Scientist’s game helps map the brain

An article about Sebastian Seung from the Boston Globe. I've posted about him before.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-07-16/business/32685087_1_brain-neurons-cell-networks
The game is here:
https://eyewire.org/

Brainwave-controlled robotic exoskeleton will help stroke victims

Inquiring minds want to know what type and then what area of the brain generates them - frontal cortex, premotor cortex, motor cortex? and how disrupted are they after a stroke?
Delta waves
 Theta waves
 Alpha waves
 Beta waves
 http://www.tecca.com/news/2012/08/28/rice-university-exoskeleton-stroke-brainwave/

Acupuncture May Reduce Post-Stroke Shoulder Pain

I refuse to dignify this title by providing anything on this. You'll have to google the title yourself. Shoulder pain after stroke has a natural ebb and flow so any benefit can't scientifically be ascribed to acupuncture alone. My shoulder pain went away after about 2 weeks with nothing specific done to alleviate it.

Leg compressions may enhance stroke recovery

This is a novel idea, but  I would think its only useful for ischemic strokes.
How long after the stroke would it still be useful? More research needed.
http://www.healthcanal.com/surgery-rehabilitation/31832-Leg-compressions-may-enhance-stroke-recovery.html
Successive, vigorous bouts of leg compressions following a stroke appear to trigger natural protective mechanisms that reduce damage, researchers report.
Compressing then releasing the leg for several five-minute intervals used in conjunction with the clot-buster tPA, essentially doubles efficacy, said Dr. David Hess, a stroke specialist who chairs the Medical College of Georgia Department of Neurology at Georgia Health Sciences University.
“This is potentially a very cheap, usable and safe – other than the temporary discomfort – therapy for stroke,” said Hess, an author of the study in the journal Stroke. The compressions can be administered with a blood pressure cuff in the emergency room during preparation for tPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, currently the only Food and Drug Administration-approved stroke therapy.
rest at the link.

The gap between clinical gaze and systematic assessment of movement disorder after stroke

This is so true. If you can't objectively measure something you can't tell when it gets better so you can keep doing that. Ask your therapists if they are objectively or subjectively  measuring your performance. The Berg-Balance Scale is a prime example of subjectivity.
http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/9/1/61/abstract

Abstract (provisional)

Background

Movement disorders after stroke are still captured by clinical gaze and translated to ordinal scores of low resolution. There is a clear need for objective quantification, with outcome measures related to pathophysiological background. Neural and non-neural contributors to joint behavior should be separated using different measurement conditions (tasks) and standardized input signals (force, position and velocity).

Methods

We reviewed recent literature for the application of biomechanical and/or elektromyographical (EMG) outcome measures under various measurement conditions in clinical research.

Results

Since 2005, 36 articles described the use of biomechanical and/or EMG outcome measures to quantify post-stroke movement disorder. Nineteen of the articles strived to separate neural and non-neural components. Only 6 of the articles measured biomechanical and EMG outcome measures simultaneously, while applying active and passive tasks and multiple velocities.

Conclusion

The distinction between neural and non-neural components to separately assess paresis, stiffness and muscle overactivity is not commonplace yet, while a large gap is to be bridged to attain reproducible and comparable results. Pathophysiologically clear concepts, substantiated with a comprehensive and concise measuring protocol will help professionals to identify and treat limiting factors in movement capabilities of post-stroke patients.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

Vasa concept

I had to put this into its own post.  I don't think this is anything other than neuroplasticity.  Be careful out there.
http://www.brainstrokes.com/

A poster on SomaSimple called it:
"Who is Rajul Vasa ?

---

Why is this woman being allowed to use this forum to advertise her strange service ?

This woman is not genuine & following much research I believe her to be running a cold hearted money making scam that tricks vulnerable people into giving her money in exchange for mumbo jumbo crap that is not scientifically proven to work.

Trust me - if 1/2 of what this woman says she can do is true there would be medical schools, research scientists and business people backing & promoting her. She would probably even get a spot on Oprah!

