Researchers on a Completely fearless woman, Do you belive !!

It has been known since the 1930s that when a certain part of monkeys’ brains were removed, the animals became fearless. Now similar effects are being seen in humans according to a study in the journal Current Biology. Justin Feinstein, the study’s lead author and a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa said, “There’s not very many humans with this sort of brain damage… Luckily for us, we had access to a patient, SM, and we studied her different fear behaviours and we read her personal diaries.”

SM due to a rare condition called lipoid proteinosis does not have her amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure that studies have shown plays a role in processing fear and other emotions, though experts say its exact role is unclear. Her condition is termed Urbach-Wiethe disease. This has made her fearless to all normally fear evoking stimuli like snakes, spiders etc. This has also made her put her life at risk a few times. Now the team is trying to coach the patient to behave in a more cautious manner.


Dr. Jon Shaw, professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine said, “It’s very striking that she has only a rational response, not a physiological one… The body is not prepared for a physiological response because the amygdala has been taken out of the loop.” Ruben Gur, professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Radiology & Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia was said, “If you look at past neuroimaging studies, there is clear evidence that the amygdala is extremely sensitive to fearful stimuli.”

Researchers believe that her condition may offer clues for therapy of people with excessive fear like war veterans. This condition is known as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Feinstein said, “We may be able to dampen the effects of the amygdale… We can do that through psychotherapy and possibly through medication.”

Not all are convinced. Elizabeth Phelps, professor of psychology and neural science at New York University said, “You have to interpret case studies with caution since there’s been contradictory work done.” She pointed out that there is one study that found an unusual emotional response in monkeys whose brains were experimentally damaged, but only during specific stages of development. She explained there was another patient HM who had part of his brain, including the amygdala, removed to treat severe epilepsy. His main problem, according to experts, was his memory loss.

Nanomaterials Used in Vivo Applications

A handful of nanomaterials are being studied in clinical trials or have already been approved by the FDA for use in humans and many proof-of-concept studies of nanomaterials in cell-culture and small-animal models for medical applications are under way.

Many of these nanomaterials are designed to target tumors in vivo and are intended for use either as drug ...............

Read more............>>

Canadian scientists make blood from human skin

Canadian scientists have transformed pinches of human skin into petri dishes of human blood — a major medical breakthrough that could yield new sources of blood for transfusions after multiple rounds of surgery or chemotherapy.

Lead scientist Mick Bhatia, head of McMaster University’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, said Sunday the first people to benefit may be leukemia patients, whose blood cells have a genetic mutation.

“Their skin cells don’t have that mutation,” he said.
“If we took skin cells from that patient and we converted it into blood in a Petri dish, we would be giving ourselves healthy blood cells we could transplant back into the patient. There would be no rejection because the cells are their own.”

It could mean saving the lives of patients suffering from the deadly blood cancer.

“The scenario I’m talking about would be where the patient can’t find a donor,” he said. “And that happens a lot.”
A similar treatment could help cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, which adversely affects the blood and can limit treatment.

To switch skin to blood, researchers took a tiny sample — less than a millimetre — of human skin and put it in a Petri dish. There, it turned into cells called fibroblasts. The scientists then added a protein that turned on or off sets of genes, bathed the mixture in more proteins necessary for human blood cells to survive and waited 30 days. By the end of the month they were then left several blood cells.

Mick Bhatia, science director at the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, was the lead investigator in the research.

The discovery was published this month in the science journal Nature. Early clinical trials could begin as in 2012.

But researchers still have a couple of hurdles — they need to be able to make enough blood and they need to be sure it’s sterile and stable enough for transfusion. But Bhatia’s hopeful.

“We think we would have enough to put into a full grown adult,” he said.

Bhatia added the discovery opens up a whole host of treatment possibilities for various diseases.

“We have some encouraging evidence that there’s more than just blood you can convert skin cells to,” he said.

Implant to Control Blood Pressure Tested

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans has high blood pressure and many don't even know it. Left uncontrolled, it can have deadly consequences. Now, a new device is being tested to help people control their blood pressure using their body's natural abilities.

Higher Healthcare Costs in 2011

WASHINGTON :- The amount employers spend on their workers' healthcare costs will reach a 5-year high in 2011, and employees will also face larger out-of-pocket costs for their medical care next year, according to a forecast released Monday by the consulting group Hewitt Associates.

Because of higher medical claim costs, an aging population, and changes under the new healthcare reform law, employers can expect to pay nearly 9% more toward their employees' healthcare costs than they did in 2010.

The findings are in line with a recent survey by the National Business Group on Health that asked large employers what they expected to pay for their workers' medical costs in 2011. The answer: about 9% more than in 2010.

The average total healthcare premium per employee working at a large firm will be $9,821 in 2011 -- up from $9,028 in 2010.

