Archive for June, 2015

Bone marrow stem cells

Diseases such as aplastic anaemia, or infections (such as tuberculosis) can negatively impact the ability of the bone marrow to produce blood cells or platelets. Other diseases, such as leukaemia, also affect the progenitor/stem cells in the bone marrow and are diagnosed by a bone marrow biopsy where a sample of the tissue is taken using a large hollow needle inserted into the iliac crest (the pelvic bone). Harvesting bone marrow is usually done under general anaesthetic, although local anaesthetic is also a possibility.

Recent advances in stimulating and harvesting stem cells from the peripheral blood may mean that the invasiveness of bone marrow harvesting can be avoided for some donors and patients. Stimulatory pharmaceuticals, such as GM-CSF, and G-CSF, which drive the stem cells out of the bone marrow and into the peripheral circulation, can allow for a large yield of stem cells during apheresis. However, bone marrow stem cells have been found through research in the past five years or so to be able to differentiate into more cell types than previously thought. Mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow have been successfully cultured to create beta-pancreatic cells, and neural cells, with possible ramifications for treatment of diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Clinical trials involving stem cell treatments for such conditions in humans remain theoretical however as there are a number of issues that need further investigation to confirm efficacy and safety.

The stem cells contained within bone marrow are of three types; haematopoietic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and endothelial stem cells. Haematopoietic stem cells differentiate into both white and red blood cells, and platelets. These leukocytes, erythrocytes, and thrombocytes, respectively, play a role in immune function, oxygen transportation, and blood-clotting and are destroyed by chemotherapy for cancers such as leukaemia. This is why bone marrow transplants can mean the difference between life and death for someone suffering from such a disease as it is vital to replace and repopulate the bone marrow with stem cells that can then create new blood- and immune-forming cells.

Mesenchymal stem cells are also found in the bone marrow and are responsible for creating osteoblasts, chrondrocytes, and mycocytes, along with a number of other cell types. The location of these stem cells differs from that of the haematopoietic stem cells as they are usually central to the bone marrow, which makes it easier to extract specific populations of stem cells during a bone marrow aspiration procedure.

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells have also been found to differentiate into beta-pancreatic islet cells, with potential ramifications for treating those with diabetes (Moriscot, et al, 2005). Neural-like cells have also been cultured from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells making the bone marrow a possible source for stem cell treatment of neurological disorders (Hermann, et al, 2006). More recent research appears to show that donor-heterogeneity (genetic differences between those donating the bone marrow) is at the heart of the variability in mesenchymal stem cells ability to differentiate to neural cells (Montzka, et al, 2009). This means that careful selection of donor stem cells would have to be carried out in order for treatment to be successful if the research ever displays clinical significance. Conditions such as spinal cord injury, Alzheimers Disease, and Multiple Sclerosis, may be able to be treated in the future using mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow that were previously thought to only be able to produce bone and cartilage cell types.

Patients with leukaemia or other cancer are likely to be treated with radiation and/or chemotherapy. Both of these treatements kill the stem cells in the bone marrow to some degree and it is the effect that this has on the immune system that is responsible for many of the symptoms of chemotherapy and radiation sickness. In some cases, a patient with cancer may have bone marrow harvested and some stem cells stored prior to radiation treatment or chemotherapy. They then have their own stem cells infused after the cancer treatment in order to repopulate their immune system. This presents little risk of graft versus host disease which is a concern with, non-autologous, allograft bone marrow transplants. The use of a patients own stem cells is unlikely to be helpful in cases where an in-borne mutation of the blood and lymph system is present and such procedures are not usually performed in such cases.

