engineering students who have found new ways to deliver bone growth enhancers directly to broken or weakened bones.
Major ongoing research at Queensland University of Technology focuses on biodegradable materials that carry bone growth enhancing substances to encourage bones to heal quickly with much less intervention.
The research is ultimately aimed at repairing fractured bones or replacing bone weakened or lost from osteoporosis, cancer or trauma with minimal intervention and without painful and expensive bone grafts or pins and plates.
Psychological Approaches Can Help Some Skin Conditions
If you’ve ever blushed, you know your skin can reflect your feelings. It makes sense, then, that emotional trouble might show up as skin trouble. Although cause and effect can be difficult to pin down, considerable data suggest that in some people, psychological factors can activate or worsen certain skin conditions. Recognizing and treating these psychological issues might help the skin, too, reports the November 2006 issue of Harvard Women’s Health Watch.
Interest in the mind-skin connection has led to a field called psychodermatology. Its aim is not to substitute psychotherapy for medicine, but to recognize emotional issues that may affect the way skin problems respond to medical treatment.
Control Measures Fail to Stop Spread of New H5N1 Virus
A new variant of the bird flu virus H5N1 emerged in late 2005 and replaced most of the previous variants across a large part of southern China, despite an ongoing program to vaccinate poultry, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong in collaboration with scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The new virus, called Fujian-like (FL), appears to be responsible for the increased occurrence of H5N1 poultry infections since October 2005, as well as recent human cases in China, the researchers said. FL has now also been transmitted to Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand, resulting in a new bird flu outbreak wave in Southeast Asia that has caused human infections as well, according to the Hong Kong/St. Jude team.
The investigators also warned that it is possible that this new H5N1 variant will spread further through Asia and into Europe, as it evolves to form other sublineages that vary from place to place. This evolution into different sublineages also occurred during the previous two waves of H5N1 transmission that occurred during the past several years, according to the investigators. A report on these findings appears in the November online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Drug prescribed for migraines and seizures increases risk of kidney stones
Topiramate (Topamax), a drug commonly prescribed to treat seizures and migraine headaches, can increase the propensity of calcium phosphate kidney stones, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
A study - the largest cross-sectional examination of how the long-term use of topiramate affects kidney-stone formation - appears in the October issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
Several case reports have described an association between topiramate and the development of kidney stones, but this complication had not been well recognized and physicians have not informed patients about the risk, the UT Southwestern researchers said. More important, the mechanism of stone formation was largely unknown previously.
