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I Wanna New Thumb
joestump98 writes: "It appears that we are taking odd steps towards growing back lost tissue - a story at Yahoo! tells that 'doctors have used a patient's own body cells and a scaffold made of coral to grow back a missing portion of his thumb.' Sounds too cool!"
The coral is dead and cleaned up/sterilized...
It, as well as cadaveric(dead people) bone can be commonly used as substitute/filler bone when there are large holes that need to be filled (i.e. traumatic experience).
The coral provides a scaphold for your bodies own osteoclasts and osteoblasts to produce new bone - but it takes a long time to do incorporate - months/years..
..........FULL STOP.
I thought coral material was alive. Even if it were just skeletal material deposits, I'd think there would be an issue of rejection to be overcome. I'm curious about how they addressed this, and whether the resulting complications would balance against the simplicity of just using the person's own tissues (i.e. a toe).
...give this breakthrough two thumbs up!
This is seriously too cool.
Justin
Read this. The amount of coral used is very small, and the methods used for harvesting supposedly have little to no effect on the coral population.
It's such a small amount that they are using, it makes very little impact. Or at least so they say...
Scientists can already create structures that are similar to coral (at least in their porousity). An example of this would be Aerogels which have a similar structure.
A gel is formed, which contains a porous, solid network, and the liquid component is removed, leaving a hunk of material with an ultra-low density (comparable to that of air). Obviously this stuff couldn't be implanted into the body, but perhaps as our understanding of these processes increases we could create materials that are even more like coral.
It's definately worth doing, if you could create something like coral, only made out of aluminum, it'd be incredibly strong and incredibly light. It might also have some other interesting properties (if the tiny spaces inside were all the same size, there might be resonance effects, etc). Overall this really won't affect the coral population though, so we have nothing to worry. It'll be years till this is even common anyways.
Justin
Disclaimer: I study physics, not biology. I have a friend working on a project with kindey rejection and computer analyses of statistical correlations, however my knowlege of tissue rejection is rather limited.
They dont use live coral they use the "dead Skelaton" of coral. The part of a coral reef that would sink ships was not the live upper coating that looked pretty it was the rock like deposits of thousands of years underneath. They use it because it is basicaly a calcium deposit in a sponge form. Pretty mutch an inert substance that they can pack the empty gaps where bone should be. The real advantage to it is what the body does. It breaks it down the same cells in the body that deal with reshaping bones after fractures and so forth actualy break down and absorb the coral replacing it with "real" bone. As for the possible enviromental effects of using coral from the see I dont theink they use "natural" coral, I believe its is grown in the lab (the only way to ensure it is sterile)
-- Vagnerr - (www.vagnerr.com) Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Recently some UK surgions have been able to re-grow a patients fingers using the old "bone-streach" technique, it cant do joints but can cirtainly improve the usability of a damaged hand, there is and article on the BBC news site Here
-- Vagnerr - (www.vagnerr.com) Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Using coral as a scaffold - I'm pretty sure the scientists can come up with a better idea, yes? Something that leaves the brightly-colored fish a place to play in? =)
Unfortunately, the guy now has a hole in his stomach.
Of course, transplanting toes to replace fingers is a great alternative to this time consuming technique. But, then again, some people really appreciate the lack of hand odor involved in using the coral transplantation method.
Dancin Santa
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
The scaffold was implanted where the thumb tip had been, with skin from the patient's stomach providing the finishing touch.
I do remember some truly basic details of physiology.
There's no "skin" on/in your stomach, your skin is an organ which covers the outside of your body.
So now I'm wondering exactly what these "doctors" did.
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
Why coral? Beyond the enviromental and possible rejection, wouldn't titanium or another proven in body replacement work better? I have two large titanium screws in my elbow that have no rejection, are light and don't kill a natural resource...