By Rachael Rettner
LiveScience – April 15, 2010
For those who find it tough to juggle more than a couple things at once, don't despair. The brain is set up to manage two tasks, but not more, a new study suggests.
That's because, when faced with two tasks, a part of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex (MFC) divides so that half of the region focuses on one task and the other half on the other task. This division of labor allows a person to keep track of two tasks pretty readily, but if you throw in a third, things get a bit muddled.
"What really the results show is that we can readily divide tasking. We can cook, and at the same time talk on the phone, and switch back and forth between these two activities," said study researcher Etienne Koechlin of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. "However, we cannot multitask with more than two tasks."
The results will be published this week in the journal Science.
Multitasking in the brain
The MFC is thought to be part of the brain's "motivational system." Specifically, it helps monitor the value of rewards and drives a person's behavior according to that value. In other words, it's where rewards are represented in the brain.
Scientists knew that a region at the very front of the brain, called the anterior prefrontal cortex (APC), was involved in multitasking. But they weren't sure how the MFC was involved. Are the rewards for the different tasks represented separately? Or summed together?
Koechlin and his colleagues had 32 subjects complete a letter-matching task while they had their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The subjects saw uppercase letters on a screen and had to determine whether those letters were presented in the correct order to spell out a certain word. They were given money if they performed the task with no errors.
The researchers saw that, the higher the monetary reward, the more activity there was in the MFC.
But then they made the task more difficult. In addition to uppercase letters, the subjects were also presented with lowercase letters, and had to switch back and forth between matching the uppercase letters to spell out, say, T-A-B-L-E-T, and lowercase letters to spell out t-a-b-l-e-t.
During this dual task, the MFC divided up the labor. One hemisphere of the brain encoded the reward associated with the uppercase letter task, and so showed activity during that task, while the other region encoded the reward associated with the lowercase task, Koechlin said.
Essentially, the brain behaved "as if each frontal lobe was pursuing its own goal," Koechlin said.
To make things even more complicated, the researchers introduced a third letter-matching task. Here, they saw the subject's accuracy drop considerably. It was as though, once each hemisphere was occupied with managing one task, there was nowhere for the third task to go.
"[The] subjects perform as if they systematically forget one of the three tasks," Koechlin told LiveScience.
Decision-making
The results might also explain why humans seem to have a hard time making decisions between more than two things, Koechlin said.
Previous work has indicated that people like binary choices, or decisions between two things. They have difficulty when decisions involve more than two choices, Koechlin said. When faced with three or more choices, subjects don't appear to evaluate them rationally; they simply start discarding choices until they get back to a binary choice.
This is perhaps because your brain can't keep track of the rewards involved with more than two choices, Koechlin said.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Study Finds Mental Exercise Offers Brain Limited Benefits
By Gautam Naik
The Wall Street Journal – April 21, 2010
Thousands of people world-wide are trying to improve memory, mental fitness and even intelligence levels by performing computer-based brain-training exercises. A large new study casts doubt on whether such programs can deliver what they promise.
The hallmark of a good brain-training program isn't whether it simply improves a person's ability to do the specific mental tasks in the training, but whether it also boosts other cognitive skills. The latest study, published in the journal Nature, found no evidence for such cognitive transfers.
"Our brain-training groups got better at the tests they practiced, and the more they practiced, the better they got. But there was no translation to any improvements in general cognitive function," said study co-author Jessica Grahn, a scientist at the Medical and Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. The unit has close links to the University of Cambridge.
The brain training and fitness industry is still in its infancy and largely centered on software programs or online offerings. In North America, the market increased to $265 million in 2009 from $225 million a year earlier, according to SharpBrains, a market-research firm in San Francisco. It is forecast to grow to at least $1 billion in five years.
Aging Boomers
Some $95 million of last year's revenue came from consumers who buy commercially available brain-training programs. The rest came from professional users, including schools, insurance companies and retirement communities.
The brain-training field has been boosted by studies suggesting that even adult brains are "plastic," and cognitive ability can be improved with the right mental training. Another spur is an aging population, and the hope that cognitive exercises and lifestyle changes may help to forestall brain maladies such as Alzheimer's disease.
The authors of the Nature study point out that some modest benefits to cognitive abilities have been reported in studies of older people, preschool children and videogame players who outperform nonplayers on some tests of visual attention. But wider empirical support has been lacking, they said.
