Zoldrenic acid increases survival rate among stage IV cancer women

It is breast cancer awareness month and we need to do everything as a community to combat this deadly disease. This news just came to my attention about the use of zoldrenic acid, a drug for treating osteoporosis, may increase survival in postmenopausal stage IV cancer women.The increase in survival rate is low but significant to placebo control group but never-the-less significant. Here is an excerpt of the summarized findings of today's article at the National Cancer Institute:

"A planned subset analysis of a phase III trial showed that adding zoledronic acid, a bisphosphonate, to standard adjuvant therapy for stage II or III breast cancer may improve outcomes in postmenopausal women. Overall, among the entire trial population of 3,360 women, the addition of zoledronic acid did not improve outcomes. However, among a subset of women who had undergone menopause 5 or more years before study entry, the 5-year overall survival rate was 85 percent for those who received zoledronic acid, compared with 79 percent for those treated with standard adjuvant therapy alone. These findings from the AZURE trial were published online September 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented the same day at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress. In the full study population, there were 17 confirmed and 9 suspected cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw in the zoledronic acid group and none in the control group. The benefit in overall survival among postmenopausal women “is a small but significant increase,” said principal investigator Dr. Robert Coleman in a news release. The finding is not conclusive on its own but “in the context of other studies and additional data anticipated later in the year,” he believes it may change practice".

More National Cancer Institute News: http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/100411/page3?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncicancerbulletin+%28NCI+Cancer+Bulletin%29#e

iPad and iPhone applications for diabetes management

As many people with diabetes have used a variety of different glucometers, insulin pumps and other gadgets to control sugar levels, there are not that many nice applications that can put all the data together for the doctor to see in a very user friendly forma. I decided to do a quick research on currently available iPhone and iPad applications for people with diabetes. We can agree that the days of recording and monitoring insulin levels, calories and sugar levels on paper are long gone. As more diabetes related medical devices such as insulin pumps and glucose meters are becoming more compatible with PCs, Macs and cell phones, the trend will likely increase over the next decade as it is projected that over more than 30 million Americans will suffer from either Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. The market projections for developing more diabetic medical devices and user friendly software is expected to net billions of dollars for pharmaceutical and software companies. Have no fear, the advent of new technologies that can interface with your glucose pumps, cell phones, desktops, iPad and laptops will be more practical to successfully monitor your health, exercise regimens and insulin intake. Today, if you have an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or an Android phone, you can download applications from your phone from iTunes, the Applestore, freeware sites and other websites for under $5.00 Here are a few applications listed here for starters. All these applications can be obtained through iTunes for less than $5.00! 1. Glucose buddy- This application lets you keep track and record your daily glucose levels, insulin intake, exercise regimens and provides basic statistical analyses of trends and averages. You can interact with the Glucose buddy forum to network with other people through the Internet. It is worth noting that their bar graphs are very colorful and enticing to see. This application is available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod. 2. WaveSense - Probably the most popular diabetes application to date from AgaMatrix. This application also allows you to log and record your glucose levels, calories, exercise regimen and take personal notes. It provides a better statistical analysis of daily, weekly, and monthly averages and projections. High, low, mode, variability, scatter plots, bar graphs, etc... are one of the few statistical analyses provided. You can directly send your results to your physician for their perusal.This application is also available for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. 3. OnTrack - Like the other aforementioned applications, this application allows you to lose monitor your pulse, blood pressure, weight and body fat which also makes it a useful weight loss application. Moreover, it provides basic statistical analyses and allows you to track your glucose and insulin levels. It is available for $2.00 and is extremely user friendly as results can be exported via e-mail to your medical team. This application is only available for the Android. 4. Vree-- This new application from Merck lets you also monitor and record your blood glucose levels, exercise, weight, blood pressure, and food and other medication intake. On the plus side, it comes with an encyclopedia calorie counter, tips and articles for weight loss and nutrition. On the downside, it does not come with a built-in feature to monitor insulin doses. This application is also available for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Also, a few reviews have complained about the lack of a feature that allows you to monitor and send data more than 1 week's worth of data to your doctor. 5.Diabetes Tracker- Like all the other applications, it allows you to monitor your glucose levels, insulin levels, calories and exercise activities. However, this application allows you to track different types of insulin (slow, regular and fast insulin) throughout the day, gives you more statistical analysis, trends and projections. It is available for the Android for $1.49. More to come:IBGstar Diabetes Manager- This is the default application for the IBGstar glucose meter, a peripheral device that directly attaches to the iPhone4 to measure your glucose levels. It will provide a log function to record glucose and insulin levels, an alert system to alert you of important scheduled glucose reading and insulin shots, a trend chart for statistical analysis feature for calculating your daily, monthly and weekly trends and emails your results to your physician. This powerful application is expected to cost around $50.00 but provides more powerful statistical analyses of bio-stats, has better pull-down and touchscreen menu and interfaces with your laptop and desktop via the iPhone 4. It will hit the Apple store soon on March. Bottomline- The only thing or important feature missing in all iPhone and Android diabetes applications is the ability for the software to calculate the projected basal insulin levels in order to know how much insulin to inject before and after meals. However, fancy and "smart" applications that give this kind of projections require complex algorithms and only your physician can readjust the basal insulin intake. Did you find this article interesting? Will you like to receive more email alerts about medical technology related news? Then consider subscribing to my blog. If you have a blog, I will follow back!

