It is uncommon, but eye cancer is life shattering, and it can hit anyone. Treatment frequently means radiation which leaves 50% of patients partly blind. Now a technique developed by, an assistant professor at University of Colorado School of Medicine, named Scott Oliver, MD, may change all this. He has found that applying silicone oil inside the eye is able to block up to 55 percent of harmful radiation, and this is enough to prevent blindness in most patients during treatments.

"You want to know, `Is this going to kill me? Is this going to make me go blind?''' says Dr. Oliver. "I believe this treatment will allow you to keep your eye and keep your vision."

A new study of weight loss surgery in England has found that use of of laparoscopic bariatric or other types of weight loss surgery has increased ten-fold in NHS hospitals since 2000. One possible reason behind the rise, say the researchers, is the greater demand from obese patients as they become more conscious of the surgery as a feasible treatment alternative. The observational population cohort study was carried out by a team of researchers based at Imperial College London. It was published 26 August 2010 in the British Medical Journal.

Kudzu, the nuisance vine that has invaded up to 10 million acres in the Southeast, may turn out to be an important dietary supplement for metabolic syndrome, according to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham¹.

In findings published in the August 26, 2009 Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, studies on animal models revealed that substances found in kudzu root called isoflavones can lower factors involved in metabolic syndrome, such as high cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose. Puerarin, an isoflavone found only in kudzu, seems to be the one with the greatest beneficial effect.

Brilliant Blue G (BBG), the food additive that gives M&Ms and Gatorade their blue hue, offers promise for preventing the additional serious secondary damage immediately after a traumatic injury to the spinal cord.

An article¹ published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports that the compound halts the chain of molecular events that cause the secondary damage. In the hours following a spinal cord injury, this secondary injury can enlarge the injured area of the spinal cord, permanently worsening paralysis in patients.

Genetic researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have made a breakthrough in the development of a gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. The mutation that causes cystic fibrosis, (CF) discovered in 1989, is a defect in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) gene.

The idea behind a CF gene therapy is simple enough; use modified viruses to deliver a corrected version of the CFTR gene into affected tissues. But this hoped for cure has been stymied by the natural ability of the lung to limit the introduction of foreign genes into its cells.