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Brain Boosters
6/27/2009 12:00:00 AM
Daryl Kipke is showing off his company's latest prototype, a state-of-the-art electronic chip. It's not the sort likely to end up powering your iPod, but it does produce a beat you won't be able to get out of your head—because this device is designed to be surgically implanted deep in your brain, where the chip will deliver electric signals to specific clusters of cells. Kipke's firm, NeuroNexus Technologies in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is developing and testing the device to deliver electric pulses that can relieve some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression. "Deep-brain stimulation has been poorly understood," says Kipke, who is also a University of Michigan neuroscientist. "But with this technology we can improve neuron targeting and tuning."
From Bench To Bedside
Sharon Begley 6/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
NIH has its work cut out for it, for the forces within academic medicine that (inadvertently) conspire to impede research aimed at a clinical payoff show little sign of abating. One reason is the profit motive, which is supposed to induce pharma and biotech to invest in the decades-long process of discovering, developing and testing new compounds. It often does. But when a promising discovery has the profit potential of Pets.com, patients can lose out. A stark example is the work of Donald Stein, now at Emory University, who in the 1960s noticed that female rats recovered from head and brain injuries more quickly and completely than male rats. He hypothesized that the pregnancy hormone progesterone might be the reason. But progesterone is not easily patentable. Nature already owns the patent, as it were, so industry took a pass. "Pharma didn't see a profit potential, so our only hope was to get NIH to fund the large-scale clinical trials," says Stein. Unfortunately, he had little luck getting NIH support for his work (more on that later) until 2001, when he received $2.2 million for early human research, and in October a large trial testing progesterone on thousands of patients with brain injuries will be launched at 17 medical centers. For those of you keeping score at home, that would be 40 years after Stein made his serendipitous discovery.
Live Your Best Life Ever!
Weston Kosova 5/30/2009 12:00:00 AM
In January, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to share her unusual secrets to staying young. Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated "bio-identical" hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she's a younger woman. According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare's urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-free (not even close to true, but we'll get to that in a minute).
Counter-Cougar Thinking
Barbara Kantrowitz 5/29/2009 12:00:00 AM
Can you have hot sex forever? No problem—just stick to a careful diet, regular Pilates and the miracles of modern medicine. At least that's the message we're getting from the recent burst of celebrity cougar mania and new advertising campaigns from pharmaceutical companies promising that hormones will restore our aging bodies to their former glory. But is it reasonable for women over 50 to expect the same level of sexual satisfaction and drive as a 25-year-old? And is this what women really want?
Second Life
Dina Fine Maron 5/18/2009 12:00:00 AM
Organ donation is one thing, but what about donating your used pacemaker? Over the past several years a Detroit-based nonprofit called World Medical Relief (WMR) has sent 50 used pacemakers donated from local funeral homes to be sterilized and reused at hospitals in India and the Philippines. Now University of Michigan researchers are looking to shore up these efforts and partner with WMR and local funeral homes to solicit and ship off used cardiac devices to hospitals in the Philippines, Ghana, Nicaragua and Vietnam, helping to close the health-care gap between more- and less-developed countries in the field of electrophysiology.
FERTILITY
Why I Froze My Eggs
5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
I had just turned 35 when I started thinking about freezing my eggs. I'd always thought I'd have a husband and a kid or two by 35—that's the ominous year when doctors start stamping women's medical charts with the words "advanced maternal age" if they are pregnant, and some warn that fertility starts to drop off a cliff if they are not. But instead I was single, with an adventurous career, and concerned about my eggs. So in 2005, when I heard about a free seminar offered by a company called Extend Fertility, I thought this was exactly what I needed: a way to safeguard my eggs so I can relax until I meet Mr. Right. Extend had just begun marketing egg freezing as the newest choice among women's options: preserve your fertility and wait to have a child.