Bone marrow transplantation from a donor source will normally require the destruction of the patients own bone marrow in a process called myeloablation. Patients who undergo myeloablation will lose their acquired immunity and are usually advised to undergo all vaccinations for diseases such as mumps, measles, rubella, and so on. Myeloablation also means that the patient has extremely low white blood cell (leukocyte) levels for a number of weeks as the bone marrow stem cells begin to create new blood and immune system cells. Patients undergoing this procedure are, therefore, extremely susceptible to infection and complication making bone marrow transplants only appropriate in life-threatening situations. Many patients will take antibiotics during this time in an attempt to avoid sepsis, infections, and septic shock. Some patients will be given immunosuppressant drugs to lower the risk of graft versus host disease and this can make them even more susceptible to infection.

It is also possible that the new stem cells do not engraft, which means that they do not begin to create new blood and immune-system cells at all. Peripheral blood stem cells harvested at the same time as bone marrow harvesting were found in one study to speed the recovery of the patients immune systems following myeloablation, thus reducing the risk if infection (Rabinowitz, et al, 1993). Peripheral blood stem cells do appear to be quicker in general at engrafting and they may become more widely involved in the treatment of diseases traditionally addressed through bone marrow transplants (Lewis, 2005).

Read the original here:
Bone Marrow Stem Cells - Stem Cell Research

The American health-care industrys pivot to personalized medicine has attracted the interest of an unlikely group of companies government contractors.

As health-care providers explore this new model of treatment, which involves the study of the human genome to provide personalized care, they face a problem with which many in government are familiar: analyzing an overwhelming amount of data.

Were literally drowning in data, said Norman Sharpless, an oncologist and director of the University of North Carolinas Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The amount of information generated from sequencing human genes is growing at a rapid clip, and it has triggered a rush of clinical trials aimed at linking that knowledge to medical treatment. Cataloguing all this new information requires computational power and sophisticated analysis, Sharpless said.

For IT contractors, many of which are based in the Washington region, the flood of information presents a simple business opportunity: The same skills used to crunch massive amounts of data for cyberthreats or warfare intelligence can be applied to personalized medicine.

The governments growing interest in this field also is a factor.

In his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama outlined an initiative to explore the uses of precision medicine. His budget includes a request for $215million to fund research in this area. The White House also hired its first chief data scientist, DJ Patil, who has made precision medicine one of his priorities.

Many contractors, especially those in information technology, have been eager to pursue opportunities in precision medicine as they look to add lines of business to make up for cuts in other parts of the federal budget as overall spending slows.

That is why so many different kinds of businesses including defense giants Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and cloud storage providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google are getting in on the game.

Lockheed Martin announced a partnership this year with Illumina, a San Diego company that provides relatively inexpensive genome sequencing technology, to study the DNA of populations and develop personalized health-care solutions. For Illumina, the partnership offered access to Lockheeds experience in managing large-scale information systems, Alex Dickinson, Illuminas senior vice president of strategic initiatives, said at the time.

Read the rest here:
Personalized medicine could mean big business for D.C ...

Spinal Cord Injury Facts The most common cause of spinal cord injury is trauma. Spinal cord injury is most common in young, white men. Spinal cord injury can be either complete or incomplete. In complete injuries there is no function below the level of injury. In incomplete injuries there is some function remaining below the level of injury. Early immobilization and treatment are the most important factors in achieving recovery from spinal cord injury. Aggressive rehabilitation and assistive devices allow even people with severe spinal cord injuries to interact in society and remain productive. What is the spinal cord injury?

The spinal cord is a collection of nerves that travels from the bottom of the brain down your back. There are 31 pairs of nerves that leave the spinal cord and go to your arms, legs, chest and abdomen. These nerves allow your brain to give commands to your muscles and cause movements of your arms and legs. The nerves that control your arms exit from the upper portion of the spinal cord, while the nerves to your legs exit from the lower portion of the spinal cord. The nerves also control the function of your organs including your heart, lungs, bowels, and bladder. For example, signals from the spinal cord control how fast your heart beats and your rate of breathing.

