The infant had tested positive on five separate occasions, but after the treatment and a year without antiretroviral medications, the baby is still free from the disease.

Shortly after birth from an HIV-positive mother, the baby was given an aggressive treatment regime, typically an uncommon practice.

It’s thought that this aggressive approach to treatment contributed to the annihilation of the virus by stopping it before it took take hold.

If the diagnosis is confirmed, it will be only the second well documented case in the world where a person has been completely cured of the virus – the first was Timothy Brown, a.k.a The Berlin patient, a middle-aged man with leukemia who received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor who was genetically resistant to H.I.V.

Mississippi Doctors Cure Baby Girl of H.I.V.

The mother arrived at the hospital in the fall of 2010 already in labor and gave birth prematurely. The woman had not sought medical advise during the pregnancy and did not know she had H.I.V. until a post pregnancy test showed she might be infected.

The baby, just 30 hours old, was then put on antiretroviral drugs to help fight the virus in its early stages. However, based on her experience treating H.I.V.-positive patients, Dr. Hannah B. Gay, an associate professor of pediatrics, decided to drop the two-drug approach applied as a prophylaxis, and administer a three-drug regime aimed directly at treatment.

The virus then began to decline rapidly until it was completely undetectable a month later. After 18 months free from the virus, the treatment was stopped.

When the mother returned 5 months later for a check up, Dr. Gay found the tests to be negative, even though she expected otherwise.

As with most scientific breakthroughs, some experts still remain skeptical about the results. Dr. Daniel R. Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, noted that it was uncertain if the child was indeed infected since the doctors began treatment before receiving test results.

However the Mississippi team says that five tests returned positive conclusions, and that its modified treatment shows a new effective method of treating the virus.

Furthers studies are now planned to see if similar aggressive treatment shows the same success. And should they do so, we may finally have a functional cure for H.I.V. infected babies, and this could indeed lead to further progress in the treatment of HIV and AIDS in adults.

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Redskins quarterback, Robert Griffin III, is an athlete that finds himself ready to fight that battle once again after a recent injury during Sunday’s game against the Seahawks required surgery. On Wednesday 9th January 2013, Griffin underwent the procedure to repair his ACL reconstructed for a second time.

Griffin managed to bounce back from his first torn ACL, which he sustained in the third game of the 2009 season. He missed the rest of the year but won the Heisman Trophy in 2011.

Robert Griffin III Undergoes Second Knee Surgery

RGIII is by no means the only person to recover from such an injury. Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson underwent reconstructive knee surgery to replace the ACL and repair the MCL in his left knee.

The surgery was performed by Dr. James Andrew on December 30th 2011. The same surgeon who also performed RGIII’s second surgery.

Despite the severity of his injury, Peterson was able to return to the game to almost break the NFL single season rushing record – an incredible record that has remained unbroken since it was set by Los Angeles Rams running back Eric Dickerson in 1984.

Dr. Andrews and Dr. Mark Adickes, the orthopedist who reconstructed Griffin’s ACL in 2009, said that pinpointing a date for RGIII’s return was not an exact science. Aside from the fact that Griffin has already had to recover from such an injury once already, no two athletes are the same, which makes it impossible to tell. However both doctors agreed that he should be ready for the start of the season in September.

Typically it can take a whole year for ligaments to fully heal, that’s why Peterson’s recovery was so remarkable. He tore his ACL in 2011, and was the leagues best in 2012.

Peterson’s focus and intensity in rehab and his natural athletic gifts are what made his quick recovery possible. While it’s clear that RGIII has the same qualities, we’ll just have to wait and see if he can return and keep improving.

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Developed by Christopher Suprock, founder of product-design firm Suprock Technologies, the new pump uses membranes and a ferrofluid, or magnetic liquid. When an electromagnet is turned on, the fluid is drawn to it which stretches the membrane out, when it’s turned of, the elastic membrane returns to its original position.

We’ve already seen several different approaches to building artificial hearts, including one which use spinning motors to consistently pump blood throughout the body, without a typical heartbeat.

Nevertheless, spinning motors and pumps can still damage blood cells, which can lead to clotting and strokes. But the new design could eliminate the risk of damage by functioning more like a real heart.

The technology has yet to be tested inside the body, but Suprock says his next step will be to team up with a medical-device maker to do just that.

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The technology could lead to wireless power for all medical implants, and without the need for a battery, devices such as pacemakers can be drastically reduced in size. In addition, the surgery required to replace batteries could be eliminated altogether.

