The traditional practice of acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, and many alternative medicine experts swear by its pain-relieving effects. Now, a study has determined that acupuncture treatment may be able to reduce the perceived severity of hot flashes in women going through menopause.

The report, published in the journal Acupuncture in Medicine, found that two and a half months of twice-weekly acupuncture reduced the psychological and somatic effects of menopause.

In particular, women who received the alternative treatment reported feeling less discomfort while experiencing hot flashes.

Researchers also measured levels of estrogen and follicular stimulating hormone in all participants, finding that these hardly varied from those of women not receiving acupuncture.

The study's authors theorized that the use of acupuncture needles may have stimulated the production of endorphins, which are hormones that register pain, excitement and feeling of well-being. These could have given the sense of enhanced thermal regulation.

For menopausal women who have limited access to acupuncture, taking a daily herbal supplement may be their best bet for staying healthy and minimizing hot flashes.

Believe it or not, you can now get your heart surgery done through an incision in your wrist -- all thanks to British cardiac surgeons who have embarked on this unique technique to carry out angioplasty.

Angioplasty involves clearing blocked arteries in patients, who usually suffer heart attacks, by inflating a tiny balloon inserted through a tube via a major blood vessel.

Angioplasty widens the blocked artery, restoring blood flow. And, to retain the improved size, a hollow metal tube or stent is inserted. Traditionally, the surgery is performed via the femoral artery in the groin.

But, a team of cardiologists in Britain is now using the radial artery in the wrist to carry out life-saving operations after a major heart attack.

"This is the future of angioplasty. It is safer and more comfortable with the chances of complications much reduced. The patient, in most routine cases, can also go home much sooner," said cardiologist Dr Rod Stables of Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital.

According to the cardiac surgeons, radial angioplasty involves a small incision being made in the wrist under local anaesthetic, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

Dr Rod Stables, who now performs 95 per cent of his angioplasties through the wrist, said: "Too few cardiologists are trained in this technique.

"They have preferred the femoral artery because it provides a larger blood vessel, making it easier to guide their instruments through, and some patients require bulkier catheters which can't fit through the radial artery."

A 63-year-old patient, Paul Hope, who recently underwent the operation, said it was little more taxing than a visit to the dentist. "It was painless and relaxed. I lay on the operating table and rolled up my sleeve," he said.

Children suffering from kidney diseases have been finding it difficult to get donors unlike adult kidney patients who require transplants. Unwillingness on the part of the parents to accept the child's condition and their failure to report it early enough are among the main reasons, say nephrologists.

On the occasion of World Kidney Day, consultant nephrologist at Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, Dr Tushar Dighe, said that of the approximate 100 cases of kidney diseases that are reported in a month, almost 10% constitute paediatric kidney diseases.

This trend has seen a rise in the last five years, although there is no adequate data on the prevalence of kidney diseases among children. It is estimated that in Pune alone, around 4,000 patients with kidney damage requiring transplants are detected every year.

In many cases, it has been observed that parents fail to accept the child's end stage kidney condition and refuse to let him/her undergo a transplant or even dialysis. This is because of lack of awareness among the masses.

Paediatric nephrologist at Bharati Vidyapeeth Hospital, Dr Jyoti Sharma said that in adults, kidney diseases can be triggered due to lifestyle disorders like diabetes or hypertension. However, in children, it can be due to the congenital nephrotic syndrome or urological problems.

According to Sharma, the extent of prevalence of kidney diseases among Indian children is not known. However the Indian Society of Paediatric Nephrology, in collaboration with the Indian Society of Nephrology, has initiated a chronic kidney disease (CKD) registry to collect and record information regarding children suffering from chronic kidney diseases.

The objective is to collate information about CKD in Indian children for advocacy in improving the situation. So far, out of the 700 registered kidney diseases patients at Bharati Hospital's paediatric nephrology department, 50% children underwent surgery due to some or the other urological problem. And most of them required transplant, added Sharma.

