The previous week was a busy one for me and anybody would have known from my blogs, I didn't write much last week because of the things and programmes I had before me but that's all gone now anyway. I was busy though but learning is one thing that doesn't get overshadowed by one's busy schedule, one way or the other you just have to learn. This week's lessons are also nice too so I thought I should share with you. Have fun while learning:

Monday: A new portable gel that could save an injured eye

_{Hydrogel developed by researchers can treat patient}

Basically, this concept was developed to aid soldiers that might get an eye injury on battlefields where health care is far away and a delay might lead to permanent loss of the injured eye.

A team of scientists from different disciplines at the University of Southern California are advancing and are steps closer to the solution of this. They recently developed a gel that is temperature-sensitive and also a temporary seal that can change from fluid to a semi-solid state when applied to the eye helping to cover the open part of the eye. Remember I said "a temporary seal", it can be removed by the addition of cool water by doctor majorly when the patient is ready to permanently close up the opening or injury.

The scientists observed the increase in the percentage of ocular injuries related to war especially in case of improved explosive devices. The scientists were majorly working on the retinal implant with a hydrogel, "poly N-isopropylacrylamide" which I don't think has a better replacement- it's just perfect. This hydrogel becomes liquid when cooled and semi-solid when heated which makes it perfect for the purpose it's needed to serve.

And if you look closely, in the image above, the eye in the middle has a syringe injecting the hydrogel into the eye. The syringe was made by the scientists that developed the gel, of course, you don't expect to them to apply the hydrogel with their hands and aside from that, the syringe has the ability to cool the hydrogel and make it liquid before applying onto the eye injury. The cooling chamber was filled "calcium ammonium nitrate crystals " to aid the cooling. Once water is added, the crystals activate and cool hydrogel to the "operating temperatures" in 30 seconds. In addition, there were able to make the syringe maintain the operating temperatures for at least 10 minutes to enable a careful filling of the hydrogel.

You can read more

Tuesday: Adding aspirin to cancer drugs increase its effectiveness

_{The University of Queensland}

Before now, we were actually clueless about the aspirin-cancer connection but now we know the addition of aspirin to cancer drugs can increase the effectiveness of the drug. Scientists believe that the addition of aspirin to a known cancer drug would increase its effectiveness against a group of tumors that prove to be resistant to the cancer drugs.

Scientists at the University of Queensland are hoping to test the cancer drugs and aspirin "clinically" on a patient with a type of cancer that has defied normal cancer drugs.

University of Queensland Diamantina Institute researcher Associate Professor Helmut Schaider said cancers driven by mutations in a group of genes, known as RAS, had a low response to treatments with currently no drug directly targeting them.

Pancreatic cancer, colorectal and lung cancer are just a few cancers that I know defied regular cancer treatments with an addition of a very low survival rate clause.

Dr. Schaider made it known that the addition of aspirin to a cancer-inhibiting drug provided it with extra effectiveness against lung cancer in a "mouse and melanoma with RAS mutations."

The cancer drug used is sorafenib and it was said that the quantity needed might be reduced once a combination is required because a good treatment should have a negligible adverse effect on the patients. The rate of drug combination should not be done by patients as aspirin also have their own side effects of an overdose.

Currently, there are researches going on as to the best rates of combining aspirin with other cancer inhibiting drugs.

You can read more

Wednesday: Chewing gum and probiotics no good in alleviating sore throats

_{The University of Southampton}

Previously, it has been believed that probiotics and xylitol chewing gums are a substitute for antibiotics used for sore throat treatments and that both probiotics and xylitol prevent bacterial5): growth and inhibit respiratory tract infections but that's a lie, a recent study by the University of Southampton has debunked that. A study published in the "Canadian Medical Association Journal," couldn't pinpoint even a single effect of either the chewing gum or the xylitol, they were both neutral and not having any effect on the sore throat..

One of the authors of the study said it was not clear whether chewing gum and probiotics would be of help in alleviating sore throat symptoms in their test which was negative but it is of course, a priority to find new ways of treatments every time especially when it is not an antibiotic treatment

Apart from the laboratory tests, they carried out human tests too. They got patients with a sore throat and gave them either probiotics or xylitol chewing gum to take as treatment. After the completion of about 75% of their treatment, "there were no significant differences between both groups which means that either xylitol or probiotics don't even help with a sore throat.

You can read more

Thursday: Scientists Make Paralyzed Rats Walk Again

_Pixabay

This is typically a good news for humans as treatments are usually tested on lower animals like dogs and rats and once they are effective, the same result would be gotten if they do same to humans. So, this means there is hope for humans as regards paralysis- a paralyzed person would be able to walk soon.

A paralyzed public rat with a wounded spinal cord was able to walk again after the restoration of their nervous function and sensation via stem cells and tissue engineering. The scientists at the Tel Aviv University used the oral mucosa from the mouth to do this.

The research was led by Prof. Daniel Offen of TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine and Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, Dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion.

A lot of struggles in the medical rehabilitation world but at least we now have something to point at as progress in neuronal transplants and tissue engineering. Moreover, there has never been a time in history where

1. Severely wounded spinal cord effects were reversed and
2. Stem cells were used to restore feelings in the limbs and complex mobility of humans in only a few weeks.

To achieve this, the researchers first used grown tissues to connect the ends of the wounded spinal cords of the rat and secondly, they produced some new stem cells to help the rat restore limb sensitivity and mobility. The leading research Professor, isolated "mature stem cells" from the mouth after which the researchers placed the mature stem cells on a "three-dimensional scaffold" made of organic materials.

The next stage utilized Prof. Offen’s research to infuse the cells with growth factors that led them to secrete proteins to support the renewed production of neurons.

Finally, after all the above processes, what was left was just the implantation of the tissues into the rats and the process just like I said earlier is capable of restoring the limbs' sensitivity, mobility, coordination and ability to walk in less than 3 weeks. About 42% of the rats began to walk normally without training or rehabilitation.

So this is really a good news for people with paralysis.

You can read more

And as for Friday's lesson, it is very voluminous, it can stand alone and I wouldn't want to compress it too much. So, Friday's lesson will come up tomorrow as a single post. Thank you!

Thank you for coming around!!

That little boy, @pearlumie.

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Sources

_{University of Southern California | The University of Queensland | University of Southampton | AFTAU}

References

Hydrogel | Aspirin | Probiotics | Paralysis