RGB's nail colors are so cool, no one will know they're healthy.

Incredibly, there seem to be no tradeoffs with this healthy, toxin-less formula. The polish--which comes in decidedly un-natural, fashionista-friendly colors--is free of all carcinogens; it has no Formaldehyde, Toulene, DPD (dibutyl pthalate), Formaldehyde Resin or Camphor. Yay! Even more incredible, the pre-moistened, travel ready, 100% cotton "Nail Color Remove Pads" contain no acetone and no acetate -- the most volatile, smelly stuff.

As far as we can tell it's healthier, green and hip. We might just carry it on our next flight in the event that some other mother decides the pursuit of vanity is an appropriate pastime.

90 minutes on an exercise bike can increase the effectiveness of a flu shot.

In a previous study, sedentary elderly people who embarked on a routine of exercise 10 months prior to getting the flu shot had improved immune responses to the vaccine. Earlier research showed that 20 minutes of bicep curls before the flu shot also enhanced its activity. 

Researchers have not yet teased out all of the biological mechanisms of the exercise effect, but the researcher's current best guess is that the exercise "probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injectin site and to other parts of the body. "The exercise probably also goosed the body's overall immune system," Dr. Kohut told The Times, "which in turn helped exaggerate the vaccine's effect."

A nice long jog or ride after a flu shot will increase its effectiveness. Other studies have established that sleep deprivation can rob a vaccine of effectiveness in the short term, although the body apparently catches up.

To optimize a vaccine, take a long moderate jog or bike ride and get a good night's sleep.  

When cosmetic surgeon Allan Wu first heard the woman's complaint, he wondered if she was imagining things or making it up. A resident of Los Angeles in her late sixties, she explained that she could not open her right eye without considerable pain and that every time she forced it open, she heard a strange click—a sharp sound, like a tiny castanet snapping shut. After examining her in person at The Morrow Institute in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Wu could see that something was wrong: Her eyelid drooped stubbornly, and the area around her eye was somewhat swollen. Six and a half hours of surgery later, he and his colleagues had dug out small chunks of bone from the woman's eyelid and tissue surrounding her eye, which was scratched but largely intact. The clicks she heard were the bone fragments grinding against one another.

About three months earlier the woman had opted for a relatively new kind of cosmetic procedure at a different clinic in Beverly Hills—a face-lift that made use of her own adult stem cells. First, cosmetic surgeons had removed some the woman's abdominal fat with liposuction and isolated the adult stem cells within—a family of cells that can make many copies of themselves in an immature state and can develop into several different kinds of mature tissue. In this case the doctors extractedmesenchymal stem cells—which can turn into bone, cartilage or fat, among other tissues—and injected those cells back into her face, especially around her eyes. The procedure cost her more than $20,000, Wu recollects. Such face-lifts supposedly rejuvenate the skin because stem cells turn into brand-new tissue and release chemicals that help heal aging cells and stimulate nearby cells to proliferate.

During the face-lift her clinicians had also injected some dermal filler, which plastic surgeons have safely used for more than 20 years to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. The principal component of such fillers is calcium hydroxylapatite, a mineral with which cell biologists encourage mesenchymal stem cells to turn into bone—a fact that escaped the woman's clinicians. Wu thinks this unanticipated interaction explains her predicament. He successfully removed the pieces of bone from her eyelid in 2009 and says she is doing well today, but some living stem cells may linger in her face. These cells could turn into bone or other out-of-place tissues once again.

Read the rest of the story at scientificamerican.com

When all was said and done, probiotics reduced the incidence of a nasty infection by an impressive 66%.

Considering that C.difficile (which can occur up to 8 weeks after antibiotic therapy) attacks more than 300,000 hospitalized patients in the U.S. each year (at a cost to treat of $3.2 billion), that's a lot of suffering that could be avoided by something as simple as taking a relatively inexpensive nutritional supplement.

The probiotics currently thought to work best for preventing these infections are Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (widely available as Culturelle) and the yeast Saccharomyces boulardii (widely available as Florastor.) Research suggests the former works better for children whereas the latter seems to be more effective for adults. In the Annals review, optimal effects were found with both types at a dosage of 10 billion units or more of bacteria or yeast per day. 

It has been his life's work. Now, Russell Portenoy appears to be having second thoughts.

Two decades ago, the prominent New York pain-care specialist drove a movement to help people with chronic pain. He campaigned to rehabilitate a group of painkillers derived from the opium poppy that were long shunned by physicians because of their addictiveness.

Dr. Portenoy's message was wildly successful. Today, drugs containing opioids like Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet are among the most widely prescribed pharmaceuticals in America.

Opioids are also behind the country's deadliest drug epidemic. More than 16,500 people die of overdoses annually, more than all illegal drugs combined.

Now, Dr. Portenoy and other pain doctors who promoted the drugs say they erred by overstating the drugs' benefits and glossing over risks.