Sharma also said that once a child undergoes a transplant, s/he requires a lengthy follow-up procedure. Since the transplanted kidney's life is only about 10 years, another transplant is required.

Paediatric kidney disorders can be prevented if the abnormality in the organs of the child is detected through an ultrasound carried out in antenatal tests.

As Dr Manoj Matnani, consultant paediatric nephrologists at King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEM) Hospital, said, "KEM gets at least two or three cases of chronic kidney diseases in the paediatric age group and almost 80% are of the end stage requiring dialysis and transplant. This can be avoided if renal diseases are detected early in children. Parents should take the child to the doctor early. For this, there is a need to bring about awareness about paediatric nephrology and kidney diseases."

For the first time, scientists discovered that a specific type of human cell, generated from stem cells and transplanted into spinal cord injured rats, provide tremendous benefit, not only repairing damage to the nervous system but helping the animals regain locomotor function as well.

The study, published today in the journal PLoS ONE, focuses on human astrocytes - the major support cells in the central nervous system - and indicates that transplantation of these cells represents a potential new avenue for the treatment of spinal cord injuries and other central nervous system disorders.

Working together closely, research teams at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and University of Rochester Medical Center have made a major breakthrough in the use of human astrocytes for repairing injured spinal cords in rats.

"We've shown in previous research that the right types of rat astrocytes are beneficial, but this study brings it up to the human level, which is a huge step," said Chris Proschel, Ph.D., lead study author and assistant professor of Genetics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. "What's really striking is the robustness of the effect. Scientists have claimed repair of spinal cord injuries in rats before, but the benefits have been variable and rarely as strong as what we've seen with our transplants."

There is one caveat to the finding - not just any old astrocyte will do. Using stem cells known as human fetal glial precursor cells, researchers generated two types of astrocytes by switching on or off different signals in the cells. Once implanted in the animals, they discovered that one type of human astrocyte promoted significant recovery following spinal cord injury, while another did not.

"Our study is unique in showing that different types of human astrocytes, derived from the exact same population of human precursor cells, have completely different effects when it comes to repairing the injured spinal cord," noted Stephen Davies, Ph.D., first author and associate professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Colorado Denver. "Clearly, not all human astrocytes are equal when it comes to promoting repair of the injured central nervous system."

The research teams from Rochester and Denver also found that transplanting the original stem cells directly into spinal cord injured rats did not aid recovery. Researchers believe this approach - transplanting undifferentiated stem cells into the damaged area and hoping the injury will cause the stem cells to turn into the most useful cell types - is probably not the best strategy for injury repair.

According to Mark Noble, director of the University of Rochester Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Institute, "This study is a critical step toward the development of improved therapies for spinal cord injury, both in providing very effective human astrocytes and in demonstrating that it is essential to first create the most beneficial cell type in tissue culture before transplantation. It is clear that we can not rely on the injured tissue to induce the most useful differentiation of these precursor cells."

To create the different types of astrocytes used in the experiment, researchers isolated human glial precursor cells, first identified by Margot Mayer-Proschel, Ph.D., associate professor of Genetics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and exposed these precursor cells to two different signaling molecules used to instruct different astrocytic cell fate - BMP (bone morphogenetic protein) or CNTF (ciliary neurotrophic factor) .

Transplantation of the BMP human astrocytes provided extensive benefit, including up to a 70% increase in protection of injured spinal cord neurons, support for nerve fiber growth and recovery of locomotor function, as measured by a rat's ability to cross a ladder-like track.

In contrast, transplantation of the CNTF astrocytes, or of the stem cells themselves, failed to provide these benefits.

Researchers are currently investigating why one type of astrocytes performed so much better than the other; however, it is likely that multiple complex cellular mechanisms are involved.

