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Credit: Washington University School of Medicine Keith H. Bridwell, MD, a spine surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, performing surgery to correct scoliosis. With colleague Michael Kelly, MD, Bridwell led a study of adults with lumbar scoliosis and found that the most important factor in determining whether to do surgery is the extent of a patient's disability due to his or her spinal deformity, as well as how much that disability interferes with day-to-day life. Newswise — For years, spine surgeons have debated the best methods for treating scoliosis in adults. Spinal curvature often results in more back pain, leg pain and other symptoms for adults than teens because adults also can have degeneration in the discs between vertebrae, and spinal stenosis — a narrowing of the opening for the spinal nerves. Still, there hasn’t been good evidence regarding whether it’s better for adults with scoliosis to have corrective surgery or whether nonoperative

Stem cells generated from mice have shown to be functional when transplanted, leading to the possibility of future therapies… Functional B1-cells that have been derived from mouse embryonic stem cells have been found to be capable of long-term engraftment as they secrete natural antibodies after transplantation. Scientists were interested in B1-cells generated from pluripotent stem cells because they could be tested as a therapeutic for a broad range of immunological disorders. “It is still challenging to produce transplantable immune cells from mouse embryonic stem cells, so obtaining transplantable functional B1-cells from mouse embryonic stem cells is a significant advance in the field,” said senior study author Dr Momoko Yoshimoto of the Center for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston. “The take-home message is that a portion of immune cells may be replaced by cell therapies utilising pluripotent stem ce

Consumer Reports Thursday, February 07, 2019 05:57AM The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning after a dozen people were hospitalized with bacterial infections following unapproved stem cell treatments. Consumer Reports has important safety tips to help keep you and your family safe. Health officials say the patients in Arizona, Florida and Texas suffered from bacterial infections after getting unapproved stem cell shots contaminated with E. coli and other bacteria. The FDA says it is "focusing more resources on enforcement when we see companies skirt safety measures and put patients at risk." No doubt a reference to the booming network of private clinics that are promoting and administering stem cell therapies for unapproved and unproven uses like treating COPD or diabetes. In fact, stem cell treatments are only widely accepted to treat blood disorders like leukemia and some forms of anemia and in some cases to help burn victims.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 6, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Implementation of a novel enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocol can reduce patients’ postoperative opioid requirements after elective spinal or peripheral nerve surgery, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Neurosurgery . Zarina S. Ali, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues compared the clinical outcomes of patients undergoing elective spine or peripheral nerve surgery after implementation of the ERAS protocol (201 patients) with a historical control cohort who received traditional perioperative care (74 patients). The researchers found that in the ERAS group, intravenous opioid medications administered postoperatively via patient-controlled analgesia were nearly eliminated (0.5 versus 54.1 percent). There was no increase in average or daily pain scores in the ERAS group in association with this change. A smaller proportion of patients in the ERAS group were usin