Scientists in The United Kingdom are studying ways to make heart valves and synthetic joints last longer.
Greater than fifty percent off all infants born today in western countries will survive to be centenarians; this means more than half the population of these countries will live for one hundred years, according to a report published in the Lancet medical journal. Life expectancy is rising and our bodies simply were not engineered to last this long. What we have available right now to see to this wear and tear requirement is not quite up to the job. Bioengineers at Leeds University have an idea that could see age one hundred becoming the new fifty.
With $82 million at their disposal, scientists are setting up to develop and rapidly rush to market some novel therapies – predominantly implants – which can substitute for God given body parts that weaken or stop working, at least those most popular parts. They hope to avoid the issues they face with the current generation of replacement parts. Their objective is not to extend life, just make life more bearable for sufferers, according to the universities director of the Medical and Biological Engineering Institute.
Already the project has one of their key advances under scrutiny in a clinical trial in Brazil, a heart valve bio-scaffold that was designed by an immunologist from the study. You take a donor valve from a corpse or animal and process it, removing all living cells and what remains is simply the lifeless leftover bits of protein material, collagen and elastin. When it is implanted, cells from the recipient patient repopulated the scaffold, which should prevent future rejection. Mechanical valves previously used required the use of anti coagulant medication and this version would not need this kind of follow up care.
Using this same procedure, clinicians could develop new ligaments or tendons for damaged knees, hips or ankles or provide arterial patching that would offer similar advantages. Scientists are quite hopeful that creating implants using this method will mean they last much longer. An artificial hip exchanged today was invented for a recipient expected to last for another twenty years says the study’s director. When these older version implants were invented, the developers did not believe the recipients of them would be water skiing and mountain hiking.
The Chairman of Duke University’s biomedical engineering department claims it is a good idea and an unusual angle. It brings up a noteworthy issue about the kind of life we would like as we age. It would not be much to look forward to if we were to live for a few more decades only to know we would be beleaguered with joint pain, bad circulation and defective hearts. Furthermore, since the beneficiaries regrow their own cells from within, these scaffolds are comparatively reasonable in price to produce, stockpile, and deliver relative to other types being developed.
The use of stem cells for instance, require removal, development in a laboratory setting, and then reinsertion into the recipient body. In addition to these benefits, the new replacement parts will mean older patients can go back to work if they so desire or have that need. Therefore, there are some social as well as economic reimbursements as well. The practical advantages to these new replacement parts are enormous in terms of dollars saved in healthcare costs when forty somethings are getting knee and hip replacements even today.
When you combine these health care savings along with future earnings of recipients, lost labor hours no longer being an issue for younger patients due to replacing the replacements over a lifetime, everyone wins. Have an eye out for these bionic centenarians in your neighborhood!
Sat, Jan 9, 2010
Bioscience, Health And Aging, Longevity