medicine

Massive amounts of money and effort are being put into researching treatments and ultimately a cure for Alzheimer's disease. A clinical trial has been running that is using human blood-plasma transfusions to treat the disease has found that the treatments are safe and promising for those suffering from the disease. Stanford University School of Medicine investigators have reported success with this treatment in an early-phase clinical trial.

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Makers of fitness trackers or any device with health-related sensors are often careful to remind their customers that these gadgets, advanced as they may be, shouldn't be considered as conclusive medical data or replace professional opinion. Apple, however, might be going in a different direction and might soon advertise the Apple Watch as a potential medical aid. Sources close to the matter claim that Apple is working with Standford and telemedicine company American Well to determine if the wearable is accurate and sensitive enough to reliably detect abnormal heart rhythms.

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People all around the world have surgeries each day to remove cancerous tissue from their bodies in an attempt to defeat the disease. The challenge for surgeons and medical personnel is to tell which tissue is cancerous and which is healthy so they know how much to remove. A team of scientists and engineers from the University of Texas at Austin has invented a new tool that will make it much easier for a surgeon to tell what tissue is cancerous and what is healthy during a surgery.

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There isn't usually much doctors can do after a spinal cord injury that results in paralysis, but a new breakthrough from Mayo Clinic may give reason to hope. The clinic reports that an electrical implant placed near the site of a spinal cord injury allowed a paralyzed patient to make voluntary movements with his legs, which is a pretty big breakthrough.

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Ask anyone, and there’s a good chance they’ve casually taken a tablet or two of ibuprofen to stave off a headache or other minor ailment. The general perception is that ibuprofen is a pretty safe drug, the small risk of stomach ulcers aside, and that’s why it is available in large quantities for low prices over the counter. According to a new study, though, this medication is associated with big increases in cardiac arrest risk, so much so that some professionals are calling for it to be made prescription-only.

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A study conducted by a group at Oxford showed that 200,000 lives have been saved from endometrial cancer over a 9-year period. This group, known better as the Collaborative Group on Epidemiological Studies on Endometrial Cancer (Oxford), showed that "about 400 000 cases of endometrial cancer before the age of 75 years have been prevented over the past 50 years (1965–2014) by oral contraceptives." Their conclusion, based on this study, is that use of oral contraceptives (birth control pills), confers long-term protection against edometrial cancer.

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Alzheimer’s disease is a growing cause for concern in the world today. In the US alone, about 5 million people are reported to be affected. And that number is predicted to grow even more in the very near future. And as there is no known cure for it, Alzheimer’s patients and their families are left to resort to treatments that are usually expensive and, in the long run, only temporary. Researchers at MIT, however, may have come across a possible new mode of treatment that shows promising results. And it involves nothing more than flashing LEDs lights at eyes.

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Methylene Blue is a drug you've possibly never heard of before, but it's been in use for nearly a century. These days, the drug is primarily used to treat methemoglobinemia, a disease that affects the ability of soft tissue to absorb oxygen from the bloodstream, but a new study suggests it may have some exciting uses for improving memory and attention.

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Much like the food in your fridge and the cleaning supplies in your closet, the drugs — both over the counter and prescription — in your medicine cabinet have an expiration date. While that expiration date isn’t a hard and fast rule in most cases, at least according to past research on the matter, it does mark a time when one can expect the medication to start losing potency, making it difficult to take proper dosages. Thanks to a new synthetic protein recently detailed by DARPA, however, that reality may itself soon be obsolete.

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Ibuprofen can be seen as one of the most useful medications available today; just two to four pills of the pain killer can help treat headaches to muscle pain. But researchers may have just improved its effectiveness by developing the world's first ibuprofen patch capable of releasing the drug over a 12 hour period once applied to the skin. That sounds much better than having to remember to take the pills every four hours or so.

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Next time your parents claim that nothing good would come from gaming, this little anecdote might tide things in your favor. Of course, it's gaming technology that's in focus here, but we're not going to split hairs. Microsoft's Kinect controller has become one of the most hacked and repurposed gaming peripherals in the market and that kind of modification might soon benefit medicine as well. Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine have developed a way to reduce radiation exposure when taking X-rays by reusing the technology found in the Kinect.

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Is there anything 3D printing can't do these days? From toys, to chocolate, to dog legs, to house parts. And now we even have 3D printed drugs. Now that in itself isn't really a novel feat, considering 3D printed food. The success that Aprecia Pharmaceuticals achieved is in actually getting the US Food and Drug Administration to approve it. This makes its SPRITRAM seizure drug to be the first 3D printed medication to receive FDA approval, perhaps opening the doors to even more such products in the future.

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