The six-week online study involved 11,430 healthy participants, all viewers of a BBC television science program. They were first tested for their existing "benchmark" cognitive abilities, and then randomly assigned to one of three groups, each with a different set of tasks.
Boosting Memory
One group took part in online games aimed at improving skills linked to general intelligence, such as reasoning, problem-solving and planning. A second test group did exercises to boost short-term memory, attention and mathematical and visual-spatial skills—functions typically targeted by commercial brain-training programs. A third "control group" was asked to browse the Internet and seek out answers to general knowledge questions.
The conclusion: Those who did the brain-training exercises improved in the specific tasks that they practiced. However, their improvement was generally no greater than the gains made by the control group surfing the Internet. And none of the groups showed evidence of improvement in cognitive skills that weren't specifically used in their tasks.
Some critics said the study's design was flawed. For example, the participants were asked to do brain workouts for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a day, for six weeks. But that may not have been long enough.
"It's not brain training," said Alvaro Fernandez, chief executive officer of SharpBrains. Past studies, he said, indicate that proper cognition transfer "only happens after more than 15 hours of training and where each session lasts at least 30 minutes."
Steven Aldrich, chief executive of Posit Science of San Francisco, which sells brain-training programs, said the "study overreaches in generalizing that since their methods did not work, all methods would not work." Mr. Aldrich added that other randomized, peer-reviewed studies have shown that brain training improves some aspects of brain performance.
The Wall Street Journal – April 21, 2010
Thousands of people world-wide are trying to improve memory, mental fitness and even intelligence levels by performing computer-based brain-training exercises. A large new study casts doubt on whether such programs can deliver what they promise.
The hallmark of a good brain-training program isn't whether it simply improves a person's ability to do the specific mental tasks in the training, but whether it also boosts other cognitive skills. The latest study, published in the journal Nature, found no evidence for such cognitive transfers.
"Our brain-training groups got better at the tests they practiced, and the more they practiced, the better they got. But there was no translation to any improvements in general cognitive function," said study co-author Jessica Grahn, a scientist at the Medical and Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. The unit has close links to the University of Cambridge.
The brain training and fitness industry is still in its infancy and largely centered on software programs or online offerings. In North America, the market increased to $265 million in 2009 from $225 million a year earlier, according to SharpBrains, a market-research firm in San Francisco. It is forecast to grow to at least $1 billion in five years.
Aging Boomers
Some $95 million of last year's revenue came from consumers who buy commercially available brain-training programs. The rest came from professional users, including schools, insurance companies and retirement communities.
The brain-training field has been boosted by studies suggesting that even adult brains are "plastic," and cognitive ability can be improved with the right mental training. Another spur is an aging population, and the hope that cognitive exercises and lifestyle changes may help to forestall brain maladies such as Alzheimer's disease.
The authors of the Nature study point out that some modest benefits to cognitive abilities have been reported in studies of older people, preschool children and videogame players who outperform nonplayers on some tests of visual attention. But wider empirical support has been lacking, they said.
The six-week online study involved 11,430 healthy participants, all viewers of a BBC television science program. They were first tested for their existing "benchmark" cognitive abilities, and then randomly assigned to one of three groups, each with a different set of tasks.
Boosting Memory
One group took part in online games aimed at improving skills linked to general intelligence, such as reasoning, problem-solving and planning. A second test group did exercises to boost short-term memory, attention and mathematical and visual-spatial skills—functions typically targeted by commercial brain-training programs. A third "control group" was asked to browse the Internet and seek out answers to general knowledge questions.
The conclusion: Those who did the brain-training exercises improved in the specific tasks that they practiced. However, their improvement was generally no greater than the gains made by the control group surfing the Internet. And none of the groups showed evidence of improvement in cognitive skills that weren't specifically used in their tasks.
Some critics said the study's design was flawed. For example, the participants were asked to do brain workouts for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a day, for six weeks. But that may not have been long enough.
"It's not brain training," said Alvaro Fernandez, chief executive officer of SharpBrains. Past studies, he said, indicate that proper cognition transfer "only happens after more than 15 hours of training and where each session lasts at least 30 minutes."
