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Archive for the ‘health’ category: Page 330

Dec 30, 2016

Synthetic Stem Cells Found Comparable To Natural Stem Cells In Therapeutic Benefits But With Reduced Risks

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Nice.


Stem cell treatments involve some serious health risks for the patients and are very expensive. A new alternative developed for patients with health problems may be a game-changer as a team of researchers has developed synthetic stem cells, which prove to be as efficient as the regular ones. ( NC State University )

A team of researchers made a significant breakthrough which will help patients with heart problems all over the world. The scientists managed to create synthetic stem cells, which can help the heart tissue regenerate just as well as normal stem cells, while also avoiding the complications associated with them.

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Dec 28, 2016

Our Galactic Future Depends On Digital Health Technologies

Posted by in categories: health, space

Improving healthcare is actually a bigger challenge than rocket science itself in reaching humanity’s next grand goal to reach Mars in the next decades.

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Dec 27, 2016

This Mobile Ultrasound Startup Is Reshaping A $6 Billion Healthcare Market

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

(Photo courtesy of Clarius Mobile Health)

The ultrasound market currently stands as a $6 billion global industry.

Contrary to popular perception, the use of ultrasounds for women’s health and pregnancy follow-ups only represents less than 20% of the overall use for healthcare. For example, a diagnostic ultrasound is routinely used to diagnose an assortment of healthcare conditions such as cancer, gall stones, and cardiovascular diseases.

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Dec 26, 2016

Losing body fat could be facilitated

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Time to work off that Chritmas Turkey bigsmile


Making muscles burn more fat and less glucose can increase exercise endurance, but could simultaneously cause diabetes, says a team of scientists from Baylor College of Medicine and other institutions.

Mouse muscles use (carbohydrate) as fuel when the animals are awake and active and switch to fat (lipid) when they are asleep. The team discovered that disrupting this natural cycle may lead to diabetes but, surprisingly, can also enhance exercise endurance. The switch is controlled by a molecule called histone deacetylase 3, or HDAC3. This finding opens the possibility of selecting the right time to exercise for losing body fat but also raises the concern of using HDAC inhibitors as doping drugs for endurance exercise. The study appears in Nature Medicine.

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Dec 26, 2016

CellScope is building smart mobile tools for better family health

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Introducing Seymour: a smarter way to manage your family’s health. Get a doctor’s opinion 24/7 for ear and skin concerns. Oto is now available nationwide.

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Dec 25, 2016

The Chatbot Will See You Now

Posted by in categories: health, robotics/AI

Could artificial intelligence help address the mental-health crisis among Syrian refugees?

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Dec 24, 2016

CellAge Campaign Q&A: Is It Safe To Remove Senescent Cells? | Lifespan.io

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, life extension

Is it safe to remove senescent cells? This is a common question we hear when talking about senolytic therapies designed to remove these problem cells that accumulate with age and play havoc with the body and its ability to repair.


Mantas from CellAge answers a question from one of our readers about senescent cell removal therapy. The removal of senescent cells has become a very hot topic this year with numerous experiments showing positive results for health and disease mitigation.

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Dec 22, 2016

Classifying Aging As a Disease: The Role of Microbes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, life extension

The body is under constant invasion by microbes so rejuvenation of the immune system and reduction of imflammation is a big priority for rejuvenation biotechnology.


Recent publications have proposed that aging should be classified as a disease (Bulterijs et al., 2015; Zhavoronkov and Bhullar, 2015; Zhavoronkov and Moskalev, 2016). The goal of this manuscript is not to dispute these claims, but rather to suggest that when classifying aging as a disease, it is important to include the contribution of microbes.

As recently as ~115 years ago, more than half of all deaths were caused by infectious diseases, including pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections, and diphtheria (Jones et al., 2012). Since then, the establishment of public health departments that focused on improved sanitation and hygiene, and the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines allowed for a dramatic decrease in infectious disease-related mortality (Report, 1999). In 2010, the death rate for infectious diseases was reduced to 3% (Jones et al., 2012). Simultaneously, as infectious disease-related mortality rates have decreased, global lifespan has increased from ~30 to ~70 years (Riley, 2005).

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Dec 21, 2016

Bionic pancreas system manages blood sugar levels in patients with type 1 diabetes living at home

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, engineering, health, transhumanism

The bionic pancreas system developed by Boston University (BU) investigators proved better than either conventional or sensor-augmented insulin pump therapy at managing blood sugar levels in patients with type 1 diabetes living at home, with no restrictions, over 11 days. The report of a clinical trial led by a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) physician is receiving advance online publication in The Lancet.

“For study participants living at home without limitations on their activity and diet, the bionic pancreas successfully reduced average blood glucose, while at the same time decreasing the risk of hypoglycemia,” says Steven Russell, MD, PhD, of the MGH Diabetes Unit. “This system requires no information other than the patient’s body weight to start, so it will require much less time and effort by health care providers to initiate treatment. And since no carbohydrate counting is required, it significantly reduces the burden on patients associated with diabetes management.”

Developed by Edward Damiano, PhD, and Firas El-Khatib, PhD, of the BU Department of Biomedical Engineering, the bionic pancreas controls patients’ blood sugar with both insulin and glucagon, a hormone that increases glucose levels. After a 2010 clinical trial confirmed that the original version of the device could maintain near-normal blood sugar levels for more than 24 hours in adult patients, two follow-up trials — reported in a 2014 New England Journal of Medicine paper — showed that an updated version of the system successfully controlled blood sugar levels in adults and adolescents for five days. Another follow-up trial published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology in 2016 showed it could do the same for children as young as 6 years of age.

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Dec 21, 2016

Piperlongumine as a Senolytic Drug Candidate with Fewer Side-Effects

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, life extension

Senescent cell removal is the first true rejuvenation therapy to treat one of the aging processes and with human clinicial trials in the next 18 months these are some very exciting times. Here is yet another study showing natural compounds can be used in combination with drugs to kill senescent cells.


Today’s open access research paper outlines the discovery of yet another new candidate drug for the selective destruction of senescent cells. This is an increasingly popular research topic nowadays. Senescent cells perform a variety of functions, but on the whole they are bad news. Cells become senescent in response to stresses or reaching the Hayflick limit to replication. They cease further division and start to generate a potent mix of signals, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype or SASP, that can provoke inflammation, disarray the surrounding extracellular matrix structures, and change behavior of nearby cells for the worse. Then they destroy themselves, or are destroyed by the immune system — for the most part at least. This is helpful in wound healing, and in small doses helps to reduce cancer incidence by removing those cells most at risk of becoming cancerous. Unfortunately a growing number of these cells linger without being destroyed, more with every passing year, and their presence eventually causes significant dysfunction. That in turn produces age-related disease, frailty, and eventually death. Senescent cells are not the only root cause of aging, but they provide a significant contribution to the downward spiral of health and wellbeing, and even only their own would eventually produce death by aging.

The beneficial aspects of senescent cells seem to require only a transient presence, so the most direct approach to the problem presented by these cells is to destroy them every so often. Build a targeted therapy capable of sweeping senenscent cells from tissues, and make it efficient enough to keep the count of such cells low. That is the way to prevent senescent cells form contributing to age-related disease. Working in mice, researchers have produced results such as functional rejuvenation in aged lungs and extended life span through the targeted destruction of senescent cells. Since perhaps only a few percent of the cells in old tissue are senescent, this targeted destruction can be accomplished with few side-effects beyond those generated by off-target effects of the medication itself.

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