HealthWrap: Ethical Stem Cells Grow Liver

By KATE WALKER

In what mark a revolutionary breakthrough for both laboratory research and hospital treatment, a team of British scientists has grown an artificial liver using stem cells taken from the blood of babies’ umbilical cords immediately after birth.

While the liver is currently the size of a penny — and nowhere near ready for use in transplants — the technique used to develop the existing piece of liver can now be used to generate bigger and bigger pieces of liver, with the eventual aim of using the samples in transplants, both partial and full.

Tissues the size of the existing sample could also be used in laboratory testing within the next two years, reducing the need to use animals in medical research.

Newcastle University’s Professor Colin McGuckin, who was part of the team who managed to grow the liver from stem cells, explained the process and its potential — eventual — benefits.

We take the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood and make small mini-livers. We then give them to pharmaceutical companies and they can use them to test new drugs on. It could prevent the situation that happened earlier this year, when those six patients had a massive reaction to the drugs they were testing.

Within five years, the scientists hope, pieces of liver tissue grown using the technique they have developed can be used to repair livers damaged by cancers, overdoses, diseases, alcoholism and injury.

Whole liver transplants are expected to take 15 years but are no longer a distant pipedream.

A team of American researchers has established a link between moderate exercise and a greater chance of healthy eye sight in old age.

Age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, is a gradual deterioration of eyesight that happens frequently in old age, in which central vision is slowly destroyed. Exudative AMD, a common form of the ailment, is caused when new blood vessels grow behind the eye. The scarring this process causes eventually leads to distorted or lost vision.

Michael Knudtson of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health and colleagues conducted a 15-year study in Beaver Dam Wis., in which 4,000 men and women ages 43 to 86 when the study began took part. Participants underwent assessment every five years and were asked about their levels of exercise.

Approximately 25 percent of participants led what the researchers termed active lifestyles, and similar numbers were in the habit of climbing at least six flights of stairs a day.

Writing in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, Knudtson said: Engaging in an active lifestyle or walking more … reduced the risk of developing exudative AMD over 15 years by 70 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

While the scientists were not sure why moderate exercise proved to be so adept at preventing AMD, they wrote that their research provides evidence that a modifiable behavior, regular physical activity, such as walking, may have a protective effect for incident AMD.

A male birth-control pill developed by New York’s Population Council has proved effective in laboratory tests in rats.

The pill combines the male hormone testosterone and the female hormone progesterone, and works by temporarily preventing the development of sperm while also maintaining testosterone levels.

According to an article published in the journal Nature, when used on laboratory rats the pill lowered sperm counts to a level that would render human males infertile. But once the pill was no longer active in the rats’ bloodstreams, the researchers found, sperm production returned to normal, with no effect on fertility or long-term side effects.

Now that laboratory trials on rats have proved successful, clinical trials on male volunteers are expected to begin within the next few years.

Russia’s Siberia is being ravaged by bootleg vodka that is killing people at an alarming rate.

The situation in the Irkutsk region is now so bad that 14 towns have declared a state of emergency. There has been a dramatic upsurge in the number of toxic liquids sold as vodka in recent weeks, and there are currently 900 people hospitalized throughout the region for liver failure caused by drinking industrial solvents.

The problem is not a new one for Russia — roughly 3,500 people die each month drinking toxic substances they believe to be vodka — but officials are concerned by recent spates of concentrated poisonings based in small towns.

It is believed that the recent upsurge in numbers stems from a government decision, put into practice earlier this year, to introduce state excise stamps — a practice that increased the price of safe and certified vodka, making it unaffordable to the vast majority of Russians.

A number of solutions to the growing problem are being discussed. Chief among them is the proposal to create an inexpensive, state-certified and approved, people’s vodka for Russia’s mass of poor.