Blood Vessels

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the supplement nitric oxide? Richard Sunland Nitric oxide is a gas naturally found in the body; its function is conveying information between cells. One of its main jobs is increasing blood flow by dilating blood vessels, and that's why it's sometimes given in supplement form to heart patients, orally and intravenously. In at least one study it's been shown to be effective for lowering blood pressure.

Step away from the beer pong table! College binge drinking may leave you with more than just embarrassing memories and excruciating hangovers. In a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology , researchers found that four years of heavy drinking between the ages of 18 and 25 may be enough to permanently increase a person's risk of heart attack, stroke and atherosclerosis. Researchers at the University of Illinois recruited 38 nonsmoking young adults and split them into two groups: alcohol abstainers and binge drinkers.

Lucentis, known generically as ranibizumab, is the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating the wet form of age-related macular degeneration, commonly known as AMD. But Lucentis costs as much as $2,000 per dose, so many physicians have begun substituting the similar anti-cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab), which costs less than $150 per dose. Some studies have indicated that Avastin is just as effective as Lucentis, and many public agencies in the United States and Canada have begun authorizing its use in an effort to save money, although such use has not been approved by the FDA or its Canadian equivalent.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday warned parents and pediatricians about the dangers of swallowing over-the-counter eyedrops and nasal decongestants by children age 5 and younger. The agency cited 96 cases of serious illness resulting from accidental swallowing of the products, with 53 hospitalizations. There were, fortunately, no deaths. The eyedrops, which are sold under a wide variety of brand and generic names -- including Visine, Opcon-A, Naphcon, Afrin, Dristan, Mucinex and Sudafed -- contain either tetrahydrozoline, oxymetazoline of naphazoline.

A successful hand transplant has a long list of ingredients: a motivated patient; a team of plastic surgeons, orthopedists, neurosurgeons and others to reattach bone, ligaments, nerves and blood vessels; and a suitable donor hand that matches the patient's size, skin color and even hair patterns. The surgery, which can run as long as 14 hours, has been available for a little more than 10 years — the first successful hand transplant was performed in France in 1998, with the U.S. following a year later.

Ever found a mysterious black-and-blue mark on your body and wondered how it gotthere? Whether the result of major trauma or an inadvertent bump, bruising is one way to assess damage to tissue. The factors involved in what makes a bruise and how it heals are fairly simple. In an effort to get to the bottom of bruising, we went to three specialists who deal in bruises: Dr. Philomena McAndrew, a Los Angeles hematologist; Dr. William Shankwiler, a Pasadena orthopedic surgeon, and Dr.

Step away from the beer pong table! College binge drinking may leave you with more than just embarrassing memories and excruciating hangovers. In a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology , researchers found that four years of heavy drinking between the ages of 18 and 25 may be enough to permanently increase a person's risk of heart attack, stroke and atherosclerosis. Researchers at the University of Illinois recruited 38 nonsmoking young adults and split them into two groups: alcohol abstainers and binge drinkers.

California researchers have developed a technique to grow artificial blood vessels from a patient's own skin cells -- a technique that could quickly find application in kidney-failure victims undergoing dialysis. The technique has been tested in 10 patients, and preliminary results published Thursday in the journal Lancet suggest that the blood vessels can remain viable for long periods. "This technology is very, very promising," Dr.

It's the most exciting use of the 3-D printer since the burritoBot : Scientists have figured out a way to make networks of blood vessels out of sugar that can be surrounded by living cells, bypassing what had been a major roadblock in the path to creating organs for transplant, or even lab-made prime steaks. Researchers have made significant progress toward the production of living tissue in the lab, but the studies have been plagued by an inability to successfully fill the tissues with vasculature.

Doctors are one step closer to a simple test that could predict whether a patient is about to have a heart attack - by using a blood sample to detect cells that have sloughed off of damaged blood vessel walls. The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, could potentially address "the greatest unmet need" facing cardiologists, said lead author Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego. Though physicians can easily detect a heart attack that's already underway, every year tens of thousands of patients walk away from the doctor's office after having passed a stress test, only to suffer a devastating heart attack within a few weeks.