Other nerves travel from your arms and legs back to the spinal cord. These nerves bring back information from your body to your brain including the senses of touch, pain, temperature, and position. The spinal cord runs through the spinal canal. This canal is surrounded by the bones in your neck and back called vertebrae which make up your back bone. The vertebrae are divided into 7 neck (cervical) vertebrae, 12 chest (thoracic) vertebrae and 5 lower back (lumbar) vertebrae. The vertebrae help protect the spinal cord from injury.

The spinal cord is very sensitive to injury. Unlike other parts of your body, the spinal cord does not have the ability to repair itself if it is damaged. A spinal cord injury occurs when there is damage to the spinal cord either from trauma, loss of its normal blood supply, or compression from tumor or infection. There are approximately 12,000 new cases of spinal cord injury each year in the United States. They are most common in white males. Specifically, 80% of spinal cord injuries occur in males, and 65% occur in whites. Most injuries occur in patients under 30 years of age.

Spinal cord injuries are described as either complete or incomplete. In a complete spinal cord injury there is complete loss of sensation and muscle function in the body below the level of the injury. In an incomplete spinal cord injury there is some remaining function below the level of the injury. In most cases both sides of the body are affected equally.

An injury to the upper portion of the spinal cord in the neck can cause quadriplegia-paralysis of both arms and both legs. If the injury to the spinal cord occurs lower in the back it can cause paraplegia-paralysis of both legs only.

Medically Reviewed by a Doctor on 1/28/2014

Spinal Cord Injury - Causes Question: What was the cause of your spinal cord injury?

Spinal Cord Injury - Symptoms Question: What were the symptoms associated with your spinal cord injury?

Spinal Cord Injury - Treatment Question: What was the treatment for your spinal cord injury?

Link:
Spinal Cord Injury: Read About the Levels - MedicineNet

What is a Spinal Cord Injury?

A spinal cord injury, or damage to the spinal cord, is an extremely serious type of physical trauma. It will likely have a lasting and significant impact on most aspects of daily life.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the group that is most at risk for spinal cord injuries are males between the ages of 15 and 35. Most people who are injured are both young and in good health at the time the trauma occurs (NIH).

The spinal cord is a bundle of nerves and other tissue contained and protected by the vertebrae of the spine, which are the bones stacked on top of each other that make up the spine. It is composed of many nerves, and extends from the brains base down the back, ending close to the buttocks.

The spinal cord is responsible for transporting impulses (messages) from the brain to all parts of the body, and from the body to the brain. We are able to perceive pain and move our limbs because of messages transmitted through the spinal cord.

If the spinal cord is injured, some or all of these impulses may be prevented from getting through. The result is a complete or total loss of sensation and mobility below the injury. Therefore, a spinal cord injury closer to the neck will typically cause paralysis throughout a larger part of the body than one in the lower back area.

Some signs that a person may have a spinal cord injury include:

Spinal cord injuries are often the result of unpredictable accidents and/or violent events. The following can all result in damage to the spinal cord:

Anyone who believes they or someone else has sustained a spinal cord injury should follow the tips below:

When the person arrives at the hospital, doctors will do a physical exam as well as a complete neurological exam. This will help them determine whether the spinal cord was indeed injured and, if so, where. CT scans, MRIs, X-rays of the spine, and evoked potential testing (which measures how quickly nerve signals reach the brain) are all diagnostic tools that doctors may use.

See the article here:
Spinal Cord Injury: Signs, Causes & Prevention

Stem Cells, Regenerative Medicine, and Tissue Engineering

Loading...

Treatments classed as regenerative medicine help our natural healing processes work more rapidly and more effectively. These technologies can enable regeneration in missing or damaged tissue that would not ordinarily regrow, producing at least partial regeneration, and in some promising animal studies complete regeneration.