Steven Aldrich, chief executive of Posit Science of San Francisco, which sells brain-training programs, said the "study overreaches in generalizing that since their methods did not work, all methods would not work." Mr. Aldrich added that other randomized, peer-reviewed studies have shown that brain training improves some aspects of brain performance.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs
Plano, TX (PRWEB) October 25, 2010
Holidays are a busy time of year, full of activity from people to places that can easily over stimulate children, especially those with special needs. A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million U.S. children in the have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs. HOPELights holiday tips are designed to aid the families that love and support special needs children-having guidance on high-sensory events like the upcoming holidays are critical.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Autism Spectrum Disorder dials in at an average of 1 in 110 children, while Down Syndrome occurs 1 in every 800 births. See related data at: www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html and www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/ds.htm. Many other children experience a variety of issues from Mental Retardation to Developmental Delays, Down Syndrome to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety to Fragile X, ADHD and so on.
Even typical needs children go into over-drive. For example, one study (Ahn, Miller, Milberger, McIntosh, 2004) shows that at least 1 in 20 children (with or without any other diagnosis) are affected by SPD, a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses.
"This means millions of children in the United States have some sort of challenge with things like loud noises, environmental or event transitions, crowds, sensitivities to taste or touch just to name a few," said Dawn Grosvenor, founder of HOPELight Media. "Which is why putting special emphasis on how to help children and their families through the holiday hustle and bustle is critical in ensuring they have a positive, healthy and loving interaction with friends and family. Holidays should be cherished and foster positive memories that last a lifetime."
HopeLights Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs:
(1) Make a Visual Schedule - Many children are used to routine, structure and consistency, but much of this is lost during the holidays. If your child can see it coming for days, hours and minutes before it happens, transitions from place to place or even events in your own home will be more welcoming to your child.
(2) Identify "Anchor" or Transition Items - Most children have an attachment to a favorite blanket, stuffed animal, toy or other item. Make sure your child has his or her favorites nearby especially if you are traveling. Let them carry a special bag of their favorite goodies. It is a little piece of home and helps them feel grounded and secure.
(3) Establish Warm Up Times and Personal Space Parameters - Holidays bring in visitors or not-so-familiar faces that your child only sees once or twice a year. It is important these visitors give your child time to warm up and re-establish a connection. Great Aunt Betty may not be familiar right away, but she will be rewarded with a warm interaction 20 minutes or so into her visit if Aunt Betty and your child are prepared for the event.
(4) Create and Communicate Code Words - Special needs or not, every child hits a melting point. Too many people, too many presents, skipping or moving a nap time can lead to the uncomfortable fit. As a parent, we can sometimes see these coming or at the very least we can intervene at the beginning. Talk with your family members before everyone gets together and establish a "Code Word" and ask them to help when you say this word or phrase. It can be as simple as "Houston, we have a problem." By establishing code words with friends and relatives, this lets them know when you and your child need a private moment. You will be amazed how well they understand and cooperate without hurt feelings and it takes the pressure off of you.
(5) Set Your Own Expectations in Advance - As parents we sometimes expect too much of ourselves, and put even more expectations on the "perfect" holiday. Remember you are only one person with only one goal, to love your children and ensure they are safe and happy this holiday season. Create your own To-Do lists and schedule plenty of time between events and preparation of visitors so you are not rushing through the holiday, but savoring each moment.
In honor of this holiday season, for every new annual HOPELights Children's Activity Magazine subscription for children with special needs purchased in December 2010, a new subscription will be donated to a child in pediatric hospice for the coming 2011 calendar year. See related announcement at: http://tinyurl.com/25a2wgm.
HOPELights magazine is available in three subscription options starting as low as $6.70 an issue with an annual subscription. To order a subscription for your child or give to a child you know this holiday season, go to www.hopelightmedia.com.
About HopeLight Media
HOPELight Media, LLC was founded by Dawn Grosvenor, mother of a daughter who was diagnosed with autism. HOPELights serves the purpose of developing materials and activities for special needs children that motivate and educate through positive, holistic stimuli. The materials are well suited across the range of special needs and provides support to many levels of Autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, MR, Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy and any child experiencing sensory or cognitive delays.
The HOPELights magazine is the first of its kind targeted specifically to support the sensory needs of "differently-abled" youth. The company strives to support the unique population of parents, families, and children with an uncompromising, sustained effort of inclusion and joy.
For more information, visit www.hopelightmedia.com or email hope@hopelightmedia.com
© 2010 HOPELights Media. All rights reserved.
