All posts by Barbara Payne

BiomedNews

Nitric oxide: Signs of becoming a magic bullet?

Sickle cells characterize sickle cell anemia, ...
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They’ve found another surprising use for nitric oxide: pain relief for sickle cell anemia (SCA) patients. Pain is usually the main reason sickle cell anemia patients are admitted to the hospital—and by the time they get to that stage, doctors are way behind on addressing the problem.

Sickle cell anemis is an inherited disease in which blood cells take on an abnormal shape:

“Normal red blood cells are disc-shaped and look like doughnuts without holes in the center. They move easily through your blood vessels. Red blood cells contain hemoglobin (HEE-muh-glow-bin), an iron-rich protein that gives blood its red color. Hemoglobin carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.

Sickle cells contain abnormal hemoglobin that causes the cells to have a sickle, or crescent, shape. These cells don’t move easily through your blood vessels. They’re stiff and sticky and tend to form clumps and get stuck in the blood vessels. (Other cells also may play a role in this clumping process.)”

Pain is typically due to the fact that the sickle-shaped blood cells are not passing through the circulatory system at the normal pace. They tend to bunch up and cause pain at the site of the backups. as well as lead to “serious infections, and organ damage.”

Since nitric oxide tends to expand the blood vessels, you’d think it might help by letting the blockages flow more freely, but scientists are speculating that inhaling nitric oxide may also affect the hemoglobin directly, restoring normal shape and charge to affected cells. “The more normal negative charge helps cells repel each other, melts sticky polymers and may prevent new ones from forming,” according to Dr. C. Alvin Head, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine.  In fact, he thinks “one of nitric oxide’s usual duties in the body is to help prevent clot formation.”

This doc thinks that once more research is done to confirm exactly how this NO treatment works for SCA, we might get to the point of giving SCA patients nitric oxide inhalers to prevent their own pain from requiring hospitalizations.

So, okay, I’m going to go out on a completely untested limb here. Since the first line of early defense when someone’s having a stroke (a clot somewhere in the body blocks blood flow to the brain) is to inject a clot-busting drug known as TPA, wonder if it makes sense that some day, instead of systemic drugs like coumadin, we might be able to give people nitric oxide inhalers to keep the blood thin and help prevent stroke. Of course, then we’d have to give people a way to measure their INR (a number telling you how thin your blood is) at home. Right now the only ways are: 1) get a blood draw and have it sent to a lab, or 2) get a finger stick and test it right in the office with a special machine. Hey, we educate diabetics to test their blood and adjust their diet for themselves. Perhaps this nitric oxide idea will take hold one day for heart patients and others who need blood thinners.

And here’s a really wild thought. Red wine helps promote the production of nitric oxide in the bod—it’s a natural blood thinner. And if you drink it regularly, you don’t need as much coumadin. Is there ever a time when it isn’t better to take less of a drug (except of course unless alcohol of any kind is contraindicated for other reasons)?

So maybe one day getting your INR (blood thinness measurement) to the “therapeutic” stage (whatever your doctor says it needs to be) will be a case of testing at home and then toasting at home with your glass of red wine! Now that sounds like a magic bullet I could get into.

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BiomedNews

Poll shows most Americans for embryonic stem cell research

Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatm...
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As the fate of a decision about funding sources for it hangs in the balance, US News & World Report notes that Harris just conducted a poll about embryonic stem cell research. Results show that a clear majority of Americans across many faiths and credos believe it is neither immoral nor unethical.

In August the federal government appealed U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision about stopping federal funding for this wildly promising field of research. An appeals court put the ban into suspension so that funding for research could continue.

I just realized that 3 of my last 5 posts on this blog have been about the heartening promises of stem cell research, so you don’t have to guess my opinion about it. And I pray the judges are all listening carefully to the fact that citizens of faiths as diverse as Catholics to born-again Christians are in favor of moving ahead. Many even realize that the United States—in addition to already being embarrassingly low on the infant mortality scale among global nations—will fall light years further behind other countries who develop healing technologies with stem cells.

I haven’t been able to determine yet if US District Court judges are appointed or elected, but we can only hope that such an unenlightened ruling is not motivated by a short-sighted desire to hold onto a judgeship.

There are too many lives to be saved and too much suffering to be prevented for us to refuse the gift that God has given us with the miracle of learning how to use stem cells for healing and regrowth.

