After a spinal cord injury, it’s all about taking baby steps.  A team of scientists from the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve Medical School have successfully restored bladder function to rats who had suffered severe spinal cord injuries.  The team used a new technique to regenerate nerve cells across the site of injury, resulting in the first time an animal has been able to urinate normally after a spinal cord injury.  While the animals did not regain the ability to walk, being able to urinate again is a significant step.

After a spinal cord injury, the nerve cells in the brainstem are disconnected from nerve cells in the spinal cord, meaning messages cannot be delivered from the brain to the muscles.  The body naturally responds to the injury with inflammation, causing scar tissue to form at the site of the injury.  While this protects against further damage, it ruins the chance of restoring nerve function.  However, the researchers in this study were able to take healthy nerves from another part of the rats’ bodies, graft them onto the damaged area of the spinal cord and add chemicals that promote cell growth and disrupt scar formation.  The results showed a re-growth of some brainstem cells across the injury site, which allowed for control over bladder function.

Being able to urinate again would be a big improvement in the quality of life for humans who have suffered spinal cord injuries. Many patients, in fact, rate that  as one of the functions they most want to regain after an injury.

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Sourced from: Medical News Today, Nerve cells regrown after spinal cord injury

Is food addiction real?  Scientists from Boston Children’s Hospital have used brain scans to support the claims that highly processed carbohydrates cause certain areas of the brain to be stimulated.

According to the researchers, when someone eats foods with a high-glycemic load – those foods most associated with obesity and overeating – the parts of the brain controlling both reward and cravings become stimulated, mimicking the same effects caused by other addictive substances.  Ingesting these foods triggers dopamine pleasure centers in the brain and raises questions about addiction, the scientists reported.

The researchers recruited 12 overweight and obese men and used function MRI scans to track how their brains lit up when consuming a series of foods.  The men drank two beverages disguised as a milkshakes, with the same calories, taste and sweetness, except one contained fast-digesting carbohydrates and one contained slow-digesting carbohydrates.  After drinking the high-glycemic index milkshake – the rapidly digesting carbs – the men saw an initial surge in blood sugar, then a crash in blood glucose.  The men experienced intense hunger and activation of the nuclear accumbens, the part of the brain which controls addictive behaviors.

These findings could help prove that limiting high-glycemic index foods could be a pathway towards treating food addiction and obesity.  Reducing intake of these foods could help decrease cravings and control the urge to overeat, according to the researchers

NEXT: Nerve cells regrown after spinal cord injury

Sourced from: Science Daily, New Brain Imaging Study Provides Support for the Notion of Food Addiction

In the latest development in the fast-growing field of cloning, Japanese scientists have cloned a mouse from a single drop of blood from the tail of another mouse.  According to researchers from the Riken BioResource Center, the cells from the blood could be used for cloning immediately after collection, meaning that the donor animal wouldn’t have to be euthanized.  Previously, mice have been cloned from white blood cells found in the lymph nodes, bone marrow and liver, but this is the first study to demonstrate that mice could be cloned using the nuclei of peripheral blood cells.

The team of scientists isolated white blood cells from the donor mouse’s tail and used the nuclei for cloning, the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep in Scotland back in 1996.  The process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves transferring the nucleus from an adult body cell—such as a blood or skin cell—into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed. The embryo is then placed inside a surrogate mother, allowing her to give birth to an exact genetic copy of the original animal.

An associated team of scientists recently produced almost 600 mice from one donor mouse after 25 consecutive rounds of cloning. This technique could be applied to creating copies of invaluable genetic strains of mice.

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Sourced from: BBC News, Mouse cloned from drop of blood

Thanks to improvements in medical treatment, people are surviving heart failure with increasing frequency.  But new research from the Mayo Clinic suggests that those survivors may be a higher risk of developing cancer. The scientists also found that heart failure survivors who develop cancer have higher mortality rates.

Researchers studied medical records from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, analyzing 596 heart failure patients and an equal number of healthy subjects.  They determined that that those who suffered heart failure between 1979 and 1990 had a 48 percent increased risk of cancer over the healthy subjects, while heart failure patients between 1991 and 2002 had an 86 percent increased risk of cancer.

The results of the study suggest that cardiovascular treatment side effects could lead to cancer, or that the stress from illness or other mechanisms associated with heart problems, such as inflammation, could be a factor.  The researchers also suspect that the increased occurrence of cancer could be attributed to increased surveillance.

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Sourced from: Science Daily, Heart Failure Survivors at Greater Risk for Cancer, Study Shows