"Did I teach about pain management, specifically about opioid therapy, in a way that reflects misinformation? Well, against the standards of 2012, I guess I did," Dr. Portenoy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We didn't know then what we know now."

Recent research suggests a significantly higher risk of addiction than previously thought, and questions whether opioids are effective against long-term chronic pain.

Dr. Russell Portenoy talks to The Wall Street Journal.

Read the rest of the story at WSJ.com

The clever thing about North American porcupine quills is that they slip through the skin easily but they are really tough to get out. This is useful for the porcupine, not so good for the victim. But this defense mechanism could also have a use in drug delivery, for example, by leading to less painful or more robust needles that do less damage as they slip through the skin.The barbs on a porcupine quill act like a serrated knife, requiring about half the pressure to penetrate a surface than a quill without barbs.

Porcupines have about 30,000 quills of up to 10 cm long, and they have tiny backward-facing barbs on the last 4 mm of the quills. These barbs not only mean that the quills snag on the way out, but also make them slide into the skin more easily, needing around half the pressure needed for quills with no barbs. The barbs act like the serrations on a sharp kitchen knife, cutting cleanly and easily through a tomato.

Creating a needle that penetrates as easily as a porcupine quill but isn't as difficult to remove could mean a shot that is much less painful.

"For needles, we envision we could use 'swell-able' or degradable barbs, to enable easy penetration and easy removal," Jeffrey Karp of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital told BBC News.

Read the story at FierceDrugDelivery

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

Read the rest of the story at nytimes.com

BBC News reports that, "drugs used to calm inflammation in psoriasis [and recently found to improve moderate to severe Crohn's Disease] may also help to combat the effects of Alzheimer's disease, a study on mice suggests." The psoriasis treatment, ustekinumab (brand name Stelera), blocks the effects of proteins released by the immune system known as IL-12 and IL-23 that are associated with the inflammation that causes psoriasis.Ustkinumab, with the brand name Stelera, may treat Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's disease is a type of dementia, a condition characterised by the loss of healthy brain cells and the formation of abnormal deposits of proteins ('plaques') and fibres inside the brain.

The news is based on a study published in the journal Nature Medicine that found that proteins released by the immune system (IL-12 and IL-23) that are associated with inflammation were found in high levels in the brains of mice genetically programmed to develop a disease similar to Alzheimer's (a 'mouse model' of Alzheimer's). 

They used two methods to lower the levels of IL-12 and IL-23 in the mouse model of Alzheimer's:

• deleting the genes that carry the instructions for making IL-12 and IL-23
• treating the mice with an antibody that blocks the effects of IL-12 and IL-23

Both methods were found to reduce the formation of plaques, and the antibody treatment could reverse some of the behavioural problems seen in the mouse model of Alzheimer's.

This finding has generated particular interest because ustekinumab, a drug which blocks the effects of IL-12 and IL-23, is already used to treat psoriasis in humans. 

Because safety data already exists for the use of this drug treating people with psoriasis, it may mean that human trials using it to treat Alzheimer's disease could happen sooner than for a completely new drug. 

However, it is likely that this is still a way off, with more animal research needed first to support the possible effectiveness and safety of the treatment for Alzheimer's.

Read the rest of the story at NHS Choices.

The FDA approved Novartis' novel flu vaccine produced using cultured animal cells instead of the traditional manufacturing process that uses fertilized chicken eggs. Novartis will use a process to manufacture its seasonal flu vaccine at its new plant in Holly Springs, NC, that is based on animal cell cultures and so will cut weeks off production times.

The FDA approved the approach for Novartis Flucelvax a few days ago, saying it provides "the potential for a faster startup of the vaccine manufacturing process in the event of a pandemic." The method is used to make other kinds of vaccines. Novartis has received about $500 million in support from the U.S. government for the Holly Springs plant as part of a program that gives the government say over production in the event of a pandemic. Novartis says the joint investment in the technology and plant is about $1 billion.

The Swiss company will use a cell-culture system derived from the kidney of a dog, The Wall Street Journal said. Using mammal cells will shave about four weeks off the process compared with using eggs and eliminates the need to keep a stock of eggs. Novartis uses the same process at a plant in Germany. Novartis says the North Carolina plant will be the first of its kind in the U.S.

Read the rest of the story at fiercebiotech.com

People with high levels of vitamin D in their blood have shown a lower risk of developing multiple sclerosis, according to results of a Swedish study released Monday.

The new study adds to a growing body of research suggesting a link between vitamin D and MS, an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord that is believed to afflict more than a quarter-million Americans. The research will be published in Tuesday's edition of the medical journal Neurology.

Vitamin D is made by the body in response to sun exposure and is found naturally in some foods such as fatty fish. The so-called "sunshine vitamin" is also added to milk and other foods in the U.S., though doctors say it is difficult to get the recommended amount of vitamin D from food alone.

Read the story at wsj.com