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Fracture Putty Can Heal a Broken Bone In Days
An anonymous reader writes "If we break a bone it can take weeks or even month to heal depending on the type and severity of the break. In some extreme cases the complexity of the fracture can make it impossible to heal properly. Researchers at the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center have come up with a new solution for healing broken bones that cuts recovery time to days. It relies on the use of stem cells that contain a bone generating protein. These cells are injected in gel form directly into the area of the broken bone, where they quickly get to work forming new bone. The end result is very rapid recovery, possibly sidestepping the muscle atrophy that can come with long bone healing times. The gel has been proven to work on animals as big as a sheep and has funding from the DoD. Lets hope it is proven to work on humans in the coming years."
Can this putty pick up the comics section from the local newspaper as it heals your bones? If not, I'm out.
People creating "jackass" type TV shows and youtube videos are up %1000
I'd steer clear of anyone involved in bones and sheep.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It'd be a bummer if you don't have a large supply of your own stem cells in your home fridge, or else this wouldn't work, or am I misinformed and you can use other peoples stem cells for this?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The question we're all afraid to ask:
What happens if I rub this stuff on my penis?
Not that many naturally occurring bone fracture in sheep that could be used for testing.
care to take a guess how they "found" the sheep's with broken bones ?
He would have made a great pitch man for this stuff.
I just spent six weeks in a cast after breaking my right arm Christmas Night (no...no rogue or drunk reindeer involved). There is now a titanium plate and six screws in my arm. My other wrist is broken also (yes...I fell and had a hell of hard time getting up). Now, I have to endure painful PT to regain full use of my arm again and have a 5 inch scar too (no...it is NOT cool).
How I would have loved to have this stuff injected into the fractures and have it immobilized for a few days while it took action and fuzed the bones. I do hope this comes to fruition...cool stuff. Who said war wasn't useful?
There exist treatments overseas for increasing a person's height which rely on repeatedly fracturing leg bones and spacing them such that they heal at a distance, essentially lengthening the bone.
Do we have any osteopathologists on slashdot who can comment on whether this can theoretically shorten such a procedure's duration to make someone taller in a matter of one or two weeks? The current procedure takes at least a few months, if not a year.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
let's as in "let us" - contraction.
Three nice things about them:
1) They are usually harvested from the entity translated too so less problem with rejection ( is this the case here the article didn't say).
2) The have been proven to work and use in many other places.
3) No one has any moral objections to them.
So many good reasons to not even worry about fetal stem cells , but no one ever bothers to talk about that.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
The stem-cell based gel was used to create a Shakeys Pizza in just a few hours. Seriously though, as someone who has broken some bones, this is amazing.
I have a boner already!
Adult stem cell are easier to control, but are not nearly as versatile as fetal stem cells. It is wrong to claim one is better than the other.
That sounds exactly like medi-gel from mass effect, which is super awesome.
Now we just need mass effect cores and we'll be good.
this would be great for horses. its nearly impossible to allow multi-leg fractures to heal properly with a large animal .. they usually just get put down.
"That IED sure took a chunk outta' ya', but, by golly, this gel will put it back in-ta-ya! NOW GET BACK IN THE WAR, SOLDIER!!!"
There is also a product called 'kryptonite' which is often used for chest surgery which is like a compound glue that sets within 24 hours. Very much improved my heart surgery healing time but I also wish they used it on my knee to improve that repair time.
Using stem cells for skin healing:
http://www.thatvideosite.com/video/the_skin_gun
Seems to me this would be a great benefit to veterinarians. The hardest part of treating a fracture in an animal is getting the patient to stay still while they recuperate. Would be a lot easier to do that for a couple of days vs. several weeks. Racehorses might be able to live with injuries that result in euthanasia now.
when they figure out a way to use this to make me some artificial bone wolverine like claws.
Is this anything like Skele-Gro? I understand it's very painful. "Regrowing bones is a nasty business," according to Madam Pomfrey.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
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what bone fracture has to do with ssh....
anyway - weird things exist nowadays
No matter how much you add to your height, you'll still be a nerd, which is a far more significant handicap in the dating world.
Peter Jackson warned us about this!
This could have a big impact in the sports world. I wonder if Peyton Manning could have played in 2011 if he had access to this type of treatment.
Is there ANYTHING a telnet/SSH client CAN'T do? :p
Ugh. Not "silly" enough to fix your funny bone. ;^)
Oh, you mean they literally tested it on sheep. They weren't referencing the people who volunteered for testing?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I wonder how many medical procedures this could speed up across the board. If I recall correctly, most of the initial recovery time for an ACL knee injury is waiting for the bone to grow/fuse around the replaced ligament; until this starts to happen, one can't start to in-depth PT process. Could this even speed up recovery for patients who have had joint replacements by allowing the bone to fuse around the prosthesis quicker? Recovery for these surgeries would still be several months (opposed to 6 months to 1 year), but the joints would be much stronger during what is considered the "delicate" portion of recovery.
I ain't afeard of that. I'll just get a new neck, off'n a cat.
If this goes through, will pro sports allow the procedure? A tangential issue, but one that could be interesting.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Well, if they had done their research they would find that it was proven long ago that artificially adding stem cells to healing bone works.
