Precise Timing Enabled Pig-to-rat Transplants To Cure Diabetes
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned that a temporal "window of opportunity" was critical to their earlier successes in treating diabetic rats with embryonic pig tissues. In those experiments, published in 2004, researchers were surprised to find that they didn't have to give anti-rejection drugs to diabetic rats treated with embryonic pig cell...Pennsylvania researchers find liver transplants provide metabolic cure for rare genetic disease
Liver transplants cured the metabolic symptoms of 11 patients with a rare but devastating genetic condition known as Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD), according to a study by researchers from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the Clinic for Special Children. All patients from the study (ranging in age from 1-20) are alive and well with normal liver function, according to the researcher...Stem cell transplants improve recovery in animal models for stroke, cerebral palsy
A single dose of adult donor stem cells given to animals that have neurological damage similar to that experienced by adults with a stroke or newborns with cerebral palsy can significantly enhance recovery from these types of injuries, researchers say. Using a commonly utilized animal model for stroke, researchers administered a dose of 200,000-400,000 human stem cells into the brain of an...Predicting successful outcomes in living-donor liver transplants
A new study on identifying which patients were likely to have poor outcomes following a living-donor liver transplant (LDLT) found that measuring how a certain non-toxic dye was eliminated by the liver shortly after surgery was an accurate indicator of liver function, and therefore a reliable indicator of the outcome of the procedure. The study used a simple non-invasive device to measure the dye...What animals can tell us about hemorrhage, organ transplants and aging
The stereotype of a scientist as a man in a white lab coat hunched over a microscope in a laboratory is far from real life. Consider the scientists who will meet at The American Physiological Society's conference, Comparative Physiology 2006: Integrating Diversity, taking place October 8-11 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. They spend time in the mountains studying bears, animals that...Parasite infections linked to organ transplants
Three transplant patients contracted a dangerous parasitic disease from their new organs in the United States.Two of the three women died, but only one recovered after antibiotic treatment.// A second study also released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention turned up 26 bacterial infections traced to tissue grafts that had come from cadavers in the United States. This show...Stem Cell Transplants May Be Effective For MS Patients
There’s a potential new treatment for people with severe cases of multiple sclerosis, according to a new research. The new treatment involves removing stem cells// from the patients’ blood, killing the cells that are working against the body’s immune system and then returning the healthy cells back to the body. The hope is that these stem cells will eventually reconstitute into healthy immune sys...Cell transplants used to fend off Parkinson's symptoms
Doctors report they have had long-term success implanting cells into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients by passing a needle through the skull. Dr. Ray Watts, professor of //neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, told that patients had improved motor function - movement of their arms and legs - by up to 60% using this procedure. Watts implanted retinal pigm...Bone marrow transplants for limbs
Scientists have observed that bone marrow cells can make new blood vessels, when transplanted into limbs with poor circulation. In peripheral arterial disease, circulation in the legs is severely restricted because the arteries are narrowed. //The result is pain and disability. In severe cases, the limb may even need amputation to avoid gangrene and death. Researchers in Osaka, Japan,...