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Rights Group Supports No Patents for COVID Vaccines

On By ModernMedia

Business Live reports on the recent call by South Africa and India for COVID vaccines not to be patented. Human Rights Watch added its support by stating that vaccines obtained by public funding should be shared as widely as possible, and their intellectual property status waived.

Some 44 vaccine candidates are being trialled around the world. Wealthy countries have placed orders in order to secure stockpiles of the vaccines. South Africa has no vaccine scheme of its own and is instead has expressed interest in (without signing up to) the global Covax scheme, which involves the World Health Organization and which aims to have two billion doses to be shipped out by the end of 2021.

HRW researcher Margaret Wurth said, “You can’t fight a global pandemic by allowing publicly funded vaccines to go to the highest bidder, at whatever price pharmaceutical companies set. When a safe and effective vaccine is found, it should be available and affordable for everyone, everywhere.”

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Breast Cancer Patients in Public Healthcare System Face Great Obstacles

On By ModernMedia

In an in-depth article, the Daily Maverick reports on the huge challenges that breast cancer sufferers face in obtaining treatment from the public healthcare sector in South Africa.

A diagnosis might take up to six months, whereas one can be obtained in a space of weeks in private healthcare. Breast reconstructions are not available under public healthcare, forcing the survivor to find some way of hiding the disfigurement. The critical drug trastuzumab is classed as an unfunded mandate even in the Western Cape. Yet in the private sector, it is a prescribed minimum benefit. There are language barriers for patients, and a lack of palliative care medicines upon discharge. They also are not connected online, and cannot engage with initiatives such as Pinktober. In a country beset by gender-based violence and inequality, women’s health often is not a priority.

The remedy still lags very far behind. Since its inception in 2017, The Breast Cancer Control Policy has not been implemented anywhere in South Africa. In order to implement this policy, registered nurses have their job descriptions updated to include a primary modality of breast cancer screenings.

The COVID pandemic has set back progress even further, with care being postponed and many hospices being forced to close.

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Cutting Edge Bio-printing Fabricates Tiny Kidneys

On By ModernMedia

Researchers from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and biotech company Organovo have successfully bio-printed miniature human kidneys with unparalleled speed and quality to be used for toxicity screening of medications known to cause kidney damage. 

A world leader in modeling the kidney, Professor Melissa Little of the MRCI said, “Drug-induced injury to the kidney is a major side effect and difficult to predict using animal studies. Bioprinting human kidneys are a practical approach to testing for toxicity before use.”

The new study involved testing the toxicity of aminoglycosides, a class of antibiotics that commonly damage the kidney. The study revealed deaths of certain types of kidney cells when exposed to aminoglycosides.

Organovo first began bio-printing kidneys in 2015, but their new processes are much faster, allowing 200 mini-kidneys to be produced in 10 minutes. The improvement in speed and quality has opened the doorway for bioprinting entire organs for transplant. “3-D bioprinting can generate larger amounts of kidney tissue but with precise manipulation of biophysical properties, including cell number and conformation, improving the outcome.”

Professor Little said that prior to this study, the possibility of using such technology for transplantation was too complicated to consider. “The pathway to renal replacement therapy using stem cell-derived kidney tissue will need a massive increase in the number of nephron structures present in the tissue to be transplanted,” she said.

“By using extrusion bioprinting, we improved the final nephron count, which will ultimately determine whether we can transplant these tissues into people.”

Source: Medical Xpress

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Anaesthetic Clues Hidden in Tarantula Venom

On By ModernMedia

In a finding that promises new research into pain management, a tarantula toxin molecule has been revealed to use a “stinger” to permanently close the voltage sensors on nerve cells’ sodium channels.

Chronic pain is difficult to treat, and attempts to seek relief can sometimes lead to opiate overdose, addiction, prolonged withdrawal, and even death. This means that there is a critical need to develop pain management medications that are safer, more effective and non-addictive. Tarantula toxin is of interest because it has to be fast-acting, shutting down the nerves of the tarantula’s prey and immobilising it before it can escape.

The tarantula toxin’s mechanism of action has proved elusive: the tarantula toxin-ion channel chemical complex has been hard to capture in its functional form. This has made it especially challenging to replicate the calcium-channel blocking effect in a small molecular form suitable for anaesthetic compounds. To overcome this obstacle, the researchers took a toxin-binding region from a specific type of human sodium channel that is key to pain transmission and imported it into their bacterium-derived model ancestral sodium channel. In doing so, they successfully obtained a clear molecular view of the configuration of the potent toxin from tarantula venom as it tightly binds to the sodium channel receptor site.

