Miracles and wonders: fake jellyfish, perfect teeth

Ersatz jellyfish.

Teenagers today will see extraordinary things in their lifetimes.

Researchers have designed a bioengineered jellyfish that can swim, an early step in scientists' quest for a way to make fresh tissue for patients with damaged hearts. The lab-made jellyfish is created with a mix of silicone and rat-heart cells. Although it isn't a living organism, the robot's muscular structure closely resembles that of a real jellyfish, enabling it to swim freely through water. Scientists hope that such techniques will make it possible to harvest cells from one organism and then reorganize them in sophisticated ways to make a bioengineered system for human use, such as a heart pacemaker that wouldn't require battery power.

Thanks to tiny microneedles, eye doctors may soon have a better way to treat diseases such as macular degeneration that affect tissues in the back of the eye. That could be important as the population ages and develops more eye-related illnesses – and as pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs that otherwise could only be administered by injecting into the eye with a hypodermic needle.

A nationwide team of scientists successfully used stem cells to further the goal of creating personalized medical treatments for Parkinson's disease. Because scientists were able to isolate the disease outside the body with the help of stem cells, they could control for certain variables which allowed them to test treatments in a more systematic way. "This study points the way to screening patients with Parkinson’s for their particular variation of the disease, and then treating them with drugs shown effective to work on that variation, rather than trying to treat all patients with the same drugs, as is generally done now." 

Johns Hopkins tissue engineers have used tiny, artificial fiber scaffolds thousands of times smaller than a human hair to help coax stem cells into developing into cartilage, the shock-absorbing lining of elbows and knees that often wears thin from injury or age. Investigators produced an important component of cartilage in both laboratory and animal models. While the findings are still years away from use in people, the researchers say the results hold promise for devising new techniques to help the millions who endure joint pain.

Happy, happy, happy.

A new chemical could make human teeth 'cavity proof' -- and do away with the need for visits to the dentists forever. The molecule has been called 'Keep 32' - after the 32 teeth in a human mouth. The chemical wipes out all the bacteria that cause cavities in just 60 seconds in tests. The chemical could be added to any current dental care product, turning toothpaste, mouthwash and chewing gum into 'super cleansers' that could get rid of the underlying cause of tooth decay.

Research: prostate surgery not so helpful

Here's another data point for men worried about prostate cancer: surgery was no better in saving lives than observation over a 10-year period, according to one of the first rigorous studies to compare the two approaches in American men with early-stage disease.

The U.S.-funded study assigned 731 men across the country with early prostate cancer to have the gland surgically removed or be observed without any attempt at curative treatment. Ten years later, 47 percent of men in the surgery group had died, mostly from other diseases, versus 49.9 percent who were just watched, results published in the New England Journal of Medicine found. The difference wasn’t statistically meaningful.

“There is no question in my mind that what we have been doing in the United States for the last 20 years has hurt a lot of men needlessly,” said Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. “We need to be telling men that there is tremendous evidence that a large number of men with prostate cancer could be watched and don’t need to be treated.”

In May, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test to spot the disease, saying the screening leads to overtreatment and unnecessary side effects.

Currently, only 10 percent of American men with prostate cancer who are eligible for observation choose observation, according to a National Institutes of Health report last year.

The vast majority elect surgery or various forms of radiation in an attempt to cure their cancer. Both forms of treatment have side effects, including impotence. “When men hear cancer they want something done,” said Durado Brooks, director of prostate and colorectal cancers for the cancer society. The idea that some prostate cancers aren’t life-threatening is “very difficult for people to accept because they are accustomed to thinking of cancer as this ravaging, always-lethal condition.”

After a median of 10 years, 171 of 364 men assigned surgery had died, while 183 of 367 assigned to observation died. In the surgery group, 5.8 percent of the men died from prostate cancer compared with 8.4 percent of the men in the observation group. Neither difference was statistically significant.

More than 1 in 5 patients in the surgery group had complications within 30 days of the operation. Urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction were much more common in men who got the surgery, while men who got observation had a higher rate of developing bone metastases.

“The results are consistent with emerging science suggesting that for the vast majority of men observation can be a wise and preferred treatment choice” if they have localized prostate cancer, said Timothy Wilt, a researcher at the Center for Chronic Disease Outcomes Research at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, and the study’s lead author.

Follow the link to the full article, print it out, and take it to your doctor to discuss.

The power of suggestion

We're all familiar with the placebo effect, in which a sugar pill makes people feel better. Researchers have now identified a nocebo effect, in which suggesting side effects of a fake drug cause people to experience those effects.

If you tell a group of trial volunteers that they’re testing a new drug that may relieve the pain of migraines, a significant number of volunteers will experience pain relief after taking the drug — even if they’ve been randomly assigned to the placebo group and are receiving nothing but sugar pills. The placebo effect in action. 

But here’s where it gets interesting. If you tell the volunteers that the side effects of this new medicine may include dry mouth, tingling in the hands and feet, and slight dizziness, some volunteers will experience precisely these side effects — inboth groups. In fact, some volunteers who are taking nothing but sugar pills will be made so uncomfortable by these symptoms that they will choose to drop out of the trial early.

