SANTA CLARA, Calif., Mar 15 (Korea Newswire)– Innovation was the word of the day as Intel announced the winners of the Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS).
Seventh Place: Megan Blewett, 17, of Madison, N.J., received a $20,000
scholarship for her analysis of a protein that may be implicated in
multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
A Russian piano pianist, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, will be playing a recital on a very special piano in Marlborough this evening.Olga Bobrovnikova, who trained as a pianist at the acclaimed Moscow Conservatoire, is touring the country to raise funds for multiple sclerosis (MS) in New Zealand.
The international pianist said she was really looking forward to the one-off piano recital at Marlborough’s Montana Brancott Winery because she would be able to perform on a Steinway used by one of her idols.
“This recital is a special event for two reasons - first the wine - and secondly there is a special Steinway in the visitors’ centre.”This instrument is one that Rachmaninoff, my piano icon, played. I am preparing a special treat with the early romantic works 1891-1906 of the young Sergei
Research under way at the University of Cincinnati could one day
help short-circuit the most disabling forms of multiple sclerosis.Istvan
Pirko, a neurologist and researcher in UC’s Waddell Center for Multiple
Sclerosis, is leading a team of researchers studying the role certain
cells in the body’s immune system play in the development of multiple
sclerosis.In the disease, the immune system seems to attack
myelin, a fatty substance that insulates the nerves. As the insulation
is worn away, various symptoms begin, including loss of vision, balance
and coordination and muscle weakness and fatigue.The exact cause of multiple sclerosis is unknown, but some experts
believe exposure to environmental toxins or a viral infection might
trigger the attack.Pirko’s research focuses on the infection theory. He and his team inject mice with viruses to re-create the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, including tell-tale lesions on the brain.
Read More Here - Cincinnati team focuses on infection as MS cause
The medication known for smoothing a wrinkled brow can also relieve uncontrollable muscle tightness that prevents many patients from functioning normally.
Botulinum Toxin, commonly knows as Botox, can paralyze and kill if consumed in contaminated food. But it’s now safely used, in a purified form, as a medicine to control certain conditions marked by involuntary muscle contractions.
SPASTICITY: This is a condition that occurs after a stroke, in multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy patients or those suffering from traumatic brain injuries. Muscles become overactive and tighten uncontrollably. These spasms cause pain and can prevent a person from moving normally.
HOW IT WORKS: Once in the body, the toxin binds to nerve endings at the point where the nerves join muscles. This prevents the nerves from signaling the muscles to contract. The result is weakness and paralysis in that muscle. Botox is not approved by the FDA to treat spasticity, but doctors can prescribe the medication if they think it will be helpful.
Biogen Idec Inc. and PDL BioPharma Inc. said Monday a midstage clinical trial using daclizumab along with interferon beta met its primary endpoint for treating multiple sclerosis.In a Phase II clinical trial, 230 patients were given either daclizumab or a placebo and then given interferon beta, a protein that helps the immune system.
Multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable neurological disease when the tissue insulating nerve fibers become damaged with lesions.Patients given daclizumab every two weeks had a significantly reduced lesions at week 24 compared with those in the placebo group.
Full results will be presented at a medical conference later in the year.As a result of the successful study, the companies plan to start a midstage clinical trial that uses daclizumab alone as a multiple sclerosis treatment.Biogen and PDL are partners in developing the drug as a treatment for multiple sclerosis. The drug is already marketed by Hoffman-La Roche under a license from PDL as the kidney organ rejection treatment Zenapax.
Danish and Belgian researchers have found a computer key that maps genes underlying heritable disorders, such as breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. These results will possibly ease the discovery of new medicines and improve treatment in various disorders.
The results which are published in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology show that genes important for the development of diseases like Alzheimer’s follow the same cellular rules as genes involved in fundamentally different disorders, such as heart disorders, multiple sclerosis, breast cancer, and Type 2 diabetes.”Many disorders manifest themselves in fundamentally different ways, but the new surprising discovery is that the underlying genes play together after the same rules. Our results show that the genes that trigger diseases, regardless of the type of disease in question, are social team players who cooperate according to highly specific rules.
These rules have now been mapped, and we have pointed at hundreds of new genes that are likely to be involved in disorders including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson, heart disorders, and diabetes”, says Kasper Lage from Technical University of Denmark, who is the project coordinator on this work.Heritable disorders will be easier to interpret for clinicians using the new results. Furthermore, the identification of new genes likely to be involved in disorders will help patients with defects in these genes.