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BiomedNews

Using stem cells to find drugs’ potential side effects

A colony of embryonic stem cells, from the H9 ...
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If we needed any further proof of how far-reaching the effects of stem cell research can be on making medicine not only less invasive but also more efficient and effective, now comes another momentous discovery.

According to a BusinessWeek article, a couple of pharma companies have developed a way to use stem cells to develop “human” tissue (independent of a living, breathing person), and they’re using the tissue to test drugs for potentially dangerous side effects.

The cost to develop a new drug—which can in some cases exceed $4 billion—usually includes animal trials and then human trials. Researchers have found that stem-cell-generated tissue—they are regularly producing 7 billion heart cells a month from skin and blood stem cells (not embryonic)—mimics the reactions of actual human tissue. And that allows scientists to test drugs for bad effects long before human trials would normally be scheduled.

The happiest part of this report is that this isn’t just the promise of stem cells—this work is actually going on now. One of the pharma companies used the stem-cell tissue to re-test a drug they’d worked on earlier and discarded because of a bad side effect on test animals. They found the drug had exactly the same results on the stem-cell tissue as it had had on the animals. The company realized if it had had this capability back then, it could have stopped development much sooner and saved a bundle.

Consider the potential benefits of making full use of this capability:

  • How much faster might useful drugs get through the pipeline and out to the patients who desperately need them?
  • How much might the cost of new drugs come down with pharmaceutical companies saving millions of dollars in development costs?
  • How many animal lives might be spared because research can be done on this “artificial” tissue instead of on rabbits or mice or chimps?

I say again, with stem cell miracles around every corner, we’ve at last discovered heaven’s own way of healing. And what we do with that power now and in the future will be limited only by our own imaginations .

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BiomedNews

Nitric oxide–the good, the bad and the incomprehensible

Three-dimensional model of NO.
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It’s amazing to me that this one substance, nitric oxide—perhaps it’s not unique in this—is cited as a godsend in one report and a disaster in another. And the record on both sides continues to grow. Check these two Google news items out:

Coffee is ‘good for the heart’, new research finds
It is thought chemicals in coffee improve heart health by preventing damage caused by oxygen molecules and blocking harmful nitric oxide. …


Telegraph.co.uk

Cardiff Sports Nutrition Relaunches BSN No Xplode Bodybuilding Supplement
“But one thing our customers kept asking for was No Xplode, which is the most powerful and most effective nitric oxide supplements out there. …

How can the same substance be both harmful and incredibly valuable? We find this strange dichotomy wherever we look with nitric oxide. I think I wrote an earlier post about moderation in all things applying to nitric oxide as well. But perhaps more to the point is, usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, user.

In the case of the bodybuilder the benefit might be one you and I aren’t that excited about. But it’s real for them: “The first is that it allows them to achieve that elusive ‘pump’ in the gym on a consistent basis. Without nitric oxide supplements, even when bodybuilders managed to achieve that vein popping, engorged look, it would always fade within hours. With No Xplode, however, the body continues to produce nitric oxide throughout the day, which means the bodybuilder’s muscles continue to look rock hard all day long. It’s really incredible.”

Vein-popping? Engorged? Hey, to each his own.

And as for the other one—about moderate coffee consumption “blocking harmful nitric oxide”—your guess is as good as mine on whether this study is meaningful. They talk about the psychological effects of drinking coffee in a relaxed atmosphere, and how diet (the  study refers to Greek folks) is a strong influence, etc. One of these days I’ll figure out why nitric oxide—considered a vasodilator and all-around beneficent influence on blood vessels—is strangely considered a culprit in stiffening blood vessels among elderly people.

Ah, science. Don’t you love its mysteries and inconsistencies?

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BiomedNews

At last – stem cell science aimed at joint replacements

diagram of a human female skeleton. : the Red ...
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I have been waiting for this news for a long time. By the end of this year, scientists in the UK will for the first time be conducting a study on human cases of osteoarthritis to see how they might apply the miracle of stem-cell therapy to rebuilding damaged cartilage in patients’ arthritic knees.

No details are yet available on the way in which the study will be conducted. But who cares? It’s wonderful to hear at last that this most common affliction–joint replacements account for almost all of the 5.7 billion Pounds spent in the UK on all musculoskeletal conditions ($850 billion in the US according to one source).

Sadly, it’s too late for my left hip, which I had replaced by the brutal butchering-of-the-bones and torturing-of-the-muscles procedure now in use. And of course, there’s no going back once they’ve cut large chunks of your bones out, so it’ll be generations before we can even imagine a way to restore those replaced joints with stem cell or any other kind of therapy.

