Author Archives: Fredricko

Alzheimer's, Dementia Care to Cost U.S. $200 Billion This Year

Posted on by

THURSDAY, March 8 (HealthDay News) -- Caring for people with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia will cost the United States about $200 billion this year, a total that includes $140 billion paid by Medicare and Medicaid, new statistics released Thursday show.

Medicaid payments are 19 times higher for seniors with Alzheimer's and other dementias and Medicare payments for the conditions are nearly three times higher, compared to payments for other patients, according to the "2012 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures" report from the Alzheimer's Association.

Nearly 30 percent of people with Alzheimer's and other dementias are covered by both Medicare and Medicaid, compared to 11 percent of people without the conditions. This means that Medicare and Medicaid costs associated with Alzheimer's and other dementias will continue to rise as baby boomers age, the report said.

"Alzheimer's is already a crisis, and it's growing worse with every year," Harry Johns, president and CEO of the Alzheimer's Association, said in an association news release.

"While lives affected and care costs soar, the cost of doing nothing is far greater than acting now. Alzheimer's is a tremendous cost-driver for families and for Medicare and Medicaid. This crisis simply cannot be allowed to reach its maximum scale because it will overwhelm an already overburdened system," Johns added.

Most people with Alzheimer's and other dementias have at least one other serious chronic health problem, and Alzheimer's acts as a "cost multiplier" on these other diseases, according to the report.

For example, the statistics showed a senior with diabetes and Alzheimer's costs Medicare 81 percent more than a senior with diabetes alone. And a senior with cancer and Alzheimer's costs Medicare 53 percent more than a senior with cancer alone.

Mental impairment in patients with Alzheimer's and other dementias complicates the management of care, resulting in more and longer hospital stays, the authors noted in the news release.

"This disease must be addressed on parallel tracks: supporting research to find treatments that cure, delay or prevent the disease, and offering assistance and support to the more than 5 million Americans now living with Alzheimer's and their more than 15 million caregivers," Johns said.

"This is what the National Alzheimer's Plan is all about. Caring for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias costs America $200 billion in just one year. By committing just 1 percent of that cost, $2 billion, to research, it could begin to put the nation on a path to effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure," he noted.

Continue reading here:
Alzheimer's, Dementia Care to Cost U.S. $200 Billion This Year

Alzheimer’s, Dementia Care to Cost U.S. $200 Billion This Year

Posted on by

THURSDAY, March 8 (HealthDay News) -- Caring for people with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia will cost the United States about $200 billion this year, a total that includes $140 billion paid by Medicare and Medicaid, new statistics released Thursday show.

Medicaid payments are 19 times higher for seniors with Alzheimer's and other dementias and Medicare payments for the conditions are nearly three times higher, compared to payments for other patients, according to the "2012 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures" report from the Alzheimer's Association.

Nearly 30 percent of people with Alzheimer's and other dementias are covered by both Medicare and Medicaid, compared to 11 percent of people without the conditions. This means that Medicare and Medicaid costs associated with Alzheimer's and other dementias will continue to rise as baby boomers age, the report said.

"Alzheimer's is already a crisis, and it's growing worse with every year," Harry Johns, president and CEO of the Alzheimer's Association, said in an association news release.

"While lives affected and care costs soar, the cost of doing nothing is far greater than acting now. Alzheimer's is a tremendous cost-driver for families and for Medicare and Medicaid. This crisis simply cannot be allowed to reach its maximum scale because it will overwhelm an already overburdened system," Johns added.

Most people with Alzheimer's and other dementias have at least one other serious chronic health problem, and Alzheimer's acts as a "cost multiplier" on these other diseases, according to the report.

For example, the statistics showed a senior with diabetes and Alzheimer's costs Medicare 81 percent more than a senior with diabetes alone. And a senior with cancer and Alzheimer's costs Medicare 53 percent more than a senior with cancer alone.

