Categories
Cardiovascular
Diagnostics
Endocrinology
Health Insurance
Medical Devices
Mental Health
Nutrition
Oncology
Public Health
Sexual Health
Popular Articles

New Global Subsidy For Malaria Medicines Must Ensure Quality Of Care
A new subsidy designed to increase access to life-saving antiretrovirals

ACOG Issues New Guidelines On Fetal Monitoring To Resolve Inconsistencies In Interpretation
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recently published new guidelines on electronic fetal monitoring in an attempt to increase consistency in the way physicians interpret and act on the results, the New York Times reports. Electronic fetal monitoring, which was introduced in the 1970s, is used during labor for more than 85% of the four million infants born alive in the U.S. annually, the Times reports. According to the Times, use of fetal monitors became standard obstetrical practice before it was known if the benefits outweighed the risks. The new guidelines refine the meaning of various readings from fetal monitors and could help doctors make better decisions about whether to intervene during labor.According to experts, the widespread adoption of fetal monitoring has produced both negative and positive consequences, including significant increases in caesarean deliveries and the use of forceps during vaginal deliveries. Monitoring has not been found to reduce the risk of either cerebral palsy or fetal death resulting from inadequate oxygen to the fetal brain, as it was intended to do. Furthermore, lawyers commonly use monitoring results to support malpractice cases that might have little merit, which in turn has driven rising malpractice insurance costs and prompted some obstetricians to stop delivering infants.The new guidelines divide monitor readings into three categories to help doctors interpret readings more consistently. The old guidelines had two categories -- reassuring and non-reassuring -- and it was up to the obstetrician to determine whether a non-reassuring reading required intervention. Under the new guidelines, the first category applies when tracings of the fetal heart rate are normal and no specific action is required. The second category is for indeterminate tracings that require evaluation, continuous surveillance and re-evaluation. Obstetricians treating patients in this category should consider other clinical factors that could affect the fetus and whether the patient could be safely moved to category one, according to Catherine Spong of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which produced recommendations on which the guidelines are based. The final category is for abnormal tracings that require immediate evaluation and efforts to reverse the abnormal heart rate. The Times reports that more refinements to the guidelines are expected to be released in 2010 (Brody, New York Times, 7/7).
News of the day
The First French Software Program Enabling 'Action Through Thought' - OpenViBE
Operating a computer by thought alone was unimaginable ten years ago, but this incredible feat is now possible. Financed by the ANR (the French national research agency) OpenViBE is the first French multi-partner project on brain-computer interfaces. With support from INRIA (the French national institute for research in computer science and control) and Inserm (the French national institute of health and medical research), OpenViBE has successfully perfected a free software programme with highly promising applications.
Nutrition

Advance In Understanding Cellulose Synthesis

Cellulose is a fibrous molecule that makes up plant cell walls, gives plants shape and form and is a target of renewable, plant-based biofuels research. But how it forms, and thus how it can be modified to design energy-rich crops, is not well understood. Now a study led by researchers at the Carnegie Institution"s Department of Plant Biology has discovered that the underlying protein network that provides the scaffolding for cell-wall structure is also the traffic cop for delivering the critical growth-promoting molecules where needed. The research, conducted in collaboration with colleagues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and published in the advance online publication (AOP) of Nature Cell Biology on June 14th, is a significant step for understanding how the enzymes that make cellulose and determine plant cell shape arrive at the appropriate location in the cell to do their job. "Cellulose is the most abundant reservoir of renewable hydrocarbons in the world," remarked Carnegie"s David Ehrhardt, a coauthor. "To understand how cellulose might be modified and how plant development might be manipulated to improve crop plants as efficient s of energy, we need to first understand the cellular processes that create cellulose and build cell walls." Plant cells have rigid walls that cannot easily change shape. There are many cell types, spiky trichomes to fend off bugs and sausage-shaped guard cells that regulate the plant"s breathing pores, as examples. In a previous study using the model plant Arabidopsis, Ehrhardt and team used groundbreaking imaging techniques to watch the molecules that create this array of shapes. It provided the first direct evidence for a functional connection between synthesis of the cell wall and an array of protein fibers - called microtubules - that provide the scaffolding that allow diverse plant cell shapes to be created as the cell wall pushes outward. In that study, the group engineered plants to produce a fluorescent version of cellulose synthase, the enzyme that creates cellulose fibers. They also included a fluorescent version of tubulin, the protein from which microtubules are built. Using advanced imaging techniques, they tracked the motion of single fluorescent molecules, and found that cellulose synthase moves along "tracks" defined by the microtubules. In this paper, the researchers looked at how the association between the cellulose synthase complexes and microtubules begins. The scientists were able to watch individual cellulose synthase complexes as they were delivered to the plasma membrane - the permeable film that surrounds the cell, but is inside the cell wall - and found that the microtubules not only guide where the complexes go as they build the cell wall, but microtubules also organize the trafficking and delivery of the cellulose synthase complexes to their place of action. They also looked at the role in trafficking of a structural element called the actin cytoskeleton that helps move organelles and maintains the cell"s shape. They found that it appears to be required for the general distribution of the cellulose synthase complexes, whereas microtubules appear to be required for final positioning. When there is a disruption of the complexes through a stressor such as a rapid change in water movement (osmotic stress), active cellulose synthase complexes disappear and organelles accumulate just under the plasma membrane. These organelles contain cellulose synthase and are tethered to the microtubules by a novel mechanism. Previously Ehrhardt and team found that plant microtubules move by shortening at one end while lengthening at the other end. They do this one tubulin molecule at a time, in a process the researchers call treadmilling. They now think that the tethering discovered in this research allows the cellulose synthase-containing organelles to stay with the treadmilling microtubules for prolonged periods in times of stress. They found that when the stress abates, these organelles deliver the cellulose synthase to the membrane. Notes: This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (0524334) and the EU Commission (FP6 2004-NEST C1 028974). The Carnegie Institution for Science (http://www.CIW.edu) has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science. David Ehrhardt Carnegie Institution


Add your comment:
Name:
Site address: http://
Your message:
Enter today\\\\'s date, 2 digits
(spam protection):

© Copyright 2009