Singing for Dementia

Reading an out of date New Scientist (22 May 2010) I found a story about dementia saying that "singing to elderly people with dementia helps them form new memories" (22 May 2010 pg12 by Nora Schultz). It has also been proved that "people with Alzheimer's disease are better at remembering events from their past when music is played" (same reference).

The breakthrough in this story (or was a breakthrough back in 2010!!) is that sufferers of dementia find it extremely difficult to remember things that have happened very recently i.e. what they have had for lunch, but can remember past events that mean a lot to them/ well in the past when stimulated.

A trial was carried out by "Brandon Ally and his team at Boston University" who were "inspired inspired by the report of a man with Alzheimer's who could recall current events if his daughter sang the news to him to the tune of familiar pop songs" (same reference).

What they found from their trial of "13 people with Alzheimer's" that by giving "the lyrics from 40 unfamiliar children's song to read, half accompanied by the actual song and half by spoken word" and the results showed that "those with Alzheimer's were able to recognise 40% of the original lyrics that had been accompanied by song but only 28% of those read to them."

Granted that this isn't a huge increase in the percentages it is a significant difference of 12%. But it was also reported that "we don't yet know why singing should help, but Ally said that music engages areas of the brain, including subcortical regions, that are typically spared until later on in dementia."

But singing has also been used in other ways for dementia sufferers such as in getting patients to "cope better with their symptoms and improve their quality of life" (http://tinyurl.com/cem7tpc).

News Round Up

A couple of stories, "PIP Breast Implants" and "Worldwide Flu Pandemic?", that I have covered in the last two months have come up again in the news recently with new developments.

Firstly in the "PIP Breast Implant" story, the BBC reported that "Lloyds TSB refunds cost of woman's faulty breast implants" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17361122). Lloyds paid out £3,700 to the lady "on the grounds she was sold faulty goods" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17361122). This is the first story I can find of someone being refunded the money that they paid for the faulty PIP breasts but the private clinics that fitted them are still refusing to pay out to the patients.

Secondly when I wrote the "Worldwide Flu Pandemic?" story there was a lot of talk at the time of closing/suspending research over risks of the H5N1 escaping and causing a flu pandemic. I then recently read in New Scientist (28th January 2012 (page 6)) that the "controversial flu research is on hold" on the basis that some "experiments could cause the H5N1 bird flu virus to spread more easily." It then went on to say "US bio-security experts say some details must be withheld, in case bioterrorists get hold of them." I'm not so sure about how big the risk of bioterrorism is though.

However, in the Telegraph it was reported "Scientists clone cashmere goats in bid to increase wool production" (http://tinyurl.com/7cztex2). This is a goat that was cloned in India to increase the production of "pashmina wool, or cashmere" (http://tinyurl.com/7cztex2). "Noori was cloned by Dr Riaz Ahmad Shah, a veterinarian in the animal biotechnology centre of Sher-i-Kashmir University and took two years to clone Noori, using the relatively new 'handmade' cloning technique involving only a microscope and a steady hand" (http://tinyurl.com/7cztex2). This is only one in a list of animals that have been cloned, but what about the ethics of cloning?

'PathFinder' Brain Surgeon Robot

In reference to last weeks post, Worldwide Flu Pandemic?, the story has developed, with the BBC posting an article on the 20th of January saying "scientists who created a potentially more deadly bird flu strain have temporarily stopped their research amid fears it could be used by terrorists" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16662346), full story on that URL.

In 2001, news arrived that the "first medical robot designed to operate on the brain has begun clinical trials at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, UK" (http://tinyurl.com/6vcogut). This sounds quite astounding if you think about the level of accuracy and precision that surgeons need to have and; in terms of ethics, surely we couldn't give over the job of neurosurgery to a robot? This video shows neurosurgery that was carried out with an awake patient and underlines the accuracy that a neurosurgeon needs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD8ckoy9NVU). They are able to do it while the patient is awake because there are no pain receptors in the brain and there can be "anaesthetic administered locally, to the scalp" (http://tinyurl.com/7dbrwec).

The robot that began its trials in 2001, called the "PathFinder, will not be able to do operations that are not already possible, but it could do them much faster and more accurately" (http://tinyurl.com/6vcogut). PathFinder can "align the surgical tools to within 1mm" (http://tinyurl.com/6wrqgnz) which is incredible and is certainly more accurate than conventional surgery, because of the movement of the surgeons hand with the instruments.

The PathFinder is also very safe, otherwise it would not pass the trials or even be used; as this New Scientist article illustrates, "despite the name, surgical robots are not automatic and do not operate in any way like factory assembly-line robots. Rather, they are precision machines controlled remotely by a surgeon" (http://tinyurl.com/6nfeb4b). Another article, http://www.imperial.ac.uk/college.asp?P=7449, shows an experiment that was carried out based on the precision of knee surgery by a robot called 'Acrobot' and also illustrates the precision of these robots.