"It is estimated that astrocytes make up the vast majority of all cell types in the human brain and spinal cord, and provide multiple different types of support to neurons and other cells of the central nervous system," said Jeannette Davies, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver and co-lead author of the study. "These multiple functions are likely to all be contributing to the ability of the right human astrocytes to repair the injured spinal cord."

With these results, the Proschel and Davies teams are moving forward on the necessary next steps before they can implement the approach in humans, including testing the transplanted human astrocytes in different injury models that resemble severe, complex human spinal cord injuries at early and late stages after injury.

"Studies like this one bring increasing hope for our patients with spinal cord injuries," said Jason Huang, M.D., associate professor of Neurosurgery at the Medical Center and Chief of Neurosurgery at Highland Hospital. "Treating spinal cord injuries will require a multi-disciplinary approach, but this study is a promising one showing the importance of modifying human astrocytes prior to transplantation and has significant clinical implications."

In addition to Proschel and Noble, Davies and Davies, Margot Mayer-Proschel, Ph.D., and Chung-Hsuan Shih, from the University of Rochester Medical Center contributed to the research. Portions of this research were funded by the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Program, the Carlson Stem Cell Fund and private donations by the international spinal cord injury community.

Funding: This work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers RO1-NS046442, RO1-NS42820]; and the CareCure SCI community. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation:

"Transplantation of Specific Human Astrocytes Promotes Functional Recovery after Spinal Cord Injury."
Davies SJA, Shih C-H, Noble M, Mayer-Proschel M, Davies JE, et al. (2011)
PLoS ONE 6(3): e17328. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017328

Heart disease is linked to just a few rogue genes as well as lifestyle choices, landmark research into Britain's biggest killer has found.

The 18 genes that raise the risk of cardiac problems, from heart attacks to hardening of the arteries, have been pinpointed in three studies involving hundreds of scientists worldwide.

The breakthrough opens the door to ways of treating and even preventing heart disease, which is to blame for one in eight deaths around the world - including more than 90,000 a year in the UK.

Heart attacks alone kill one Briton every six minutes and cost the economy euro 9billion a year.

The potential of the findings is so great that heart disease could be eradicated within 50 years, say researchers.

The discovery, detailed in the journal Nature Genetics, more than doubles the number of known heart disease genes.

Some of the newly discovered genes affect cholesterol, blood pressure and other processes important to heart health - but how many of the others damage the heart and arteries is, as yet, a mystery.


This has excited the scientists because it suggests there are important causes of heart disease yet to be found - and that drugs to combat the effects of the genes could one day make a huge improvement to health.

Dr Robert Roberts, of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Canada, said: 'This is a landmark result because we have identified so many genes and most operate using completely unknown mechanisms to us right now. Now our job is to understand how these genes work, develop a new group of drugs to target them and identify people who will benefit most.'

Professor Nilesh Samani, of the University of Leicester, who co-led the largest of the studies, said: 'Understanding how these genes work, which is the next step, will vastly improve our knowledge of how the disease develops, and could lead to new treatments.'

The 18 genes were discovered in three studies in which almost 300 scientists from around the world, including many Britons, analysed the DNA of more than 200,000 people.

They focused on genetic links to the narrowing of the arteries that supply the heart muscle with oxygen-rich blood. This narrowing, caused by the build up of fatty deposits or plaques, raises the odds of a host of ills, from blood clots to angina, heart attacks, heart failure and irregular heartbeats.

Dr Thomas Quertermous, of Stanford University, in the U.S., said that drugs tailored to stop the blood vessels from becoming clogged up could 'profoundly reduce the risk of a heart attack'.

Professor Hugh Watkins, of Oxford University, who co-led one of the studies, said the first new drugs could be on the market in under a decade.

Some of the North American researchers said the breakthrough meant we were 'inching closer' to a genetic test that will tell a person their risk of a heart attack.

However, for most people, other factors such as smoking, poor diet and a lack of exercise can play a much greater role in causing heart attacks.