Our bodies are pretty incredible and for the most they are amazingly resilient, able to bounce back from most injuries and illnesses it finds itself subjected to, but even with all those abilities to recover there are times, and diseases that are harder to fight and survive from.

One of the hardest of those diseases is cancer but even there our bodies have a warrior capable of battling cancer cells all the while not damaging healthy cells in the area. Called T-Cells, of the cytotoxic family, and they are an integral part of our body’s immune system.

There are actually six different types of T-Cells and they each have different functions to help heal our bodies but with the primary purpose of killing off things that shouldn’t be in our bloodstream.

What’s interesting about T cells is that they are highly efficient killers, almost the smart-bomb of the body if you will. In the case of the cytotoxic T cell, it secretes a glycoprotein to its surface that is able to detect a unique antigen that is present with cells that are cancerous. Researchers are working to learn more about these cells so they can gain control of them to create a new weapon in the fight against cancer.

via Geek.com

Here is a video of a T-Cell in action.

T-Cells, our body’s warrior in the war against cancer [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Let me just say off the top here that the idea of any ‘rocket’; no matter how micro, travelling though my internal organs is disturbing to say the least and I don’t care what the scientists at the University of California, San Diego, say about it.

The scientists are of course saying that we have nothing to fear from these self-propelled yet controllable “microrockets” and in fact they could be the next great diagnostic tool made available for doctors.

These “microrockets” don’t need any external power source in order to travel though your body, instead they are powered by hydrogen bubbles and even in the most acidic of conditions they can reach speeds of 100 body lengths per second.

In fact the top speed clocked by scientists so far is 1,050 micrometers per second and this talk of body length is the length of the microrocket’s body not ours. Thankfully the lifespan of the microrocket is only ten to 120 seconds depending of course on the rate at which the zinc dissolves.

Okay .. it was bad enough thinking about some microrocket speeding through my organs but now they’re talking about dissolving zinc .. this isn’t sounding like a lot of fun folks. However it doesn’t end there, oh no they have more fun stuff to brag ab out

The more elaborate functionality comes courtesy of magnetism. The outside of the tubes can be coated with a magnetic layer, allowing the microrocket to be guided to a desired location. This way, the scientists were able to collect a polystyrene payload, travel, and then release it with a sudden change in the magnetic field – something akin to a poorly secured bicycle falling off a roof rack by taking a corner too quickly.

“With further improvements and optimization, we hope to improve and expand the working environments to milder conditions and extend the lifetime of such microrockets to longer periods,” researcher Joseph Wang told PhysOrg. “We are also exploring new materials to broaden the scope of our microengines towards new environments.”

via GizMag

I don’t know about you but I think I’ll hold off on having anything resembling a rocket, no matter how micro, zipping through my body, but just in case you are up for the experience here is a video of the little beastie in action.

That ‘microrocket’ – well it’s intended for you stomach and other bodily parts [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Malaria is one of the world’s largest killers of human beings. In 2008 there were between 190 million and 311 million reported cases of malaria with between 708,000 and 1.003 million people killed by malaria; with the majority of those deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.

A new study published in the November 11, 2011 issue of PLoS ONE reports about a new line of attack against malaria that is showing real promise.

Discovered by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshive University this new antimalarial agent is proving effective at clearing infections caused by malaria parasite by simply starving the parasites to death.

This “starving” can be done because of a weakness that the researchers found with strain of the parasite most commonly associated with severe infections and death – the Plasmodium falciparum (P.falciparum) strain. The “Achilles heel” as the researchers call it is that the P.falciparum can’t synthesize a vital building block for making DNA called purines.

Instead the parasite makes these purines by indirect methods by using an enzyme called purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP) to make the needed purine precursor called hypoxanthine. This is the point that the researchers have targeted as the weak point and by using the drug BCX4945 they kill the parasites by starving them of the purines they need.