Holidays are a busy time of year, full of activity from people to places that can easily over stimulate children, especially those with special needs. A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million U.S. children in the have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs. HOPELights holiday tips are designed to aid the families that love and support special needs children-having guidance on high-sensory events like the upcoming holidays are critical.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Autism Spectrum Disorder dials in at an average of 1 in 110 children, while Down Syndrome occurs 1 in every 800 births. See related data at: www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html and www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/ds.htm. Many other children experience a variety of issues from Mental Retardation to Developmental Delays, Down Syndrome to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety to Fragile X, ADHD and so on.
Even typical needs children go into over-drive. For example, one study (Ahn, Miller, Milberger, McIntosh, 2004) shows that at least 1 in 20 children (with or without any other diagnosis) are affected by SPD, a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses.
"This means millions of children in the United States have some sort of challenge with things like loud noises, environmental or event transitions, crowds, sensitivities to taste or touch just to name a few," said Dawn Grosvenor, founder of HOPELight Media. "Which is why putting special emphasis on how to help children and their families through the holiday hustle and bustle is critical in ensuring they have a positive, healthy and loving interaction with friends and family. Holidays should be cherished and foster positive memories that last a lifetime."
HopeLights Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs:
(1) Make a Visual Schedule - Many children are used to routine, structure and consistency, but much of this is lost during the holidays. If your child can see it coming for days, hours and minutes before it happens, transitions from place to place or even events in your own home will be more welcoming to your child.
(2) Identify "Anchor" or Transition Items - Most children have an attachment to a favorite blanket, stuffed animal, toy or other item. Make sure your child has his or her favorites nearby especially if you are traveling. Let them carry a special bag of their favorite goodies. It is a little piece of home and helps them feel grounded and secure.
(3) Establish Warm Up Times and Personal Space Parameters - Holidays bring in visitors or not-so-familiar faces that your child only sees once or twice a year. It is important these visitors give your child time to warm up and re-establish a connection. Great Aunt Betty may not be familiar right away, but she will be rewarded with a warm interaction 20 minutes or so into her visit if Aunt Betty and your child are prepared for the event.
(4) Create and Communicate Code Words - Special needs or not, every child hits a melting point. Too many people, too many presents, skipping or moving a nap time can lead to the uncomfortable fit. As a parent, we can sometimes see these coming or at the very least we can intervene at the beginning. Talk with your family members before everyone gets together and establish a "Code Word" and ask them to help when you say this word or phrase. It can be as simple as "Houston, we have a problem." By establishing code words with friends and relatives, this lets them know when you and your child need a private moment. You will be amazed how well they understand and cooperate without hurt feelings and it takes the pressure off of you.
(5) Set Your Own Expectations in Advance - As parents we sometimes expect too much of ourselves, and put even more expectations on the "perfect" holiday. Remember you are only one person with only one goal, to love your children and ensure they are safe and happy this holiday season. Create your own To-Do lists and schedule plenty of time between events and preparation of visitors so you are not rushing through the holiday, but savoring each moment.
In honor of this holiday season, for every new annual HOPELights Children's Activity Magazine subscription for children with special needs purchased in December 2010, a new subscription will be donated to a child in pediatric hospice for the coming 2011 calendar year. See related announcement at: http://tinyurl.com/25a2wgm.
HOPELights magazine is available in three subscription options starting as low as $6.70 an issue with an annual subscription. To order a subscription for your child or give to a child you know this holiday season, go to www.hopelightmedia.com.
About HopeLight Media
HOPELight Media, LLC was founded by Dawn Grosvenor, mother of a daughter who was diagnosed with autism. HOPELights serves the purpose of developing materials and activities for special needs children that motivate and educate through positive, holistic stimuli. The materials are well suited across the range of special needs and provides support to many levels of Autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, MR, Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy and any child experiencing sensory or cognitive delays.
The HOPELights magazine is the first of its kind targeted specifically to support the sensory needs of "differently-abled" youth. The company strives to support the unique population of parents, families, and children with an uncompromising, sustained effort of inclusion and joy.
For more information, visit www.hopelightmedia.com or email hope@hopelightmedia.com
© 2010 HOPELights Media. All rights reserved.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
A Tale of Two Stem Cells
By Andrew Fergusson
Christian News on Christian Today
This last month there have been two developments in stem cell therapies.
One is not ethically controversial, and represents a major gain in efficiency in making effective stem cell treatments available quite soon. It received no coverage in the British media at all.
