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Spirituality and health pioneer publishes paper on development of the field
Date: Feb-21-2014While spirituality played a significant role in health care for centuries, technological advances in the 20th century overshadowed this more human side of medicine. Christina Puchalski, M.D.'94, RESD'97, founder and director of the George Washington University (GW) Institute for Spirituality and Health and professor of medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), and co-authors published a commentary in Academic Medicine on the history of spirituality and health, the movement to reclaim medicine's spiritual roots, and the future of this field.
Tracking Alzheimer's Disease progression: neuropsychological assessment more efficient than MRI
Date: Feb-21-2014Investigators at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, have shown that progression of disease in memory clinic patients can be tracked efficiently with 45 minutes of neuropsychological testing. MRI measures of brain atrophy were shown to be less reliable to pick up changes in the same patients.This finding has important implications for the design of clinical trials of new anti-Alzheimer drugs. If neuropsychological assessment is used as the outcome measure or "gold standard," fewer patients would be needed to conduct such trials, or the trials may be of shorter duration.
Gene therapy used to direct stem cells into becoming new cartilage on a synthetic scaffold
Date: Feb-21-2014By combining a synthetic scaffolding material with gene delivery techniques, researchers at Duke University are getting closer to being able to generate replacement cartilage where it's needed in the body.Performing tissue repair with stem cells typically requires applying copious amounts of growth factor proteins - a task that is very expensive and becomes challenging once the developing material is implanted within a body.
Zebrafish neuron research may improve understanding of birth defects like spina bifida
Date: Feb-21-2014The zebrafish, a tropical freshwater fish similar to a minnow and native to the southeastern Himalayan region, is well established as a key tool for researchers studying human diseases, including brain disorders. Using zebrafish, scientists can determine how individual neurons develop, mature and support basic functions like breathing, swallowing and jaw movement. Researchers at the University of Missouri say that learning about neuronal development and maturation in zebrafish could lead to a better understanding of birth defects such as spina bifida in humans.
Marijuana may protect the immune system against HIV and slow disease progression
Date: Feb-21-2014New evidence that chronic intake of THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, can protect critical immune tissue in the gut from the damaging effects of HIV infection is reported in AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses website.
Refining genomic data may help researchers gain traction against human disease
Date: Feb-21-2014Led by biomedical engineer Justin Zook of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a team of scientists from Harvard University and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute of Virginia Tech has presented new methods to integrate data from different sequencing platforms, thus producing a reliable set of genotypes to benchmark human genome sequencing."Understanding the human genome is an immensely complex task and we need great methods to guide this research," Zook says.
Spirituality and health pioneer publishes paper on development of the field
Date: Feb-21-2014While spirituality played a significant role in health care for centuries, technological advances in the 20th century overshadowed this more human side of medicine. Christina Puchalski, M.D.'94, RESD'97, founder and director of the George Washington University (GW) Institute for Spirituality and Health and professor of medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), and co-authors published a commentary in Academic Medicine on the history of spirituality and health, the movement to reclaim medicine's spiritual roots, and the future of this field.
Psychology in action
Date: Feb-21-2014People and spaces, the tragedy of commonsense morality, myths about meaning of life, and remaking love were four themes at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference in Austin. Researchers presented new work, showing how psychology reaches into our everyday lives. Highlights include: Sam Gosling of the University of Texas-Austin described how the link between our emotions and spaces is is inseparable. As such, our spaces say a lot about us.
New smartphone apps 'detect epilepsy and improve stroke care'
Date: Feb-21-2014In these modern times, there is practically a smartphone app for all aspects of life. Now, new research has detailed two new apps that could help people detect epileptic seizures and receive better treatment for stroke.The two new studies will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, in April.For the first study that looks at the creation of the epilepsy app, the research team analyzed 67 people with the condition.
Metabolism may play a role in epilepsy
Date: Feb-21-2014Researchers from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio are exploring a possible link between metabolic defects and seizures. They determined that diet could influence susceptibility to seizures, and they have identified a common diabetes drug that could be useful in treating disorders such as epilepsy.Dr. Daniel Kuebler, the principal investigator behind the experiment, and his lab made the connection by measuring fruit fly movement with inexpensive web-cams.
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