Gene Therapy: Promise for Parkinson's

The preceding attempts with growth promoters did not filter outside. The new approach employs the gene therapy - injecting a virus which carries a gene which produces alternatively the neurturin growth promoter - to try to obtain the protective protein line where it needed.

None of the first 12 patients to undergo the experiment - at the university of the hospital of university of precipitations of California, San Francisco and Chicago - suffered serious side effects, Dr. Philip Starr of neurosurgeon of UCSF brought back Monday.

One year after treatment, three patients did not show any difference on a standard rating scale of the movement. But the others nine showed an improvement of 38 percent, Starr said a meeting of the American association of the neurological surgeons.

That does not mean the worked therapy, informed Starr. It could have been coincidence; some preceding attempts found the councils similar of the effectiveness, to only fail once put at a more rigorous test.

But the results encouraged enough that the researchers are registered the victims of more than Parkinson - 56 of them - for the next stage of the test. A third of these patients will undergo the surgery of pretence, obtaining the holes did not drill inside their craniums but any gene-bearing virus, to try to tease outside if the therapy really functions.

Gene Therapy: Promise for Parkinson's

First dozen the Parkinson patients to have boreholes inside their craniums for an attempt at gene therapy of novel were not harm - and the councils with a certain improvement have researchers to embark on a greater study to see whether the treatment really can function.

The doctors reported preliminary results of the experiment narrowly observed at a meeting Monday of neurology, but informed that it is remote too early to raise hopes.

With the question: Use of a growth promoter of nerve to try to save the cells of brain of death.

Approximately 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson, a disease which gradually destroys the cells of brain which produce the dopamine, a crucial chemical for the cellular one announcing that movement of muscle of orders. Not enough dopamine causes increasingly serious tremors and periodically stiff or frozen members.

The standard treatments can order tremors during one moment but cannot stop the inevitable walk of the disease. Thus the scientists are manners of hunting of protecting the neurons remaining dopamine-producers, and the delivery those of deaths.

Transmission

Direct contact with the infected poultry, or the surfaces and the objects soiled by their droppings, is considered the principal route of the human infection. The risk of exposure is considered higher during demolition, plucked, demolition, and the preparation of the poultry for the kitchen. The studies available indicate that the strongly pathogenic viruses, including A/H5N1, deviate with practically all the parts of an infected bird, including the meat. The kitchen at the temperatures above 700 Centigrade destroys the virus. The poultry in affected sectors should be made cook so much there are not any pink sector, of eggs should not be consumed with the liquid yellows and of believed eggs should not be employed in no dish without complete handling cooking.8 suitable of the poultry and the poultry products during the preparation of food and the suitable kitchen are extremely important in the sectors testing of the manifestations of avian influenza H5N1 in the poultry. There is no obviousness that the correctly cooked the poultry poultry or products can be a source of infection.

Avian Influenza and the Risk to Human Health

The center running of the concern rests on the epizootic one without precedent of the disease of H5N1 HPAI, its current and obvious widespread diffusion of direct poultry transmission to the human ones. The detection of A/H5N1 in the pigs in Indonesia and China announces the possibility of reassortment of A/H5N1 and the human viruses in pigs.13 however in spite of the million human exposures, from the human and avian viruses containing viruses reassortant of influenza of origin did not emerge yet, suggesting a difficult process of adaptation for infections A/H5N1 at the man and a low probability of reassortment due to a restricted number the human ones infected up to now. The phase of pandemia of WHO remains with phase 3 (human of alarm of pandemia infected by a new constraint with only the very occasional person with the isolated person). The risk however increases with the total diffusion continues the epizootic one.

Human pandemias of influenza of the 20th century were caused by H2, flu viruses H1 and H3, the genes of hémagglutinine coming from the avian viruses of influenza. These three sub-types are low pathogenic in avian species and thus there was no warning anticipated of the demonstrations in the poultry before the beginning of these pandemias. Next human pandemia still could result from a low pathogenic constraint, or reappearance of the already human adapted A/H2N2, or indeed of reassortment or adaptive change of A/H5N1. Stohr described pandemias as typically striking populations of the world as the flash floods, starting abruptly and explosivement, leaving considerable damage in their wake. The appearance of the human cases of A/H5N1 acted as a warning and we must prepare now while better us can to mitigate the effects of next pandemia, any sub-type it can finally prove to be. All the clinicians must consider emergency plans for such an event.

The discovery of the x-ray

To imagine the world before 1895, a world with very few of the technologies that we considered essential today: the computer, airplane, televisions and considers this: No machines of x-ray.
Before the machines of the ray of x were invented, the broken bones, the tumors and the location of bullets all were diagnosed by the physical examen and conjectures of a doctor the best one.
The patients paid the price of these approaches. Then the 8 of November of 1895, a German Roentgen of professor Wilhelm Conrado of the physics made a discovery remarkable.
It took to a similar tube the fluorescent light bulbs, cleared all the air and he filled it of a special gas. When it passed a high electrical voltage with him, the tube emitted a fluorescent brilliance.
The Roentgen later covered the tube with the heavy black paper and the electricity passed again with him and noticed them that a covered screen barium through laboratory began to shine intensely.

It made quickly that its tube emitted a "invisible light" or the ray, and this ray could happen through heavy paper that covered the tube. He made more experiments quickly and he discovered them that these new rays could happen through most of the substances and that the shades would throw of solid objects in pieces of the film.
He named the new x-ray of the ray, because in mathematics "X" he is used to indicated the unknown amount. And within month a Roentgen gave its report to the society Physical-Medical de Wurzburg and the friends of the physicist through Europe.

Before the January of 1896 the world was taken hold by "odd habit of the x-ray," and the Roentgen was proclaimed the discoverer of a medical miracle. Within a year, the x-rays were used in diagnosis and therapy and were an established part of medicine. The Roentgen did not look for patents in its discovery of x-rays, but it was the container of the first Nobel prize in the physics in 1901.

We today took the x-rays and systems more falsified all from the granted projection of image for. Some of the pioneers in the dead work field with the x-rays that did not know were harmful. But its sacrifice does about 111 years created a technology that is vital to our health today.