New sensor could allow for better long-term monitoring of patients' vitals

 

The new sensors are designed to be flexible and are high conductive, allowing them to maintain strong signal quality (Photo: Yong Zhu) Image Gallery (2 images) Researchers have developed a new silver nanowire sensor that has the potential to significantly improve long-term patient health monitoring. The new sensor is as accurate as those used in hospitals, and thanks to its dry nature and flexibility, is well suited to electrophysiological monitoring when the patient is moving around. With existing hospital-based electrophysiological sensors, such as EKGs, a layer of electrolytic gel must be maintained between the sensor and patient’s skin in order for accurate recordings to be obtained. This wet electrode method provides accurate results, but lacks practicality, as the gel must be reapplied to keep it from drying up. If this occurs, the sensor will be less effective at reporting stats and may cause discomfort to the patient. A team from North Carolina State University has developed an alternative method that uses nanowire sensors that are comparable to the wet sensors in terms of signal quality, but don’t require the use of gel. The sensors, which consist of a single layer of nanowires embedded in a stretchable polymer, are also more accurate than existing technologies when monitoring electrophysiological signals over longer periods of time, when the patient is moving about. They’re designed to be flexible, conform to the contours of the wearer’s skin, and are high conductive, allowing them to maintain strong signal quality. Dr. Yong Zhu, a professor at NC State and senior author of a paper on the research, commented that while the sensors are essentially "ready to use," the team is still working to lower the overall manufacturing cost, which is currently comparable to that of the existing wet alternative. The paper was published online in RSC Advances on January 14. Source: North Carolina State University

One nanoparticle, six types of medical imaging

 

This transmission electron microscopy image shows the nanoparticles, which consist of a core that glows blue when struck by near-infrared light, and an outer fabric of porphyrin-phospholipids (PoP) that wraps around the core. It's technology so advanced that the machine capable of using it doesn't yet exist. Using two biocompatible parts, University at Buffalo researchers and their colleagues have designed a nanoparticle that can be detected by six medical imaging techniques: • computed tomography (CT) scanning; • positron emission tomography (PET) scanning; • photoacoustic imaging; • fluorescence imaging; • upconversion imaging; and • Cerenkov luminescence imaging. In the future, patients could receive a single injection of the nanoparticles to have all six types of imaging done. This kind of "hypermodal" imaging -- if it came to fruition -- would give doctors a much clearer picture of patients' organs and tissues than a single method alone could provide. It could help medical professionals diagnose disease and identify the boundaries of tumors. "This nanoparticle may open the door for new 'hypermodal' imaging systems that allow a lot of new information to be obtained using just one contrast agent," says researcher Jonathan Lovell, PhD, UB assistant professor of biomedical engineering. "Once such systems are developed, a patient could theoretically go in for one scan with one machine instead of multiple scans with multiple machines." When Lovell and colleagues used the nanoparticles to examine the lymph nodes of mice, they found that CT and PET scans provided the deepest tissue penetration, while the photoacoustic imaging showed blood vessel details that the first two techniques missed. Differences like these mean doctors can get a much clearer picture of what's happening inside the body by merging the results of multiple modalities. A machine capable of performing all six imaging techniques at once has not yet been invented, to Lovell's knowledge, but he and his coauthors hope that discoveries like theirs will spur development of such technology. The research, Hexamodal Imaging with Porphyrin-Phospholipid-Coated Upconversion Nanoparticles, was published online Jan. 14 in the journal Advanced Materials. It was led by Lovell; Paras Prasad, PhD, executive director of UB's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics (ILPB); and Guanying Chen, PhD, a researcher at ILPB and Harbin Institute of Technology in China. The team also included additionanl collaborators from these institutions, as well as the University of Wisconsin and POSTECH in South Korea. The researchers designed the nanoparticles from two components: An "upconversion" core that glows blue when struck by near-infrared light, and an outer fabric of porphyrin-phospholipids (PoP) that wraps around the core. Each part has unique characteristics that make it ideal for certain types of imaging. The core, initially designed for upconversion imaging, is made from sodium, ytterbium, fluorine, yttrium and thulium. The ytterbium is dense in electrons -- a property that facilitates detection by CT scans. The PoP wrapper has biophotonic qualities that make it a great match for fluorescence and photoacoustic imagining. The PoP layer also is adept at attracting copper, which is used in PET and Cerenkov luminescence imaging. "Combining these two biocompatible components into a single nanoparticle could give tomorrow's doctors a powerful, new tool for medical imaging," says Prasad, also a SUNY Distinguished Professor of chemistry, physics, medicine and electrical engineering at UB. "More studies would have to be done to determine whether the nanoparticle is safe to use for such purposes, but it does not contain toxic metals such as cadmium that are known to pose potential risks and found in some other nanoparticles." "Another advantage of this core/shell imaging contrast agent is that it could enable biomedical imaging at multiple scales, from single-molecule to cell imaging, as well as from vascular and organ imaging to whole-body bioimaging," Chen adds. "These broad, potential capabilities are due to a plurality of optical, photoacoustic and radionuclide imaging abilities that the agent possesses." Lovell says the next step in the research is to explore additional uses for the technology. For example, it might be possible to attach a targeting molecule to the PoP surface that would enable cancer cells to take up the particles, something that photoacoustic and fluorescence imaging can detect due to the properties of the smart PoP coating. This would enable doctors to better see where tumors begin and end, Lovell says.

