Archive for the ‘MEDICAL SCIENCE’ Category

7 Sep

The Irish that Battled Blight, Plague, Flu and TB

Posted by seanduke in AGRICULTURE, EPIDEMIOLOGY, MEDICAL SCIENCE. Tagged: , , , .


“The dance of death” by Michael Wolmegut (1493) [Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Irish history is littered with stories of death and destruction, from the days of Cromwell to the Civil War. But, diseases have also ravaged the land at various points in our history.

The ‘Black Death’ or the Plague, arrived here in 1347 (give or take a year or two according to experts), landing first in the port towns of Howth, Youghal and Waterford, before spreading at a frightening pace all over the country.

Then there was the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s triggered by a disease that rendered potatoes unfit for consumption.

In 1918, Influenza, or flu, wiped out a staggering 50 to 100 million people worldwide – more than the casualties of World War 1, which are estimated at 37 million. In Ireland at least 20,000 people died of from this flu that mainly killed healthy young people.

Then in the 1950s, TB arrived, again striking fear into the population before the authorities finally managed to get it under control.

In all four situations there were Irish people that contributed to the fight against disease. To find out more

LISTEN: Interview with Dr Aoife MacCormack & Daniel Kirby of Ireland’s Biomedical Diagnostic Institute

This was first broadcast on Science Spinning on 103.2 Dublin City FM on 05-09-2012

LINKS:

Biomedical Diagnostic Institute

Videos: How Irish Science Battled Big Diseases

7 Aug

‘Epilepsy Gene’ Find Opens Door to Better Treatment

Posted by seanduke in MEDICAL SCIENCE, NEUROSCIENCE. Tagged: , , , .


Epileptic seizures are the result of a storm of electrical activity in the brain which can last from a few seconds up to several minutes (Credit: NYU Langone Medical Center).

The discovery by scientists in Dublin of an ‘epilepsy gene’ that is present in “unusually high amounts” in people with epilepsy opens the door for the development of new and better drug treatments for epileptic seizures.

Epilepsy is a disease that affects 37,000 Irish adults, as well as an estimated 50 million people worldwide, but little is known about why epileptic seizures occur, or why a significant number of people do not respond to drug therapies.

One in three people with epilepsy have a problem with the currently available drug therapies. This group of people either do not respond at all to the drugs, or they experience severe side effects.

The reasons why epilepsy occurs in certain people, and why fits happen only occasionally are poorly understood. There is a genetic link, but drug and alcohol abuse, as well as sleep deprivation are also causative factors, say scientists.

The finding of a new gene linked to epilepsy by Professor David Henshall and his team at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland was reported in the scientific journal, Nature Medicine.

LISTEN: Interview with Professor David Henshall

This interview was broadcast on the 26th July 2012 on Science Spinning on 103.2 Dublin City FM

 

7 Aug

Stem Cells ‘Tricked’ into Producing Bone

Posted by seanduke in CANCER, MEDICAL SCIENCE, THE SUNDAY TIMES. Tagged: , , , , , .


The use of stem cells to replace damaged or diseased bone tissue would be a less risky and invasive approach than using surgical bone grafts, as depicted in this image (Credit: Wikipedia)

Stem cells, the body’s most flexible cells, have been ‘tricked’ into producing bone cells by a team of researchers based at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, led by Professor Fergal O’Brien.

The significance of this work is that it provides a way for scientists to generate new bone tissue where it has been damaged, or destroyed by disease, and avoid the need for surgical bone grafts.

Surgical bone grafts, either from another part of the person’s body, or from a donor, carry the risk of infection, and also, there is no guarantee that the grafted bone will not properly ‘take’ at the site where it’s required.

Surgery causes stress on the body, and, where possible, medics try to avoid it.

The use of stem cells to produce bone could provide the means for producing exactly the right amount of bone, at the location where it is required.

READ MORE:

The article below was published in The Sunday Times 22.07.2012

15 Jun

Spinal cord injury repair to arrive ‘inside a decade’

Posted by seanduke in MATERIALS, MEDICAL SCIENCE. Tagged: , , , , , , .


There is no current treatment for serious spinal cord injury, but that is likely to change inside the next decade (Credit: http://www.topnews.in/health/)

People with spinal cord injuries could have a radical new treatment available to rebuild their spine, and help them walk again, inside the next decade.

That’s according to Professor Abhay Pandit, a NUI Galway-based scientist, and Director of the Network of Excellence for Functional Biomaterials, which is also located in Galway.

Prof Pandit’s research group is aiming to construct a kind of  biological scaffold that will link separated pieces of spinal, and reconnect them, using stem cells that are ‘told’ to grow into new spinal cord tissue.

There are many hurdles to overcome before such a treatment is available, but Prof Pandit believes it will happen, and, finally, there will be an effective treatment available to help people with spinal cord injury.

This will be great news to those affected by spinal cord injuries and their families.

According to Spinal Injuries Ireland, spinal cord injury affects, on average, one person per week in Ireland.

The majority of these injuries are sustained by people in the 18 to 35 age group, and 75 per cent of these do not return to work after their injury.

Click on the link below to hear an interview with Prof Pandit, explaining the science behind what is planned over the next few years, and Martin Codyre, a 34-year-old Irish engineer with a spinal cord injury.

LISTEN: Interviews with Abhay Pandit and Martin Codyre

Broadcast first on Science Spinning on 103.2 Dublin City FM

18 Apr

DCU scientist comes up with a greener, cheaper way to make drugs

Posted by seanduke in CHEMISTRY, MEDICAL SCIENCE. Tagged: , , , , .


DCU researcher and ‘green chemist’ Dr Nick Gathergood, has developed a cheaper, greener way of producing new antibiotic drugs.

LISTEN: Interview with Dr Nick Gathergood

Broadcast on the weekly Science Spinning show on 103.2 Dublin City FM on 05-04-2012

READ: The article below was published in The Sunday Times, Irish Edition, on 08-04-201

16 Mar

Long-release drug technology at WIT can improve treatment of chronic disease

Posted by seanduke in MEDICAL SCIENCE. Tagged: , , , , , , .


One of the biggest problems in treating people that have long term medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, depression or schizophrenia is ensuring that they take their medication correctly every day as prescribed.

For a variety of reasons, that doesn’t always happen and that means that when the person visits the GP’s office, the practitioner doesn’t know whether a person’s condition has, for example, worsened, due to not taking medicines, or not.

 For this reason, it would be greatly advantageous if GPs could inject patients with a drug formulation that would release itself as required in the patient’s body, over a period of weeks, or even months.

 This is the reasoning behind the Prolonged Release Injectable Device Project (PRIDE) a collaboration between two applied research centres based at Waterford IT; the Pharmaceutical and Molecular Biotechnology Research Centre (PMBRC) and the South Eastern Applied Materials Research Centre (SEAM)

 PRIDE was recently awarded €145,ooo in funding from Science Foundation Ireland.

LISTEN: Interview with Dr Niall O’Reilly Manager of the PMBRC.

Broadcast on Science Spinning on 103.2 Dublin City FM on 15.03.2012


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