Since tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1996 for the dissolution of blood clots in the brain that cause strokes, it has been the primary treatment for stroke victims. But it has several limitations. In most cases, it must be used within three hours after the stroke to be effective, although in some cases the crucial window can be extended to 4.5 hours. It is also often not effective in dissolving larger blood clots.  On 2004, the FDA approved the first mechanical system for removing clots from the brain, the Merci Retrieval System.

It's the most exciting use of the 3-D printer since the burritoBot : Scientists have figured out a way to make networks of blood vessels out of sugar that can be surrounded by living cells, bypassing what had been a major roadblock in the path to creating organs for transplant, or even lab-made prime steaks. Researchers have made significant progress toward the production of living tissue in the lab, but the studies have been plagued by an inability to successfully fill the tissues with vasculature.

Lucentis, known generically as ranibizumab, is the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating the wet form of age-related macular degeneration, commonly known as AMD. But Lucentis costs as much as $2,000 per dose, so many physicians have begun substituting the similar anti-cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab), which costs less than $150 per dose. Some studies have indicated that Avastin is just as effective as Lucentis, and many public agencies in the United States and Canada have begun authorizing its use in an effort to save money, although such use has not been approved by the FDA or its Canadian equivalent.

With the help of power tools and industrial-grade vise grips, Miami doctors have successfully removed a 3-foot spear that pierced a teenager's skull during a fishing accident. And Tuesday, 16-year-old Yasser Lopez left the intensive care unit. “It could be a complete recovery,” said Dr. Ross  Bullock, a neurosurgeon at the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Hospital. “That is so rare.” The afternoon of June 7, Lopez's 15-year-old friend misfired a Cressi Sub SL spear gun while trying to load it, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department.

Doctors are one step closer to a simple test that could predict whether a patient is about to have a heart attack - by using a blood sample to detect cells that have sloughed off of damaged blood vessel walls. The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, could potentially address "the greatest unmet need" facing cardiologists, said lead author Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego. Though physicians can easily detect a heart attack that's already underway, every year tens of thousands of patients walk away from the doctor's office after having passed a stress test, only to suffer a devastating heart attack within a few weeks.

British actress Judi Dench is seeking to downplay fears over the revelation that she is suffering from a degenerative eye condition. The Oscar-winning Dench, perhaps best known as James Bond's mysterious boss M, has been dealing with two different forms of macular generation -- one in each eye. According to Reuters, she can no longer read scripts and has to have someone read them out loud to her, "like reading me a story. " According to the National Eye Institute, macular degeneration occurs in an area known as the macula, which sits at the center of the light-sensitive tissue known as the retina, located at the back of the eye socket.

Chemists are attempting to modify the surface of certain plastics in the hope of developing advanced bionic materials that ultimately can be used as implantable blood vessels. Experiments under way at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico join a growing repertoire of potential uses of plastic to replace malfunctioning physiological systems.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have produced for the first time artificial blood vessels from cells grown in the laboratory. The living blood vessels hold great promise for replacing small vessels that have been damaged by diabetes, blood vessel diseases or physical injury, the scientists said. As many as 300,000 people each year in the United States could benefit from small blood vessel replacements if they should become widely available.

Vampire bats like it warm: To home in and bite with fanged efficiency, they've developed a temperature sensor to guide them to their prey, a new study has found. All mammals need heat sensors to help them avoid potentially harmful temperatures such as those that would be encountered from a forest fire or dangerously hot water. This is achieved by a protein called TRPV1 that forms a pore — known as an ion channel — in the membranes of cells. TRPV1 detects temperatures higher than 109 degrees Fahrenheit.

Researchers at De Montfort University, the University of York and Loughborough University in Britain have released a study suggesting that many students with sickle cell disease aren't getting the help they need from their schools.   Sickle cell disease is a rare, inherited blood condition - in the U.S., most prevalent in African Americans - that causes sufferers to develop abnormally shaped, "sickled" red blood cells that clog blood vessels and cause complications such as chronic severe pain, organ damage and sometimes stroke.