Jaslok Hospital on Tuesday announced that it had performed a breakthrough surgery, which could go a long way towards reducing the symptoms of ?Parkinson’s disease? amongst patients.

Dr Paresh Doshi, chief of the department of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery at the Jaslok Hospital, said that he had performed a ?Subthalamic Nucleus lesioning? (STN) for advanced Parkinson?s diseases on a 61-year-old patient from Gujarat. Typically, those with advanced Parkinson?s are treated by using a technique called the ?Deep Brain stimulation? ? which involves implanting electrodes on the two sides of the brain, and passing high frequency current through it.

This is besides treating them with medicines. Through this, the idea is to target a part of those hyperactive cells of the subthalamic nucleus, which aggravate the symptoms of Parkinson?s among patients. When high frequency current is passed, these hyperactive cells calm down. ?But this is very expensive as patients have to come back frequently for follow up treatments,? Doshi said.

On Friday, Doshi performed an STN on Purushottam Dadhania. this surgery involves performing a lesion on these hyperactive cells. this means these hyperactive cells are removed altogether. it is tricky as doctors have to avoid harming the good cells as subthalamic nucleus cells are responsible for movement, emotions and moods in a patient. ?I have been suggesting this technique to patients for nearly two years. it is one sixth the cost of the DBS technique, but patients have been wary of the STN because this is an irreversible process,? Doshi said.

Dr. Marcel Waldinger, a Professor of Sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, has revealed in two studies that he published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy that men suffer from flu like symptoms just after they have an ejaculation.

The studies showed that men suffer from a condition known as Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome or POIS which cause them with problems such as feverishness, running nose, extreme exhaustions and burning eyes just as if they are having an attack of flu.

The study revealed that men with POIS actually have an allergy o their own semen that causes these symptoms. there is a treatment called hyposensitisation therapy that can help them to get relieved of this irksome problem.

According to Dr. Waldinger, "These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome." However he affirmed that his findings may "contradict the idea that the complaints have a psychological cause and show that an auto-allergic reaction to semen is the most likely cause."

To come to this conclusion, Dr. Waldinger and his team analysed 45 Dutch men who were found with the ailment.

88% of the men who underwent a standard skin-prick allergy test using a diluted form of their own semen have reported with a positive skin reaction that indicated that they had auto-immune response or allergic reactions.

In a POIS therapy men receive skin injections that have their own semen in two stages with different dilutions. this has shown that the men after the treatment show remarkable improvement from the disease. However Dr. Waldinger said, "It’s a very slow process. It is used for all sorts of allergies and can sometimes take up to 5 years."

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 15:27 CST

The amount of uric acid in one’s joints may increase the likelihood of severe osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis worldwide, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

Osteoarthritis is a debilitating joint degeneration for which no drug has been proven to slow or halt its progression. Physicians can only offer to treat the symptoms associated with osteoarthritis, and people with the condition are often subject to a reduced quality of life.

"Finding a way to treat the degenerating joints of people with osteoarthritis would be a tremendous breakthrough," said Virginia Byers Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at Duke University in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology and senior author of the study. "this research is a step towards identifying uric acid as a risk factor for osteoarthritis."

The researchers looked at 159 people, who had knee osteoarthritis but no history of gout, a type of arthritis triggered by uric acid crystals in the joints. the researchers found the severity of osteoarthritis in their knees to be strongly correlated with the amount of uric acid in their knees. the results, which are published online in PNAS, show, despite the lack of gout history, above normal uric acid levels in 39 percent of the study population, and evidence of the form of inflammation in the joints that is typically triggered by uric acid crystals.

"in a non-gout population, this provides some of the very first evidence that uric acid level is a potential cause of inflammatory events and joint degeneration in osteoarthritis," Kraus said.

But there are many drugs available for lowering uric acid. "So the next question would be, if you are able to lower uric acid levels in an osteoarthritis sufferer, could you actually slow down the progression of their osteoarthritis and bring about a meaningful change in the course of their disease," Kraus said.

There are a lot of different markers for osteoarthritis that are indicative of disease severity, according to Kraus. "this is presumably a marker that is also a mediator of the disease process, not just a marker of the amount of disease you have," she said.

Kraus and her colleagues believe this to be true because the uric acid was so strongly associated with the severity of disease and linked to disease progression over time.

Kraus called the results extremely exciting. "I haven’t been this excited about anything I’ve ever done," she said. "It’s so innately treatable."

Current treatment for people with high uric acid levels and symptoms of gout involves uric acid-lowering drugs.

"We’ve always thought of uric acid as the agent for gout, but it may be a much more general agent," Kraus said.

There’s even an emerging interest in uric acid as a mediator of other types of disease, like chronic kidney disease and coronary artery disease, Kraus said.

"Duke has great strengths in gout disease and osteoarthritis, so we think it’s the perfect situation for pursuing evaluations of the interface between the two, trying to determine whether uric acid should be lowered to help prevent the onset or progression of osteoarthritis," she said.

On the Net:

• Duke University Medical Center
• PNAS

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A new study has found that changes in a blood protein could be linked to the development of Alzheimer's disease.

Doctors have been looking for ways of detecting Alzheimer's disease before symptoms start to appear.

They used new technology where they studied hundreds of proteins from a small blood sample.

The researchers analysed blood samples of 57 older and symptom-free volunteers to determine whether specific proteins were associated with the build-up of amyloid in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

They measured brain amyloid using PET scans.

“Recent advances in imaging and biomarkers that help track the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease show promise for early detection of the disease process and for tracking the effectiveness of early interventions,” said National Institute on Ageing director Richard J Hodes.

“This is critically important in streamlining and conducting trials more efficiently so that we can find out about possible therapies that much sooner.”

Researchers say this breakthrough could one day lead to a blood test for Alzheimer's disease.

They found the amount of a specific protein called ApoE in the blood samples was strongly associated with the level of beta amyloid in the brain.

Those with the highest levels of the protein had more amyloid deposits in the brain.

“These results are especially intriguing as this protein is made by the APoE gene, the most robust genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's,” Dr Hodes said.

Late-onset Alzheimer's is the most common form of the disease.