Prof William Catterall of the University of Washington School of Medicine explains: “Remarkably, the toxin plunges a ‘stinger’ lysine residue into a cluster of negative charges in the voltage sensor to lock it in place and prevent its function. Related toxins from a wide range of spiders and other arthropod species use this molecular mechanism to immobilise and kill their prey.”

The researchers hope that these insights will lead to the development of a new variety of anaesthetic compounds.

Source: News-Medical.Net

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Inexpensive Oxford COVID Vaccine Proven Effective

On By ModernMedia

A vaccine developed by the University of Oxford has shown to be effective, according to the BBC. The vaccine trial was conducted with over 20 000 volunteers in the UK and Brazil.

The vaccine conferred 70% protection, compared to the 90% and above level from the other two vaccines. However, a small dose followed by a large dose however, conferred 90% protection.   

At £3 (R60) a dose, the Oxford vaccine is less costly than the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines which cost £15 (R300) and £25 (R500) respectively. The Oxford vaccine is also easier from a logistical perspective as it can be stored at higher temperatures. In an encouraging sign for controlling the pandemic, it appears that there were fewer asymptomatic infections with the low-dose-then-high-dose vaccine administration. 

The UK government has four million doses already prepared, and if the vaccine is authorised, the government will roll out an immunisation program on a vast scale. Care home staff, health care workers and the elderly will receive the vaccinations first. Meanwhile, Oxford’s manufacturing partner AstraZeneca is preparing to produce three billion doses. However, logistical challenges remain.

Prof Peter Horby, from the University of Oxford, said, “This is very welcome news, we can clearly see the end of [the] tunnel now. There were no Covid hospitalisations or deaths in people who got the Oxford vaccine.”

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Tinnitus reduced by electric stimulation of Tongue

On By ModernMedia

Science reports that a serendipitous discovery by Hubert Lim, a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota has led to a new treatment of tinnitus: using electrical shocks in other parts of the body.

It’s “really important” work, says Christopher Cederroth, a neurobiologist at the University of Nottingham, University Park, who was not involved with the study. The finding, he says, joins other research that has shown “bimodal” stimulation—which uses sound alongside some kind of gentle electrical shock—can help the brain discipline misbehaving neurons.

The experiment involved 326 people with tinnitus receiving electrical shocks to their tongue whilst listening to background noise on headphones.

Over the 12 weeks of treatment, the patients’ tinnitus symptoms improved dramatically. More than 80% of those who complied with the prescribed regimen saw an improvement. And they saw an average drop of about 14 points on a tinnitus severity score of one to 100, the researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine. When the team followed up after 12 months, 80% of the participants still had lower tinnitus scores, with average drops of 12.7 and 14.5 points.

The results are “quite impressive,” Cederroth says. The reduction in symptoms is larger than other studies have found for bimodal stimulation, he says, and it’s the first evidence of such long-term effects. A 2018 paper that stimulated the skin on the neck and cheek over a shorter time improved patients’ tinnitus, but there was a smaller dip in severity scores, he notes, of only about seven points. And cognitive behavioral therapy, a kind of talk therapy that is currently the only clinically validated tinnitus therapy, improves severity scores by about 10 points on average.

Still, University of Oxford neuroscientist Victoria Bajo notes there was no control group in the trial. Without that, she says, it’s impossible to know how much patients would have improved on their own or with a placebo. The work is good, she says, “but this is the beginning.”

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Electromagnetic fields treat diabetes in animal models

On By ModernMedia

According to Medial Express, electromagnetic fields (EMF) may be a new way to modulate blood glucose levels. Scientists found that when drawing blood from mice borrowed from an experiment which had them to low level EMF, the typical high blood sugar in these animals was found to be lowered. 

Carter and Huang are energized by the possibility of translating the findings to human patients with type 2 diabetes. In terms of safety, the World Health Organization considers low energy EMFs safe for human health. The UI study also found no evidence of any adverse side effects in mice.

The team is now working on a larger animal model to see if the EMFs produce similar effects in an animal that has a more similar size and physiology to humans. They also plan to conduct studies to understand the redox mechanism underlying the effects of EMFs. Their ultimate goal is to move into clinical trials with patients to translate the technology into a new class of therapies. With that goal in mind, Carter, Huang, and Carter’s twin brother, Walter, have created a startup company called Geminii Health, with help from the UI Office for the Vice President of Research.

