Compostable splint for broken bones

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Doctors newspaper online, 04.07.2019

    

        
        
        

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fractures

Because it can be composted, a splint splint to help prevent garbage.

Bone fractures could soon be helped by a compostable rail.

© Mareen Friedrich / Fotolia

POTSDAM. A new splint for immobilizing bone fractures, which can be reshaped several times during treatment, was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam in cooperation with Nölle Kunststofftechnik. The reshaping is suitable, for example, when the swelling subsides. After use, the rail can be composted, according to the IAP.

The bio-based plastic polylactic acid (PLA) makes its shape and compostability possible. At the Biopolymer Congress, which took place in Halle / Saale on 21 and 22 May 2019, the product RECAST was awarded the second prize in the Biopolymer Innovation Award, which was awarded for product novelties made of compostable plastics.

The rail works in such a way that preformed PLA parts of different sizes are used. The rails would be heated to 55 to 65 ° C. The now malleable plastic is then adapted to the appropriate body site. This process takes about five minutes. If corrections are necessary, the hardened rail can simply be reheated.

"We want to enable users in doctors' practices and hospitals to provide their patients with faster, cleaner and, above all, individual care. In the first place, the rail should be much more comfortable and easier for patients ", Anselm Gröning, Managing Director of Nölle Kunststofftechnik GmbH, is quoted in the communication. "At the same time, it was important to us to use a plastic that avoids garbage, is biodegradable, affordable and non-toxic," says Groening.

Great demands on the material

In developing the material, the plastics processor worked closely with the polymer developers of the Fraunhofer IAP in Potsdam-Golm. "The demands on the material were complex. For example, it should remain malleable for only a half to three minutes and then become hard and stable at body temperature. The shape should also be readjusted several times, "explains Helmut Remde, the head of the Processing Technology Center at Fraunhofer IAP, in the release.

The research team chose to use PLA, although it has a major drawback for most applications: it softens at around 58 ° C. However, for use as an orthopedic splint, the low thermal softening point of PLA is a great advantage. Thus, the product can be repeatedly and quickly reshaped by heating, they say.

The use of PLA brings another decisive benefit: it is biodegradable. While the vast majority of common immobilization agents produce large amounts of plastic waste, which is disposed of in landfills and incinerated, the PLA rails in the industrial composter can be biodegraded. "In this way about 80 percent of waste could be avoided. In addition, 20 percent of the plastic waste could be saved simply by the possibility of reuse, "explains Gröning. Currently, this composting would, however, only work when used in medical practices or privately via the bio bin, the researchers use. Hospitals have their own waste concepts, where composting is not planned.

In order to make the splint even more comfortable for patients, the RECAST products also receive a fleece padding made of PLA and viscose, which was developed jointly with the Saxon Textile Research Institute in Chemnitz. This too is biodegradable. (eb)

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Researchers Eliminate HIV DNA from Infected Cells

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Doctors newspaper online, 02.07.2019

    

        
        
        

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With Genscher

US scientists have developed a method that successfully eliminates the HI virus – at least in animal experiments – and even removes it from the genome.

By Peter Leiner

3D illustration of a HI virus.

© Artem_Egorov / Getty Images / iStock

OMAHA. The retrovirus HIV is indeed able to incorporate into the genome of infected cells and thus not be vulnerable to antiretroviral drugs. For this reason, treatment of people infected with HIV has so far only succeeded in reducing the amount of virus below the detection limit, but not in extracting and destroying the pathogen from its hiding place in the genome in which it incorporates the enzyme integrase.

But only when such latent Aids pathogens are eliminated, a cure of HIV-infected people is possible. As long as this does not succeed, a lifelong drug treatment is inevitable.

On a good path to more successful HIV therapy, US researchers are now around Dr. Prasanta K. Dash of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska ( Nature Communications 2019; online July 2 ). They have developed a strategy in which two approaches are combined and successfully tested in animal experiments on mice.

Two Methods Combined

First, they developed a special antiretroviral therapy (ART), which they call LASER ART (long-acting slow effective release ART). The hallmark of this form of therapy is that the drugs used – dolutegravir, lamivudine (3TC) and abacavir – were packaged in nanocrystals and administered as prodrugs, released more slowly than normal and have better bioavailability.

Due to this galenic approach, researchers are ultimately supported by the activity of macrophages, which ingest these drugs and relay them via cell-cell contacts to infected CD4-positive T lymphocytes.

However, the LASER ART alone does not succeed in removing latent HI viruses that have taken root in the genetic material of cells in the preferred niches of the brain, lymph nodes, liver, bone marrow and spleen. That's why Dash and his colleagues decided to combine the special ART with the Genetic Engineering Tool CRISPR / Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat).

They used adeno-associated viruses to transport the once-only gene scissors. The strategy was tested in mice equipped with human hematopoietic stem cells from birth. These mice develop human T lymphocytes that are easily infected with HIV.