Mental impairment in patients with Alzheimer's and other dementias complicates the management of care, resulting in more and longer hospital stays, the authors noted in the news release.

"This disease must be addressed on parallel tracks: supporting research to find treatments that cure, delay or prevent the disease, and offering assistance and support to the more than 5 million Americans now living with Alzheimer's and their more than 15 million caregivers," Johns said.

"This is what the National Alzheimer's Plan is all about. Caring for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias costs America $200 billion in just one year. By committing just 1 percent of that cost, $2 billion, to research, it could begin to put the nation on a path to effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure," he noted.

Continue reading here:
Alzheimer's, Dementia Care to Cost U.S. $200 Billion This Year

Study finds key dementia drugs should be used more

Posted on by

LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer's dementia drug Aricept, already commonly used to treat mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, can also help patients with severe disease and should be used more widely and for longer, according to research published on Wednesday.

British scientists who studied the possible longer-term benefits of giving Aricept suggested that extending treatment could help twice as many Alzheimer's sufferers worldwide.

The study also looked at another commonly used dementia drug called memantine, which is sold in the United States under the brand Namenda by Forest Laboratories and Germany's Merz, and in Britain under the brand Ebixa by Danish group Lundbeck.

It found that keeping patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's on Aricept, or donepezil as it is known generically, or starting them on memantine treatment, meant they had significantly better cognitive and function abilities than patients taking a placebo or dummy pill.

An estimated 18 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia. It is fatal brain disease that affects memory, thinking, behaviour and the ability to handle daily activities and is placing an increasingly heavy burden on societies and economies across the world.

According to the World Health Organisation, some 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's Disease International predicts that as populations age, dementia cases will almost double every 20 years to around 66 million in 2030 and 115 million in 2050.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 295 Alzheimer's patients in Britain who were assigned to one of four separate groups - one continuing to take donepezil, one stopping donepezil and getting a placebo, one stopping donepezil and starting memantine, and a fourth taking both drugs together.

Robert Howard, a professor at King's College London who led the trial, said it was the first to show the value of continued drug treatment for patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's.

While donepezil is commonly prescribed for patients in the early stages of the disease, doctors in some countries, including Britain, are advised to stop prescribing the drug to patients once their disease has progressed to become more severe.

"As patients progress to more severe forms of Alzheimer's disease, clinicians are faced with a difficult decision as to whether to continue or not with dementia drugs and, until now, there has been little evidence to guide that decision," Howard told reporters at a briefing abut his findings.

Continue reading here:
Study finds key dementia drugs should be used more

Teacher Disciplines Autistic Student with Spray Bottle – Video

Posted on by

04-03-2012 11:33 courtesy: http://www.myfoxhouston.com FAIR USE NOTICE This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 USC section 106A-117 of the US Copyright Law.

Read more:
Teacher Disciplines Autistic Student with Spray Bottle - Video

From 'Refrigerator Mothers' to untangling the genetic roots of autism

Posted on by

Public release date: 7-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society

With the "Refrigerator Mother" notion about the cause of autism a distant and discredited memory, scientists are making remarkable progress in untangling the genetic roots of the condition, which affects millions of children and adults, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

In the story, C&EN Associate Editor Lauren K. Wolf points out that most people in the 1960s believed autism resulted from a lack of maternal warmth and emotional attachment. It was a hypothesis popularized by Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer Bruno Bettelheim. Now scientists around the globe are focusing on genes that have been implicated in autism and related conditions, collectively termed "autism spectrum disorders." That research may solve mysteries about autism, which affects 1 in 110 children in the U.S. Among them: what causes autism, why does it affect more boys than girls and what can be done to prevent and treat it?