Alcohol ads on TV associated with drinking behavior in young people

 

January 20, 2015 Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Seeing and liking alcohol advertising on television among underage youths was associated with the onset of drinking, binge drinking and hazardous drinking, according to a study. Alcohol is the most common drug used by young people. In 2013, 66.2 percent of U.S. high school students reported trying alcohol, 34.9 percent reported alcohol use in the past 30 days and 20.8 percent reported recent binge drinking. Seeing and liking alcohol advertising on television among underage youths was associated with the onset of drinking, binge drinking and hazardous drinking, according to a study by researchers at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) and Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (CHaD) published online by JAMA Pediatrics. CHaD pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Susanne E. Tanski, MD, MPH and her coauthors examined the reach of television advertising and its effect on drinking in young people. In 2011 and 2013, they conducted telephone- and web-based surveys with 2,541 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 23 years at baseline, with 1,596 completing a follow-up survey. The surveys examined recall of more than 300 television advertising images for top beer and distilled spirits brands that aired nationally in 2010-11. The authors derived an alcohol receptivity score based on having seen the ad, liking it and correctly identifying the brand. "The alcohol industry claims that their advertising self-regulation program protects underage youths from seeing their ads," said Tanski. "Our study indicates that it does not." Participants who were underage were only slightly less likely than legal-drinking-age participants to have seen alcohol ads (the average percentage of ads seen were 23.4 percent, 22.7 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively, for young people ages 15-17, 18-20 and 21-23 years of age). Alcohol is the most common drug used by young people. In 2013, 66.2 percent of U.S. high school students reported trying alcohol, 34.9 percent reported alcohol use in the past 30 days and 20.8 percent reported recent binge drinking. In the U.S. alone, producers of alcohol spend billions of dollars annually marketing their products. And, unlike cigarettes, which voluntarily ended television advertising in 1969, alcohol is actively marketed on television, according to the study background. Survey results indicate that higher alcohol receptivity score among underage participants predicted the onset of drinking, binge drinking and hazardous drinking in the future. The transition to binge drinking (participants were asked how often they have six or more drinks on one occasion) and hazardous drinking (which was defined as meeting or exceeding a threshold score for frequency and quantity of alcohol use) happened for 29 percent and 18 percent of young people ages 15 to 17 years, respectively, and for 29 percent and 19 percent of young people ages 18 to 20 years, respectively. "Alcohol companies claim their advertising does not affect underage drinking -- that instead it is parents and friends that are the culprits," said James D. Sargent, MD, senior author on the study and a CHaD pediatrician, the Scott M. and Lisa G. Stuart Professor of Pediatric Oncology at Geisel, and co-director of the NCCC Cancer Control Program. "This study suggests otherwise -- that underage youths are exposed to and engaged by alcohol marketing and this prompts initiation of drinking as well as transitions from trying to hazardous drinking." "Our study found that familiarity with and response to images of television alcohol marketing was associated with the subsequent onset of drinking across a range of outcomes of varying severity among adolescents and young adults, adding to studies suggesting that alcohol advertising is one cause of youth drinking," the authors conclude. "Current self-regulatory standards for televised alcohol advertising appear to inadequately protect underage youth from exposure to televised alcohol advertising and its probable effect on behavior." Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The original article was written by Rick Adams. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: Susanne E. Tanski, Auden C. McClure, Zhigang Li, Kristina Jackson, Matthis Morgenstern, Zhongze Li, James D. Sargent. Cued Recall of Alcohol Advertising on Television and Underage Drinking Behavior. JAMA Pediatrics, 2015; DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.3345

Living longer, but not healthier?