For example, if you are a high risk carrier of a gene that underlies a disease such as Type 2 diabetes, physicians could prevent or delay the manifestations of the disease by dietary guidance early in life.”This is a crucial breakthrough for our understanding of heritable disorders, and a breakthrough for systems biology as a research strategy in the field genetics and disease”, says Søren Brunak leader of Center for Biological Sequence analysis at the Technical University of Denmark.
“We work with genes and proteins, but also with clinical literature describing the characteristics of different disorders. Then we let the computer integrate all of these data, and extract the pattern”, he adds.The results are the product of a collaboration between the Center for Biological Sequence analysis, the Wilhelm Johannsen Center for Functional Genomics, Steno Diabetes Center in Denmark, and the SymBioSys Center for Computational Systems Biology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF DENMARK (DTU)
I am back at work and yesterday I banged off the article to start the ball rolling with NetXperiment within my work place. Over the next couple of weeks I will be pushing to have it go worldwide within the company. Very exciting stuff and very heartening for me to be finally able to get back on track.
Other news is the results of my final MRI were posted to me. I found out all sorts of interesting things about my spine. The bulging discs, the dehydrated discs, the damage from my big flare up in 2000. My spine is a wreck in pictures…feels fine to me though!
t’s been 10 years since Ian Altman got the news that his body had an incurable problem
When first stunned with the news you have multiple sclerosis, you’re not
sure what to think. They tell you it’s chronic and debilitating, Altman said during an interview last
week.
But doctors don’t tell you exactly what the effects will be. They don’t
know. Those with MS say it affects everyone differently.
Altman has been fortunate. Yes, he has spent scary, frustrating days and
weeks with numbness that makes him clumsy. And the fingers of his right hand have a pretty much permanent “pins and
needles” feeling.
But most of the time the 34-year-old is going full-bore, teaching at
Colorado Timberline Academy north of Durango and living an outdoors-oriented lifestyle. A couple years ago, he and
friend Brian Murray mountain biked the Colorado Trail from Molas Pass to town in one day - 12½ hours in the saddle.
Backcountry skiing above Silverton, ice climbing near Tamarron, scaling mountains in Canada’s Bugaboos and
Chile/Argentina’s Patagonias - Altman’s out doing it. There was a time doctors would have warned against such extreme
exploits.
“For a long time they said, ‘Just sit back and relax,’” Altman said.
“Medically they’ve proved it’s good to exercise.”
The MS (Multiple Sclerosis) Association in Iceland received a grant of ISK 20 million (EUR 228,000, USD 301,000) yesterday from the memorial fund of Margrét Björgólfsdóttir, who died in an accident in 1989 at 33.
Sigurbjörg Ármannsdóttir, head of the MS Association, and Thóra Hallgrímsson, Björgólfsdóttir’s mother, signed an agreement about the grant at a special ceremony at the MS home in Reykjavík. Morgunbladid reports.
The grant will be used for building a 179 square meter extension to the MS home.
There, MS patients receive physical and occupational therapy, nursing, medical and social service and general care and can exercise in a specially equipped room.“With the extension of the home we can offer service to more people, who […] can come and exercise […] whenever they have time to spare,” Ármanssdóttir said. “It is a great honor to have received this grant and it comes with responsibility. […] We will use it the right way.”
The memorial fund was founded two years ago by Margrét Björgólfsdóttir’s parents, Björgólfur Gudmundsson and Thóra Hallgrímsson.Since then 710 grants worth ISK 260 million (EUR 3 million, USD 4 million) in total have been handed out to various associations.
March 02, 2007 (Computerworld) — Think Microsoft Corp. and Bill Gates are too rich? Then use the latest version of Microsoft’s free instant messaging program and watch the company donate some of that excess wealth to one of nine charities of your choice.
As part of an initiative to promote Windows Live Messenger 8.1, Microsoft will give away a percentage of the advertising revenue it gains from participating users, according to an announcement made Thursday on the software vendor’s Channel 10 product news Web site.U.S. users of WLM can choose among nine nonprofit groups: the American Red Cross, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the National AIDS Fund, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Ninemillion.org, the Sierra Club, StopGlobalWarming.org, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF
© 2008 Allison.
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