Following much hard work and perhaps the use of aids such as saebo flex and the drug botox a stroke patient and / or cerebal patients may get some function back but not using the non specific , generalised nonsense Ms (not Dr!) Vasa writes of. Many people have been fooled and visited India on the basis of referees quoted on her website (many of these people are employees & / friends of hers )

Most insultingly, it is seriously vulnerable and desperate people who are sucked in and unfortunately they get very dissappointed. Usually people get told 'Oh you just were not positive enough ' or 'you did not believe in the Casa concept enough so that was why it did not work for you '

I am sure this text will be deleted by a monitor, but if my writings prevent just one person from being duped by this nonsense I will be happy that I took the effort to type this with my one functioning hand."

If you want to correspond with Ms. Vasa she is on the SomaSimple forum neurological section.

I have no intention of even looking at her protocols.

You can read pros and cons on this neurology message board so you can decide which experts version of truth you want to believe.
http://www.neuropt.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3

Study questions validity of quality measure for stroke care

You'll have to read and see what this portends. Just get the patients past the 30 day period however possible. What is measured can be improved. You will notice they aren't measuring the recovery at 30 days. That would require useful hyperacute therapies .
http://www.sciencecodex.com/study_questions_validity_of_quality_measure_for_stroke_care-97378

Blood Flow In Brain Rebooted By Nanoparticles

Inquiring minds want to know if this is also releasing the pericytes clamping down on the capilliaries. 

Blood Flow In Brain Rebooted By Nanoparticles

A nanoparticle developed at Rice University and tested in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) may bring great benefits to the emergency treatment of brain-injury victims, even those with mild injuries.

Combined polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters (PEG-HCC), already being tested to enhance cancer treatment, are also adept antioxidants. In animal studies, injections of PEG-HCC during initial treatment after an injury helped restore balance to the brain's vascular system.

The results were reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.

A PEG-HCC infusion that quickly stabilizes blood flow in the brain would be a significant advance for emergency care workers and battlefield medics, said Rice chemist and co-author James Tour.

"This might be a first line of defense against reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are always overstimulated during a medical trauma, whether that be to an accident victim or an injured soldier," said Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. "They're certainly exacerbated when there's trauma with massive blood loss."

In a traumatic brain injury, cells release an excessive amount of an ROS known as superoxide (SO) into the blood. Superoxides are toxic free radicals, molecules with one unpaired electron, that the immune system normally uses to kill invading microorganisms. Healthy organisms balance SO with superoxide dismutase (SOD), an enzyme that neutralizes it. But even mild brain trauma can release superoxides at levels that overwhelm the brain's natural defenses.

"Superoxide is the most deleterious of the reactive oxygen species, as it's the progenitor of many of the others," Tour said. "If you don't deal with SO, it forms peroxynitrite and hydrogen peroxide. SO is the upstream precursor to many of the downstream problems."

SO affects the autoregulatory mechanism that manages the sensitive circulation system in the brain. Normally, vessels dilate when blood pressure is low and constrict when high to maintain an equilibrium, but a lack of regulation can lead to brain damage beyond what may have been caused by the initial trauma.

"There are many facets of brain injury that ultimately determine how much damage there will be," said Thomas Kent, the paper's co-author, a BCM professor of neurology and chief of neurology at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. "One is the initial injury, and that's pretty much done in minutes. But a number of things that happen later often make things worse, and that's when we can intervene."

Kent cited as an example the second burst of free radicals that can occur after post-injury resuscitation. "That's what we can treat: the further injury that happens because of the necessity of restoring somebody's blood pressure, which provides oxygen that leads to more damaging free radicals."

In tests, the researchers found PEG-HCC nanoparticles immediately and completely quenched superoxide activity and allowed the autoregulatory system to quickly regain its balance. Tour said ROS molecules readily combine with PEG-HCCs, generating "an innocuous carbon double bond, so it's really radical annihilation. There's no such mechanism in biology." While an SOD enzyme can alter only one superoxide molecule at a time, a single PEG-HCC about the size of a large protein at 2-3 nanometers wide and 30-40 nanometers long can quench hundreds or thousands. "This is an occasion where a nano-sized package is doing something that no small drug or protein could do, underscoring the efficacy of active nano-based drugs."

"This is the most remarkably effective thing I've ever seen," Kent said. "Literally within minutes of injecting it, the cerebral blood flow is back to normal, and we can keep it there with just a simple second injection. In the end, we've normalized the free radicals while preserving nitric oxide (which is essential to autoregulation). These particles showed the antioxidant mechanism we had previously identified as predictive of effectiveness."

