Monthly Archives: April 2012
Call for single, out-of-hours point of contact for Norfolk’s dementia carers
Dementia services in Norfolk will be discussed at the Norfolk Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on Thursday, April 12.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
10.30 AM
A patient watchdog is calling for a single, out-of-hours point of contact for families and carers of people with dementia.
The current state of services for people with dementia and their families will be discussed at a Norfolk Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting at 10am on Thursday at County Hall.
Big Advance Against Cystic Fibrosis: Stem Cell Researchers Create Lung Surface Tissue in a Dish
Harvard stem cell researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have taken a critical step in making possible the discovery in the relatively near future of a drug to control cystic fibrosis (CF)
ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2012) — Harvard stem cell researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have taken a critical step in making possible the discovery in the relatively near future of a drug to control cystic fibrosis (CF), a fatal lung disease that claims about 500 lives each year, with 1,000 new cases diagnosed annually.
Beginning with the skin cells of patients with CF, Jayaraj Rajagopal, MD, and colleagues first created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and then used those cells to create human disease-specific functioning lung epithelium, the tissue that lines the airways and is the site of the most lethal aspect of CF, where the genes cause irreversible lung disease and inexorable respiratory failure.
That tissue, which researchers now can grow in unlimited quantities in the laboratory, contains the delta-508 mutation, the gene responsible for about 70 percent of all CF cases and 90 percent of the ones in the United States. The tissue also contains the G551D mutation, a gene that is involved in about 2 percent of CF cases and the one cause of the disease for which there is now a drug.
The work is featured on the cover of this month’s Cell Stem Cell journal. Postdoctoral fellow Hongmei Mou, PhD, is first author on the paper, and Rajagopal is the senior author.
WHO calls for a rethink of conventional definitions of what it means to be ‘old’
Good health adds life to years
Edited by Jane Hill editor@wellbeingnorfolk.co.uk
On World Health Day [7 April], the World Health Organization [WHO] is calling for urgent action to ensure that, at a time when the world’s population is ageing rapidly, people reach old age in the best possible health.
In the next few years, for the first time, there will be more people in the world aged over 60 than children aged less than five. By 2050, 80 per cent of the world’s older people will be living in low– and middle–income countries.
The main health challenges for older people everywhere are non–communicable diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and lung disease.
