#78 Ideology for Neurology - Installment #5 [37:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (871)

Publication Date: July 13th, 2007.

Installment #5 of Ideology for Neurology — working toward neurological perfection Focus: Stem cell therapy.

• Stem Cell Victory in California: CA Supreme Court just cleared the way for the state to use bond funding to pay for the Institute of Regenerative Medicine - a very large-scale stem cell research initiative.
• Stem Cells Treat Rat Paralysis: Paralyzed rats that received mouse embryonic stem cells (and differentiation factors) regrew motor neurons that resulted in roughly 50% recovery of strength in their limbs.
• Palliation Clinically Effective, Reduces Hospital Care Costs: In one patient group the savings were essentially $350 per day.
• Chronic Severe Pain Can Mean Death To Those Left Untreated: With adequate pain control, the % of patients with abnormal serum cortisol levels dropped to just 4% of the patients.
• Conduction Studies Don’t Imperil Cardiac Devices: Electrical output during nerve conduction studies probably don’t imperil implanted cardiac devices.
• Abusive head trauma easily missed in the ED: Shaken baby syndrome misdiagnosed in almost 30% of children.

And Last but not least: Honey-Maggot medicine–anyone?

Next week’s show: Nerve University — education, research and scholarship in neurology.

Weblinks:

• Harvesting one cell from the blastomere (image): www.sfgate.com
• Information on appellants to the CA stem cell legislation: www.curesforcalifornia.com
• Other than the official California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (the California stem cell agency) website, here’s the only other website devoted solely to news and information about CIRM: www.californiastemcellreport.blogspot.com/
• This website lists the hospitals which accept cord blood donations for stem cells, and has contact information for Cryobanks International, which accepts cord blood donations from anywhere in the continental US: www.marrow.org.