Health

A cheap drug, which is already prescribed for arthritis, could fight amoebic dysentery, according to researchers in the US

They were testing old drugs to see if any killed the dysentery bug.

Tests on animals, published in Nature Medicine, showed that auranofin was 10 times more effective than the best drug currently available.

Further studies will be needed in humans, but researchers say it holds great promise — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A paralysed man has regained limited use of his hand after pioneering surgery to bypass damage to his spinal cord.

His injury meant his brain could not talk to his hand, meaning all control was lost.

Surgeons at the Washington University School of Medicine re-wired his nerves to build a new route between hand and brain.

He can now feed himself and can just about write.

The 71-year-old man was involved in a car accident in June 2008. His spinal cord was damaged at the base of the neck and he was unable to walk.

While he could still move his arms, he had lost the ability to pinch or grip with either of his hands — via BBC News

Scientists have figured out how to stop brain cell death in mice with brain disease which could provide a deeper understanding of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

British researchers writing in the journal Nature say they have found a major pathway leading to brain cell death in mice with prion disease, the mouse equivalent of Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD).

They then worked out how to block it, and were able to prevent brain cells from dying, helping the mice live longer.

The finding, described by one expert as a major breakthrough in understanding what kills neurons, points to a common mechanism by which brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and CJD damage the nerve cells — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A researcher at an infectious disease lab died over the weekend after being exposed to a rare bacteria strain that he was working with, said health officials

Richard Din, 25, worked at San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, reported the San Jose Mercury News.

California health authorities said that the victim had worked with the rare Neisseria meningitis bacterial strain for months before his death.

The Contra Costa Times reported that the recent UC-Berkeley biology grad left the lab last Friday and became ill during the evening with fever, chills and a headache.

By Saturday morning his symptoms had grown worse and he developed a body rash.

He called his friends to drive him to the hospital but died shortly after — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Aggressive pancreatic tumours may be treatable with a new class of drugs, according to Cancer Research UK.

Less than one in five people with this form of cancer are still alive a year after being diagnosed.

A study, published in the journal Nature, showed that a gene was being switched off in the cancerous cells — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australian researchers have found that blocking a particular protein acts as a handbrake to stop the progression of multiple sclerosis.

An estimated 21,000 Australians have MS, a disease that can attack parts of the central nervous system such as the brain and the spinal cord.

Doctors from Monash University and RMIT have discovered the interaction of two proteins causes damage to nerve fibres, and when they blocked the interaction, the disease was halted.

Their findings have been published in Brain, a respected international neurology journal — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A new treatment helped rabbits born with cerebral palsy to regain near-normal mobility, offering hope of a potential breakthrough in treating humans with the incurable disorder, researchers said Wednesday.

The method, part of the growing field of nanomedicine, worked by delivering an anti-inflammatory drug directly into the damaged parts of the brain via tiny tree-like molecules known as dendrimers.

Baby rabbits treated within six hours of birth showed dramatic improvement in the motor function by the fifth day of life, said lead author Sujatha Kannan of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Perinatology Research Branch. The study appears in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A team of Australian researchers developing a bionic eye that could help restore sight to the blind will test a full prototype later this month.

The Monash Vision Group, a team of 50 scientists, believes it is on track to be the first in the world to implant a microchip into the brain of blind patients.

A patient will wear glasses with a tiny camera, which will act like an eye’s retina. A pocket processor will then convert these images into electronic signals to be sent to a microchip implant in the brain.

The procedure will insert 650 hair-thin electrodes into the visual cortex. When fully operationally, the patient will see low resolution black and white images — via redwolf.newsvine.com