The breakthrough in the
understanding of ALS is noted. This is a
good list and plenty more is out there been all simultaneously advanced as
quickly as possible.
What is most noteworthy is
underlying all this is the steady miniaturization of our understanding and
access to the body itself. We are not at
the point of eliminating one cancer cell at a time, but I can tell you how to
do it. This applies to everything in
medicine today.
What no one understands as yet is
that we are a short breath away from completely mastering medicine! The direct result of that mastery will be as
follows:
1 Health restoration for all human beings.
All disease will disappear except for
accidental events quickly handled such as snake bite and the like.
2 Diagnostics will be completely computerized
as in Star Trek. You will live to see
this soon (a lot of this could be done now).
3 Robotic surgery will replace human
surgery.
4 The practice of medicine will become
obsolete.
All this will happen soon and
long before we get around to enhancing the human genome in any particular way
that is significant.
7 Recent Discoveries That Could Revolutionize Medicine
BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER JD
RUCKERSun Nov 13, 2011
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and
expresses that expert's views alone.
The past decade has seen remarkable progress in the field of medicine.
Since scientists with the International Human Genome Project released a rough
draft of the human genome to the public in 2000, the impact of science and
technology on medicine has arguably been more salient than ever. New
discoveries and inventions have opened up new possibilities in both the
treatment and prevention of human sickness, so far that diseases that were once
instant death sentences like cancer and HIV/AIDS, while still potentially
fatal, a little less horrifying.
Sickness, of course, still exists, and so do the material burdens of
medicine. Over the past thirty years, America ’s
health care system has seen the steady increase in consumer costs that have
marginalized consumers and burdened states; the U.S. Census Bureau reported that a
record 50.7 million residents (which includes 9.9 million non-citizens) or
16.7% of the population were uninsured in 2009. With each new discovery, the
possibility of saving citizens million of dollars in treatment--or ensuring
preventative measures against formerly rampant illnesses--become more apparent.
In recent years, a handful of recent discoveries have provided glimmers
of hope for both effective and affordable health care. Here, a list of seven
recent discoveries that could revolutionize medicine.
1) Disarming HIV
HIV/AIDS kills around 1.8 million people a year, and ranks as the third
leading cause of death in low-income countries. But a recent study in journal Blood presents
a potentially new way to combat the disease: instead of killing the virus, make
the body resistant to it. When a person is infected, the body's innate immune
system provides an immediate but flawed defense; HIV takes its membrane or
"skin" from the cell that it infects.
Researchers led by scientists at Imperial College London and Johns
Hopkins University exposed HIV by removing cholesterol from this cellular wall,
producing a large hole in the virus's membrane and making it permeable, which
in turn led to a stronger adaptive response, orchestrated by immune cells.
While researchers have lengths to go before they can even think to announce a
cure for HIV, this breakthrough could drastically reduce the amount of
resources devoted to treating and combating the disease and provide insight
into fighting similarly complex diseases in the future.
2) A Common Cause of ALS
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often referred to as ALS or Lou Gherig’s
disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that paralyzes its victims. For
years, the underlying disease process has long eluded scientists and prevented
development of effective therapies. But a new Northwestern Medicine study for
the first time has identified a common cause of all forms of ALS. The basis
of the disorder is a broken down protein recycling system in the neurons of the
spinal cord and the brain.
Optimal functioning of the neurons relies on efficient recycling of the
protein building blocks in the cells. In ALS, that recycling system is broken.
The cell can’t repair or maintain itself and becomes severely damaged. The
discovery by Northwestern
University Feinberg
School of Medicine
researchers, published in the journal Nature, could herald the end of one of
the biggest medical mysteries of the 20th century.
3) Cellular “Leapfroging”
Recently, scientists developed a method of “leapfrogging” cells, or
transmuting existing cells into a totally new form. Fully mature liver cells
from laboratory mice have been transformed directly into functional neurons by
researchers at the Stanford
University School
of Medicine. It is the first time that cells have been shown to “leapfrog” from
one fundamentally different tissue type to another. These liver cells
unambiguously cross tissue-type boundaries to become fully functional neural
cells.
