Fetal Cells: Enhanced Efficiency And Effectiveness For Wound Healing.

June 4, 2015

Fetal Cells: Enhanced Efficiency And Effectiveness For Wound Healing

“Extensive burns and full thickness skin wounds can be devastating to patients, even when treated. There are an estimated 500,000 burns treated in the United States each year. The overall mortality rate for burn injury was 4.9 % between 1998 and 2007 and medical costs for burn treatments approach $2 billion per year,” Owan TE, Hodge D.O., Herges R.M, et al. (2006).

These statistics could as well be over 11 million injuries per year as claimed by some medical reports. Other than burns, full-thickness chronic wounds also claims a large number of patients and despite technological development of therapeutic approaches, healing rates remain way below 50 % of success.

Patients with the non-healing chronic wounds are as well estimated at about 7 million per year in the US alone. Yearly costs on the other hand continue to rise, the figure is currently approaching $25 billion. Patient survival is reportedly inversely proportional to the amount of time required to recover from such a chronic wound and to stabilize.

wound-healing

Those with severe burns of between or more than 15–20 % total their body surface area are also likely to go into shock without rapid treatment. In addition, without sufficient and or rapid fluid resuscitation, patient conditions deteriorate and mortality rates increase steeply.

Inadequate therapeutic programs often result in long-term patient complications including open wounds, prominent scars, prolonged pain, high temperature sensitivity, loss of feeling to touch and or itching.

Patients who suffer from such burns and or chronic wounds benefit from prompt treatments that result in appropriate closure and or protection of the wounds. Burn patients in particular, who receive delayed treatments, are usually subject to prolonged therapeutic care that has long-term negative physiological side effects.

Recent medical advancements have been made to handle wound healing; however, the generally accepted and practiced treatment approach still remains an autologous split-thickness skin graft. This involves extracting a piece of skin with the goal of removing stem cells from a minor surgical site on the patient’s body, stretching the skin, and re-applying the graft on the burn or chronic wound.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells in the body that majorly bear two specific characteristics. They have the capacity to replicate themselves indefinitely and have the ability to replace and or repair nearly all body tissues as directed.

Stem cells extracted from the amniotic fluid, (AFS) are reportedly a very rich cell source for use in regenerative therapy due to their high proliferation capacity, immune-modulatory activity and multipotency.

AFS also have the capacity to modulate inflammatory responses and secrete therapeutic cytokines. Because of these characteristics, AFS cells have been explored for treatments in wound healing and skin regeneration among similar therapeutic care.

These attempts have over time been backed by relevant scientific studies that increasingly indicate AFS cells are effective in accelerating healing of skin in embryonic environments and more recently in treating wounds in adults. More scientific evidence also points to the fact delivered cells are often temporary, that is, do not permanently integrate into final skin tissue.

Instead, they hide a portfolio of effective growth factors very vital to the skin regeneration and angiogenesis, suggesting a trophic ability of enhancing skin and or wound healing.

These initial pieces of scientific studies suggest delivery of AFS cells have the potential to be an effective cell treatment for enabling wound healing and should be considered for clinical trials and use in treating skin wounds in patients.

While this treatment indicates the ability to yield a reasonably good therapeutic outcome, if the wound is extensive, the number and size of donor sites may be limited, making autographs difficult to use in cases that require rapid and or aggressive measures to save the wounded patient’s life.

Alternatively, allografts may be used but the option suffers a critical need of immuno-suppressive drugs so as to prevent body immune rejection of the graft. This limitation has thus caused the creation of noncellular dermal substitutes, which most often comprises a polymeric scaffold.

They include skin regeneration template and Biobrane among others. Even though such polymeric scaffolds result in improved wound healing, they are costly to produce and more often result in relatively poor temporary outcomes.

Recent developments in tissue engineering have also led to more complex biological skin parallels that may yield more suitable alternative wound care options for patients. These include: cellularized graft-like products such as dermagraft, Apligraf (Organogenesis), and TransCyte, (Advanced BioHealing) among others.

The products are commonly polymer scaffold patches that are planted with human fibroblasts and cultured in vitro prior to their application. Unfortunately, these grafts are also expensive to produce, and as allografts, can suffer from the same immunological setbacks mentioned earlier.

This topic can go on and on. It is actually very interesting but it would not be possible to include everything in one article. However more information can be found at www.awaremednetwork.com. Dr. Dalal Akoury M.D., M.P.H., who is also a family physician and has many years of experience in integrative medicine will be of great assistance.