“Our dream is to create a new class of non-invasive medicines that remotely take control of cells to fight disease,” Carter says.

The multidisciplinary research team also included scientists from the UI Departments of Radiology, Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Physics and Astronomy, as well as colleagues from Vanderbilt University.

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Tinnitus Severity Measured with Non-invasive Brain Imaging

On By ModernMedia

Tinnitus, experienced by about 20% of people, has long been a complaint without any overt signs to measure. Recent bran imaging techniques showed that tinnitus was related to increased neural firing and changes in connectivity in certain brain regions.

Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), researchers in 2014 were able to map anomalous activity in the right auditory cortex of tinnitus sufferers, and in 2018, researchers showed that signals there were related to both the presence and intensity of the tinnitus.

fNIRS measures the absorption of near-infrared light shining into the head to measure oxy- and deoxyhaemoglobin levels, which are associated with cerebral activity.

Using machine learning which compared 25 patients with tinnitus to 21 healthy patients, the researchers were able to isolate two distinct areas of 

The algorithms were able to diagnose tinnitus with 78% accuracy and gauge intensity with 87% accuracy.

The imaging showed higher connectivity in the temporal-frontal lobe, linked to tinnitus duration and stress, and higher connectivity in the temporal-occipital lobe, which is linked to sound intensity. It opens the possibility of measuring both loudness and annoyance with fNIRS, and also supports preliminary research showing that by making the brain process other information, the tinnitus intensity can be reduced.

Source: Science Alert

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Algorithm-driven Treatment Lowers LDL-c, Blood Pressure

On By ModernMedia

Clinicians working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US treated patients with the aid of digital tools and an algorithm which calculated the titration of medication for pharmacists.

Over 5000 patients were enrolled into the study, entering either the cholesterol control program, the hypertension program, or both. Of those in the cholesterol program, 35% had established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD); 25% had diabetes without ASCVD; and 31% had a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) >190 mg/dL. 

Study lead author Benjamin Scirica, MD, MPH, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Medicine, said, “To better control cholesterol and blood pressure, both of which are major cardiovascular risk factors, we need new end-to-end treatment solutions that improve patient identification, data collection, education and care delivery, including standardizing medication regimens. We are redefining treatment pathways to address persistent gaps in health care, overcome clinical inertia and address the problems of limited access to physicians by expanding remotely-delivered care.”

Patients with high LDL-c and/or hypertension were identified using electronic patient records, and received a digital blood pressure cuff for at-home monitoring. With the aid of the algorithm, pharmacists and support staff initiated and titrated medication.

For patients who completed the titration phase of the program, a 52mg/dL (42%) decrease in LDL-c was observed, while for all patients, LDL-c levels dropped by 24mg/dL (18%) and 14mmHg systolic and 6mmHg diastolic blood pressure drops were recorded. Patients in high-risk categories saw significant drops in LDL-c.

The research showed that efficient, effective care was possible, while simultaneously reducing the need for physical consultations. Such enabling technology allows access to care delivery to be significantly expanded.

Source: Science Daily

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Assisted Hyperventilation: A New Way to Treat Alcohol Intoxication

On By ModernMedia

Alcohol impacts just about every bodily function, from brain function and circulation to nail growth. At high levels, alcohol intoxication can damage organs and lead to death.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately three million people around the world die due to alcohol intoxication each year. 

About 90% of alcohol is processed through the liver at a constant rate, and the only way to speed this up is dialysis. Thus, the only treatment for alcohol intoxication thus far has been to supply oxygen and intravenous fluids, and medications for cardiac support as needed.

The new approach simply adds the lungs to the process: simply by hyperventilating, three times more alcohol could be excreted via the lungs than the liver. 

“But you can’t just hyperventilate, because in a minute or two you would become light-headed and pass out,” explained Dr Fisher, anaesthesiologist and senior scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI). The decrease in CO2 in the bloodstream is what causes the sensation of light-headedness, as well as tingling in the extremities.

To get around this, the researchers created a simple device which returns the same amount of carbon dioxide to the lungs as was exhaled, no matter the volume of air.

“It’s [a] very basic, low-tech device that could be made anywhere in the world: no electronics, no computers or filters are required. It’s almost inexplicable why we didn’t try this decades ago,” said Dr. Fisher.

Source: Medical Xpress