But for the millions of people suffering with some form of arthritis—including the five siblings in my family who’ve had or will soon have hip replacements—this is profoundly promising news.

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BiomedNews

Exciting stem cell lung research

They’ve done it. Took a rat’s lung down to its scaffolding (collagen and connective tissue), put it in a bioreactor to simulate uterine conditions, and then inserted stem cells from a newborn rat. The cells somehow migrated to the proper places and grew into the appropriate types of tissue. The lung was then transplanted into a rat where it respired as hoped quite nicely for an hour or two. The artificial rat lung was said to perform 95% as effectively as a real lung at exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide.

They noticed a few issues—in particular that blood clots formed in certain spots. The conclusion was that this was not an insurmountable obstacle; it would just take more research.

And another lung front (same link, further down), a Harvard researcher put some lung cells on a flexible chip and got it to mimic some of the functions of a human lung. The hope is that we might someday be able to use this kind of chip to replace some of the animals currently used to test the effects of environmental toxins or inhaled drugs.

Stem cell research is beginning to reveal the miracles of natural healing we have always been intended to discover. It’s a wondrous time to be alive.

BiomedNews

Moving pains

Blogger.com just canceled out the ability to upload posts via FTP. So we’re testing out a new blog software template. Hope you find this new one attractive and easy to navigate.

Any feedback will be happily taken into account. And I promise I’m going to be more consistent about posting. It’s been a crazy time for me the past few months with moving my home and office–and now moving blogs around, too.

Happy mother’s day to all you moms, stepmoms, grandmoms, etc. out there.

BiomedNews

Exercise improves brain controls in rabbits with chronic heart failure


Another substance that helps control arterial pressure is the hormone angiotensin (ANG II). Then, there’s an enzyme that converts angiotensin (ACE and ACE2). A recent study found that exercise normalized levels of these enzymes in rabbits with chronic heart failure. The conclusion, though many unknowns are still involved, is that exercise can re-balance such enzymes in the part of the brain that controls autonomic functioning.

Nobody’s making any promises that this will convert to a change for humans with chronic heart failure. But there do seem to be some chemical similarities between the human and the rabbit brain. I had a pet rabbit for 8 years. I’m glad she wasn’t one that got used for the research, but I trust that today’s experiments are by law conducted humanely on all living creatures.

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BiomedNews

Nitric oxide restorer promises help for high blood pressure

In a recent study in rats, L-arginine, a nonessential amino acid, was found to lessen the severity of monocrotaline-induced hypertension by, among other things, restoring the nitric oxide in the linings of blood and lymph systems. Other actions included decreasing right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) right heart hypertrophy, and mortality.

The abstract was complex and I found myself having to look up a bunch of terms, but it sounds like this discovery for generating nitric oxide is highly promising for treating the silent killer.

BiomedNews

Stem cells: New source for heart repairs and replacement parts

Stem cells have been somewhat out of the daily news for a while. But researchers are quietly moving forward finding new miracles these incredible cells can perform. Out of my own curiosity–in 2008 I had bioprosthetic valve replacement surgery–I decided to see where they were on fixing hearts with stem cells.

Found this CBS news story from last June about a guy who’s taking part in a clinical trial to see how well stem cells can repair heart damage, and thus alleviate or prevent congestive heart failure (which tends to be a death sentence within 5 years of diagnosis). Research is promising. They were at first trying to use bone marrow stem cells but had mixed results. Now the clinical trial is focusing on using a snippet of the patient’s own heart-originated stem cells to grow new heart cells to be inserted back into the damaged area of the heart.

Talk about miraculous. The extracted heart stem cells are “coaxed to grow spontaneously from the specimens, eventually forming into clusters called ‘cardio-spheres’ that can even start beating in the dish. [emphasis added]” In just a few weeks, they have millions of stem cells.

That trial is about repairing heart damage that results from cardiovascular disease. Searching further to see what’s happening with stem cells and heart parts such as valves, I found a report of successfully using bone marrow stem cells to grow enough new valve cells to make it functional again. According to the report, the woman had the operation done in Germany in 2005, recovered completely, and in 2009 is still doing well.

This is fantastic news. Maybe by the time my prosthetic valve wears out they’ll be using stem cells to grow new ones on a regular basis. It’ll be like being able to go to your very own parts department.

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