The transition-state analog BCX4945 was chosen for this study because of its high affinity for both P. falciparum PNP and human PNP (which the parasite obtains from the red blood cells it infects). Since PNP is abundant in mammalian red blood cells and those cells are constantly replaced, BCX4945 is toxic only to the parasite and not its mammalian hosts. (Two of Dr. Schramm’s other PNP inhibitors — one for T-cell cancers, the other for gout — are being evaluated in clinical trials.)

“Inhibiting PNP differs from all other current approaches for treating malaria,” said Dr. Schramm. “For that reason, BCX4945 fits well with the current World Health Organization protocols for malaria treatment, which call for using combination-therapy approaches against the disease.”

via Science Daily

image courtesy of Doctors Without Borders

Starving the malaria parasite to death shows real promise as cure is a post from: The Inquisitr

A new study published in the medical journal the Archives of Internal Medicine details the differences in the ways physicians treat patients versus treatments they’d select for themselves.

Interestingly, doctors were far more likely to chance death in their own treatments than those offered to patients, opting for riskier hypothetical therapies during the study. 940 primary care physicians were surveyed during the study’s course, and presented with two hypothetical scenarios involving colon cancer and avian flu:

One option in the colon-cancer scenario was an operation that completely cures 80% of patients with no complications, fails to cure 16% of patients —meaning they will die within two years—and cures but leads to complications such as a colostomy or chronic diarrhea for the remaining 4%. The other option was a different surgery that also cures 80% of patients without any complications, but fails to cure 20% of patients.

The option with a lower risk of death may seem to be the logical choice. But 38% of physicians tasked with weighing the decision for themselves picked the treatment with the higher death rate—preferring not to risk complications. Only 25% of the physicians in the other group said they would recommend a patient go that route. In the avian-flu scenario, 63% picked the treatment with the highest chance of death for themselves, with 49% recommending it for patients.

Physician Peter Ubel commented on the findings and said that while doctors may not always select the higher-risk treatments for themselves off the bat, that different “psychological biases” come in to play when considering their own treatments. Ubel advises allowing a doctor to get to know you before asking for advice on issues such as quality versus length of life.

Study: Doctors would treat selves differently than patients is a post from: The Inquisitr

I am a member of Quora but I really don’t spend all that much time thre as I have more than enough time sucks in my life but one thing is for sure – some of the best answers from incredible people who are usually the center of the topic being talked about.

Thanks to @mathewi on Twitter I discovered that a neuroscientist, Bradley Voytek, has posted a great detailed post about what was involved in saving Giffords life over on Quora, along with a whole bunch of related links:

Giffords’ surgeon, Peter Rhee, was “a former military doctor who served in Afghanistan” and her neurosurgeon, Michael Lemole, “removed half of her skull to give the [brain] tissue room. The bone is being preserved at a cold temperature and can be reattached when the swelling subsides.”

The article does not, however, explain this procedure very well, and so I thought I’d give a little bit of an explanation.

This surgery is known as a decompressive hemicraniectomy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dec…

I’ve published research with people who have had this procedure:
http://darb.ketyov.com/professio…

Blogged about that work:
http://blog.ketyov.com/2009/12/r…

Talked about it a TEDxBerkeley last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k…

And even got picked up by Mind Hacks:
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/20…

And Wired for it:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscienc…

Brain surgeon tells the medical back story of Congressional Rep. Giffords on Quora is a post from: The Inquisitr

A more nuanced version of how several professions, including the TSA, relate to your junk.

[Reddit]

TSA Venn Diagram Redux: Your Junk is a post from: The Inquisitr

I so many ways it is pretty neat how much of the science fiction from shows like Start Trek are finding modern day implementations. It’s fairly easy to see the similarities between our cellphones and Star Trek’s communicator but now it looks like we might be on the path to a modern medical tricorder.

It still might be limited to doing only ultrasound scans but there is no denying the fact that GE’s Vscan is some pretty cool technology and surely is only a harbinger of things to come. In an interview at the Web 2.0 summit GE CEO Jeff Immelt showed off this technological wonder that has the same power as a console based ultrasound machine from about two to three years ago and would have cost $250,000 to buy.