C&EN explains that scientists now have solidly implicated certain genes as being involved in autism. Most of those genes play a role in the transmission of signals through the junctions or "synapses" between nerve cells. Synapses are the territory where one nerve releases a chemical signal that hands off messages to an adjoining nerve. The human brain has an estimated 1,000 trillion synapses, and they are hot spots for miscommunications that underpin neurological disorders like autism. Scientists now are gleaning information on what those genes do, what brain circuits they affect and how the proteins they produce function. In doing so, they are paving the way for future medications for autism spectrum disorders.

###

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Excerpt from:
From 'Refrigerator Mothers' to untangling the genetic roots of autism

From ‘Refrigerator Mothers’ to untangling the genetic roots of autism

Posted on by

Public release date: 7-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society

With the "Refrigerator Mother" notion about the cause of autism a distant and discredited memory, scientists are making remarkable progress in untangling the genetic roots of the condition, which affects millions of children and adults, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

In the story, C&EN Associate Editor Lauren K. Wolf points out that most people in the 1960s believed autism resulted from a lack of maternal warmth and emotional attachment. It was a hypothesis popularized by Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer Bruno Bettelheim. Now scientists around the globe are focusing on genes that have been implicated in autism and related conditions, collectively termed "autism spectrum disorders." That research may solve mysteries about autism, which affects 1 in 110 children in the U.S. Among them: what causes autism, why does it affect more boys than girls and what can be done to prevent and treat it?

C&EN explains that scientists now have solidly implicated certain genes as being involved in autism. Most of those genes play a role in the transmission of signals through the junctions or "synapses" between nerve cells. Synapses are the territory where one nerve releases a chemical signal that hands off messages to an adjoining nerve. The human brain has an estimated 1,000 trillion synapses, and they are hot spots for miscommunications that underpin neurological disorders like autism. Scientists now are gleaning information on what those genes do, what brain circuits they affect and how the proteins they produce function. In doing so, they are paving the way for future medications for autism spectrum disorders.

###

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Excerpt from:
From 'Refrigerator Mothers' to untangling the genetic roots of autism

The Flutie Family Tackles Autism, National Autism Awareness Month

Posted on by

The famed quarterback's foundation raises awareness and provides support for families.

By Stephanie Stephens WebMD the Magazine - Feature

Doug Flutie Sr., 49, reaches his goals on the field and off. "For whatever reason, people have the feeling I can get things done," the Heisman Trophy winner says. Maybe they remember the former quarterback's famous heart-stopping, last-second Hail Mary pass in 1984 to win the Orange Bowl for Boston College.

But for families with children who have autism, Flutie's can-do mojo scores highest with the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism. Flutie and his wife, Laurie, established it in 2000 to honor son Doug Jr., known as Dougie, who has childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD), a very rare autism spectrum disorder.

A Canadian study suggests one to six children in 100,000 may have CDD. Like Dougie, they develop normally for at least two years but then lose some or most language, motor, and social skills. Genetics or the body's autoimmune system could play a role, but scientists aren't sure. Dougie, now 20 and 6 feet tall, is termed "low functioning" -- he learns at a very slow pace, says Flutie, but does go to school.

To date, the Fluties have raised more than $13 million to support families affected by autism spectrum disorders, which are among the fastest-growing developmental disabilities in children and adults in the United States. The foundation funds national advocacy, educational, therapeutic, and recreational programs. For National Autism Awareness Month, the foundation's members and other organizations involved with Advocates for Autism of Massachusetts will visit Boston on April 9, the state's Autism Awareness Day, to remind legislators about the importance of critical services and support for families who need them.

Throughout the year, the foundation hosts numerous fund-raisers, some of which Dougie attends. "People really connect with him," says his proud dad. "We give comfort to families so they feel like they're not alone."

Read the original here:
The Flutie Family Tackles Autism, National Autism Awareness Month

Autism Center Offers New Options for Families

Posted on by

When doctors diagnosed Darcie Crawfords 2-year-old daughter with autism, she and her husband were left scrambling to find treatment options. They didn't know where to turn to help Lauren at first.