Such an advance could prove essential in generating essential cells for
an ailing patient--or transmuting potentially dangerous or cancerous agents
into benign cells.
4) Breakthroughs in Stem Cell Research
Probably no area of research has fired the public imagination and
ignited the fires of public controversy as much as stem cell research. But the
clinical advances--even when they have come from pilot studies--have been
tantalizing. In 2009, European researchers genetically manipulated bone marrow
cells taken from two 7-year-old boys and then transplanted the altered cells
back into the boys and apparently arrested the progress of a fatal brain
disease.
Now, scientists can make embryonic-like stem cells directly from
skin cells, which makes it possible to model a multitude of human diseases.
New drugs based on stem cells are being developed, and the first human clinical
trial based on products of human embryonic stem cells is expected in 2011. With
the cheap and efficient means of manipulating stem cells within reach
(regardless of the legal barriers), new options are opening up for researchers
looking to generate new tissue in a lab setting, which could radically change
the way America’s organ donor system functions
.
5) Harnessing Information Technology
One of the unseen burdens of modern health care is the sheer wealth of
data. Charts, blood cultures, past history--all of this information is
increasingly essential in diagnosing and preventing deadly diseases, and modern
medical institutions are struggling to find ways to manage and efficiently
utilize available data. Doctors say the internet and new information
technology--and yes, even the iPad--has actually changed the way they practice
medicine for the better.
Gone are the days wasted in a medical library, looking for topics,
writing down the references, going to the stacks and pulling the volumes of
journals. Now, medical records, case files, and volumes upon volumes of crucial
medical information and references are available at the swipe of a finger. Not
only is this essential in solving complex medical problems, but also in terms
of making patients safer by cataloging blood types, recoding the administration
of vaccines, tracking medical histories, and more.
6) Synthetic Cells
While cellular “leapfrogging” and stem cell manipulation are remarkable
advances, Dr. J. Craig Venter, co-mapper of the human genome, took the process
one step forward by creating life in the lab and developing totally new
synthetic cells in 2010. Generated from a painstaking process of stitching
together the chemicals that compose DNA, Venter synthesized the entire genome
of a bacterium, which was inserted into a cell and was able to replicate.
Venter hopes his findings will be the first of a long line of lab-made
creatures in synthetic biology. Synthetic cells aren’t a purely medical
miracle: by mixing and matching genetic material into viable combinations,
Venter is already generating organisms that may serve as new types of biofuel.
But health-related applications are apparent.
Scientists could speed up flu vaccine production keeping artificial
versions of different viral strains of influenza, for example, or generate
brand new strains of diseases to experiment on if the original host is
inaccessible or spoiled. For researchers, the experimental possibilities are
endless.
7) Robot Surgeries
In late 2007 the surgeons at the Cleveland
Clinic began removing kidneys through a single incision in the patient's navel.
Using tiny metal hands carefully manipulating sutures deep inside a patients
body seems like something pulled from science fiction, but that robotic surgery
is occurring daily in a growing number of centers across the country.
The greatest benefit of tiny openings into the body rather than large
incisions made by traditional surgery, may--believers say--be shorter and less
painful recovery time. Doctors have also used robotic surgery to improve the
accuracy of procedures, especially in cancer cases. Robotic surgery increased
the ability of cancer surgeons to get clean margins as well due to the
magnification of the structures.
Robotic tools also offer the potential for surgeons to operate on patients
remotely, which would reduce the costs of travel and other barriers towards
receiving specialized care. While critics say the cost of the robotic hardware
may outweigh the benefit, the potential for smoother, more efficient, and less
invasive surgeries bodes well both for patient safety and overall medical
costs.
Source: Interfysio,
a healthcare staffing agency that specializes in helping individuals findoccupational
therapist jobs in the New
York City area.
No comments:
Post a Comment