FDA Approves Bayer GBCA for Coronary Artery Disease
This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light approval to Bayer AG ’s gadobutrol (Gadavist), a gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA) used in cardiac MRI procedures for patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. It’s the first and only approved agent for this type of procedure. “We now have an approved contrast agent for use in cardiac MRI to assess perfusion and late gadolinium enhancement in less than 1 hour, ” saidScott Flamm, MD who co-authored a statement on using the GBCA in myocardial perfusion studies. Gadavist is also used to evaluate the blood supply to the heart...
Source: radRounds - July 19, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 8th 2019
In this study, we identify a link between members of the genus Veillonella and exercise performance. We observed an increase in Veillonella relative abundance in marathon runners postmarathon and isolated a strain of Veillonella atypica from stool samples. Inoculation of this strain into mice significantly increased exhaustive treadmill run time.
Veillonella utilize lactate as their sole carbon source, which prompted us to perform a shotgun metagenomic analysis in a cohort of elite athletes, finding that every gene in a major pathway metabolizing lactate to propionate is at higher relative abundance postexercise. Us...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 7, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
First Cryopreservation Following Use of Assisted Death Legislation in California
Simple human dignity and self-ownership demands the right to end one's own life on one's own terms, and to be able to help others achieve this goal where they are not capable of doing so themselves. Yet these acts remain forbidden to most people in most parts of the world. Painless, effective euthanasia requires medical assistance, and providing that service remains largely illegal. This state of affairs is slowly starting to change in the US, however, and so late last year the first cryopreservation following voluntary euthanasia took place.
Cryopreservation is the only presently available end of life option that o...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 3, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs
Two patients with RBBB
Case 1.A 60-something woman presented with dyspnea. She had a history of chronic respiratory disease and hypoxia, but hypoxia was no worse than normal.ECG:There is abnormal ST Elevation in I and aVL.Although as a general rule, there should be no ST elevation in RBBB in the absence of ischemia, there sometimes is ST elevation that looks like this.Therefore, I went to find an old ECG and it looked the same.The patient ruled out for acute MI with all negative troponins.She had a completely normal formal echo.All previous ECGs were identical.This was her baseline ST elevation, and I have seen this many times.Case 2: sent...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - June 30, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Contrast Agent Uses Heart ’s Electricity to Activate Itself
Imaging the heart for signs of disease is still quite rudimentary. While CT, ultrasound, and PET (positron-emission tomography) scanners generate impressive looking graphics, they’re a long way from giving doctors a true representation of the anatomy and function of the heart and nearby vasculature.
Contrast agents are widely used to allow these modalities to produce better images of the heart, but they’re indiscriminate in what they help to illuminate. Similar to a flood light, these agents tend to make everything they permeate brighter on the output display. This results in larger vessels being visible, b...
Source: Medgadget - June 24, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Anesthesiology Cardiac Surgery Cardiology Materials Nanomedicine Radiology Source Type: blogs
ROSC: does the ECG rule out OMI? And why does a heart just stop beating? And what rhythm is this?
This study had afatal flaw: they did not keep track of all the Non-STEMI patients who were NOT enrolled, but instead were sent for immediate angiogram. It was done in Europe, where the guidelines suggest taking all shockable arrests emergently to the cath lab. So it is highly likely that physicians were very reluctant to enroll patients; they did not want them to be randomized to no angiogram. This strong suspicion is supported by their data:only 22 of 437 (5.0%) patients in this study had OMI.What percent of shockable arrests without STE have an OMI? This large registry in Circulatio...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - June 17, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
ROSC: does the ECG to rule out OMI? And why does a heart just stop beating? And what rhythm is this?