The first clues to PEG-HCC's antioxidant powers came during nanoparticle toxicity studies with the MD Anderson Cancer Center. "We noticed they lowered alkaline phosphatase in the liver," Tour said. "One of our Baylor colleagues saw this and said, 'Hey, this looks like it's actually causing the liver cells to live longer than normal.'

"Oxidative destruction of liver cells is normal, so that got us to thinking these might be really good radical scavengers," Tour said.

Kent said the nanoparticles as tested showed no signs of toxicity, but any remaining concerns should be answered by further tests. The researchers found the half-life of PEG-HCCs in the blood - the amount of time it takes for half the particles to leave the body - to be between two and three hours. Tests with different cell types in vitro showed no toxicity, he said.

The research has implications for stroke victims and organ transplant patients as well, Tour said.

Next, the team hopes to have another lab replicate its positive results. "We've repeated it now three times, and we got the same results, so we're sure this works in our hands," Kent said.

Spotlight shifts—again—to anti-inflammatories for cutting CV risk

So talk to your doctor on this, I'm sure the statin makers will criticize it.
http://www.theheart.org/article/1438055.do?utm_medium=email&utm_source=20120826_ESC2012_world_2&utm_campaign=newsletter
  It's time to shift some of the attention paid to lipid-lowering drugs onto therapies that fight vascular inflammation, according to a number of experts speaking on the opening day of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2012 Congress.

Statin and aspirin studies tracking markers of inflammation show that "the magnitude of this disease associated with inflammation is at least as large as that of lipids or blood pressure," Dr Paul Ridker (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA) told heartwire here.

Ridker points out that the Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention: An Intervention Trial Evaluating Rosuvastatin (JUPITER)—for which he was primary investigator—showed that rosuvastatin (Crestor, AstraZeneca) reduced major adverse events 44% compared with placebo in patients with low LDL cholesterol but a high level of C-reactive-protein (CRP), a common marker of systematic inflammation. JUPITER showed a 50% decrease in LDL and a 37% decrease in CRP at 12 months, and the risk reduction was greater in patients with greater CRP reduction.

In his ESC talk, Ridker described two new studies getting under way looking at anti-inflammatory agents for reducing CV risk.

"Statins are weak anti-inflammatory drugs, but we've shown this enormous effect with a weak anti-inflammatory drug, so I said, 'Wow, what might happen with a real anti-inflammatory drug?' " Ridker said. "We've done dozens of lipid-lowering trials and dozens of hypertension trials, but we haven't done a single inflammation-reduction trial. But now we have two, which is very exciting."

The Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction Trial (CIRT), announced last week [1], will compare methotrexate, given 10 to 20 mg weekly for three to four years, with placebo in about 7000 adults who have had an MI within the past five years, have type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome, and are already on a statin. The end point will be a reduction in recurrent MI, stroke, and cardiovascular death among stable post-MI patients with type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome. Methotrexate is already widely available as generic drug indicated for rheumatoid arthritis and also sometimes used in higher doses to treat certain types of cancer.

Ridker and colleagues will begin site selection for CIRT in November to begin patient recruitment in March 2013, but he has already begun to talk up the significance of the study. "This is the most exciting new biology in the field," he said. "And [the National Institutes of Health] NIH is trying to back what is the most important science."

Novartis is also betting that directly attacking inflammation will make a big impact on cardiovascular events in patients already on a statin. The company is backing the CANTOS trial of canakinumab (Ilaris), a high-affinity human monoclonal anti-human interleukin-1 (IL-1) antibody currently used for the treatment of IL-1-driven inflammatory diseases (cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome).

The study will compare three doses of canakinumab with placebo in about 17 200 stable post-MI patients with elevated high-sensitivity CRP levels. The primary end point will be first occurrence of a major adverse cardiovascular event, a composite of cardiovascular-related death, nonfatal MI, and stroke over a follow-up of three years. There will also be a substudy measuring the change from baseline in the patients' carotid plaque burden in the bifurcation region of the index carotid artery and another study measuring the change from baseline of the patients' insulin secretion rate.