They might not have announced a price for this Blackberry sized ultrasound scanner but that didn’t stop Immelt from waxing poetically about the potential.

The price of the device was not revealed, but Immelt asked the audience to imagine these devices going to Africa and helping health care providers there determine “if a baby is breech,” for example. “This could be the stethoscope of the 21st century,” he said.

Immelt also gave a demo of an enhanced online medical records system, in which patient data is combined with clinical outcome data and research to help caregivers apply effective and current treatments to patients. Medical records, he said, don’t win only because they give patients portable electronic files, but rather, “it’s about making better clinical decisions faster.”

Source: cnet News

Here’s a video of the Vscan in action

image credit: cnet News – Rafe Needleman

One step closer to that magic Star Trek medical tricorder is a post from: The Inquisitr

There is an 800 pound elephant in the boardroom of all the big pharma corporations and it consists of nothing more than milk sugar in the shape of a pill – otherwise known as The Placebo. This little pill has drug companies running scared because it is beginning to cure people better than all the fancy new drugs that they are testing and in some cases is doing better than long established drugs.

From 2001 to 2006 the percentage of new drugs cut from development during Phase II trials, which is where the new drugs are first tested against placebos, rose by 20 percent. When it came to the Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly because of poor showing against placebos. Even with all the millions poured into R&D by the drug companies the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first of their kind drugs in 2007. This was the fewest drugs ever approved by the FDA since 1983 and this didn’t change in 2008 which only saw 24 drugs approved.

Even when it comes to the old standby drugs like Prozac are failing in more recent tests to prove themselves to be any better that those sugar pills. It was also found out through two extensively analyzed antidepressant trials that there has been a dramatic increase in the placebo response since the 1980s. Drug developers don’t believe that it is a matter of the drugs getting weaker but more that the placebo effect is getting stronger.

In serious studies of this placebo effect researchers are finding that the body’s response to certain types of medication is in constant flux and can be affected by conditioning, beliefs, expectations of treatment, and social cues. William Potter, now VP at Merck, found that geographical variations could affect the placebo effect.

For instance, the geographic variations in trial outcome that Potter uncovered begin to make sense in light of discoveries that the placebo response is highly sensitive to cultural differences. Anthropologist Daniel Moerman found that Germans are high placebo reactors in trials of ulcer drugs but low in trials of drugs for hypertension—an undertreated condition in Germany, where many people pop pills for herzinsuffizienz, or low blood pressure. Moreover, a pill’s shape, size, branding, and price all influence its effects on the body. Soothing blue capsules make more effective tranquilizers than angry red ones, except among Italian men, for whom the color blue is associated with their national soccer team—Forza Azzurri!

Source – Wired :: Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

Big Pharma’s biggest scare – Placebos cure better than their new drugs is a post from: The Inquisitr

Typically when it comes to repairing badly shattered or broken bones in the human body doctors have use all kinds of pins, plates and screws to hold everything in place until the body can naturally mend itself. While this is okay for major types of breaks it gets increasingly difficult to hold everything together the smaller, or fragile, the bones get. That may all change with the announcement by some researchers today that they have discovered a new glue that has the sticking power to adhere to bones.

That might not seem all that difficult but in fact making a glue that can stick to bones and other wet surfaces is a very complex problem. Normally glue will either slide off the bones or it will dissolve into the surrounding liquid. The solution for the problem was once again found in nature and a little sandcastle worm. You see the sandcastle worm lives on the bottom of the ocean floor where it builds it’s tube like home using sand grains and bits of shell that are cemented into place by a type of glue it creates.

"The worm has to overcome several problems when putting a sandcastle together underwater," Stewart says. "Its adhesive has to adhere to wet surfaces, and when it’s secreting that adhesive under water, it has to prevent it from just dissolving into the ocean." Although the glue starts out as fluid, it must harden into a solid. "The worm has solved all of these problems, and we’re trying to copy those solutions," he says.