Wireless Cardiac Implant Could Make Pacemakers Much Smaller

Developed by Ada Poon, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, and her colleagues, the proof-of-concept cardiac device measures just 0.8 millimeters and contains a coil that receives and transmits radio waves.

The tiny size of the device was not the teams biggest breakthrough, that came after they figured out that the implant could still receive power even if it was implanted on the heart, under 5 centimeters of human tissue.

Radio waves are sufficient to provide power for small devices, however smaller coils need to receive higher frequency radio waves to generate this power. Previous mathematical models showed that high frequency radio waves do not penetrate human tissue very well, but Poon and her team re-crunched the numbers and found this not to be true.

After careful revision, they found that power can transfer through human tissue at up to 1.7 billion cycles per second – much higher than previously thought. This allowed them to increase the power transfer 10 times more than on previous devices, which means they could also shrink the antenna by a factor of 10.

The team claims that a millimeter-radius coil can generate more than 50 microwatts of power – a pacemaker require around 8 microwatts.

Although the technology still has a long way to get before it will be implanted into medical devices, Poon is currently applying for patent on the antenna structure, and will continue to research and refine the device.

The team’s research was published in the Journal Applied Physics Letters.

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The particles, invented by a team at Boston Children’s Hospital, allow patients to stay alive for 15-30 minutes in the event of respiratory failure. This provides enough time for doctors to act without risking a heart attack or permanent brain damage.

Successful trails on animals with critical lung failure have shown that when injected the particles were able to restore blood oxygen saturation to near-normal levels within seconds, and keep working for between 15-30 minutes.

The particles are composed of oxygen gas sealed in a layer of lipids (fatty acids). These fatty oxygen particles, which contain ‘three to four times the oxygen content of our own red blood cells’, are about two to four micrometers in size and come suspended a liquid solution that can be easily transported.

Oxygenating blood is technique that has been attempted numerous times since the early 1900’s, however earlier techniques used gas, which failed to oxygenate the blood and often led to gas embolisms.

Human Blood Cells

According to John Kheir, MD at the Department of Cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, they solved the problem by using deformable particles, rather than bubbles:

“We have engineered around this problem by packaging the gas into small, deformable particles. They dramatically increase the surface area for gas exchange and are able to squeeze through capillaries where free gas would get stuck.”

Although the new technique has been shown to be effective, it does have limitations. The particles can only provide 15 and 30 minutes because they are carried in fluid that would overload the blood if used for longer periods, Kheir says. Nevertheless, the short window of time would still be enough to save millions of lives every year.

The study was funded by three awards from the Technology Development Fund at Boston Children’s Hospital Boston and a U.S. Department of Defense Basic Research Award to Kheir, and was published in the June 27 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

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The water bottle works using an ultraviolet cap, which can purify water in 60 seconds. To produce the UVs rays the cap comes with a built in battery that can treat 80 cycles or 16 gallons with each charge. Simply fill the bottle, turn it on, and an LCD screen confirms when the process is complete.

All Clear Bacteria Eliminating Water Bottle

Since the device is marketed to treat unfiltered water from taps, streams and spigots, it might not be a good idea to fill up from dirty stagnant pools of water. However the All Clear certainly provides an affordable water purifying solution for those who like to roam the outdoors.

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The Robo-Humany Urine Aspiration diaper has pocket for the penis, an electronic urine sensor, and a suction tube, which is attached to bedside collection tank.

As one would imagine, when the electric sensor detects urine, the suction tube begins to work. The system is powerful enough to siphon off most of the liquid, leaving no more than 0.5 cc (0.01 ounces) remaining in the pad.

Robo-Humany Aspiration Diaper

Compared with regular adult diapers, the Robo-Humany pad is 10 times lighter after use, the company claims.

Designed to reduce frequency of toilet trips, the Robo-Humany pad will not only make life easier for patients who have difficulty moving, it will also help relieve some of the nurse’s workload so they can attend to more patients.

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After years of preclinical trials, which including curing hemophiliac mice, scientist finally started trials on humans using gene therapy.

The patients were injected with a specially built virus containing a working version of the gene responsible for blood clotting. The virus implants the gene into liver cells where they begin to produce the chemical need for clotting.

Red and White Blood Cells

After 6 months of injections to maintain elevated levels of the working gene, four of them were able to stop receiving injections altogether.

The researchers are now monitoring the patients for any signs of liver cancer caused by the virus, a known risk of gene therapy, but so far there have been no complications.