Also, do not miss an opportunity to learn and interact with various professionals during this year’s Integrative Addiction. For more information about the upcoming conference, visit http://www.integrativeaddiction2015.com. The conference will also deliver unique approaches to telling symptoms of addiction and how to assist patients of addiction.

Fetal Cells: Enhanced Efficiency And Effectiveness For Wound Healing.

Effects of Cannabis Deregulation on College Students

March 16, 2015

Effects of Cannabis Deregulation on College Students

Scientifically Cannabis sativa popularly known by many titles such as weed, marijuana among others, has always been a drug that is accessible to many youths in spite of harsh laws that regulate its use in given countries. In most countries the use of this drug is prohibited and if you are unlucky to be caught you will serve a jail term longer enough to make you regret knowing it in the first place. Despite the stringent rules that have outlawed the use of this drug in many countries it has remained one of the highly abused drugs especially by college students and teens who are out of school.

Marijuana is currently an outlawed drug in most countries but it does not defy the saying that every dark cloud has a silver lining, it also has good effects that were once valued- this drug being rich in THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol). THC is one of the most active ingredient in cannabis that has medicinal qualities, due to its high content in this medicinal content, many researchers have opined that marijuana can be used in treatment of many diseases including cancer. However owing to the fact that it is a highly addictive drug that is prone to be abused it has attracted the attentions for all the wrong reasons making it outlawed in many parts of the world.

The use of cannabis is common despite the strict laws in fact it is on the rise among college students, thanks to its hallucinatory effects that has made it a darling to many students. Most college students begin using this drug without even knowing all the side effects that it is always associated with. Due to peer pressure and a need to belong some students also begin using this drug since some of their friends are using it. in the long run the number of college students affected grows and by the time they become aware of the dangerous effects of using cannabis they are have already become addicted to the drug so much that it can’t be easily stopped. This leads to a situation where college students become adversely affected with the drug so much that they cannot effectively study.

Cannabis and students

The use of cocaine on the rise among students

According to an article published on Michigan University News on Sept/8/2014; the use of illicit drugs has been rising at an alarming rate among American college students since 2006 when only 34 per cent indicated that they had used some illicit drugs in years prior to 2006. By 2013 the rate of those who indicated to have used illicit drugs had heightened by 39 per cent. The report also stated that marijuana is one of the drugs that are highly abused by college students. This study was done by University of Michigan scientists who conduct the nationwide Monitoring the Future study.

The report states that the use of marijuana is on the rise while that of other drugs of leisure is declining and this can be attributed to availability of this drug and affordability in comparison to such drugs as cocaine and heroin. According to this study, Daily marijuana use is now at the highest rate among college students in more than three decades. 51 percent of all full-time college students currently have used an illicit drug at some time in their lives; roughly four in 10 have used one or more such drugs in just the 12 months preceding the survey.

The results are based on a nationally representative sample of some 1,100 students enrolled full time in a 2- or 4-year college in spring 2013. The survey is part of the long-term MTF study, which also tracks substance use among the nation’s secondary students and older adults under research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The study showed that marijuana has remained the most widely used illicit drug over the 34 years that MTF has tracked substance use by college students, but the level of use has varied considerably over time. In 2006, 30 percent of the nation’s college students said they used marijuana in the prior 12 months, whereas in 2013 nearly 36 percent indicated doing so. This shows how marijuana use in colleges is rising despite the fact that it is still regulated. The question is what will happen if it is deregulated.

If marijuana would be deregulated today, the students will begin using it like some sort of over the counter drugs, without fear of authorities and deregulation in itself may sound as an approval by the state on the positive effects of the drug hence many students will use it.

Cannabis

These are some of the problems that the students will face

Inconsistence in performance- consuming alcohol doesn’t end with blowing the smoke in the air; its effects are far more than the euphoric effects that an individual may get from using the drug. When used for a long time it will result in anxiety which will not enable the student to study and perform well in exams and being that it will be unregulated the dosage may hike to a dangerous limit that over a time may cause cognitive malfunctions.

Depression- this is a threat that most people using cannabis have to face. Depression is not good for a student as it alienates him from his studies and even lecturers it may graduate to other serious problems.

Addiction to marijuana is a serious concern that needs to be duly addressed. Here at AWAREmed we are dedicated to offer the best treatment available to addicts. Contact Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) for more help in any kind of addiction you may be wrestling with.