 

January 20, 2015 University of Massachusetts Medical School A study of long-lived mutant C. elegans shows that the genetically altered worms spend a greater portion of their life in a frail state and exhibit less activity as they age then typical nematodes. These findings suggest that genes that increase longevity may not significantly increase healthy lifespan and point to the need to measure health as part of aging studies going forward. A study of long-lived mutant C. elegans by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School shows that the genetically altered worms spend a greater portion of their life in a frail state and exhibit less activity as they age then typical nematodes. These findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that genes that increase longevity may not significantly increase healthy lifespan and point to the need to measure health as part of aging studies going forward. "Our study reveals that if we want to find the genes that help us remain physically active as we age, the genes that will allow us to play tennis when we're 70 similar to when we were 40, we have to look beyond longevity as the sole criteria. We have to start looking at new genes that might play a part in 'healthspan.'" said Heidi A. Tissenbaum, PhD, professor of molecular, cellular & cancer biology and the program in molecular medicine at UMass Medical School, and principal investigator of the study. Genomic and technological advances have allowed scientists to identify several groups of genes that control longevity in C. elegans, a nematode used as a model system for genetic studies in the lab, as well as in yeast and flies. These genes, when examined, have analogs in mammals. The underlying assumption by scientists has always been that extending lifespan would also increase the time spent by the organism in a healthy state. However, for various reasons, most studies only closely examine these model animals while they're still relatively young and neglect to closely examine the latter portion of the animals' lives. Challenging the assumption that longevity and health are intrinsically connected, Dr. Tissenbaum and colleagues sought to investigate how healthy long-lived C. elegans mutants were as they aged. "The term healthspan is poorly defined in the lab, and in C. elegans few parameters have been identified for measuring health," said Tissenbaum. "So we set out to create a definition of healthspan by identifying traits that could be easily verified and measured as the worms aged." Identifying both frailty and movement as measureable physical attributes that declined in the nematode with age and that could be tested, Ankita Bansal, PhD, now a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, took four different C. elegans mutant specimen (daf-2, eat-2, ife-2 and clk-1) known to live longer than typical nematodes and measured their resistance to heat stress, oxidative stress and activity levels on solids and in liquids as they aged. When Tissenbaum and her colleagues, Dr. Bansal; Kelvin Yen, PhD, now assistant research professor at the University of Southern California; and Lihua Julie Zhu, PhD, research associate professor of molecular, cellular & cancer biology at UMMS, compared these results with wild-type nematodes they found that all the animals--wild-type and mutants--declined physically as they aged. And depending on the mutant specimen and trait being measured, each declined at different rates. Overall they found that the mutant worms, despite having longer lifespans, spent a greater percentage of their lives at less than 50 percent of measured maximum function when compared to wild-type nematodes. The increased lifespan experienced by the mutants was spent, instead, in a frail and debilitated state. "What this means, is that the mutant nematodes were living longer, but most of that extra time wasn't healthy time for the worm," said Tissenbaum. "While we saw some extension in health as the mutants aged for certain traits, invariably the trade off was an extended period of frailty and inactivity for the animal. In fact, as a percentage of total lifespan, the wild-type worms spent more time in a healthy state than the long-lived mutants." The implication for scientists, according to Tissenbaum, is that the set of genes that influence longevity may be distinct from the genes that control healthspan. "This study suggests that there is a separate and unexplored group of genes that allow us to perform at a higher level physically as we age. When we study aging we can no longer look at lifespan as the only parameter; we also have to consider health as a distinct factor of its own." Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by University of Massachusetts Medical School. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: Ankita Bansal, Lihua J. Zhu, Kelvin Yen, Heidi A. Tissenbaum. Uncoupling lifespan and healthspan inCaenorhabditis eleganslongevity mutants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015; 112 (3): E277 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1412192112

China's aging population poses challenges, but policy changes can help

 