Employees will contribute, on average, $2,209, or 22.5% of the total premium, which is a few hundred dollars more than in 2010, when the average employee at a large firm paid 21.8% of their total premium, to total slightly less than $2,000. Once out-of-pocket costs for co-pays and deductibles are factored in, employees can expect to pay about $486 more than they paid toward their medical costs in 2010.

The authors of the Hewitt report say that the new figures mean that healthcare premiums have more than doubled in the past decade and employees' share of their medical costs will have more than tripled.

The high 2011 cost projections are based on a number of factors, the study authors said. For one, employers haven't hired many new employees in recent years, which has resulted in a slightly older work force that is more prone to expensive medical conditions.

Certain insurance market reforms contained in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) -- such as covering dependents until age 26 and eliminating lifetime and annual limits -- contributed to about 1% to 2% to the 9% increase in what employers are likely to pay in 2011.

"After 18 months of waiting for healthcare reform to play out, employers find themselves in a very challenging cost position for 2011," said Ken Sperling, Hewitt's healthcare practice leader, in a press release. "Reform creates opportunities for meaningful change in how healthcare is delivered in the U.S., but most of these positive effects won't be felt for a few years. In the meantime, employers continue to struggle to balance the significant healthcare needs of an aging work force with the economic realities of a difficult business environment."

Hewitt's data came from a database with detailed census, cost, and plan design information for 350 large U.S. employers representing 14.4 million participants and $51.9 billion in 2010 healthcare spending.

Take care of Depression among medical students!!

Medical students with moderate to severe depression more frequently endorsed several depression stigma attitudes than nondepressed students and had a higher rate of suicidal thoughts, according to a study in the September 15 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

"Medical students experience depression, burnout, and mental illness at a higher rate than the general population, with mental health deteriorating over the course of medical training. Medical students have a higher risk of suicidal ideation and suicide, higher rates of burnout, and a lower quality of life than age-matched populations," the authors write. They add that medical students are less likely than the general population to receive appropriate treatment, perhaps because of the stigma associated with depression. "Students may worry that revealing their depression will make them less competitive for residency training positions or compromise their education, and physicians may be reluctant to disclose their diagnosis on licensure and medical staff applications."

Thomas L. Schwenk, M.D., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues conducted a study to assess the prevalence of self-reported depression and suicidal ideation among medical students and to assess the perceptions of depression stigma by both depressed and nondepressed students. In September-November 2009, the researchers surveyed all students enrolled at the University of Michigan Medical School (n = 769). The survey response rate was 65.7 percent (505 of 769).

blast from Europe's medieval medical past are medicinal leeches

Miichael Palin experiments with a traditional Russian health therapy in Estonian capital Tallinn by allowing a doctor to cover him in sucking leeches. Fascinating video that is definitely not for the faint hearted! Taken from BBC travel documentary, Palin's New Europe.



In modern medicine, however, leeches are used in reconstructive surgery to provide a vacuum effect that helps stimulate blood circulation. This process is crucial to help kick start blood flow into, for example, a reattached finger.

more targeted therapy for psoriatic and rheumatoid arthritis by contrast-enhanced MRI

In the past the treatment for patients with psoriatic arthritis was based on the treatment for those with rheumatoid arthritis
According to a new study ,contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could help to differentiate between psoriatic and rheumatoid arthritis in hands and wrists. the results of the study might lead to a more targeted therapy unique to each condition.

This study that was done at the University Hospital of Tubingen imaged using contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging 31 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 14 with psoriatic arthritis. The contrast media in rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis is presumed to be different and the difference can only be seen 15 minutes after the contrast material is given.
“Our study revealed a significant difference in perfusion between those patients with rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis after 15 minutes. However, since it was a small group of patients and there was an overlap in perfusion values between both types of arthritis, a diagnosis could not be led by contrast-enhanced MRI alone. Our results are nonetheless promising though,” said Nina Schwenzer, lead author of the study.

World’’s youngest smoker : A Chinese boy

Melbourne: A two-year-old Chinese boy is the world’’s youngest smoker. And it was Tong Liangliang’s dad who taught him how to spark up between tantrums and milky vomits.

Liangliang’s dad said his son was born with a hernia, and being too young for an operation, has taken up smoking to help him deal with the pain.
“The father wasnt aware how serious the toddler’s habit had become until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day,” News.com.au quoted news agency CRI as saying.
However, The Guinness Book of World Records may not accept the feat, as it has refused such requests before on the grounds that it “promoted a harmful habit”. (ANI)

Spain performs full face transplant(Al Jazeera's)

Spanish surgeons have announced that they have carried out the world's first full-face transplant.

The hospital, in Barcelona, performed the surgery on a young man who lost his face in an accident five years ago. Since then, he'd been unable to swallow, speak or breathe properly.