Source: Technology Review :: Bone-setting Glue

What lead researcher and biomedical engineer Russell Stewart from the University of Utah have done is found a way to recreate a synthetic version of the worm’s adhesive that is at least as strong as Super Glue and from early testing doesn’t cause toxicity in testing done with rats.

While there are already medical grade adhesives available they tend to be highly inflammatory and this causes problems when you need to align small fragments of bone without causing inflammation.

Stewart and his colleagues believe the adhesive can be used as a complement to wires, pins, and plates–large pieces could be held in place with hardware, while small pieces could be glued back in. And in cranial-facial fractures, where using pins and screws can cause permanent cosmetic damage, the glue could potentially be injected with a syringe, avoiding open surgery.

"One of our challenges is to hold very small pieces in very precise alignment. We just need to hold them there until they heal, just six weeks," says Thomas Higgins, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine who specializes in joint fractures and has consulted with Stewart on the adhesive’s clinical applications. "To have something that is liquid and would assume a more rigid state when you put it [in the body], that would be much more easily applicable and much more versatile than what we use now," he says. "This is still preliminary, but it shows a lot of promise."

Source: Technology Review :: Bone-setting Glue

Video link to see how a little sandcastle worm provided all this inspiration

Doctors may soon be able to super glue bones together is a post from: The Inquisitr

I realize that smokers are the lowest scum of the earth lately and that we get bastardized and ostracized worse than the homeless, the drug addicts and the drunks but now we are being told we’re worse than rapists and terrorists. At least that is the position that The American Medical Association Alliance is taking when it comes to the movies. Yes, that’s right our favorite people in scubs is lobbying the Motion Picture Association to apply a mandatory R-rating to any move that has smoking in it.

This is because, according to a report just out via CNN, these green suited goodie two shoes are blaming movies for being the cause of one-third to one-half of all young smokers in the United States. The prime example of the incredible social pressure being applied to our weak-willed innocent babies to get them hooked on smoking is the gratuitous smoking in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

American Medical Association Alliance President Sandi Frost used as her chief example of a movie with "gratuitous smoking" this month’s blockbuster "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which was rated PG-13 "for intense sequences of action and violence, and some partial nudity."

"Millions of children have been exposed to the main star of the film, Hugh Jackman, with a cigar in his mouth in various scenes," Frost said. "I’m willing to bet that not one child would have enjoyed that movie or Mr. Jackman’s performance any less if he hadn’t been smoking."

Of course Twentieth Century Fox, the studio responsible for the movie, have come out saying otherwise

A spokesman for Twentieth Century Fox, the studio responsible for the Wolverine movie series, said Jackman’s cigar was never lit and it was limited to just two scenes.

In one scene, the cigar is shot out of his mouth, prompting Jackman’s Wolverine character to suggest its loss would lead to clean living — an anti-smoking statement — the studio spokesman said.

He said that while the Wolverine character has a cigar in his mouth in almost every panel of the comic book series, producers made "a conscious decision" to limit the cigar in the movie.

This hasn’t stopped the doctors though in their push to have the MPAA add smoking to its list of factors used in determining the ratings given to movies. A list that runs from cursing, lewd gestures right up to rape and terrorism.

The MPAA has come out and said though that they have already been doing this to an extent for the last two years. Angela Martinez, an MPAA spokesperson, said that smoking is rated like all the other factors which includes sex and violence. This isn’t enough for the doctors though because they what it to be an absolute condition of a movie getting the R-rating not just a factor.

As a side note it took me longer to find a graphic with Wolverine smoking a cigar than it took me to write the post and it wasn’t even a great graphic at that

[hat tip to Newsarama Update: I should also give proper credit to Russ over at Newsarama for the inspiration for this post's headline - sorry about that Russ]

Smoking is worse than rape and terrorism is a post from: The Inquisitr