The study began in April 2011 and is expected to be completed in the summer of 2016.

'Clot nets' help stroke recovery

I'm glad they are coming up with alternative ways of clearing clots but I wish they would also focus on the secondary deaths due to the neuronal cascade of death. Pericytes, excitotoxicity, glutamate poisioning.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=247258
Using small nets to extract blood clots from patients' brains may be the future of stroke care, according to two studies.
Clots block blood vessels, starving parts of the brain of oxygen, which leads to symptoms such as paralysis and loss of speech.
Two studies, presented in the Lancet medical journal, suggest extracting clots with nets could improve recovery.
The Stroke Association said it was very excited by the treatment's potential.
There are already techniques for reopening blocked blood vessels in people's brains.
Some patients will be given "clot-busting" drugs, but this needs to be in the hours just after the stroke and is not suitable for everyone.
CLOT EXTRACTION
Other techniques have been developed to extract the clot. Some procedures pass a tube up through the groin to the brain. There the wire passes through the clot, forming a coil on the far side and then pulling the clot out. However, this is far from routine practice.
The latest methods involve a tiny wire cage instead of a coil. This pushes the clot up against the walls of the artery and enmeshes the clot in the wires, allowing doctors to pull the clot back out of the groin.
Two similar devices were compared with the current coil methods. One trial of 113 patients showed 58 percent had good brain function after three months, compared with 33pc of those treated with the coil method, as well as a lower death rate.
Another study in 178 patients showed almost double the chance of living independently after treatment.
One of the researchers involved, Prof Jeffrey Saver from the University of California, Los Angeles, told the BBC that these techniques would become more common, as they are more likely to clear clots than drugs.
"Clot-busting drugs only partially reopen 40pc of large blocked arteries. These devices partially reopen 70-90pc of large blocked arteries.
"Second, these devices can be used in patients in whom it is not safe to give 'clot busting' drugs, such as patients taking anticoagulant medications, patients who had recent surgery, and patients who are between 4.5 to eight hours after stroke onset."
In the long term he can see drugs being used as a first option and then clot removal if the drugs fail or cannot be used.
'MAJOR STEPS FORWARD’
Responding to the research, the Stroke Association's Dr Clare Walton said clot-busters did not work for all patients so new techniques could help many patients.
She added: "Clot retrieval devices have the potential to be used with more stroke patients and are better at removing blood clots than clot-busting drugs.

Video Catches Tiny Brain Proteins on the Move

This is so simple, lets set up videorecording and watch neuroplasticity in action, axon sprouting and dendrite connections. Then we might be able to make a decent hypothesis as to how to enable neuroplasticity after stroke. We know it works, we just have no idea as to how it works or how to duplicate it.  Get your researcher involved.
 http://danapress.typepad.com/weblog/2012/08/video-catches-tiny-brain-proteins-on-the-move-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DanaFoundationBlog+%28Dana+Foundation+Blog+Atom%29

By illuminating certain proteins and blocking and unblocking just one of the myriad pathways inside a neuron, a team from the University of Southern California recorded, on video, how proteins shuttle along inside a jellyfish cell (see video after the jump).
The short video shows vesicles carrying the glowing proteins entering both the axon and the dendrite sections of the neuron; when they enter the axon, though, they stop and reverse course, the researchers said.

Video at the link.

Haptic suit aids stroke rehabilitation

All I could think of when seeing this was, is it the Americanized version of the Regent suit from Russia?, only from Jan. 2011 so these people should know about it.  But progress anywhere is good, just get it into therapists hands.

Haptic suit aids stroke rehabilitation

Engineers at Arizona State University discuss the "haptic suit," a wearable technology for improving stroke rehabilitation. The suit contains motion sensors and provides real-time instruction and feedback to patients. The suit is being developed at ASU's Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC) with funding from the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. I-Corps prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and broadens the impact of their basic research projects. Produced by Alexander D. Chapin and Kirk Davis, Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

Adjusting kinematics and kinetics in a feedback- controlled toe walking model

We must have enough smart therapists that could follow this same approach for stroke survivors.
http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/9/1/60/abstract

Abstract (provisional)

Background

In clinical gait assessment, the correct interpretation of gait kinematics and kinetics has a decisive impact on the success of the therapeutic programme. Due to the vast amount of information from which primary anomalies should be identified and separated from secondary compensatory changes, as well as the biomechanical complexity and redundancy of the human locomotion system, this task is considerably challenging and requires the attention of an experienced interdisciplinary team of experts. The ongoing research in the field of biomechanics suggests that mathematical modeling may facilitate this task. This paper explores the possibility of generating a family of toe walking gait patterns by systematically changing selected parameters of a feedback-controlled model.

