by By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) – Hello Health Rounds Readers! Sometimes science is just so cool. Today we have a study that makes good on the science envisioned by HG Wells over 100 years ago in “The Invisible Man”. We also report on a new use of AI that can improve the diagnosis of heart failure in pregnant women, and the discovery of a new type of brain cell.
Absorbed dye makes the skin of the mouse invisible
Adding a food-safe dye that absorbs light to the skin of a mouse makes its skin transparent, allowing researchers to see the blood vessels of the scalp, the movement of organs under the skin of the abdomen, and the muscles work, they reported. on Thursday in Science.
The harmless process, which was reversible with a quick wash, could eventually be useful in a wide range of medical diagnostics, the researchers said in a statement.
Injecting the dye – known as tartrazine and commonly known as FD&C Yellow 5 – may lead to visions deeper into the body, they believe.
Normally, the body is not invisible because light bends and scatters differently as it passes through each of the different tissues and fluids.
When dissolved in water, tartrazine molecules are structured in a way that aligns with the skin’s ability to bend, or its “refractive index”. The dye absorbs blue/purple light and allows red/orange light to travel through the tissue, resulting in transparency.
“Looking forward, this technology could make veins more visible for blood draws, make laser-based tattoo removal simpler, or help detect and treat cancer early,” said Guosong Hong from Stanford University, who helped conduct the research. .
″For example, some therapies use lasers to eliminate cancer and pre-cancer cells, but they are limited to areas near the surface of the skin. This technique may be able to improve that light penetration.”
A commentary published with the paper notes that HG Wells foresaw this approach long ago in his novel The Invisible Man.
“The protagonist invents a serum that will make the cells in his body transparent by precisely controlling their refractive index to match the surrounding medium, air,” wrote Christopher J. Rowlands and Jon Gorecki from Imperial College London.
Now, 127 years later, the Stanford team reports that “biocompatible dyes make living tissue transparent by tuning the refractive index of the surrounding medium to match that of the cells.”
AI-enabled stethoscope improves pregnancy heart monitoring
A digital stethoscope enabled with artificial intelligence improves heart failure detection in pregnant women, according to data from a trial presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in London.
Heart failure often goes unnoticed during pregnancy because common symptoms such as shortness of breath, extreme fatigue and trouble breathing while lying down are easily mistaken for typical pregnancy discomforts, they noted.
The trial included nearly 1,200 women in Nigeria, which has the world’s highest rates of pregnancy-related heart failure.
Exams that included the use of the AI-enabled digital stethoscope were 12 times more likely than traditional screening to indicate heart pump weakness indicative of a type of pregnancy-related heart failure called peripartum cardiomyopathy, according to findings also published in Nature Medicine.
Early recognition of this type of heart failure is important for the mother’s health and well-being, study leader Dr. Demilade Adedinsewo of the Mayo Clinic said in a statement.
“Symptoms of peripartum cardiomyopathy can gradually worsen as pregnancy progresses, or more commonly after delivery, and can be life-threatening for the mother,” she said. “Severe cases, if not controlled with medical therapy, may sometimes require intensive care, a mechanical heart pump, or a heart transplant.”
Newly discovered brain cells may predict glioma outcome
Researchers have discovered a surprising new type of cell in the human brain that may be linked to how patients with a certain type of brain tumor are likely to fare, according to a report in Cancer Cell.
The cells, found in brain tumors called gliomas and also in healthy brain tissue, fire electrical impulses called action potentials, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston found.
The discovery “supports the pioneering idea that neurons are not the only cells capable of generating electrical signals in the brain,” they said in a statement.
“We’ve known for some time now that tumor cells and neurons interact directly,” study co-author Dr. Rachel Curry said in a statement. “But one question that was always in my mind was, ‘Are cancer cells electrically active?'”
Studying human brain cells obtained from patients undergoing brain surgery, the researchers discovered that the newly identified cells are hybrids, with elements of neurons and glial cells, that keep neurons alive and help them function . Gliomas are tumors of the glial tissue.
“We’ve never seen anything like this in a mammalian brain before,” said study coauthor Dr. Qianqian Ma, in a statement.
Much more work is needed to determine the role of these hybrid cells in the brain, but the results suggest that their proportion may have prognostic value in gliomas.
“The data show that the more of these spiking hybrid glioma cells a patient has, the better the survival outcome,” said coauthor Dr. Ganesh Rao in a statement. “This information is very valuable to patients and their doctors.”
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Bill Berkrot)
