Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Intracerebral hemorrhage is a type of stroke that affects two million people worldwide each year. Despite its seriousness, no effective treatment has yet been developed. But if a recent study in the journal Nanomedicine is right, good news for doctors and patients might one day arrive in a very small package: namely, a peptide nanofiber scaffold. In the last few decades, molecular engineering of various self-assembling peptide nanofiber scaffolds (SAPNS) has emerged as an active area of research. The peptide can form stable structures that self-assemble into a gel-like substance. Now a University of Hong Kong team led by Professor Raymond Tak Fai Cheung, PhD and his student Lynn Yan-Hua Sang, PhD, who performed the majority of the experimental work, suggests a new therapeutic strategy for intracerebral hemorrhage: injecting SAPNS directly into a hemorrhagic lesion. Using rats, the team found that SAPNS attenuated brain injury, reduced brain cavity volume and enhanced recovery of brain function. This is the first time a nanomaterial has been used to replace the hematoma in the deep brain in a rat model of intracerebral hemorrhage. The hemostatic effects of SAPNS and other self-assembling peptides were discovered by … Continue reading →

A new stem-cell discovery might one day lead to a more streamlined process for obtaining stem cells, which in turn could be used in the development of replacement tissue for failing body parts, according to UC San Francisco scientists who reported the findings in the current edition of Cell. The work builds on a strategy that involves reprogramming adult cells back to an embryonic state in which they again have the potential to become any type of cell. The efficiency of this process may soon increase thanks to the scientists identification of biochemical pathways that can inhibit the necessary reprogramming of gene activity in adult human cells. Removing these barriers increased the efficiency of stem-cell production, the researchers found. Our new work has important implications for both regenerative medicine and cancer research, said Miguel Ramalho-Santos, Ph.D., associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF, who led the research, funded in part by a prestigious NIH Directors New Innovator Award. The earlier discovery that it was possible to take specialized adult cells and reverse the developmental clock to strip the mature cells … Continue reading →

Stem Cell Treatment for Shoulder Pain To learn more about San Diego shoulder surgery, visit orthopedicsurgerysandiego.com. By: ClientSiteVideos … Continue reading →

By Alan Mozes HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, July 29, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Treating certain adult autism patients with just a single dose of the hormone oxytocin quickly improved their ability to judge facial expressions and emotions, Japanese researchers report. Known as the "love hormone," oxytocin has been shown to play a role in emotional bonding between lovers, and between mothers and their children. In this study, it boosted underperforming neural activity in a key area of the brain that has long been associated with the processing of both empathy and emotion recognition. The finding has only been observed among male autism patients who are relatively "high-functioning," meaning that they possess verbal communication skills that exceed those of people with more severe autism. Yet, study co-author Hidenori Yamasue suggested that even "low-functioning" autism patients might ultimately derive some benefit from oxytocin treatment, because the effect of the hormone is on the ability to interpret nonverbal facial expressions, rather than dialogue. "Therefore, autistic people with deficits in nonverbal communication and interaction [might] benefit from oxytocin administration," he noted. Yamasue, from the department of neuropsychiatry in the Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Tokyo, and his team report the findings online … Continue reading →

New research has found that the brains of children with autism are relatively inflexible at switching from rest to task and this inflexibility is correlated with behaviors characteristic of the disorder. One of the core clinical symptoms of autism is restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, senior study author Vinod Menon, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, told FoxNews.com. Autism is characterized by significant behavioral inflexibility and we were interested in finding out the brain basis of inflexibility. This behavioral inflexibility can manifest as atypical motor behaviors including hand flapping or restricted interests such as preoccupation with particular activities, objects and sounds. Menon noted that these behaviors could impact how a child with autism attends to the external world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 1 in 68 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder. To study the autistic brain, Stanford researchers worked with two groups. The first group of 17 children with autism and 17 typically developing children did social face recognition tasks that required them to respond when there was a different face presented in the screen. The second equally sized group did a simple math problem … Continue reading →