Methods

From the selected clinical case of toe walking we identified typical toe walking characteristics and encoded them as a set of gait-oriented control objectives to be achieved in a feedback-controlled walking model. They were defined as fourth order polynomials and imposed via feedback control at the within-step control level. At the between-step control level, stance leg lengthening velocity at the end of the single support phase was adaptively adjusted after each step so as to facilitate gait velocity control. Each time the gait velocity settled at the desired value, selected intra-step gait characteristics were modified by adjusting the polynomials so as to mimic the effect of a typical therapeutical intervention - inhibitory casting.

Results

By systematically adjusting the set of control parameters we were absle to generate a family of gait kinematic and kinetic patterns that exhibit similar principal toe walking characteristics, as they were recorded by means of an instrumented gait analysis system in the selected clinical case of toe walking. We further acknowledge that they to some extent follow similar improvement tendencies as those which one can identify in gait kinematics and kinetics in the selected clinical case after inhibitory casting.

Conclusions

The proposed walking model that is based on a two-level control strategy has the ability to generate different gait kinematics and kinetics when the set of control parameters that define walking premises change. Such a framework does not have only educational value, but may also prove to have practical implications in pathological gait diagnostics and treatment.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

Motivation through Inclusion of Failure in Stroke Rehabilitation

A new way of looking at rehab. If parents protected and prevented their newborns from ever falling while learning to walk they may never learn.
Another dissertation, better than most professionals.
Failure +1 more try.
http://gradworks.umi.com/35/15/3515244.html

The environment created by classic physical therapy for locomotion used with patients recovering from stroke is often one of overprotection, which has been shown to have a significant negative effect on patient motivation. Fall-based therapy, by contrast, uses a robot to allow patients to experience failure at walking tasks without risking physical injury that results from falls. The inclusion of this option for Non-Harmful Failure in the walking tasks within the rehabilitation environment may increase the motivation of individuals participating in the therapy over the increases seen in classic physical therapy, leading to greater rehabilitative success. By allowing for a non-harmful failure, Fall-Based therapy dissipates the overprotection of classic therapy, removing a strong negative influence on patient motivation, and should result in a significant increase in patient motivation to participate and complete physical therapy.
This study sought to examine the literature on motivation of participants while also cataloging their experiences during the study through quantitative and qualitative measures. Participants completed a survey, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), weekly during the study to record motivation throughout. Additionally, a subset of participants completed a semistructured interview discussing their motivation. These measures were examined in hopes of finding an increase in motivation due to Fall-Based therapy.

Staff perceptions of using outcome measures in stroke rehabilitation

After reading this you'll no longer wonder why stroke recovery is so bad. Nothing is standardized or even measured. If you can't measure it you can't improve it. Google returns 36 million hits on this so ask your  medical staff how they are measuring and improving their care of stroke survivors.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09638288.2012.709305

The use of standardised outcome measures is an integral part of stroke rehabilitation and is widely recommended as good practice. However, little is known about how measures are actually used or their impact. This study aimed to identify current clinical practice; how healthcare professionals working in stroke rehabilitation use outcome measures and their perceptions of the benefits and barriers to use. Method: Eighty-four Health Care Professionals and 12 service managers and commissioners working in stroke services across a large UK county were surveyed by postal questionnaire. Results: Ninety-six percent of clinical respondents used at least one measure, however, less than half used measures regularly during a patient’s stay. The mean number of tools used was 3.2 (SD = 1.9). Eighty-one different tools were identified; 16 of which were unpublished and unvalidated. Perceived barriers in using outcome measures in day-to-day clinical practice included lack of resources (time and training) and lack of knowledge of appropriate measures. Benefits identified were to demonstrate the effectiveness of rehabilitation interventions and monitor patients’ progress. Conclusions: Although the use of outcome measures is prevalent in clinical practice, there is little consistency in the tools utilised. The term “outcome measures” is used, but staff rarely used the measures at appropriate time points to formally assess and evaluate outcome. The term “measurement tool” more accurately reflects the purposes to which they were put and potential benefits. Further research to overcome the barriers in using standardised measurement tools and evaluate the impact of implementation on clinical practice is needed.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Health professionals working in stroke rehabilitation should work together to agree when and how outcome measures can be most effectively used in their service.
• Efforts should be made to ensure that standardised tools are used to measure outcome at set time-points during rehabilitation, in order to achieve the anticipated benefits.
• Communication between service providers and commissioners could be improved to highlight the barriers in using standardised measures of outcome.

