Some interesting medical developments

"Scientists successfully reversed diabetes in mice by transplanting mice human stem cells into mice in a discovery that may lead to way to finding a cure for a disease that affects 8.3 percent of the U.S. population. ... In an experiment designed to mimic human clinical conditions, researchers were able to wean diabetic mice off of insulin four months after the rodents were transplanted with human pancreatic stem cells (abstract). [They] were able to recreate the 'feedback loop' that enabled insulin levels to automatically rise or fall based on the rodents' blood glucose levels. Additionally, researchers found that the mice were able to maintain healthy blood sugar levels even after they were fed large quantities of sugar. After several months, researchers removed the transplanted cells from the mice and found that the cells had all the markings of normal insulin-producing pancreatic cells."

http://medicaldaily.com/news/20120628/10517/diabetes-stem-cell-mice-transplantation-pancreas-immune-system.htm

"Two anti-clotting compounds already approved for use in humans may have a surprising role in treating radiation sickness. Last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan renewed anxiety over the lack of treatments for radiation poisoning. It was long thought that the effects of exposure to high doses of radiation were instantaneous and irreversible, leading to destruction of the gut and loss of bone marrow cells, which damages blood-cell production and the immune system. The two compounds are thrombomodulin (Solulin/Recomodulin), currently approved in Japan to prevent thrombosis, and activated protein C (Xigris). Treating mice with either drug post-exposure led to an eightfold increase in key bone marrow cells needed for the production of white blood cells, and improved the survival rates of mice receiving lethal radiation doses by 40–80% (abstract). And yes, the lead author's name really is Geiger."

http://www.nature.com/news/injected-proteins-protect-mice-from-radiation-poisoning-1.10881

"Rabbits with blocked windpipes have been kept alive for up to 15 minutes without a single breath, after researchers injected oxygen-filled microparticles into the animals' blood. Oxygenating the blood by bypassing the lungs in this way could save the lives of people with impaired breathing or obstructed airways (abstract). In the past, doctors have tried to treat low levels of oxygen in the blood, or hypoxaemia, and related conditions such as cyanosis, by injecting free oxygen gas directly into the bloodstream. But oxygen injected in this way can accumulate into larger bubbles and form potentially lethal blockages."

http://www.nature.com/news/rabbits-kept-alive-by-oxygen-injections-1.10899

Faster low-power CT scans!

"Standard CT scanners can generate images of patient's body in less than five minutes today, but the radiation dose can be equal to about 70 chest X-rays. Lower-powered CT scans can be used in non-emergency situations, but it can take more than four days to produce those images. Intel and GE created an algorithm that speeds up a computer's ability to process the low radiation dose scans by 100x, from 100 hours per image to one hour."

http://freepress.intel.com/community/news/blog/2012/03/12/computing-power-speeds-safer-ct-scans

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/12/199244/algorithm-brings-speedier-safer-ct-scans

I definitely like this as I get CT scans at least once a year. We try to keep aware of my exposure to radiation, and we definitely prefer MRI's to CT scans, so this is a great step in the right direction.

GE calls the technology Veo, so that's what to ask for when you're told you need a CT scan.

From the article:
As Baker described the breakthrough, "The joint team ultimately developed an accelerator based on 28 Xeon processors totaling 112 cores and a dramatically improved algorithm. We reduced the compute time to around an hour, delivering superior medical images and reducing the X-ray power by up to 90 percent."

As I was reading through some of the Slashdot comments, I came across a post that said this had already been done by some scientists using the graphics processors in video games such as the Sony Play Station. I'm not really an expert on the processing power of console game units, but I understand it's pretty incredible. A couple of years ago the U.S. Air Force bought something like 1,700 Playstation 2's to rig together to form a small supercomputer for the Academy, and this has become a fairly common technique for filling the need for inexpensive supercomputing requirements: they may not be as fast as a dedicated mainframe or supercomputer, but they're tremendously faster than a PC or PC network.

http://phys.org/news198934846.html

Organ transplants where the recipient is able to discontinue immunosuppressive drug use!

This is REALLY big news! It will be quite interesting to see what the follow-up studies report.

"Researchers have for the first time managed to give patients a complete bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor. The recipients were also able to accept kidneys from the same donors without the need for immunosuppressive drugs. Normally, such transplants would trigger graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) — an often deadly complication that occurs when immune cells from an unrelated donor attack the transplant recipient's tissue. The researchers report that five of eight people who underwent the treatment were able to stop all immunosuppressive therapy within a year after their kidney and stem-cell transplants, four of which came from unrelated donors (abstract)."

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/08/2159252/drug-free-organ-transplants-from-unrelated-donors