"It was really devastating. We couldn't even leave the hospital, Darcie Crawford said.

After five years of visits to specialists and out-of-pocket expenses, Crawford was grateful to have found the help she'd been searching for at the Hospital for Special Cares new Autism Center.

Dr. John Molteni, who runs the center, said they try to help parents identify concerns that they have for their child, clarify diagnostics and provide treatment options.

One of the centers goals is to provide help for an underserved population of children with autism, including those whose families have limited resources to access the kind of specialized care they need. Its also a place where parents can get a game plan on how to care for an autistic child.

Hospital for Special Care Unveils New Autism Center

Hospital for Special Care officials said the new autism center will help diagnose patients with autism and lead families toward the best treatment options.

"It would have been so much more helpful had I gotten the diagnosis from someone that could actually point me to treatment and tell me what to do. And I think that's what this offers, Crawford said.

Specialists from the autism center want to reach out to children who need inpatient care.

The Hospital for Special Cares has a plan to open an inpatient facility in the near future and is working to secure funding for the project.

Read the rest here:
Autism Center Offers New Options for Families

Pet stem cell biz booming for MediVet

Posted on by

In just two years after going commercial, MediVet Americas headquarters in Nicholasville has seen exponential growth with no sign of slowing down.

The privately owned company is one of a handful of developers and researchers worldwide working on stem-cell regenerative therapy for animals suffering from osteoarthritis, hip dysplasia and other degenerative diseases. MediVet also provides other services such as stem-cell storage and selling stem cell extraction kits to veterinarians around the globe.

Founded as a research company six years ago in Sydney, Australia, MediVet as a whole is now represented in 26 counties and has hubs in 44 American states.

In 2010, there were only two full-time working employees at the office and lab building located in Nicholasville. The headquarters now employs 12 people with more sales, research and manufacturing jobs expected to open up in the next few months.

The Nicholasville lab has seen an increase of 3,000 percent in monetary growth since February 2011, said director of lab services Katherine Wilkie.

A University of Kentucky graduate, Wilkie said the lab has seen tremendous increase in clientele, as well. Currently, the facility banks approximately 600 different animal stem cells that account for more than 2,000 samples from all across the country and Canada.

In September, we received a sample from Alaska, she said. That now gives us an animal from each of the 50 states.

Stem-cell regenerative therapy has been used to treat everything from a mouse to an elephant, and Wilkie said they may soon do the procedure on a dolphin.

The companys blooming success boils down to its devolvement of advanced technologies in extracting, activating and storing stem cells that have cut the cost by one-third of their competitors, CEO Jeremy Delk said.

MediVets research and developments has made the procedures and other services they offer economically viable to the average pet owner, he said.

Go here to see the original:
Pet stem cell biz booming for MediVet

Fly Research Gives Insight Into Human Stem Cell Development

Posted on by

Newswise CHICAGO, IL March 8, 2012 Stem cells provide a recurring topic among the scientific presentations at the Genetics Society of Americas 53rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference, March 7-11 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Specifically, researchers are trying to determine how, within organs, cells specialize while stem cells maintain tissues and enable them to repair damage and respond to stress or aging. Four talks, one on Thursday morning and three on Sunday morning, present variations on this theme.

For a fertilized egg to give rise to an organism made up of billions or trillions of cells, a precise program of cell divisions must unfold. Some divisions are asymmetric: one of the two daughter cells specializes, yet the other retains the ability to divide. Chris Q. Doe, Ph.D., professor of biology at the University of Oregon, compares this asymmetric cell division to splitting a sundae so that only one half gets the cherry. The cherries in cells are the proteins and RNA molecules that make the two cells that descend from one cell different from each other. This collecting of different molecules in different regions of the initial cell before it divides is termed "cell polarity."

