MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS

TURNING POOR QUALITY EGGS INTO HEALTHY ONES

Poor quality eggs are one of the reasons that some women struggle to get pregnant. But researchers at Stanford University developed a technique that helps women with ovarian insufficiency to produce healthy, mature eggs again. The process, called in vitro activation, involves removing an ovary or piece of ovarian tissue and treating it in a lab with proteins and other factors that help the immature follicles it contains to develop into eggs. The recharged tissue is then re-implanted near the fallopian tubes. So far, of the 27 women who volunteered to test the technique, five produced viable eggs, one woman is pregnant and another gave birth to a healthy baby.

THE POOP PILL

The pills are actually made up of the bacteria found in poop. It turns out that our guts are packed with microbes that do good – they help us digest our food and fend off other, their disease-causing microbes. The right population of bacteria can also stamp out Clostridium difficile, a scourge that plagues hospitals and can cause diarrhea and potentially fatal inflammation of the colon. Packaging a microbial community in a pill was the brilliant idea of Dr. Thomas Louie, of the University of Calgary. Among 27 patients who tested the gel capsules, none experienced recurrent symptoms of their Clostridium infection. And they certainly welcomed the easier mode of delivery, which was an improvement over the alternative: fecal transplants, delivered by nasogastric tube, though sanitized of the nastiest and most toxic components.

HAIR 

The answer to growing new hair may lie in turning hair on its head – literally. Researchers at Columbia University report that transplanting hair follicles, which contain the roots of new hair, as well as the cells that surround them – upside down – may be the key to luscious new growth. The experiment involved patches of foreskin from circumcised babies that were transplanted onto mice. Foreskin was used because it has no hair follicles of its own, so any follicles that were inverted, implanted and took root could not be confused with native ones. The new follicles took rout and sprouted—a big boost for the hairless but hopeful.

THE FIRST HOME PREGNANCY TEST THAT TELLS YOU HOW PREGNANT YOU ARE 

Pregnancy tests just got an upgrade. The Clearblue Advanced Pregnancy Test with Weeks Estimator is the first such test approved by the Food and Drug Administration that not only detects pregnancy, but measures how far along it is, based on time since ovulation. The test uses levels of the same hormone that signals pregnancy, human chorionic gonadotropin, to make its estimate.

THE BIONIC EYE

The “Argus II” takes a video signal from a camera built into sunglasses and wirelessly transmits that image to implants in the retinas of people who have lost their vision. Though it’s been available in Europe since 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only approved the eye earlier this year. 

The system isn't perfect. It lets a blind person regain basic functions like walking on a sidewalk without stepping off a curb, and distinguishing black from white socks, but only lets you read one giant-sized word at a time on a Kindle. Plus, as the retina itself heals over the implant, the quality of vision decreases. The Argus II is currently only approved for people who have lost their sight from retina pigmentosis.  But the technology could soon help the more than 1.75 million people who suffer from macular degeneration.