Slashdot Mirror
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?
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what bone fracture has to do with ssh....
anyway - weird things exist nowadays
Is there ANYTHING a telnet/SSH client CAN'T do? :p
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.
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 ----
So what? Sheep are not conscious. Life does not equal consciousness.
No consciousness = no ability to suffer or to have emotions. They don't feel pain, their nervous system just processes the information that it is wounded the same way your laptop processes the fact that it's battery is empty or that it's keyboard has been amputated... I mean unplugged.
They respond to wounds and injuries, but they don't interpret any of it as pain without consciousness. And no evidence shows sheep are conscious (unlike other animals).
There is exactly as much evidence to show that sheep, plants, and rocks are conscious as there is to show that humans are conscious.
Step 0: Cogito ergo sum
Step 1: Define consciousness
Step 2: Describe the physical construct and mechanisms which create consciousness
Step 3: Identify consciousness in various things
Step 4: Show that no other construct / phenomena could result in consciousness
Step 5: Identify a lack of consciousness in various things
We're on step 1.
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
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I am not in Rome, I am in a rush.