Simple blood test can predict Alzheimer's disease with high accuracy

Alzheimer's disease is a really devastating disease of the brain with no present cure or therapy to slow down the progression of the disease. Although there is no cure at the moment, the diagnostics of the disease have significantly improved and scientists. For example, the combination of fluorescent dyes  (Pittsburgh B compound) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a key diagnostic tool for predicting the outcome of the disease about 10 years before a patient develops symptoms. Now the first time have discovered that measuring two fatty acids or lipids in the bloodstream is correlated with a higher chance of cognitive decline. This simple blood test is faster, and probably more reliable than an MRI. One of these lipids is ceramide and the higher the lipid is found in the blood the higher the probability of developing dementia.  However, this type of diagnosis can help the patient by providing intensive therapy for those patients are highest risk but can also open the door for a lot of controversy as many small and large employers and even insurance companies may not be willing to hire people at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or may drop their medical coverage all together years before developing the disease.

Read the complete article that was posted today on Medical News:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/235462.php

This is amazing! It will be soon before quadraplegics and other paralized people will be able to walk with the assistance of robotic legs. Cyberdyne in Japan seems to have developed a prototype of prosthetic legs that may come out the market soon for handicap people. It is called the HAL cyberwalker or robot walker.

 Currently the US army has developed an exoskeleton similar to this but applied for the whole body so that soldiers can lift heavy load of supplies in a much faster and efficient way.

Please click on the link below to get the information of this article from Techradar posted today:

HAL Cyberwalker: http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/hal-robot-walker-shown-off-at-ceatec-2011-1031116?src=rss&attr=all

Anyone can become a neuroscientist and run cheap experiments in their own backyard!

Due to recent draconian cuts that were implemented by many states across the US, all state-funded universities and colleges will suffer draconian cuts from 10-15% of their total operating budget to upto 30% for landgrant universities. For instance, the University of Pittsburgh has been hit with a drastic decrease in state funding while the Community College of Allegheny County will see county and state funding reduced by at least two million dollars. While the current economic recession may have a negative impact on employment and finances of many families across the United States, other people are coming up with innovative ideas to start their own companies to produce products with practical uses. This is an interesting case of a small company called BackyardBrains, a spin-off company that started at the University of Michigan. Backyard brains was initially developed by a group of electrical, software, and bio-engineers who teamed up and came up with an interesting idea of helping to teach neuroscience to middle schools, highschools and colleges across the United States by building cheap and easy-to-use educational products that teach the basic principles of neuroanatomy.
   The company has sold over more than 250 SpikerBox products this year and has already received an NIH educational grant ($450,000) to develop educational curricula that can be implemented in highshools and colleges across the US and to further refine their products. Moreover, the Society for Neuroscience may advocate for the implementation of cheap lab products/ reagents that can be used in highschools and colleges to help educate the public on neuroscience and brain-related diseases across the country. The main goal of the company was to develop a low budget product that enabled students to learn the basic principles of how neurons communicate, receive sensory input and send out electrochemical impulses (also called action potentials). After many long year of labor and brainstorming, Backyard Brains finally developed their first open-source product called SpikerBox. This neat, sleek and small device is a small box that contains a pair of electrodes that record electrophysiological activity, a whole bunch of silicon based resistors, output and inlet outlets, screws, electrical amplifier, structural support rods, switches and speakers batteries. The SpikerBox records the electrical activity from pieces of tissue and converts the electrical activity emanated by neurons (motor or sensory) into acoustic signals (noise) that can be then analyzed and interpreted as neuronal activity. This neat product is currently sold for $89.00 USD, comes with a manual and other spare parts. The electrical data (spikes) that is recorded from the SpikerBox can be downloaded into a laptop or hooked to your iPhone using an application that can be downloaded for free. The data can be analyzed to measure the number and amplitude of spikes per millisecond and make conclusions about the effects of temperature, chemical solutions, hormones, sensory input (moving bristles or hair on the cockroach leg) or electrical stimulation. Also, the company sells other accessories that attach to the Spikerbox such as laptop cables. Please feel free to see a Youtube video demonstration showing the features of SpikerBox located on the left hand side of the article. Although it may not be the best "animal model" compared to a frog or rat, the company encourages the use of coackroaches (Blaberus discoidalis) as an insect model to study neurophysiology as it relates to the human body. The cockroaches are grown and sold by the company as well. The advantages of using the cockroach is that they are cheaper, smaller, can be weaned, reproduce faster than rats and have the ability to re-grow the appendages that are dissected for each experiment performed. Indeed, standard electrophysiological equipment used by neurobiologists to patch pieces of tissue or even cells (patch clamping) can cost from $3,000 upto $10,000. So simply hook the two electrodes of the spiker box into a dissected and immobilized leg of a coackroach (do not worry, they can grow back), turn on the switch and you will soon hear the popping and crackling sounds of electrical activity! The company has a sample laboratory manual that all K12 educators or even high school professors can use as an initial guide to teach neurobiology to students. However, the lab manual is very coarse and bare and is available for editing and sketching by other experts in the field. As the company develops, it is certain that more and more colleges will implement neurophysiology as part of their educational curricula in order to educate the public on the principles of how neurons from the brain (or ganglia in the case of insects) receive sensory input, relay the information through peripheral nerves and cause muscles to twitch in order to produce locomotion. A second product being under development by BackyardBrains is Roboroach, a roach containing several electrical devices surgically implemented into the insect which allows the user study neurotechnology and locomotion in vivo.

What does this news have to do with medical technology? Well, pretty much everything. By studying how certain chemicals, pesticides, natural products, liquid medicines or toxins on neuronal activity and muscle movement , one can perform cheap toxicology and neurobiology experiments that have relevance to human physiology and health. So if you are the parent a high school or middle school kid, please encourage your school officials to support buying cheap scientific equipment like the Spikerbox in order to promote neuroscience research and elevate the quality of education.

To learn more about the products sold by this company, please click on the following links here Did you find this article interesting?

     

Image obtained from: www.myblacktravel.com