Taurine protects a donor heart

Some of us may know taurine in the following forms:

















However, recent research has shown that taurine can protect donor hearts from being damaged by blood deprivation.¹ Hearts from rats that were fed taurine showed less damage compared to hearts from rats fed a normal diet, when hearts were removed and kept on ice for 5 hours.

This study also pointed out that taurine infusion can protect the heart muscle if supplied before coronary artery bypass surgery and that dietary taurine can protect the heart from damage caused by heart attack.

Please note: energy drinks also have other ingredients which may not be good for your heart, so they definitely can't be considered a medicine!


¹Mehmet A Sahin, Orhan Yucel, Adem Guler, et al. (2011) Is there any cardioprotective role of Taurine during cold ischemic period following global myocardial ischemia? Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery 6: 31

Source

Christmas special: the weird and the wonderful

In the process of looking for hot new research topics (or just in the course of my daily working day) I find a fair amount of curious papers. So, as a final entry for the year I thought I'd post a special edition, listing a few of my favourites.

From the department of Advanced Medical Science (literally)¹:

"Obesity significantly increases the difficulty of patient management in the emergency department."

With the objective to "... determine which aspects of ED management are adversely affected by patient obesity, to determine the level of obesity above which management is made more difficult and to make recommendations on how these effects might be mitigated...", this study showed that patient obesity makes it difficult to manage an emergency department. And offered no solutions.


Ever wondered if watching TV or working on your computer late at night affects your sleep? So did a couple of researchers in Brazil who investigated the "Quality of sleep among university students: effects of nighttime computer and television use."²

The internet lost out in this study as it seems to affect sleep a lot more than television. Interestingly, if you manage to use the internet untill 3am, you sleep a bit better. This blogger wonders how much of the "affected sleep" is due to online arguing...



The title of this paper says it all, really: PMS: premenstrual storm? An unusual cause of electrical storm in a young woman with vasospastic angina. ³
Never underestimate how hard it is to be a girl...



Apparently "Hearing loss in stranded odontocete dolphins and whales" ⁴ is a big problem. Researchers speculate that this may have somethig to do with the actual stranding. How do you measure hearing in a dolphin? Well, with great difficulty, but apparently "in all cases, a jawphone consisting of an ITC-1042 piezoceramic transducer embedded in a RTV silicone suction cup was placed on the lower jaw fat pad to deliver sound stimuli." If a response could be detected from the dolphin or whale, then that was marked as the level at which the animal could "hear". There was a strong correlation between stranding and hearing loss in some of the species. (Picture below: a hydrophone)




The brushtail possum is a major pest species of New Zealand. Some researchers are investigating a nanoparticle system containing a chemical sterilitant which could be used orally to control their numbers.⁵ Poor little possums.




Our last two entries are shamelessly of a scatological nature:

A woman with a history of depression presents with abdominal bloating. Her doctor sends her for a colonoscopy. It turns out she's fine, but they do find something odd. A cockroach. ⁶


And finally... Apparently "robotic assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy" is a fairly uncomfortable procedure used in prostate cancer. So a few researchers in Seattle wondered whether a suppository containing belladonna (that's deadly nightshade to me and you) and opium would help.⁷ And indeed it did! With no adverse events noted either!





¹ Kam J, Taylor DM. Emerg Med Australas. 2010 Aug;22(4):316-23. Source

² Mesquita G, Reimão R. Arq Neuropsiquiatr. 2010 Oct;68(5):720-5. Source

³ Li J, Zitron E, Katus HA, Becker R. Clin Res Cardiol. 2010 Nov 30. [Epub ahead of print] Source

⁴ Mann D, Hill-Cook M, Manire C, Greenhow D, Montie E, Powell J, Wells R, Bauer G, Cunningham-Smith P, Lingenfelser R, DiGiovanni R Jr, Stone A, Brodsky M, Stevens R, Kieffer G, Hoetjes P. PLoS One. 2010 Nov 3;5(11):e13824. Source

⁵ Kafka AP, McLeod BJ, Rades T, McDowell A. J Control Release. 2010 Oct 31. [Epub ahead of print] Source

⁶ Kumar AR, Perez JA, Miick R, Govil YK Endoscopy. 2010;42 Suppl 2:E209-10. Epub 2010 Sep 15. Source - INCLUDES FULL ARTICLE PLUS PHOTO!

⁷ Lukasewycz S, Holman M, Kozlowski P, Porter CR, Odom E, Bernards C, Neil N, Corman JM. Can J Urol. 2010 Oct;17(5):5377-82. Source

Stem cell therapy for cardiovascular disease

Stem cell therapy is controversial, mostly for the application of foetal stem cells in a large proportion of research.

A new type of stem cell has been developed by researchers in Japan, called induced pluropotent stem (iPS) cells. These cells derive from somatic (body) cells, and therefore are a lot less morally questionable than foetal cells.

A recent study has investigated the usage of iPS cells in the treatment of ischemia ¹ - the restriction of blood supply to a specific body part that can lead to tissue damage. Hind limb ischemia in mice was treated with iPS cells specifically treated to produce a protein called fetal liver kinase-1 (Flk-1). This protein plays an important role in the formation of blood vessels.

Transplantation of stem cells producing Flk-1 into the damaged limbs of mice accelerated the formation of new blood vessels, showing that this therapy could potentially rescue tissues that have suffered restricted blood flow. This could potentially be applied after events such as heart attacks.

¹ Suzuki et al. Therapeutic angiogenesis by transplantation of induced pluripotent stem cell-derived Flk-1 positive cells. BMC Cell Biology 11:72 (2010)