Archives: 8/2007

The Cellular CT Scan

by Nicholas Genes on Aug 16, 2007 • 8:09 am

worm The Cellular CT Scan
The MIT Tech Review is reporting on a new way to image live cells — using tomographic refractive microscopy:

As light passes through a cell, its direction and wavelength shift. Different parts of the cell refract light in different ways, so the MIT microscope can show the parts in all their detail… The microscope creates three-dimensional images by combining many pictures of a cell taken from several different angles. It currently takes only a tenth of a second to generate each three-dimensional image, fast enough to watch cells respond in real time.
…Using Feld’s microscope, “you can capture cells in their natural environment and see how they respond to changes,” says Maryann Fitzmaurice, associate professor of pathology at Case Western Reserve University. “Otherwise you just get a snapshot in time of a cell.” Fitzmaurice says that because the technique is so new, it’s not clear what researchers will learn about cells by looking at refraction images. “It’s a very basic technique, with a lot of potential uses,” she says. One potential application may be in drug screening tests in live cells. Researchers could dose cells with a potential therapeutic compound and use the microscope to watch their response.

If they’re having trouble imagining uses for this new microscope, we have a few ideas. Cell adhesion and motility studies are still in need of ways to make live imaging rival the clarity and usefulness of fixing and staining.
More from MIT.
Video in Real (.ram) format…
MIT Spectroscopy Lab

Society

Designer Nite-Lite

by Nicholas Genes on Aug 16, 2007 • 5:36 am

If fear of the dark is keeping you up at night, but you fret about wastefulness and lower-quality sleep in less-than-dark conditions, and you’re an adult with refined tastes… this is the item for you! Designer Sun-Young Lee has created an hourglass that only stays lit while sand passes over it:
sand light Designer Nite Lite
No word yet on price, or availability.
Via Gizmodo…

in the news... / Medicine

Counterfeit Glucose Tests Tracked by J&J to China

by Gene Ostrovsky on Aug 16, 2007 • 12:00 am

OneTouchUltraStrips Counterfeit Glucose Tests Tracked by J&J to China Johnson & Johnson has tracked fake versions of its OneTouch at-home diabetes tests to China. Bloomberg reports:

Tipped off by J&J, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a nationwide consumer alert in October without disclosing the link to China. While no injuries were reported, inaccurate test readings may lead a diabetic to inject the wrong amount of insulin, causing harm or death, the agency said. Fake medicines are a $32 billion global business, says the World Health Organization, and the FDA says it ran 54 counterfeit investigations in 2006, almost double the year before.
…
The court filings disclose, for the first time, that China is the source of about one million phony test strips that have turned up in at least 35 states and in Canada, Greece, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
The court documents reveal, also for the first time, a worldwide distribution chain discovered in the past year by investigators hired by Johnson & Johnson. The trail, initiated by consumer complaints to a LifeScan hotline, first led detectives to 700 pharmacies where the products were sold, then to eight U.S. wholesalers, and then to two importers, one in the U.S., who was tracked down in a hotel room in Las Vegas, and another in Canada.
Records seized from the importers show the counterfeit strips were bought from Henry Fu and his company, Halson Pharmaceutical, which according to its Internet site is based in Shanghai.

Read on for all the details at Bloomberg…

Ophthalmology

Sneak Peek: Tiny Wireless Glaucoma Sensor

by Nicholas Genes on Aug 15, 2007 • 9:14 pm

wireless glaucoma Sneak Peek: Tiny Wireless Glaucoma Sensor The MIT Technology Review has a piece on a new bit of eye-candy: a pressure sensor to measure glaucoma continuously, instead of once every 6 months in the ophthalmologist’s office.

…According to Shareef, a continuous monitoring device, like those used to measure an irregular heartbeat, would be a welcome tool.
Toward that end, Irazoqui and his colleagues have designed a tiny microchip, to be implanted between two layers of the eye. The sensor is designed to measure intraocular pressure and wirelessly transmit the data to a nearby computer. A doctor can then access the data and review it for possible warning signs. At present, Irazoqui’s team has engineered a prototype of the sensor, although he and his colleagues have yet to test it on animals. The researchers plan to present the details of their research later this month at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society’s conference in Lyon, France.
One of the major obstacles in creating this type of device is designing a tiny but highly functional chip that uses very little power. Irazoqui’s group has overcome this problem in part by designing the sensor to run on nanowatts rather than on microwatts. “We use a million times less power, which means we can get a million times more on the circuit,” says Irazoqui, who declined to release further details until he presents the research later this month. The researchers will begin testing the implant in animals by December.

All this talk of glaucoma got us humming an old tune … we wondered: Is the Glaucoma Hymn still online? Why yes, yes it is.
More from Purdue University researcher, Pedro Irazoqui and his lab…
Medgadget’s Glaucoma Archives…

Cardiology

Needed Like a Hole in the Heart

by Nicholas Genes on Aug 15, 2007 • 5:10 pm

When we read the headline of this BBC report:

“Hole-in-the-Heart Self Repair Kit“
we were worried about more do-it-yourself surgery, this time for gunshot victims.
But instead, the BBC is ‘covering’ a new product from Organogenesis and NMT called BioStar that closes patent foramen ovales, the hole between the atria that’s used in fetal circulation. This hole should close at birth but persists in 25% of adults, sometimes problematically (leading to strokes and / or migraines). Some celebrities with PFO include Tedy Bruschi of the Patriots, and Ariel Sharon.
Currently, the PFO can be closed with graft material — but some patients end up with inflammation around the graft material. BioStar uses a biodegradable mesh that encourages “self-repair” — the body’s own cells migrate into the material, eventually replacing it:
biostar Needed Like a Hole in the Heart

In the womb, the opening is necessary to allow efficient circulation of blood and oxygen before the lungs start working.
After birth, the hole should close to separate the two chambers. Sometimes, however, this does not occur correctly.
…In turn, this means blood can bypass the filtering system of the lungs and if debris are present in the blood, such as small blood clots, these can travel to and lodge in the brain, causing a stroke.
Dr Michael Mullen, the consultant cardiologist who has been using the device to treat his patients, said: “Traditional grafts are permanent and so can cause an inflammatory reaction, which can lead to problems.
“Instead, this treatment does the repair job and then disappears in a natural way. The healing is very similar to how the body would heal itself normally.”
So far he has treated about 70 patients with the BioSTAR device, all who were deemed to be at high risk of stroke because of their PFO.
He said some of his patients have reported relief from their migraines since having the treatment.