Another example of a robot used for neurosurgery is the 'NeuroArm'. The team on the NeuroArm Project had to overcome a number of challenges, including "how could a machine be created to be as precise and dexterous as the human hand, without compromising surgical technique?" (http://www.neuroarm.org/project/). This is one of the questions that all of the companies who make robots for surgery must ask themselves. Another video (http://tinyurl.com/7383jft) shows the NeuroArm in action.

Ten years on from when PathFinder was first unveiled I have been unable to find any statistics on the performance of the robot at all or in fact many other articles on the robot. But there are other surgical robots that have been developed (worth looking at) since 2001, such as the NeuroArm (http://www.neuroarm.org/project/) and also the ROBOCAST (http://tinyurl.com/7pk33h9).

Worldwide Flu Pandemic?

Another article from the New Scientist website that I found was looking into this question; "Two labs have made lethal, highly transmissible versions of bird flu virus – do the risks of it escaping outweigh the benefits of the research?" (http://tinyurl.com/7q74mgz). The labs have "brewed up variants of H5N1 that can spread between ferrets merely breathing the same air" (http://tinyurl.com/7q74mgz) which shows that this is an extremely contagious virus that could most certainly cause a pandemic in human beings.

I found out about the H5N1 virus, Avian Influenza, on PubMed Health (The World's Largest Medical Library). Avian Influenza is a "flu infection in birds; the virus that causes the infection in birds can mutate to infect humans, such mutation could start a deadly worldwide epidemic" (http://tinyurl.com/3hcyygv). People have been infected with the virus all across the world and "slightly more than 60% of those who became ill have died" (http://tinyurl.com/3hcyygv). This is a staggering statistic, which was also hinted by D. A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who said that the "1918 flu would look like nothing if this really got loose." To give a scale to his words, he is referring to the epidemic "known as 'Spanish Flu' or 'La Grippe' between 1918-1919 which killed between 20 and 40 million people" (http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/).

In 2004 the H5N1 virus "caused poultry disease in eight Asian countries and infected at least 44 people, killing 32, most of these people had close contact with poultry" (http://tinyurl.com/7maqhxz). This shows that there are recent examples of the severity of this flu. New Scientist say that they "don't know for sure that the viruses would behave the same way in people as in ferrets [indicated in the aforementioned experiment], but the assumption has to be that they do" (http://tinyurl.com/7q74mgz). However on another website, http://tinyurl.com/7maqhxz, it is suggested that "the virus does not easily transmit from human to human" due to the binding properties of the H5N1 virus.

I think, based on the theories of the biologists and the conflicting views on how effectively the virus will take hold in humans, that we need to be aware that there is a serious risk associated with laboratories manufacturing and testing this virus and that maybe there should be limited access for those those who are working on the virus, so as to reduce the chances of passing it on. Maybe the scientists should live on a campus where they are isolated from others while they are experimenting on the virus. So in answer to New Scientist's question; "do the risks of it escaping outweigh the benefits of the research?" I would say that yes, it is worth the research so we can learn more about mutations and viruses but there needs to be strict regulations and monitoring in place to deal with the risk of a pandemic.

Indian drug-resistant TB

I picked this story up from the New Scientist website (http://tinyurl.com/6oqv3rf) which was about a "strain of tuberculosis that is resistant to all existing TB drugs" which has been "emerged" in Mumbai, India.
Tuberculosis is an infection caused by bacteria that infects the lungs but can also "spread to other parts of the body". Either, the "immune system deals with it, or it fails to kill or contain it. If it is not treated, an active TB infection can be fatal. It can damage the lungs to such an extent that a person cannot breathe properly" (http://tinyurl.com/78j3mds). There have been "12 confirmed cases of which three are dead" said Zarir Udwadia of the Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre in Mumbai "(head of the team whose diagnoses of four cases has just been published)", (http://tinyurl.com/78j3mds).

"Several medicines are used to treat TB and the treatment usually lasts six months" (http://tinyurl.com/789jpvy). The issue with the strain of TB that has been uncovered is that it is drug-resistant (as indicated in the title...) and this has caused a big worry to Mumbai as it is such a densley populated city and TB is passed on "through inhaling tiny droplets of saliva from the coughs or sneezes of an infected person" (http://tinyurl.com/78j3mds) which is incredibly easy when there are so many people, ("30,000 per square km", http://tinyurl.com/6lpbyco). The worry is that this will result in an epidemic in Mumbai with an incurable disease affecting the majority of the population of the city. "It's estimated that on average, a tuberculosis patient infects 10 to 20 contacts in a year" (http://tinyurl.com/6oqv3rf).

The only way to prevent this strain from continuing to be spread is by "quarantining them in hospitals with isolation facilities till they become non-infectious – which is not practical or possible" (http://tinyurl.com/6oqv3rf) and will become even harder to enforce as there becomes more people affected.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) will be organising a meeting to "decide what steps to take next" (http://tinyurl.com/6oqv3rf). New Scientist also mentions two other cases, one in Italy (2007) and another in Iran (2009) where there were cases of people with "totally drug-resistant (TDR) tuberculosis" and say that the "Indian report is the first since then" (http://tinyurl.com/6oqv3rf).