Dr. Doe and his team are tracing the cell divisions that form a flys nervous system. Producing the right cells at the right time is essential for normal development, yet its not well understood how an embryonic precursor cell or stem cell generates a characteristic sequence of different cell types, he says. Dr. Doe and his team traced the cell lineages of 30 neuroblasts (stem cell-like neural precursors), each cell division generating a daughter cell bound for specialization as well as a self-renewing neuroblast. The dance of development is a matter of balance. Self-renew too much, and a tumor results; not enough, and the brain shrinks.

Tracing a cell lineage is a little like sketching a family tree of cousins who share a great-grandparent except that the great-grandparent (the neuroblast) continually produces more cousins. The offspring will change due to the different environments they are born into, says Dr. Doe.

Julie A. Brill, Ph.D., a principal investigator at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, investigates cell polarity in sperm cells. These highly specialized elongated cells begin as more spherical precursor cells. Groups of developing sperm elongate, align, condense their DNA into tight packages, expose enzyme-containing bumps on their tips that will burrow through an eggs outer layers, form moving tails, then detach and swim away.

The Brill lab studies a membrane lipid called PIP2 (phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate) that establishes polarity in developing male germ cells in Drosophila. Reducing levels of PIP2 leads to defects in cell polarity and failure to form mature, motile sperm, Dr. Brill says. These experiments show that localization of the enzyme responsible for PIP2 production in the growing end of elongating sperm tails likely sets up cell polarity. Since loss of this polarity is implicated in the origin and spread of cancer, defects in the regulation of PIP2 distribution may contribute to human cancer progression, she adds.

Stephen DiNardo, Ph.D., professor of cell and developmental biology at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is investigating how different varieties of stem cells in the developing fly testis give rise to germ cells and epithelial cells that ensheathe the germ cells, as well as being able to self-renew. For each of these roles, stem cells are guided by their environment, known as their niche.

In the fly testis, we know not only the locations of the two types of stem cells whose actions maintain fertility, but of neighboring cells. We study how these niche cells are first specified during development, how they assemble, and what signals they use. Elements of what we and others learn about this niche may well apply to more complex niches in our tissues, Dr. DiNardo explains.

Denise J. Montell, Ph.D., professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, will report on the female counterpart to the testis, the fly ovary. She and her co-workers use live imaging and fluorescent biomarkers to observe how the contractile proteins actin and myosin assemble, disassemble, and interact, elongating tissues in ways that construct the egg chamber. These approaches are particularly valuable for observing the response of the developing ovary to environmental changes. Starvation, for example, slows the rate of stem cell division and induces some egg chambers to undergo apoptosis (die) while others arrest until conditions improve, she says.

Her group has discovered that, surprisingly, following starvation and re-feeding, some of the cells that got far along the cell death pathway actually reversed that process and survived. The group has documented this reversal of apoptosis in a variety of mammalian cell types including primary heart cells. These observations have many intriguing implications. This may represent a previously unrecognized mechanism that saves cells that are difficult to replace, and therefore, may have implications for treating degenerative diseases.

Go here to read the rest:
Fly Research Gives Insight Into Human Stem Cell Development

Fly research gives insight into human stem cell development and cancer

Posted on by

Public release date: 8-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Phyllis Edelman pedelman@genetics-gsa.org 301-351-0896 Genetics Society of America

CHICAGO, IL March 8, 2012 Stem cells provide a recurring topic among the scientific presentations at the Genetics Society of America's 53rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference, March 7-11 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Specifically, researchers are trying to determine how, within organs, cells specialize while stem cells maintain tissues and enable them to repair damage and respond to stress or aging. Four talks, one on Thursday morning and three on Sunday morning, present variations on this theme.

For a fertilized egg to give rise to an organism made up of billions or trillions of cells, a precise program of cell divisions must unfold. Some divisions are "asymmetric": one of the two daughter cells specializes, yet the other retains the ability to divide. Chris Q. Doe, Ph.D., professor of biology at the University of Oregon, compares this asymmetric cell division to splitting a sundae so that only one half gets the cherry. The "cherries" in cells are the proteins and RNA molecules that make the two cells that descend from one cell different from each other. This collecting of different molecules in different regions of the initial cell before it divides is termed "cell polarity."

