Science

Scientists have shown that light-sensitive retinal cells, grown in the lab from stem cells, can successfully integrate into the eye when implanted into blind mice. The technique opens up the possibility that a similar treatment could help people who have become blind through damage to their retinas to regain some of their sight.

Loss of light-sensitive nerve cells, known as photoreceptors, is a major cause of blindness in conditions such as age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and diabetes-related blindness. These conditions affect many thousands of people in the UK alone and there is no effective treatment at present. Scientists have been exploring the possibility of somehow replacing the photoreceptors, which come in two types: rods that help us see in low light conditions, and cones, which help us differentiate colours.

Robin Ali at University College London’s Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital has previously shown that transplanting immature rod cells from the retinas of very young mice can restore vision in blind adult mice. It was a neat proof of concept, but the technique as it stood would be impractical as a way to treat people.

His latest work got around the problems of sourcing donor photoreceptor cells by growing and differentiating them from embryonic stem cells in a culture dish, rather than taking the cells from young mice. The donor photoreceptors developed normally once inside the adult mouse eyes and, crucially, formed nerve connections with the brain. The results are published on Sunday in the journal Nature Biotechnology — via redwolf.newsvine.com

On 10 October 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn’t. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. It’s been a tough week for vitamins, said Carrie Gann of ABC News.

These findings weren’t new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world’s greatest quack — via redwolf.newsvine.com

PH is the first confirmed case of someone who hears people speak before registering the movement of their lips. His situation is giving unique insights into how our brains unify what we hear and see.

It’s unclear why PH’s problem started when it did — but it may have had something to do with having acute pericarditis, inflammation of the sac around the heart, or the surgery he had to treat it.

Brain scans after the timing problems appeared showed two lesions in areas thought to play a role in hearing, timing and movement. Where these came from is anyone’s guess, says PH. They may have been there all my life or as a result of being in intensive care — via redwolf.newsvine.com

First cousins who marry run twice the risk of having a child with genetic abnormalities, according to the findings of a study based on the English city of Bradford.

The city, which has a high proportion of South Asian immigrants and their descendants among its population, served as a microcosm for examining the risk of blood relative couplings.

About 37 per cent of marriages among people of Pakistani origin in the study involved first cousins, compared with less than one per cent of British unions, said the researchers.

University of Leeds investigator Eamonn Sheridan led a team that pored over data from the Born in Bradford study, which tracks the health of 13,500 babies born at the city’s main hospital between 2007 and 2011.

Out of 11,396 babies for whom family details were known, 18 per cent were the offspring of first-cousin unions, mainly among people of Pakistani heritage.

A total of 386 babies — three per cent — were born with anomalies ranging from problems in the nervous, respiratory and digestive systems, to urinary and genital defects and cleft palates.

This Bradford rate was nearly twice the national average, said the study published in medical journal The Lancet — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The search for a malaria vaccine could soon be over, after an Australian-led trial has proven successful on mice.

The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, saw mice develop immunity to  multiple strains of the disease.

We found that if you take blood stage parasite in red blood cells and treat it with a chemical that binds the DNA and then administer that as a vaccine to mice, and you can get protection against the strain, they’ll be immunised, says Griffith University’s Jennifer Reiman, one of the authors of the study.

The vaccine is now ready for human trials, and researchers are hoping adult males in South-East Queensland might be willing volunteers.

If that turns out to be safe then we can go on and do clinical trials in areas where there’s malaria, Ms Reiman says — via redwolf.newsvine.com

It may be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes by training a patient’s own immune system to stop attacking their body, an early trial suggests.

Their immune system destroys the cells that make insulin, the hormone needed to control blood sugar levels.

A study in 80 patients, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a vaccine could retrain their immune system.

Experts described the results as a significant step.

Normally a vaccine teaches the immune system to attack bacteria or viruses that cause disease, such as the polio virus.

Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Centre used a vaccine with the opposite effect – to make the immune system cease its assault.

In patients with type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas. This means the body is unable to produce enough insulin and regular injections of the hormone are needed throughout life.

It is a different disease to type 2 diabetes, which can be caused by an unhealthy diet.

The vaccine was targeted to the specific white blood cells which attack beta cells. After patients were given weekly injections for three months, the levels of those white blood cells fell — via redwolf.newsvine.com

US scientists say they have made progress in repairing spinal cord injuries in paralysed rats.

Rats regained some bladder control after surgery to transplant nerve cells into the spinal cord, combined with injections of a cocktail of chemicals.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, could raise hopes for one day treating paralysed patients.

But UK experts say it will take several years of research before human clinical trials can be considered — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Scientists say new research into the behaviour of superbug bacteria could help prevent life-threatening infections forming on medically implanted devices.

Drug-resistant bacteria such as golden staph can cause infections on devices like catheters, pacemakers and joint replacements that are notoriously difficult to treat.

A team of researchers from Sydney’s University of Technology say they have discovered how the bacteria behaves and why it spreads so quickly.

The research has just been published in the prestigious US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. — via redwolf.newsvine.com