40 mice as test objects

The new strategy was tested on a total of 40 mice. The animals were first treated with LASER ART for four weeks. Thereafter, the medicines were discontinued. In the ninth week after infection with HIV-1, the researchers finally used the gene scissors and checked the tissue for HI viruses at the 14th week.

The gene scissors removed the region in the genome of HIV, which contains the gene gag (group-specific antigen), which is essential for the assembly of an infectious virus.

The researchers report that they have successfully eliminated the pathogen in more than 30 percent of infected animals using their novel strategy. Drug pretreatment enabled very efficient removal of large parts of the viral genome from infected cells using CRISPR / Cas9.

Pretreatment is a prerequisite for the successful and optimal use of the gene scissors. This had according to their statements, the cuts only in the selected places set. Accordingly, no new mutations have occurred.

Dash and his colleagues hope to soon be able to make experiments with primates and possibly their strategy for the first time in HIV patients this year to check. Her animal experiment is an important first step "on the long journey to virus eradication".

Combination of two strategies

• LASER ART is a proprietary antiretroviral therapy in which the drugs are administered as prodrugs.
• CRISPR / Cas9 is a gene scissors that has specific implications Can cut out regions in the genetic material. In the study, the researchers thus removed the gene sequence of the HI virus, in which the gag gene lies.

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G20 Summit: Health as a Random Note

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G20

At their meeting in Osaka, the G-20 leaders promise further strategic aid to the Congo in the fight against the Ebola epidemic. Antimicrobial resistance and life with dementia were also on the agenda.

By Matthias Wallenfels

Stop, Ebola! The G20 states want to strengthen their commitment in the fight against Ebola.

© narvikk / Getty Images / iStock

OSAKA. Global access to quality-assured medical care, the fight against infectious diseases, and effective crisis and pandemic management, not least in view of the current Ebola epidemic in Congo, were all on the G20's agenda this weekend in Osaka, Japan -Gipfels.

And all of them also found their way into the final statement of the meeting in which, at least on the part of the international media, the US-China trade war – and thus the bilateral meeting of Presidents Trump and Xi – as well as the plot the occupation of the high-ranking EU posts and, of course, Chancellor Merkel's state of health were the focus of interest after two public trembling attacks.

As the G20 clarifies in their final statement, they see health as a prerequisite for sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

However, with health care systems facing increasing cost pressures around the world in the face of population growth, there is no getting away from digital and other innovative health technologies for effective and efficient care for all people around the world, according to the consensus. The keyword here is Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

Health Action Plan to Provide Impetus

Important impulses are expected from the summit participants of the "Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-Being for All" initiated by Chancellor Angela Merkel among others. This is to achieve the health-related goals of the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" adopted by the UN General Assembly in in 2015.

At the institutional level, within 15 years, all people worldwide will have access to family planning and reproductive health services, and reproductive health will be transferred to national strategy programs.

In addition, epidemic diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and Ebola are to be eradicated by 2030. The action plan will be presented at this year's UN General Assembly in the context of the high-level UHC meeting.

As stated in the G20 Final Declaration, with regard to the importance of sustainable health financing, states are calling for closer cooperation between financial and health authorities, especially in developing countries.

Allowing People to Live Healthy and Active

Another focus of the G20 was on unspecified policies to strengthen health promotion, prevention and the control of communicable and noncommunicable diseases to help more and more people achieve healthy and active aging.

The vehicle for this should be patient-centered, multisectoral, communal, integrated concepts, which – in line with the respective demographic development of the state in question – accompany people through all stages of their lives.

They also want to implement a comprehensive set of health policies as a response to the growing global prevalence of dementia. The aim is also to improve the living conditions of dementia patients as well as carers.

Cooperation in Pandemic Management

The summit participants from Osaka sent a clear message to countries that are potentially affected by Ebola outbreaks and other epi- or even pandemics. The G20 member states, they say, want to improve health service response planning in their own ranks.

It is not only about strengthening one's own capacities, but also about supporting affected countries in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) international health regulations.

Explicitly, the G20 address the current Ebola outbreak in Africa – and promise both financial and technical support, with WHO co-ordinating aid. [PandemicEmergencyFinancingFacilityPandemic Emergency Financing Facility created by the World Bank in collaboration with WHO after the devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa in the middle of the decade for poor countries; PEF), the final declaration states that work continues on sustainable and efficient financing mechanisms to combat global health emergencies.

As the G20 Agriculture Ministers emphasized in Niigata in May summit participants in Osaka now pleaded for the cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary "one-health approach" and antibiotic resistance in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. To pursue stewardship programs.

The Global Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Development Hub research initiative calls on the G20 to identify and report on the best models in the fight against resistance as a basis for further G20 AMR strategies.

At least symbolically, Osaka is not the worst place to pave the way for innovative technologies and approaches to health care systems worldwide. Because in old Japan, when Osaka was still called Naniwa, the port there served as a central point of contact for foreign visitors – and they often brought along new, innovative technologies that the Japanese liked to adapt.

We updated and renewed the article on 01/07/2019 at 16:14.

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