The product is not available in the US but is being studied as part of the MIST II trial for PFOs and migraines.
More from Organogenesis and MIST II…

etc. / Medicine / not funny

Finally, Maggot Therapy on YouTube

by Gene Ostrovsky on Aug 15, 2007 • 3:14 pm

The wait is over. Take note, this video is not for the squeamish.

Flashbacks: Our Favorite Medgadgets Get a Hearing, Frogs + Maggots = New Weapons in the War on MRSA
(hat tip: Kevin, MD)

in the news...

Tiny, Flexible Batteries for Future Implants

by Gene Ostrovsky on Aug 15, 2007 • 2:43 pm

flexbattery Tiny, Flexible Batteries for Future Implants The Telegraph is reporting on the development of super thin batteries, which can operate in extreme temperatures, bend under outside stress, and discharge both like a typical battery or faster like a capacitor. The size and form factor should allow these new batteries to be used in future miniature medical implants.

Along with its ability to work in temperatures up to 150°C (300°F) and down to -70°C (-100°F), the battery can be printed like paper, rolled, twisted or folded, and even works with the help of human blood or sweat, so it could power implanted medical devices.
The battery’s semblance to paper is no accident: more than 90 per cent of the device is made up of cellulose, the same plant cells used in most kinds of paper. “It’s essentially a regular piece of paper, but it’s made in a very intelligent way,” said Prof Robert Linhardt of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, one of the team that outlines the advance in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
…
To create the battery, the paper was infused with carbon nanotubes, so named because they consist of carbon atoms wrapped into tubes that only measure a few nanometres (billionths of a metre) across the mouth, which act as the battery electrodes and allow the storage devices to conduct electricity.
Using aluminium foil to pick up the current, the device can provide the long, steady power comparable to a conventional battery, as well as a quick burst of high energy typical of a device called a “supercapacitor.”

More at Telegraph…

Informatics

Google, Microsoft, and You?

by Gene Ostrovsky on Aug 15, 2007 • 1:05 pm

Via Bernard’s Diabetes Blog, we found a New York Times article about Google’s and Microsoft’s plans for bringing electronic medical records to the masses. Both efforts will likely be announced later this year or next, and both will likely employ a patient-centered approach. Its not fully clear what they’re up to, but they’re beefing up and focusing their search engines specifically on health related material, and working on managing one’s personal health records. We’re particularly tickled by a leaked screenshot of a Google Health’s page, on Google Blogoscoped :

google health Google, Microsoft, and You?

This “Conditions & symptoms” dialog includes an auto-completion feature, just like other input boxes in Google Health. You enter “head”, and Google suggests “Head and Neck Angioedema”, “Head Injury”, “Head Pain” and more.

Oh, yes. Bring it. Maybe a year from now, a patient with the worst headache of his life will direct me to his Google Health page, which will helpfully include a history of “Severe Head Pain” — this is the diagnostic aid we’ve been waiting for! A more robust critique of patient-produced diagnoses is up at Graham Walker’s site.
We’re also excited about the mysterious “Immunications” that are mentioned on one screenshot — Are they email reminders about immunizations? Are they medications that promote healing? Is this a revolutionary new product from the leading internet company, or a hack job put together by spelling-impaired high schoolers over the weekend?
Color us disappointed. We thought when Google brought together some of the world’s top experts in health care and informatics, we’d soon see the emergence of a secure, intuitive way to maintain and update medical information. Instead, it looks like we’re getting Medical MySpace — with all the vacuousness and fluff that name implies. Instead of real diagnoses, we get a drop-down list featuring “Severe Head Pain.”
We fail to see how this is a step up from the wallet-sized index cards listing medications, allergies, and doctor’s phone numbers that responsible patients already carry around with them.
Screenshots at Google Blogoscoped…
New York Times article…
Bernard’s Blog…
More from Google OS…

Neurological Surgery / Neurology

Implant for Potential Treatment of Epilepsy

by Gene Ostrovsky on Aug 15, 2007 • 10:05 am

Purdue University researchers devised an implantable device they hope will one day predict the onset of epileptic seizures, and hopefully stop them with proper neuron stimulation.

They have developed a tiny transmitter three times the width of a human hair to be implanted below the scalp to detect the signs of an epileptic seizure before it occurs. The system will record neural signals relayed by electrodes in various points in the brain.
“When epileptics have a seizure, a particular part of the brain starts firing in a way that is abnormal,” said Pedro Irazoqui, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. “Being able to record signals from several parts of the brain at the same time enables you to predict when a seizure is about to start, and then you can take steps to prevent it.”
Data from the implanted transmitter will be picked up by an external receiver, also being developed by the Purdue researchers.
The transmitter consumes 8.8 milliwatts, about one-third as much power as other implantable transmitters while transmitting 10 times more data, and can collect data related to epileptic seizures from 1,000 channels, or locations in the brain.
The electrodes that pick up data will be inserted directly in the brain through holes in the skull and then connected to the transmitter by wires.

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