Strategies presently either under development, in clinical trials, or available via medical tourism include stem cell transplants, manipulation of a patient's own stem cells, and the use of implanted scaffold materials that emit biochemical signals to spur stem cells into action. In the field of tissue engineering, researchers have generated sections of tissue outside the body for transplant, using the patient's own cells to minimize the possibility of transplant rejection. Regenerative therapies have been demonstrated in the laboratory to at least partially heal broken bones, bad burns, blindness, deafness, heart damage, worn joints, nerve damage, the lost brain cells of Parkinson's disease, and a range of other conditions. Less complex organs such as the bladder and the trachea have been constructed from a patient's cells and scaffolds and successfully transplanted.

Work continues to bring these advances to patients. Many forms of treatment are offered outside the US and have been for a decade or more in some cases, while within the US just a few of the simple forms of stem cell transplant have managed to pass the gauntlet of the FDA in the past few years.

What Are Stem Cells?

Some of the most impressive demonstrations of regenerative medicine since the turn of the century have used varying forms of stem cells - embryonic, adult, and most recently induced pluripotent stem cells - to trigger healing in the patient. Most of the earlier successful clinical applications were aimed at the alleviation of life-threatening heart conditions. However, varying degrees of effectiveness have also been demonstrated for the repair of damage in other organs, such as joints, the liver, kidneys, nerves, and so forth.

Stem cells are unprogrammed cells in the human body that can continue dividing forever and can change into other types of cells. Because stem cells can become bone, muscle, cartilage and other specialized types of cells, they have the potential to treat many diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer. They are found in embryos at very early stages of development (embyonic stem cells) and in some adult organs, such as bone marrow and brain (adult stem cells). You can find more information on stem cells at the following sites:

Embryonic and adult stem cells appear to have different effects, limitations and abilities. The current scientific consensus is that adult stem cells are limited in their utility, and that both embryonic and adult stem cell research will be required to develop cures for severe and degenerative diseases. Researchers are also making rapid progress in reprogramming stem cells and creating embryonic-like stem cells from ordinary cells.

Progress in Stem Cell Research

Read more:
Stem Cells, Regenerative Medicine, and Tissue Engineering

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Systemic or chronic inflammation has a domino effect that can seriously undermine your health. So how does it all begin?

Many experts now see inflammation as arising from an immune system response thats out of control. When you catch a cold or sprain your ankle, your immune system switches into gear. Infection or injury trigger a chain of events called the inflammatory cascade. The familiar signs of normal inflammation heat, pain, redness, and swelling are the first signals that your immune system is being called into action. In a delicate balance of give-and-take, inflammation begins when pro-inflammatory hormones in your body call out for your white blood cells to come and clear out infection and damaged tissue. These agents are matched by equally powerful, closely related anti-inflammatory compounds, which move in once the threat is neutralized to begin the healing process.

Acute inflammation that ebbs and flows as needed signifies a well-balanced immune system. But symptoms of inflammation that dont recede are telling you that the on switch to your immune system is stuck. Its poised on high alert even when you arent in imminent danger. In some cases, what started as a healthy mechanism, like building scar tissue or swelling, just wont shut off.

Are you walking around on simmer? Just yesterday I saw Nancy, a patient who has been with me for years. When she first came to see me, her triglycerides were sky-high (in the 400s!), her cholesterol was elevated, and she was overweight, unhappy and stressed. Her face was flushed and chapped, her lips were dry, and she seemed fluttery and agitated. On the surface she looked like a heart disease candidate, but when I probed deeper I saw a woman on fire from the inside out.

Currently there is no definitive test for inflammation the best that conventional medicine can do is measure blood levels of C-reactive protein (a pro-inflammatory marker) and the irritating amino acid called homocysteine. I use the high-sensitivity CRP test now available at most labs. Anything above 1 mg/dL with this test is too high in my book. With the older tests a reading of between 25 mg/dL was considered normal. (If youve been tested, be sure to ask your doctor for the results). Newer ways to assess risk early on for future inflammatory disease include markers such as the apolipoprotein B to A1 ratio (ApoB/ApoA-1). This and other tests are in experimental use and only available through a few labs.