This study had afatal flaw: they did not keep track of all the Non-STEMI patients who were NOT enrolled, but instead were sent for immediate angiogram. It was done in Europe, where the guidelines suggest taking all shockable arrests emergently to the cath lab. So it is highly likely that physicians were very reluctant to enroll patients; they did not want them to be randomized to no angiogram. This strong suspicion is supported by their data:only 22 of 437 (5.0%) patients in this study had OMI. What percent of shockable arrests without STE have an OMI? This large registry in Circ...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - June 17, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 17th 2019
In this study, analysis of antioxidant defense was performed on the blood samples from 184 "aged" individuals aged 65-90+ years, and compared to the blood samples of 37 individuals just about at the beginning of aging, aged 55-59 years. Statistically significant decreases of Zn,Cu-superoxide dismutase (SOD-1), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities were observed in elderly people in comparison with the control group. Moreover, an inverse correlation between the activities of SOD-1, CAT, and GSH-Px and the age of the examined persons was found. No age-related changes in glutathione reductase activiti...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 16, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Declining Microcirculation as an Important Aspect of Aging
Tissues are supported by dense and intricate networks of capillaries, hundreds passing through any square millimeter cross-section. Many studies have shown that capillary density decreases with age, which is perhaps another of the many results of faltering tissue maintenance due to the decline in stem cell activity, or alternatively, a specific dysregulation of the processes of angiogenesis at the small scale, resulting from inappropriate cellular reactions to rising levels of damage and chronic inflammation. Fewer capillaries means a lesser delivery of nutrients and oxygen, and we might well wonder to what degree this con...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 13, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Lymph Node Organoids Integrate into the Lymphatic System and Restore Function
The lymphatic system is vital to the correct operation of the immune response: lymph nodes are where immune cells communicate with one another in order to direct the response to invading pathogens and other threats. Unfortunately lymph nodes deteriorate with age, becoming inflammatory and fibrotic, no longer able to host the necessary passage and communication of immune cells. Researchers have demonstrated that, at least in late life, this can prevent improvements elsewhere in the aged immune system from producing the expected benefits in the immune response. What use extra immune cells or better immune cells if those cell...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 11, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 3rd 2019
In conclusion, there is solid evidence that obesity deregulates cellular mechanisms related to nutrient sensing.
Altered Intercellular Communication
It is accepted that aging impacts the organism at the cellular level, but also decreases the capacity of cells of an organism to interact. During aging, there is a decreased communication at the neuronal, neuroendocrine, and endocrine levels. Two of the most compelling examples of impaired communication are inflammaging and immunosenescence. The inflammaging phenotype results in elevated cytokines. These cytokines can accelerate and propagate the aging process. T...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 2, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Decreased Cerebrospinal Fluid Flow is Associated with Cognitive Decline
Many neurodegenerative conditions are associated with the accumulation of forms of metabolic waste in the central nervous system, protein aggregates that form solid deposits between or within cells. Tauopathies such as frontotemporal dementia are associated with tau aggregates, synucleinopathies such as Parkinson's disease with α-synuclein, and amyloidoses with varying forms of amyloid, such as the amyloid-β found in elevated amounts in Alzheimer's disease patients. Alzheimer's itself is an amyloidosis that also becomes a tauopathy in its later stages. These protein aggregates and their surrounding halos of harmful bioch...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 28, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Masimo Radius PPG Wireless Oximeter FDA Cleared
Masimo won FDA clearance for its Radius PPG wireless pulse oximetry sensor. The device features Masimo’s SET Measure-through Motion and Low Perfusion technology that stays accurate as the patient moves around and about.
The tetherless product allows patients to freely move about the clinic, going to the bathroom without having to disconnect from the monitor, and in the process saving time for nurses. The technology also helps to keep track of patients while they are on those journeys, which in themselves can provide interesting clinical information.
Data from the Radius PPG is transmitted in real-time to one of any n...
Source: Medgadget - May 21, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Anesthesiology Cardiology Critical Care Emergency Medicine Source Type: blogs
XVIVO Perfusion System for Donor Lung Preservation and Assessment Finally Approved by FDA
XVIVO Perfusion, a company based out in Göteborg, Sweden, has been approved to introduce its Xvivo Perfusion System in the United States to effectively renew lungs that would otherwise would not be good enough for transplantation. The system ventilates, oxygenates, and pumps the Steen Solution Perfusate, a buffered extracellular solution, through the donor lungs while they’re inside the device. It essentially keeps the lungs alive and breathing independent of a human body. Since organs are typically cooled, packed, and rapidly shipped after harvesting, they’re not really kept alive and end up degrading quickly...
Source: Medgadget - May 1, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Cardiac Surgery Source Type: blogs
A Demonstration of Bioprinting Thick Tissue that Incorporates Small-Scale Vasculature
3-D bioprinting is a form of rapid prototyping adapted to the tissue engineering industry. Printers assemble tissues from ink containing cells and supporting materials of various types. Given a suitable recipe, the result is a functional tissue quite close to the real thing in structure and function. The interesting part of this open access paper is not that the team bioprinted small-scale model hearts as their proof of concept, given that these are not fully functional heart tissues capable of the electrical coordination required to exhibit a heart beat, and nor is it that they used materials personalized to a specific pa...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