The next stage will be the trial of 20 patients to assess what dosage of the virus is necessary to get enough liver cells making clotting factor so that all patients can stop receiving injections.

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Battling the symptoms of cold and flu can be tough; the one thing we need the most is sleep, but thanks to those blocked sinuses, getting a good nights sleep quickly becomes a challenge. Fortunately there are several easy home remedies and tips you can employ to help clear your blocked nose so you can sleep better at night.

Cold Relief Tips For A Better Nights Sleep

8 Tips To Help Relieve Blocked Sinuses For A Better Nights Sleep

Use A Nasal Strip

Nasal strips are designed to relieve nighttime congestion. They come with a sticky adhesive on one side and a stiff plastic strip that gently pulls the strip outwards, opening the nasal passages. Nasal strips are not just great for those suffering from a blocked nose; they can also help people stop snoring.

Take A Hot shower Before Bed

A hot shower before bed is a great way to help clear those airways. The steam and humidity causes the sinuses to drain nasal passages, making it much easier to breath.

Drink Hot Tea Or Chicken Soup

Just like a hot shower, the heat from hot drinks also helps clear the sinuses. For nighttime relief tea is probably better than coffee since the amount of caffeine absorbed by the body is considerably less. Perhaps better still is a bowl of chicken soup. In small trials at Mount Sinai Medical Center, chicken soup was proven more effective at clearing sinuses than hot water alone.

Don’t Drink Cold Drinks Before Bed

The same study conducted at Mount Sinai Medical Center not only found that chicken soup is better than hot water for clearing sinuses; it also showed that drinking cold water before sleep was linked to increased congestion.

Use A Saline Rinse

One of the most effective ways to clear a blocked nose is to use a saline rinse. Available in spray bottle or neti pot with narrow spout, saline is applied in small amounts periodically to help ‘rinse’ out the nasal passage. The clean saltwater not only clears the passageway of mucus, it also helps the cells that move mucus work much better.

Elevate Your Upper Body Not Just Your Head

Propping your head up with pillows to help the mucus drain more easily is a common mistake people make when trying to get a good nights sleep with a cold. Elevating your head does indeed help, but bending your neck in unnatural positions makes it more difficult to breath. Instead of using a pillow to support your head, use a larger pillow to elevate your position from the waist up.

Apply Mentholated Gel Don’t Just Breath It

Another common remedy for a blocked nose is to use a menthol steam bath. While the steam from the hot water will help clear the nasal passage, menthol vapors don’t actually add to the effect. Bradley Marple, MD, professor of otolaryngology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas explained; “Studies have shown that menthol doesn’t actually open up the airways. Instead, the cooling sensation it causes makes people feel as if they’re breathing more freely,”

Sleep On Schedule

When it comes to clearing up cold and flu, experts say that maintaining good sleep hygiene can often be just as effective as prescription drugs. So not only is important to get a good nights sleep, it’s also important to maintain a steady sleep schedule. In tests conducted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh involving volunteers who agreed to be quarantined and exposed to rhinoviruses, researchers found that those who slept less than 7 hours a night were three times more likely to develop cold and flu.

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A study published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, suggests that the addictive ingredient in cigarettes, Nicotine, may reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

When tested on lab mice, the researchers found the nicotine had the potential to rescue dopamine neurons; the loss of these neurons is closely related to the development of Parkinson’s. The findings have led some doctors to believe the nicotine could be used to treat Parkinson’s by targeting the brain’s nicotine receptors. Similarly, stimulating the brain’s nicotine receptors could also help to treat Alzheimers, according to a separate study from the University of Maryland.

Surprising Health Benefits From Smoking

Even more surprisingly, this isn’t the first positive link found between nicotine and health. Researchers from the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research in the Netherlands, found that nicotine enhances learning and memory.

Another study published in the Journal of Pharmacology found, nicotine can also reduce depression because it stimulates the release of serotonin and dopamine; chemical know to have inverse effects on depression.

Despite that fact that smoking is typically related with reduced blood flow, a Stanford study found that nicotine actually boosts the growth of blood vessels, which in theory could lead to the development of new treatments for diabetes.

However, no matter how many health benefits the medical community can associate with smoking, cigarettes are still way more damaging than they are helpful. Researcher speaking at the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Gerald Weissmann, reminded smokers of the downside to lighting up;

“Even if smoking protects you from Parkinson’s, you might not live long enough to develop the disease because smoking greatly increases the risk for deadly cancers and cardiovascular diseases.”

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