Medical Breakthroughs, Research, and News

[WstateU]

This one is big for a lot of people.

Baldness May Be Treated by Sugar That Naturally Occurs in the Human Body

I’m definitely not Fabio, but they put me on ‘Finasteride’ about 20 years ago when I had a bought with Prostatitis; the difference is amazing… the young ‘flappers’ still look my way.

[SubGod22]

Potential New Source for Drugs to Fight Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Found Deep in Arctic Ocean

“Promising” antibiotic candidates were found by Finnish scientists in microbes under the seafloor in the Arctic Ocean.

70% of all currently licensed antibiotics have been derived from actinobacteria in the soil, but most environments on Earth have not yet been searched for them.

Scientists say that focusing the search on actinobacteria in other habitats is a good strategy—especially if it were to yield new molecules that neither kill bacteria outright nor stop them from growing, but only reduce their “virulence” or capacity for causing disease.

They explained it’s hard for targeted pathogenic strains to evolve resistance under such conditions, while such anti-virulence compounds are also less likely to cause unwanted side effects.

The rate of discovery of fundamentally new antibiotics has been much slower than in previous decades, and opening research objectives to include antivirulent agents could greatly increase the number of potential candidates available for testing.

“We discovered a compound that inhibits enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) virulence without affecting its growth, and a growth-inhibiting compound—both in actinobacteria from the Arctic Ocean,” said Professor Päivi Tammela, of the University of Helsinki.

Tammela and his team were part of the crew onboard Kroprins Haakon, a research vessel that made a trip around the seas off the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in 2020. They developed a new suite of methods that can test for the anti-virulence and antibacterial effects of hundreds of unknown compounds simultaneously.

They targeted an EPEC strain that causes severe and sometimes deadly diarrhea in children under five, especially in developing countries. EPEC causes disease by adhering to cells in the human gut.

Once it adheres to those cells, EPEC injects so-called ‘virulence factors’ into the host cell to hijack its molecular machinery, ultimately killing it.

The tested compounds were derived from four species of actinobacteria, isolated from invertebrates sampled in the Arctic Sea off Svalbard.

[pinstripers]

"In medical news, a new test can now detect prostate trouble months earlier than any previous test.
The only downside? It involves shoving some huge device up your ass.
So... it's not all gravy, you know?"

------------Norm Macdonald

[SubGod22]

Targeted Sound Waves Treat Pain and Depression in as Little as One 40-minute Session

A crown-like device has been relieving patients of pain and depression in clinical trials, and has the authors excited.

Called the Diadem, named for a crown-like adornment worn by sovereigns across time, it sends therapeutic sound waves to targeted regions of the brain with millimeter precision.

These sorts of non-pharma treatments can raise eyebrows with some, as for the last generation, the prescription of SSRIs for depression has been widespread and nearly universal among American clinicians.

But the paper’s lead author Tom Riis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah, reports rave reviews among his team.

“We’ve been blown away by the positive results so far,” Rise told New Atlas. “After just a single 40-minute stimulation session, patients are showing immediate, clinically substantial improvements in symptoms.”

“While it should be kept in mind that not every participant saw drastic improvement, in the ones that did the change could be quite remarkable,” he added. “For several, you could just see it in their eyes—coming out of the session, their mood and behavior were a total 180 from when they had walked in. They were noticeably at ease, less burdened, more present.”

The paper on the device was conducted during phase 2 clinical trials, and the authors, blown away by the results as they admitted, are quickly looking to advance to phase 3.

In the phase 2 results, among 20 people who were treated with the Diadem, 60% of the patients reported a 33% reduction in pain immediately following treatment. When tested on those with clinically significant depression, 10 of 14 reported remission one week later after just one session with the device.

The Diadem works by sending ultrasonic frequencies to specific areas of the brain like the anterior cingulate cortex which is partly the center of pain and emotional regulation in our minds.

[C0|dB|00ded]

Targeted Sound Waves Treat Pain and Depression in as Little as One 40-minute Session

I like my targeted sound waves in the form of a concert.

[WstateU]

I sleep to the sound of the ocean every night...

"I sleep like a baby..."

[SubGod22]

I actually pull up thunderstorms often times when I go to bed.

[SubGod22]

This is awesome.

100 Times Improvement in Sight Seen After Gene Therapy Trial for Disease That Deteriorates Vision in Childhood

Patients with an inherited disease that caused them to lose much of their sight early in childhood experienced a quick return of vision after they received gene therapy.

The new treatment addressed the genetic mutation that caused their vision’s deterioration, letting them see 100 times better than before.

Some patients even experienced a 10,000-fold improvement in their vision after receiving the highest dose of the therapy, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine.

“That 10,000-fold improvement is the same as a patient being able to see their surroundings on a moonlit night outdoors as opposed to requiring bright indoor lighting before treatment,” said the study’s lead author, Artur Cideciyan, PhD, a professor of Ophthalmology and co-director of the Center for Hereditary Retinal Degenerations.

“One patient reported for the first time being able to navigate at midnight outdoors only with the light of a bonfire.”

A total of 15 people participated in the Phase 1/2 trial, including three pediatric patients. Each patient suffered from Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA1) as a result of mutations in the GUCY2D gene, which is essential to producing proteins critical for vision. The rare condition, which affects 100,000 people worldwide, causes significant amount of vision loss as early as infancy.

All subjects had severe vision loss with their best measure of vision being equal or worse than 20/80—meaning if a typically-sighted person could see an object clearly at 80 feet, these patients would have to move up to at least 20 feet to see it. Glasses provide limited benefit to these patients because they correct abnormalities in the optical focusing ability of the eye, and are unable to address medical causes of vision loss, such as genetic retinal diseases like LCA1.

The clinical trial published in The Lancet tested different dosage levels of the gene therapy, ATSN-101, which was adapted from the AAV5 microorganism and was surgically injected under the retina.

Improvements were noticed quickly, often within the first month, after the therapy was applied and lasted for at least 12 months.