Dr. Doe and his team are tracing the cell divisions that form a fly's nervous system. "Producing the right cells at the right time is essential for normal development, yet it's not well understood how an embryonic precursor cell or stem cell generates a characteristic sequence of different cell types," he says. Dr. Doe and his team traced the cell lineages of 30 neuroblasts (stem cell-like neural precursors), each cell division generating a daughter cell bound for specialization as well as a self-renewing neuroblast. The dance of development is a matter of balance. Self-renew too much, and a tumor results; not enough, and the brain shrinks.

Tracing a cell lineage is a little like sketching a family tree of cousins who share a great-grandparent except that the great-grandparent (the neuroblast) continually produces more cousins. "The offspring will change due to the different environments they are born into," says Dr. Doe.

Julie A. Brill, Ph.D., a principal investigator at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, investigates cell polarity in sperm cells. These highly specialized elongated cells begin as more spherical precursor cells. Groups of developing sperm elongate, align, condense their DNA into tight packages, expose enzyme-containing bumps on their tips that will burrow through an egg's outer layers, form moving tails, then detach and swim away.

The Brill lab studies a membrane lipid called PIP2 (phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate) that establishes polarity in developing male germ cells in Drosophila. "Reducing levels of PIP2 leads to defects in cell polarity and failure to form mature, motile sperm," Dr. Brill says. These experiments show that localization of the enzyme responsible for PIP2 production in the growing end of elongating sperm tails likely sets up cell polarity. Since loss of this polarity is implicated in the origin and spread of cancer, defects in the regulation of PIP2 distribution may contribute to human cancer progression, she adds.

Stephen DiNardo, Ph.D., professor of cell and developmental biology at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is investigating how different varieties of stem cells in the developing fly testis give rise to germ cells and epithelial cells that ensheathe the germ cells, as well as being able to self-renew. For each of these roles, stem cells are guided by their environment, known as their "niche."

In the fly testis, we know not only the locations of the two types of stem cells whose actions maintain fertility, but of neighboring cells. "We study how these niche cells are first specified during development, how they assemble, and what signals they use. Elements of what we and others learn about this niche may well apply to more complex niches in our tissues," Dr. DiNardo explains.

See more here:
Fly research gives insight into human stem cell development and cancer

Patient dies during procedure

Posted on by

(CNN) -

A Florida cardiologist could have his medical license revoked by state authorities who have accused him of performing illegal stem cell therapy on a patient who died during the procedure.

Florida's Department of Health ordered the emergency suspension of Zannos Grekos' medical license Wednesday, accusing the Bonita Springs doctor of violating an emergency order against using stem cell treatments in Florida and causing the death of an unidentified elderly patient. Grekos can appeal the order.

According to the license suspension order, Grekos performed a stem cell treatment this month on the patient, who was suffering from pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis. Both diseases restrict blood flow to the heart.

"During said stem cell treatment, patient R.P. suffered a cardiac arrest and died," the suspension order said.

CNN first investigated Grekos' activities in 2009, when he said he was using stem cell therapy for a company called Regenocyte Therapeutic. His profile, listed on the company's website, describes Grekos as having "extensive experience in the field of stem cell therapy" and says he "was recently appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the United States' Repair Stem Cell Institute."

At the time of CNN's interview, Grekos said he extracted stem cells from patients and then sent the blood to Israel for laboratory processing. That processing, he said, resulted in "regenocytes," which he said would help heal crippling diseases, mostly associated with lung problems.

The president of the International Society of Stem Cell Research, Dr. Irving Weissman, told CNN at the time that "there is no such cell."

"There is nothing called a regenocyte," he said.

After CNN's initial report, Grekos said the name was "advertising" and was not intended to be scientific.