The other is ethically controversial, is at such an early stage that clinical benefit remains unlikely for at least another decade, but achieved massive coverage. What – and why?
Stem cells are primitive cells with potential to turn into other specific cell types, and obviously it would be great in medicine if we could grow our own tissues to replace those damaged by injury or disease. Stem cells come from two different sources – one controversial, one not.
‘Embryonic stem cells’ (ESCs) are derived from human embryos and have the most potential to turn into other kinds of tissue. That’s no surprise – after all, each and every one of us came from one single cell formed when dad’s sperm and mum’s egg fused at our inception.
But that enormous potential also means that trials to date have not worked – the ESCs are so lively they are uncontrollable and cannot be directed, even in cases forming tumours. And the ethical controversy? Human lives are lost as the embryos yielding ESCs are destroyed in the process.
By contrast, stem cells can be derived from many completely non-controversial sources found in our bodies already. Stem cells from non-embryonic sources are known as ‘adult stem cells’ (ASCs).
And just a couple of years ago, scientists became able to reprogramme back human skin cells into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ (iPS) – with the potential to make many different kinds of tissues to treat diseases.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
Christian News on Christian Today
This last month there have been two developments in stem cell therapies.
One is not ethically controversial, and represents a major gain in efficiency in making effective stem cell treatments available quite soon. It received no coverage in the British media at all.
The other is ethically controversial, is at such an early stage that clinical benefit remains unlikely for at least another decade, but achieved massive coverage. What – and why?
Stem cells are primitive cells with potential to turn into other specific cell types, and obviously it would be great in medicine if we could grow our own tissues to replace those damaged by injury or disease. Stem cells come from two different sources – one controversial, one not.
‘Embryonic stem cells’ (ESCs) are derived from human embryos and have the most potential to turn into other kinds of tissue. That’s no surprise – after all, each and every one of us came from one single cell formed when dad’s sperm and mum’s egg fused at our inception.
But that enormous potential also means that trials to date have not worked – the ESCs are so lively they are uncontrollable and cannot be directed, even in cases forming tumours. And the ethical controversy? Human lives are lost as the embryos yielding ESCs are destroyed in the process.
By contrast, stem cells can be derived from many completely non-controversial sources found in our bodies already. Stem cells from non-embryonic sources are known as ‘adult stem cells’ (ASCs).
And just a couple of years ago, scientists became able to reprogramme back human skin cells into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ (iPS) – with the potential to make many different kinds of tissues to treat diseases.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
CMV in Stem Cell Transplantation: Impact on Mortality - Infectious Diseases
Prophylactic use of ganciclovir against cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and disease has been associated with inconsistent improvement in overall post-transplant survival. Because ganciclovir's beneficial effects are offset by its potential toxicities, CMV treatment strategies have been developed to reduce ganciclovir exposure in hosts with evidence of active CMV replication. The purpose of this observational cohort study was to determine the association of CMV serostatus with mortality in the era of ganciclovir prophylaxis among 1750 consecutive recipients of non-T-cell-depleted stem-cell transplants.
All patients were monitored weekly, from engraftment until day 100 after stem-cell transplant, for CMV reactivation or primary CMV infection, as indicated by blood cultures and pp65 antigenemia assay. CMV disease and neutropenia caused by ganciclovir administration were associated with mortality among CMV-seropositive patients. CMV-seronegative patients who had received allografts from CMV-seropositive donors had a significantly higher risk for death from bacteremia or invasive fungal infection, even after adjustment for duration of neutropenia, than CMV-seronegative patients whose donors were also CMV-seronegative.
Comment: CMV-seropositive status continues to be associated with mortality after allogeneic stem-cell transplantation, despite preemptive ganciclovir therapy. In this study, CMV donor-positive, recipient-negative hosts were at highest risk for death, and ganciclovir recipients in this group showed a trend toward lower mortality compared with nonrecipients. Better diagnostic methods are needed to determine whether, as the authors suggest, seronegative graft recipients who fare poorly may have undetected, subclinical CMV infections.
— Linda M. Mundy, MD
Published in Journal Watch Infectious Diseases February 21, 2002
Citation(s):
Nichols WG et al. High risk of death due to bacterial and fungal infection among cytomegalovirus (CMV)-seronegative recipients of stem cell transplants from seropositive donors: Evidence for indirect effects of primary CMV infection. J Infect Dis 2002 Feb 1; 185:273-82.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)