While the rapid aging of China's population is thought to condemn the nation to a dismal future, past policies on education and new policies to improve health and foster internal migration could ease the challenges posed by an older citizenry, according to a new study of the impact of aging on China's future. Problems that need attention include China's growing obesity rate and high smoking rates among men and rising levels of urban pollution, challenges that could increase health costs if they trigger disease in older ages, according to the report published online by the Journal of the Economics of Ageing. In addition, China should reform migration policies to allow older Chinese residents to move about the nation more freely and retain full health benefits when they relocate. Such a change would allow older citizens to follow their children as they move about China. The three authors of the study are James P. Smith of the RAND Corporation, John Strauss of the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California, and Yaohui Zhao with the National School of Development of Peking University. "There will not be a demographic fix to healthy aging in China, even if the one-child policy is relaxed, since fertility is unlikely to change much" said Smith, Chair in Labor Market and Demographic Studies at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Government policies need to focus on improving health behaviors, combatting pollution and allowing elderly parents to live with their adult children." Researchers say that Chinese people, reaping the health benefits of dramatically improved education levels, will live longer and healthier lives in future decades, even among those who live in remote areas of the nation. "If you look at a cross section right now, it can be very misleading for population aging in China," Smith said. "In 20 years, Chinese people who are 50 today are not going to look at all like Chinese people in their 70s right now." Better education will make a difference in the health of Chinese citizens as they get older, researchers say. For example, the survey found that today 80 percent of women and 40 percent of men over the age of 75 were illiterate. But in the age range of 45 to 54, only 20 percent of women and 5 percent of men were illiterate, and the education levels of young adults is virtually the same for both men and women today. But Chinese people also are making the same health-threatening lifestyle choices as people in the rest of the world. Smoking rates among men remain high, rates of obesity among men and women are growing, and China's urban areas have extraordinarily high levels of pollution. And as young people migrate to cities for schooling and jobs, their aging parents could be left to fend for themselves in remote areas, according to the study. The research team analyzed information from the 2011-2012 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), which is collected by researchers headed by Zhao at Peking University and is funded in part by the U.S. National Institute of Aging. The survey is a nationally representative sample of people 45 and older in continental China. Chinese respondents from more than 10,000 households will continue to be followed every two years in face-to-face interviews. In 1950, the life expectancy in China was about 40 years, growing to about 70 today, with every indication the trend toward longer life will continue. The biggest change that will affect Chinese people as they age is a rising education level. Chinese citizens also are getting diagnosed and treated for common conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, conditions that just a few years ago they didn't even realize they had. "The silent killers are now being heard," Strauss said. The tradition of children caring for aging parents also is undergoing dramatic change, with fewer children available as caretakers. In 1950, the average Chinese woman had six children. Projections are that in China, in part due to the one-child policy, by 2050 women will have 1.9 children, or below replacement level fertility. "If you have five kids, it's a lot more certain that one of them will take care of you than if you only have one or two," Zhao said. Today, more than 90 percent of elderly people have a child living with or near them. But indications are that that is changing. While 94 percent of people over 75 live with or near a child, that is true for only 82 percent of those 55 years old. And when children leave rural areas for cities, some government policies make it difficult or impossible for parents to follow. For example, today almost all rural Chinese people have health insurance. But insurance pools are operated at the county level, and reimbursement for care decreases while co-payments increase for care received outside of one's home county. Such policies discourage older parents from following their adult children to new locations. "A larger fraction of parents will not have access to an adult child," Zhao said. "That's not a crisis of the moment, but a potential crisis of the future." Changes in China's one child policy are unlikely to affect this since China's fertility rate is very similar to other countries at the same level of development, according to researchers.

Ears on: Sony's new high resolution, high dollar Walkman

 

The new Walkman will launch in the first half of 2015 Image Gallery (7 images) The original Sony Walkman was introduced over 35 years ago, and has since been supplanted in popular culture by first the iPod and more recently, by iPhones and other smartphones. But Sony isn't giving up on its original portable music brand that easily – the company introduced a new high resolution digital Walkman at CES 2015 and Gizmag had the chance to test it out. If you're paying close attention, you'll notice that the "return of the Walkman" is a near annual occurrence with Sony. There were CD and ill-conceived MiniDisc versions of the device in the 1990s, and as far back as 2003 Gizmag was covering an odd new solid state Network Walkman from the company. A few years later it tried out its first Walkman phone, then there was a strange pace-sensing Sports Walkman, the Walkman response to the iPod, an Android Walkman and even a Walkman built in to waterproof earbuds. Having tried just about everything else, it seems, to catapult the Walkman back to relevance, Sony's latest gambit is to go super high-end with the Walkman NW-ZX2, which it claims can "reproduce master quality recordings just as the artists originally intended." Sony has baked a bunch of proprietary technologies with unfamiliar acronyms like its S-Master HX digital amplifier and DSEE HX tech that supposedly "upscales" non-high resolution sound to higher quality. Much of this will be familiar to those who have had the opportunity to plug their ears into the ZX1 version of this Walkman, the last generation that was available in Japan but not released in North America. I was able to listen to a few songs with the new Walkman using a few different pairs of high-quality headphones, and while it delivers high levels of clarity and impressive deep bass, it wasn't quite the mind-blowing experience I'd expect for what is rumored to be a US $1,000-plus device. I could detect a bit of distortion in one of the tracks, but it's tough to say if that was the fault of the device, the headphones, or perhaps the insane levels of interference with my headphones' Bluetooth connection coming from everything else on the CES show floor. I'd put my money on the latter, but still. The ZX2 is a little bigger and clunkier than you might expect, but it certainly feels solid, like the components inside are well protected and your listening experience won't eventually degrade due to a loose connection somewhere, which inevitably seemed to happen with well-worn cassette Walkmans. As far as specs go, this Walkman is running off Android Jelly Bean with Wi-Fi, and you could technically download apps to it, but you won't find it to be the best experience for that kind of use, as it's really geared for audiophiles. It supports digital files up to 192 kHz/24 bit in formats including MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV and ALAC. There's 128 GB of storage built-in and a microSD card slot, providing plenty of room for all your audio in most cases. Part of the bulk of this device is given over to a battery big enough to deliver up to 60 hours of listening per charge. This Walkman will be available in the northern spring of this year, where it could be competing with the likes of Neil Young's Pono player, a device taking pre-orders now for a retail price that could be 65 percent lower and deliver the same sound quality. Don't fear, though, Walkman fans, if this latest version doesn't catch fire, history tells us the next iteration is probably just a year or so away. Product page: Sony