Go here to see the original:
Patient dies during procedure

Florida suspends doctor accused of illegal stem cell therapy

Posted on by

By David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffin, Special Investigations Unit

updated 9:23 PM EST, Thu March 8, 2012

Dr. Zannos Grekos, seen here in 2009, could have his license suspended.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- A Florida cardiologist could have his medical license revoked by state authorities who have accused him of performing illegal stem cell therapy on a patient who died during the procedure.

Florida's Department of Health ordered the emergency suspension of Zannos Grekos' medical license Wednesday, accusing the Bonita Springs doctor of violating an emergency order against using stem cell treatments in Florida and causing the death of an unidentified elderly patient. Grekos can appeal the order.

According to the license suspension order, Grekos performed a stem cell treatment this month on the patient, who was suffering from pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis. Both diseases restrict blood flow to the heart.

"During said stem cell treatment, patient R.P. suffered a cardiac arrest and died," the suspension order said.

CNN first investigated Grekos' activities in 2009, when he said he was using stem cell therapy for a company called Regenocyte Therapeutic. His profile, listed on the company's website, describes Grekos as having "extensive experience in the field of stem cell therapy" and says he "was recently appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the United States' Repair Stem Cell Institute."

At the time of CNN's interview, Grekos said he extracted stem cells from patients and then sent the blood to Israel for laboratory processing. That processing, he said, resulted in "regenocytes," which he said would help heal crippling diseases, mostly associated with lung problems.

Read the original post:
Florida suspends doctor accused of illegal stem cell therapy

Doctor accused of illegal stem cell therapy suspended

Posted on by

(CNN) -

A Florida cardiologist could have his medical license revoked by state authorities who have accused him of performing illegal stem cell therapy on a patient who died during the procedure.

Florida's Department of Health ordered the emergency suspension of Zannos Grekos' medical license Wednesday, accusing the Bonita Springs doctor of violating an emergency order against using stem cell treatments in Florida and causing the death of an unidentified elderly patient. Grekos can appeal the order.

According to the license suspension order, Grekos performed a stem cell treatment this month on the patient, who was suffering from pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis. Both diseases restrict blood flow to the heart.

"During said stem cell treatment, patient R.P. suffered a cardiac arrest and died," the suspension order said.

CNN first investigated Grekos' activities in 2009, when he said he was using stem cell therapy for a company called Regenocyte Therapeutic. His profile, listed on the company's website, describes Grekos as having "extensive experience in the field of stem cell therapy" and says he "was recently appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the United States' Repair Stem Cell Institute."

At the time of CNN's interview, Grekos said he extracted stem cells from patients and then sent the blood to Israel for laboratory processing. That processing, he said, resulted in "regenocytes," which he said would help heal crippling diseases, mostly associated with lung problems.

The president of the International Society of Stem Cell Research, Dr. Irving Weissman, told CNN at the time that "there is no such cell."

"There is nothing called a regenocyte," he said.

After CNN's initial report, Grekos said the name was "advertising" and was not intended to be scientific.

Original post:
Doctor accused of illegal stem cell therapy suspended

The Oblivious Public

Posted on by

At the end of a post on the science of aging, filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas says the following on the goal of greatly extending human life:

Actual age reversal was something - that, when I first heard of it 5 years ago - I put in the category of time travel and ghosts. [But] after 5 years of interviewing the researchers and poking around labs with my camera, it is not a question of if but when. The general population has little idea of what is about to befall them.

Which is both true and a problem. From an advocate's point of view, I'd say that unless a much larger portion of the public gains an understanding of longevity, the level of support will not rise far enough to generate the large sums of money needed for meaningful progress within the next 20 to 30 years. Outside of stem cell medicine and cancer research, the necessary research programs to build rejuvenation biotechnology are somewhere between fringe, anemic, and non-existent, relatively speaking - and it's only the dedicated efforts of groups like the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Foundation that have boosted these research projects to be more than non-existent. The present few million dollars a year is a lot in one sense, but a drop in the bucket in comparison to the the hundred of millions that are necessary for real progress.