It also forms new bone on amputees.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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Like when Storm whooped Toad?
The same thing that happens if you were to rub it on any other penis.
In this new study, the researchers used a rat model of ALS to test for possible nerve cell- restoring properties of stem cells. The rats were exposed to Sindbis virus, which infects the central nervous system and destroys the motor neurons in the spinal cord. Rats that survive are left with paralyzed muscles in their hindquarters and weakened back limbs. Scientists assess the degree of impairment by measuring the rats' movement, quantifying electrical activity in the nerves serving the back limbs, and visually judging the extent of nerve damage through a microscope.
The researchers wanted to see whether stem cells could restore nerves and improve mobility in rats. Because scientists have had difficulty sustaining stem cell lines derived from rat embryos, the investigators conducted their experiments with embryonic germ cells that John Gearhart and colleagues isolated from human fetal tissue in 1998. These cells can produce unchanged copies of themselves when maintained in culture, and they form into clumps called embryoid bodies. Under certain conditions, research has shown that the cells in the embryoid bodies begin to look and function like neurons when subjected to specific laboratory conditions. The researchers had an idea that these embryoid body cells in their nonspecialized state might become specialized as replacement neurons if placed into the area of the damaged spinal cord. So they carefully prepared cells from the embryoid bodies and injected them into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord of the paralyzed rats that had their motor neurons destroyed by the Sindbis virus.
To test this idea, the researchers selected from laboratory culture dishes barely differentiated embryonic germs cells that displayed the molecular markers of neural stem cells, including the proteins nestin and neuron specific enolase. They grew these cells in large quantities and injected them into the fluid surrounding the spinal cords of partially paralyzed, Sindbis-virus-treated rats.
The response was impressive. Three months after the injections, many of the treated rats were able to move their hind limbs and walk, albeit clumsilywhile the rats that did not receive cell injections remained paralyzed. Moreover, at autopsy the researchers found that cells derived from human embryonic germ cells had migrated throughout the spinal fluid and continued to develop, displaying both the shape and molecular markers characteristic of mature motor neurons. The researchers are quick to caution that their results are preliminary, and that they do not know for certain whether the treatment helped the paralyzed rats because new neurons took the place of the old, or because trophic factors from the injected cells facilitated the recovery of the rats' remaining nerve cells and helped the rats improve in their ability to use their hind limbs.
Nor do they know how well this strategy will translate into a therapy for human neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. And they emphasize that there are many hurdles to cross before the use of stem cells to repair damaged motor neurons in patients can be considered. Nevertheless, researchers are excited about these results, which, if confirmed, would represent a major step toward using specialized stem cells from embryonic and fetal tissue sources to restore nervous system function. http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/chapter8.asp
----
I am not in Rome, I am in a rush.
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love it when the DoD funds medical research. Healing to make our killers more efficient. maybe we can use this stuff for enhanced interrogation techniques too.
I want to use it to develop an exoskeleton!
#DeleteChrome
When a fractured bone heals normally, does it have similar bone density as before the injury? I would be concerned about what effect on bone density this gel treatment might have. Now that we have gotten that little bit of pessimism out of the way wouldn't it be nice if this treatment actually provided increased bone density, and could be used therapeutically by those who lack sufficient bone density? I doubt it would be much fun having a clinician drilling into your bones to create artificial fractures but I suppose it beats the uncertainty of living with weak bones.
This is probably a very silly question, but could this be used to create artificial growths on bones? Say someone wanted horns, could they have such bone putty put onto the skull to grow extra bone there? That would then be a sort of bone tattoo.
What are the chances this is going to bankrupt someone? Some bitch ass insurance company / hospital will jack up the price beyond a payable amount and then what... this shit will be useless if it's not cheap enough for people to fucking afford it.
I'm curious if they could lay down a structure and completely regen a Finger or even an arm. Just think how we could remake fingers that were cut off, if not with the ability to move then just for cosmetic purposes-
Kind of like the Silver tree experiment http://thehomescientist.blogspot.com/2010/04/experimehnt-silver-tree.html
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The dividing line in this case is largely (but not entirely) along the Catholic/Protestant split. Protestants tend to ignore IVF and forms of birth control that are abortifacient. Catholics tend to spotlight IVF and abortifacient forms of birth control on the list of things that kill the unborn.
But, to be fair, this split is at usually at the doctrinal level. It's not uncommon for either Catholics or Protestants to either (a) not be well informed on matters of doctrine or (b) not care about matters of doctrine. But, if you look at the literature, that split will be there even if it isn't manifested 100% in those who self-identify with the respective label.
One of the Harry Potter films had this. In the movie it was called "Skelegrow" and fixed Harry's broken arm in just a few days when he fell off his broomstick.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
"The gel has been proven to work on animals as big as a sheep..."
Early tests on humans have found that the bones heal in days, but the subjects retain an urge to walk together in groups.
The article didn't make it clear where the stem cells came from. Googling on the term they used it seems that some of those type of stem cells come from bone marrow but it didn't say if that was exclusively so.
If the putty needs stem cells from fetuses, the Republicans/Christians will try to shut it down. I can't see it working if the stem cells come from bone marrow either. Harvesting stem cells from bone marrow doesn't sound easy......and may have ethical issues also.
'Nuf said.
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