Major cause of blindness linked to calcium deposits in the eye

 

Microscopic spheres of calcium phosphate have been linked to the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a major cause of blindness, by UCL-led research.   AMD affects 1 in 5 people over 75, causing their vision to slowly deteriorate, but the cause of the most common form of the disease remains a mystery.* The ability to spot the disease early and reliably halt its progression would improve the lives of millions, but this is simply not possible with current knowledge and techniques. The latest research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has implicated tiny spheres of mineralised calcium phosphate, 'hydroxylapatite', in AMD progression. This not only offers a possible explanation for how AMD develops, but also opens up new ways to diagnose and treat the disease. AMD is characterised by a build-up of mainly protein and fat containing deposits called 'drusen' in the retina, which can prevent essential nutrients from reaching the eye's light-sensitive cells, 'photoreceptors'. Photoreceptors are regularly recycled by cellular processes, creating waste products, but drusen can trap this 'junk' inside the retina, worsening the build-up. Until now, nobody understood how drusen formed and grew to clinically relevant size. The new study shows that tiny calcium-based hydroxyapatite, commonly found in bones and teeth, could explain the origin of drusen. The researchers believe that these spheres attract proteins and fats to their surface, which build up over years to form drusen. Through post-mortem examination of 30 eyes from donors between 43 and 96 years old, the researchers used fluorescent dyes to identify the tiny spheres, just a few microns -- thousandths of a millimetre -- across. "We found these miniscule hollow spheres inside all of the eyes and all the deposits that we examined, from donors with and without AMD," explains Dr Imre Lengyel, Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Honorary Research Fellow at Moorfields Eye Hospital, who led the study. "Eyes with more of these spheres contained more drusen. The spheres appear long before drusen become visible on clinical examination. "The fluorescent labelling technique that we used can identify the early signs of drusen build-up long before they become visible with current methods. The dyes that we used should be compatible with existing diagnostic machines. If we could develop a safe way of getting these dyes into the eye, we could advance AMD diagnoses by a decade or more and could follow early progression more precisely." Some of the mineral spheres identified in the eye samples were coated with amyloid beta, which is linked to Alzheimer's disease. If a technique were developed to identify these spheres for AMD diagnosis, it may also aid early diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Whether these spheres are a cause or symptom of AMD is still unclear, but their diagnostic value is significant either way. As drusen are hallmarks of AMD, then strategies to prevent build-up could potentially stop AMD from developing altogether. "The calcium-based spheres are made up of the same compound that gives teeth and bone their strength, so removal may not be an option," says Dr Lengyel. "However, if we could get to the spheres before the fat and protein build-up, we could prevent further growth. This can already be done in the lab, but much more work is needed before this could be translated into patients." "Our discovery opens up an exciting new avenue of scientific research into potential new diagnostics and treatments, but this is only the beginning of a long road." says Dr Richard Thompson, the main international collaborator from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, USA. The work was supported by the Bill Brown Charitable Trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Mercer Fund from Fight for Sight, and the Bright Focus Foundation. The UCL-led international collaboration involved researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Imperial College London, the University of Tübingen, George Mason University, Fairfax, and the University of Chicago. *A minority (10%) of cases are 'wet' AMD, which is caused by leaking blood vessels and can sometimes be treated with eye injections. The majority (90%) of cases are 'dry' AMD, whose cause remains a mystery and for which there are no reliable treatments.