The relevance of the nocebo effect is not limited to clinical trials.

A particularly nasty demonstration of its power can be provided by patients who are being treated for Parkinson’s disease with small doses of electrical current delivered to certain structures in the brain. This technique, known as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), has been shown to be effective in controlling tremor and other motor issues in patients who are resistant to drugs. But if you tell a DBS patient that the current has been switched off — even though it remains on — their coordination and other motor functions will abruptly decline until you tell them that the juice has been switched on again. Classic nocebo.

Someone suggested that I look tired and will probably need a nap this afternoon. Wow, they're right!

Why don't you just light up and watch TV?

Won't live forever.

Yet another study says that lack of exercise is as deadly as smoking.

People across the world are falling so far short on exercise that the problem has become a global pandemic, causing nearly a tenth of deaths worldwide and killing roughly as many people as smoking, researchers warned this week as an alarming series of studies was published in the Lancet.

Eight out of 10 youngsters age 13 to 15 don't get enough exercise, according to one of the Lancet studies released Tuesday, and nearly a third of adults fall short. The problem is even worse for girls and women, who are less active than boys and men, researchers found.

I'm going to make this real easy. This costs nothing.

More good news about aspirin

Taking low-dose aspirin for five years halves the risk of developing colon cancer, according to data published two years ago by Peter Rothwell, from Oxford University. The problem is it causes stomach bleeding in some people. Now there may be a solution.

A mass-screening programme foar 50- to 70-year-olds could cut the risk of stomach bleeds experts have said. About a third of this group carry the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which makes stomach bleeds three times more likely - and antibiotics eradicate it. Professor Jack Cuzick told the BBC's that screening would make the choice to take aspirin to help protect against cancer a "no-brainer". He said the test is easy to do and eradication only takes five days.But Prof Cuzick told Newsnight the most up-to-date data showed "much stronger results".

Last year, research indicated daily low-dose aspirin cut the risk of dying by 66% for oesophageal cancer and 25% for lung cancer. When researchers looked at all solid cancers together, the risk also fell, by 25%.

This year, the team looked at aspirin's effect on the spread of cancer, and found it reduced the risk of secondary spread to the lungs, liver and the brain by "about half". Low-dose aspirin is already recommended to cut the risk of heart attack and stroke, but there are no national guidelines on who should consider taking it to prevent cancer, or how much to take.

Because of the risk of bleeding you should consult your doctor before gulping these things down. 

Get thee to a CPR course

Marla Sewall: lucky to be alive.

A year ago I hauled myself down to the firehouse a couple of evenings to learn CPR. If you're like me, and the last time you had a course was 137 years ago in the Boy Scouts, it's time for a refresher.

That's because we have portable defibrillators today, and they're marvelous machines. They basically tell you -- a voice talks to you -- what to do. And the how-to of chest compressions has changed. I was surprised to see how hard you actually have to push on a chest, and how often. 

I thought about this after reading a post by Helen Smith. It's said that half a million people die from sudden cardiac arrest each year and that 90 percent of people who have sudden cardiac arrest die --  the other 10 percent get defibrillated and live.

It can strike even those who are athletic and active.

Just ask Marla Sewall. By 2011, the 42-year-old had 11 marathons under her belt. She’d also made quite the name for herself on the tennis court. By Labor Day weekend, the University Park mother was even combining the two, running 20 miles one day and then competing in a three-hour tennis tournament in the next.  

For good measure, Sewall ran 10 miles the day after that and played in the same tennis tournament for three more hours. Which is why it was so shocking when her husband found her face-up unconscious in the family’s tub one night. This woman’s husband luckily knew CPR and saved her life. 

 The best argument I can make for staying inside and taking a nap.

Please sit down to read this

This family is doomed.

Restricting the amount of time spent seated every day to less than 3 hours might boost the life expectancy of U.S. adults by an extra 2 years, according to an analysis of published research in the British Medical Journal. And cutting down TV viewing to less than 2 hours every day might extend life by almost 1.4 years.

Several previous studies have linked extended periods spent sitting down and/or watching TV to poor health, such as diabetes and death from heart disease/stroke. 

The researchers used data collected for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 2005/6 and 2009/10, to calculate the amount of time US adults spent watching TV and sitting down on a daily basis.

To be precise:

The results of life table analyses indicates that cutting the amount of time spent sitting down every day to under three hours would add an extra two years to life expectancy. Similarly, restricting time spent watching TV to under two hours daily would extend life expectancy by an extra 1.38 years.

"Given that the results from objective monitoring of sedentary time in NHANES has indicated that adults spend an average of 55% of their day engaged in sedentary pursuits, a significant shift in behaviour change at the population level is required to make demonstrable improvements in life expectancy," they conclude.

This distresses me so much that I think I'll turn on a rerun of NCIS and take a nap.

(Thanks, Jim)