When I first ran Nancys tests, I was surprised to see that her CRP levels were normal (this was before the high-sensitivity CRP test was widely available as it is today). This was good news for her heart, since elevated CRP and cholesterol increase your risk of heart disease threefold. But her homocysteine levels were high and all of her other symptoms pointed to inflammation. I prescribed an anti-inflammation diet, essential fatty acids, other anti-inflammatory supplements, and a daily exercise regime (for more information, read our article Reducing Inflammation The Natural Approach.) When Nancy next came in, her triglycerides were down by 200 points, her skin was clear, and her mood was much better. Later tests revealed her cholesterol had gone down, too.

A year went by, and as Nancy entered a stressful period in her life, she again began snacking on unhealthy food and going for days without exercise. Her cholesterol crept back up and she started having irritable bowel symptoms. After a brief pep talk, she got back on track and today shes feeling great. When I saw her yesterday she looked like a different person. Her blood tests all looked good and her inflammation was back under control. Nancys fires are well-tended now, and I feel confident she knows what to do if they start to flare up again.

Here is the original post:
Causes Of Inflammation | Women to Women

Can you please explain why inflammation is now thought to be so harmful and what to do about whole-body inflammation?

Answer (Published 10/27/2011)

Inflammation in the body is a normal and healthy response to injury or attack by germs. We can see it, feel it and measure it as local heat, redness, swelling, and pain. This is the body's way of getting more nourishment and more immune activity into an area that needs to fend off infection or heal. But inflammation isn't always helpful. It also has great destructive potential, which we see when the immune system mistakenly targets the body's own tissues in (autoimmune) diseases like type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Whole-body inflammation refers to chronic, imperceptible, low-level inflammation. Mounting evidence suggests that over time this kind of inflammation sets the foundation for many serious, age-related diseases including heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Recent evidence indicates that whole-body inflammation may also contribute to psychological disorders, especially depression - for more on this, see my new book, Spontaneous Happiness, which will be released November 8, 2011.

The extent of this chronic inflammation is influenced by genetics, a sedentary lifestyle, too much stress, and exposure to environmental toxins such as secondhand tobacco smoke. Diet has a huge impact, so much so that I believe that most people in our part of the world go through life in a pro-inflammatory state as a result of what they eat. I'm convinced that the single most important thing you can do to counter chronic inflammation is to stop eating refined, processed and manufactured foods.

You can also try my anti-inflammatory diet, as illustrated by my anti-inflammatory diet and food pyramid. This isn't a weight-loss diet (though you can lose weight if you follow it). Instead, it is designed to help you reduce chronic inflammation by eating fresh, healthy and delicious foods. One of the most important things the diet does is provide balanced amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Most people consume an excess of omega-6 fatty acids, which the body uses to synthesize compounds that promote inflammation. You get a lot of omega 6 fatty acids from snack foods and fast foods. Omega-3 fatty acids - from oily fish, walnuts, flax, hemp and to a lesser degree canola oil and sea vegetables - have an anti-inflammatory effect.

If you look at the food pyramid on this site you'll see that it emphasizes fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes, fish and sea food, whole soy foods, and tells you how much of these foods to eat daily or weekly. You get a wide variety of fresh foods on this diet, plus some red wine daily, if you so desire, and healthy sweet treats such as dark chocolate (make sure it has a minimum content of 70 percent cocoa). Along with influencing inflammation, this diet will provide steady energy and ample vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, dietary fiber, and protective phytonutrients. What's more, I think you'll enjoy it.

Andrew Weil, M.D.

Learn more about Dr. Weil's new book and online program: Spontaneous Happiness

Can you please explain why inflammation is now thought to be so harmful and what to do about whole-body inflammation?

See the original post here:
Reducing Whole Body Inflammation? - Ask Dr. Weil