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Popular Articles

Care Regulator Publishes Inspection Report On East-Yorkshire Based Mental Health Hospital
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published an inspection report on the Yorkshire-based independent mental health hospital, Linden House in Market Weighton near York.

Stopping Fatty Change In Heart Cells
Heart failure is one of the world"s most frequent causes of death - caused by conditions such as diabetes and obesity. With people who are overweight, the heart has to do more work in order to pump the blood through the circulatory system and this causes an increase in blood pressure. The heart itself becomes enlarged as the myocardial muscle cells increase in mass. To enable the heart to grow there also has to be an increased supply of energy and oxygen. However, the myocardial muscle cells suffer from a lack of oxygen and energy until such time as there are enough blood vessels to support the tissue.
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International Stem Cell Corporation Reports Positive Pre-Clinical Trial Results From Human Corneal Epithelial Cells
International Stem Cell Corporation (OTCBB:ISCO), the first company to perfect a method of creating human "parthenogenetic" stem cells from unfertilized eggs, has received positive early results from animal trials designed to improve photorefractive keratectomy (PRK), a form of corrective laser eye surgery that offers an improved alternative to LASIK.
Diagnostics

Disease Markers That Will Aid Arthritis Research

A combination of biochemical and MRI markers will allow improved measurement of osteoarthritis (OA) progression. The biomarkers, described in BioMed Central"s open access journal Arthritis Research and Therapy, will be useful for the design and interpretation of trials of new disease modifying drugs. Erik Dam, from Nordic Bioscience, Denmark, worked with a team of researchers to develop and evaluate the markers. He said, "Presently, there is no disease-modifying OA drug with a consistent, documented effect despite several clinical attempts in late stage phases. We believe that effective therapies could be demonstrated, if tools were available that allow identification of rapid progressors for inclusion in trials. With this in mind, we investigated whether combinations of biochemical and MRI-based biomarkers might improve diagnosis and prognosis of knee osteoarthritis". Dam and his colleagues included 159 subjects in their trial. After exclusions, a total of 287 knees were measured. At baseline and after 21 months, biochemical (urinary collagen type II C-telopeptide fragment, CTX-II) and MRI-based markers were quantified. MRI markers included cartilage volume, thickness, area, roughness, homogeneity, and curvature in the medial tibio-femoral compartment. Joint space width, the presently accepted marker for population selection in clinical studies, was measured from radiographs. According to Dam, "The best individual diagnostic marker was cartilage roughness and the best individual prognostic marker was homogeneity. The aggregate cartilage longevity marker (combining CTX-II, volume, area, thickness, congruity, roughness, and homogeneity) performed very well both diagnostically and prognostically - and superior to the individual biochemical and MRI markers. We attribute this to the combination of markers with complementary information about cartilage quantity (e.g. volume), quality (e.g. homogeneity), and breakdown (CTX-II) that together allow superior diagnosis/prognosis". The proposed aggregate marker methodology may have a direct impact on the design of clinical studies. The researchers claim, "By allowing the selection of a high risk population, the study sample size can be lowered while still improving the chance of a positive study outcome. This should facilitate the development of effective drugs". Notes: Identification of progressors in osteoarthritis by combining biochemical and MRI-based markers Erik B Dam, Marco Loog, Claus Christiansen, Inger Byrjalsen, Jenny Folkesson, Mads Nielsen, Arish A Qazi, Paola C Pettersen, Patrick Garnero and Morten A Karsdal Arthritis Research & Therapy (in press) http://arthritis-research.com/ Graeme Baldwin BioMed Central


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