Read More: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09638288.2012.709305

Astrocytes control the generation of new neurons from neural stem cells

More pieces of the brain puzzle.
http://www.sciencecodex.com/astrocytes_control_the_generation_of_new_neurons_from_neural_stem_cells-97238

Astrocytes are cells that have many functions in the central nervous system, such as the control of neuronal synapses, blood flow, or the brain's response to neurotrauma or stroke.

Reduces brain tissue damage
Prof. Pekny's laboratory together with collaborators have earlier demonstrated that astrocytes reduce the brain tissue damage after stroke and that the integration of transplanted neural stem cells can be largely improved by modulating the activity of astrocytes.

Generation of new neurons
In their current study, the Sahlgrenska Academy researchers show how astrocytes control the generation of new neurons in the brain. An important contribution to this project came from Åbo Academy, one of Sahlgrenska's traditional collaborative partners.
"In the brain, astrocytes control how many new neurons are formed from neural stem cells and survive to integrate into the existing neuronal networks. Astrocytes do this by secreting specific molecules but also by much less understood direct cell-cell interactions with stem cells", says Prof. Milos Pekny.

Important regulator
"Astrocytes are in physical contact with neural stem cells and we have shown that they signal through the Notch pathway to stem cells to keep the birth rate of new neurons low. We have also shown that the intermediate filament system of astrocytes is an important regulator of this process. It seems that astrocyte intermediate filaments can be used as a target to increase the birthrate of new neurons."

Virus could aid post-stroke recovery

Another option needing more research. More down under brains.
http://www.odt.co.nz/campus/university-otago/223084/virus-could-aid-post-stroke-recovery
In a remarkable twist, a virus which causes scabby mouth skin infection in sheep could be used to help people recover better after strokes, new University of Otago research suggests.
Marie Inder, who will graduate from Otago University today with a PhD in microbiology and immunology, said the research, at the university's virus research unit, could create "exciting new options" for medical treatment.
Those included potentially improved recovery from some strokes, by increasing the repair of blood vessels in the brain.
After her own father, Robert Inder, survived a stroke in 2004, she had become more aware of the need to improve post-stroke therapies.
A growth factor protein generated by the virus could also potentially be used in other therapeutic settings, including to improve healing of diabetic skin ulcers and burn injuries.
Ms Inder devoted her doctoral studies to analysing the growth-factor protein- called "vascular skin growth factor" (VEGF). This promotes skin and blood vessel development.
The growth factor is generated by the orf virus, using hijacked host cells.
The orf virus causes scabby mouth in sheep, and a skin infection in humans.
In order to generate the protein growth factor by using hijacked host cells, the virus uses a gene it had earlier "stolen" from its hosts hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The virus replicates only in growing host skin cells, and uses the VEGF protein to promote positive conditions for its own development.
An unusual aspect of this particular growth factor is that it stimulates skin growth without promoting an inflammatory response.
This could help in therapeutic uses, including wound healing.
Ms Inder, who is of Samoan ancestry, said she was "really excited and really relieved" to have completed her research, which was supported by an HRC Pacific Health PhD Scholarship.
Andrew Mercer, who is director of the microbiology department's virus research unit, has said some viruses deployed "a vast array of weapons".
By enlisting aspects of the viruses' strengths to work for humans rather than against them, "a whole new arsenal of tools" could be created to counter diseases.
Prof Mercer, who supervised Ms Inder's research, with fellow supervisors Dr Lyn Wise and Dr Stephen Fleming, said her research had contributed significantly to the field.

