Oldest Known Case of Infectious Diseases.

Researchers in Germany have discovered that two 3,500 year old adult mummies had suffered from malaria, one of the most common infectious diseases in the world. Bone tissues samples were studied in over 90 mummies found in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, which today is called Luxor. The two adult mummies were found in separate tombs, yet both had tissues containing the DNA of a parasite that causes malaria.That's not all! A team of researchers at The University Collage in London discovered a pair of 9,000 year old skeletons of a woman and a baby off the coast of Israel who both were infected with the oldest known case of tuberculosis.
By studying ancient diseases that in time have changed, it could help scientist better understand how modern diseases mutate in reaction to drugs. Millions of people die each year from malaria and tuberculosis has grown resistant to antibiotics, it's important that scientist have all the clues they can to help find a cure for these life threatening, potentially fatal diseases.
Frank Ruhli, the head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, said "If you go back in the past and see this genetic fingerprint of a disease, from a hundred years ago to ten thousand years, it helps you asses how it might actually react in the future."
Radiology and CT scans have also helped researchers find medical abnormalities in mummies, including arthritis, sclerosis, bone fractures, dental problems, and injuries. Only problem is that these scans provide little evidence of these diseases. As a result, archeologists have you use more invasive procedures such as autopsies. By sampling the tissue to look at DNA is both less damaging to the mummy and more precise when it comes to the studying of these diseases.
Although pathologist have not yet found the information they need to create treatments for these diseases, there is still much to be discovered. The more they can find and sample the closer they get to a cure!

A heart that beats, but leaves you pulseless!

Just think, an artificial hear that leaves patients without a pulse? Sounds crazy but believe it or not it just might be possible. Texas scientist are designing a artificial heart that dose just that. The key factor in this is a constant flow pump, first used in ancient Greece as an elongated screw encased in a tube to raise water from one level to another. Over 1, 006 patients have had screw-shaped pump implanted to help their ventricles pump blood to the rest of their body. Even though they still have a natural heartbeat but you are unable to detect a pulse.
Doctors for the Texas Heart Institute are teaming up with scientist from the University of Huston to completely replace the beating of a human heart with a humming constant flow pump. Doctor Ian Fraizer says that it won't perfectly match a natural heart's activity but it will preform the same function. Total artifical replacments hearts alreay exist and have been implanted into patiens. Although the mechanical hearts pump blood, many have failed after one or two years due to mechanical faulires realated to the pumping action. The artifical hearts are a way to buy more time for patients until a nautral hear becomes availavble for transplant.
The hearts today are too large aren't meant for women, children and most men, but the constant flow pump would be much smaller and be about the size of a C cell battery. By being smaller that means they could be used in a wider variety of people, even children. The constant flow pump would also be more resistant to mechanical failures which means they woud be able to last longer then a few years.
Scientists plan to use two pumps working together to produce blood to the ret of the body and eventually one screw-shaped pump could replace both values. Doctor Timothy Baldwidn of the National Insitutes of Health says that before the constant flow pump replaces the human heart, years of studied are needed to test its efficancy.
Doctor Baldwin also says that the artifical heart could benfit many people in the furture, although they say that permanelty eliminating one of the most dunfamental sgins of being alive is a big deal. Scientes aren't sure of the long-term effects of constant blood pressure will be.
Although beacuse patients have done well in the past, it only makes doctors more confident.