Given that, I feel I can say that if the first fruits of longevity science come as a surprise to the world at large, to the average fellow in the street, then those advances will likely be faltering and far less imposing than might have been possible. On the large scale progress in science and medical technology is a numbers game: the more public support there is, the easier it becomes to raise funding, the more researchers become interested in working in the field, and the more entrepreneurs step forward ... and the wheel turns faster as a result. To gain that greater public support requires persuasion, communication, and education - informal and otherwise - are thus it is these line items that are the roots of progress when looking at breadth of society and a length of decades.

And still, today, the public is indeed largely oblivious to longevity science - not at all aware of the possibility that biotechnologies already envisaged in some detail could be rejuvenating the old 20 to 30 years from now. That future is uncertain: it depends on many more people grasping the idea and the potential, and doing their part to help provide the research community with a full head of steam and major funding.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

More Support for the Membrane Pacemaker Hypothesis of Aging

Posted on by

The membrane pacemaker hypothesis suggests that longevity differences between species are largely determined by the resistance to oxidative damage exhibited by important cell membranes - such as those in mitochondria. Here is some evidence to suggest that this holds up within a species too: "Membrane unsaturation plays an important role in the aging process and the determination of inter-species animal longevity. Furthermore, the accumulation of oxidation-derived molecular damage to cellular components particularly in the nervous and immune systems over time leads to homeostasis loss, which highly influences age-related morbidity and mortality. In this context, it is of great interest to know and discern the degree of membrane unsaturation and the steady-state levels of oxidative damage in both physiological systems from long-lived subjects. In the present work, adult (28?±?4 weeks), old (76?±?4 weeks) and exceptionally old (128?±?4 weeks) BALB/c female mice were used. Brain and spleen were analysed for membrane fatty acid composition and specific markers of protein oxidation, glycoxidation and lipoxidation damage ... The results showed significantly [higher membrane resistance to lipid peroxidation and lower lipoxidation-derived molecular damage brain and spleen in] exceptionally old animals when compared to old specimens ... In addition, the higher levels of the glycoxidation-derived marker observed in exceptionally old animals, as well as in adult mice, could be considered as a good indicator of a better bioenergetic state of these animals when compared to the old group. In conclusion, low lipid oxidation susceptibility and maintenance of adult-like protein lipoxidative damage could be key mechanisms for longevity achievement."

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22367548

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

On Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Skin Aging

Posted on by

An open access commentary at Impact Aging: "There is a lively discussion going on as to whether oxidative stress is or is not a cause of (accelerated) aging, fuelled to a significant extent by the finding from Arlan Richardson's group that mice heterozygous for the mitochondrial superoxide dismutase SOD2 showed increased oxidative stress, increased cancer incidence but not accelerated ageing. A new twist to this story was introduced recently when it was shown that connective tissue-specific SOD2 knockouts developed multiple signs of progeria including short lifespan, associated with up-regulation of the cell senescence marker p16INK4A. Mitochondrially generated oxidative stress is both an established cause and a relevant consequence of cell senescence, frequencies of senescent cells in connective tissue increase during mice aging, and destruction of senescent cells can 'cure' some age-related tissue dysfunction. A paper by Judith Campisi's and Simon Melov's groups recently published in Aging now further explores the connection between oxidative stress, cell senescence and aging. The authors demonstrate that mitochondrial dysfunction occurs in the epidermis of old (2 years) mice ... These data enforce two central hypotheses in the field, namely that of mitochondrial dysfunction as a cause of cell senescence, and of cell senescence as a relevant contributor to mammalian aging ... However, a fascinating question remains: Is it really Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) arising from mitochondria that promote cellular senescence in this model?"

Link: http://impactaging.com/papers/v4/n2/full/100432.html

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm