Under the Skin Blood testing device

I apologise for not posting in a while, I have been very busy on duke of Edinburgh in Dartmoor where I woke up to 4 inches of snow! Also I’ve been having QQE’s in Biology and practice EMPA’s for chemistry which are the experimental qualification to each course, I’m sure many other hopeful medics will be doing them too! On BBC news there was information about the development of a blood testing device, it particularly caught my attention because could show a new type of blood monitoring for my sister who has Type 1 Diabetes.  

Scientists have developed a blood testing device which gives results immediately to a mobile phone using radio waves and Bluetooth technology and they hope can measure up to five substances at one time. It is about half an inch, and would be inserted by a needle to the abdominal, arms or legs into interstitial tissue. The device has three main parts which are five sensors, a radio transmitter and a power delivery system.  Each sensor’s surface is covered with an enzyme, but enzymes only have a limited life span so scientists are developing you methods to make them last as long as possible. Outside the body, a battery patch provides 1/10 watt of power, inductively coupled through the patient’s skin — no need to operate every time the battery needs changing.

 It will be particularly useful in measuring chronic illnesses for example diabetes and high cholesterol. The devices could send alerts even before symptoms emerge, and anticipate the need for medication. It could also be used for tracking the effects of some drugs like chemotherapy. Currently, oncologists use occasional blood tests to evaluate their patients’ tolerance to a particular treatment dosage. In these conditions, it is very difficult to determine the optimum dose.

This research is expected to be used on patients in 4 years’ time; they have already tested it in the laboratory and on animals and the next step is on intensive care patients who require frequent monitoring. It will be a huge advancement because it can provide a much higher level of care than traditional blood tests can show.

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21841829

http://www.kurzweilai.net/under-the-skin-a-tiny-blood-testing-laboratory

Curing HIV

How Does HIV invade the immune system?
HIV is the immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.) HIV is a retrovirus which means it contains RNA instead of DNA, it is found in the core surrounded by lipid and protein. The core of the cell also contains transcriptase which is essential once the virus enters a body cell, because it creates a DNA version of RNA, and the humans infected cell follows the coding on the DNA to create more virus'. The reproduction of HIV can only occur inside a cell, and it infects the bodies T Lymphocyte blood cell. It enters the body through direct contact, such as sexual intercourse, sharing hypodermic needles, infected blood from transfusions or a mother to her newborn. At first the virus lies in the T lymphocyte it has infected, the body copies the virus's DNA and incorporates them into their own chromosomes. Symptoms only happen once the virus has become active, it produces many copies of itself and destroys the cell as it 'bursts out.' 
T lymphocytes are destroyed, these are the cells that protect us from diseases and therefore without them the body has a weakened immune system so more diseases take hold such as pneumonia or Kaposi's sarcoma. 

  

Doctors in the USA have been able to cure a baby girl with HIV, as they were able to hit the virus hard and early. Does this bring us closer to a HIV cure?

The difficulty is that many adults gain HIV several years before symptoms become dominant, so many people are unaware they have it. With babies who have a vulnerable immune system it is unpredictable on how they will react.  The baby was treated with antiretroviral drugs, which stop the virus from replicating and reduce to level of the virus, therefore reducing the harm of HIV on the babies immune system. The progress is measured by how much it reduces the viral load. For most people this treatment has to be carried on for the rest of their lives to reduce the amount of HIV particles in the blood. 

Many people now die with HIV, rather than dying because of HIV due to treatment. 70% of these people are in Africa, who has poor access to treatment so HIV is a larger cause of death there. A Cure is needed next: as soon as HIV infects a patient, the virus will spread rapidly throughout the body, the most difficult obstacle to overcome is that the virus ‘hides’ in the DNA. At Oxford University there is much research in using cancer drugs to make the virus prominent and vulnerable so a vaccine can then destroy it.

Source:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21653463

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/03March/Pages/Reports-of-HIV-cure-are-sadly-premature.aspx