When your recovery fails - What is your Plan B?

So read this commencement address and a  medical blogger discussing it. Then ask yourself, does your doctor and therapists have a plan B? And why don't they? Only 10% of survivors get to full recovery. Those numbers are from the NSA so I really don't trust them.
Commencement address:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/06/atul-gawande-failure-and-rescue.html
Medical blogger:
http://www.medrants.com/archives/6955

Supersmall lab-on-a-chip is superfast

This really seems like some excellent technology to prove what type of stroke you had. And if we are going to continue down the tPA route then we had better get a faster, less technology intensive and less education needed way of determining the type of stroke you had.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343100/title/Supersmall_lab-on-a-chip_is_superfast
Looking for a specific protein in a drop of blood is like trying to find a notorious white whale on the seven seas — it takes some time. But a new device quickly filters the ocean of molecules in a blood sample, capturing proteins that may warn of an impending heart attack or out-of-whack insulin levels. Besides detecting potential emergencies, such devices could minimize the fraught days a patient spends waiting for lab results, providing them in mere minutes.
http://www.genomeweb.com//node/1119771?hq_e=el&
Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed a nanowire-based device to separate and analyze protein biomarkers in blood samples. As they report in Nano Letters, the filtering, separation, and analysis all occurs on a single chip — and rapidly. The chip, adds ScienceNews, is made of two compartments, one that is full of a "forest" of densely packed nanowires coated with protein-specific antibodies and one that contains flat nanowires, also coated with antibodies, that are connected to electrodes. The researchers tested their device on its ability to detect troponin T, which it was able to do sensitively and in less than 10 minutes. "It's clever," Yale University's Tarek Fahmy tells ScienceNews. "They are doing separation and concentration on the same chip." 
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl3021889
Importantly, this is the first demonstration of an all-NWs device for the whole direct analysis of blood samples on a single chip, able to selectively collect and separate specific low abundant proteins, while easily removing unwanted blood components (proteins, cells) and achieving desalting effects, without the requirement of time-consuming centrifugation steps, the use of desalting or affinity columns.

Interactive cueing with walk-Mate for Hemiparetic Stroke Rehabilitation

This might be the walk-mate;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gogzSan8EdQ

http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/9/1/58/abstract

Abstract (provisional)

Background

Many techniques that compensate for locomotion problems in daily life using externally controlled stimulation have recently been reported. These techniques are beneficial for effortlessly supporting patients' locomotive functions, but the users of such devices must necessarily remain dependent on them. It is possible that some individuals with gait impairment may be prevented recovering locomotive function. From a rehabilitation viewpoint, it may therefore be supposed that ideally, devices that can be used in daily life to improve the locomotive functions of the body itself should be proposed.

Methods

We evaluate the effectiveness of Walk-Mate, which has been used mainly as a gait compensation device, as a gait rehabilitation training device by analyzing improvement in locomotion before, during and after rehabilitation in hemiparetic patients and comparing it with a previous gait training method. Walk-Mate generates a model walking rhythm in response to a user's locomotion in real time, and by indicating this rhythm using auditory stimuli, provides a technology that supports walking by reducing asymmetries and fluctuations in foot contact rhythm. If patients can use the system to learn a regulated walking rhythm, then it may also be expected to fulfil the functions of a gait rehabilitation training device for daily life.

Results

With regard to asymmetry, significantly improvements were seen for compensatory movement during training using Walk-Mate, but improvements were not retained as rehabilitative results. Regarding fluctuations in the foot contact period, significant improvement was observed for compensatory movement during training and these significant improvements were retained as rehabilitative results. In addition, it became clear that such improvement could not be adequately obtained by the previously proposed training technique utilizing constant rhythmic auditory stimulation.

Conclusions

Walk-Mate effectively compensated for locomotion problems of hemiparetic patients by improving gait rhythm both during and after training, suggesting that locomotive function can be effectively recovered in some patients. The interactive mechanism of Walk-Mate may be capable of simultaneously achieving the aims of gait compensation and gait rehabilitation training methods previously developed under individual frameworks. Walk-Mate is a promising technology for assisting the reintegration of disabled persons into society.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.