BBC Health News

A stem cell therapy for osteoarthritis is to be tested on patients in the UK for the first time.

A year-long trial, funded by Arthritis Research UK, will mix stem cells with cartilage cells in the lab and inject them back into damaged knee joints.

The new treatment could be an alternative to joint replacement surgery, experts hope.

Stem cell therapy is a less invasive

treatment than joint replacement

Scientists from Keele University will study up to 70 people from the end of this year.

The trial will be run at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, Shropshire as part of a five-year research programme.

Three treatments are being tested in a randomised trial of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee.

Read More

BBC Health News

Botox has been approved as a preventive treatment for chronic migraine by UK drug regulators.

It comes after a trial of more than 1,300 patients showed success in reducing the frequency of headaches.

But only patients who suffer headaches for at least 15 days a month, half of which come with migraine symptoms, are eligible, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said.

Chronic migraines can dramatically

impair quality of life

It is thought around 700,000 people in the UK get chronic migraines.

Migraine charities said many of those would not have been properly diagnosed and that some patients can really struggle to find a treatment that works.

Injections of botox, or botulinum toxin, are more commonly associated with smoothing out wrinkles.

It is not exactly clear why it may work in chronic migraines but it is thought that, as well as being a muscle relaxant, it may work to block pain signals.

In clinical trials, patients were given up to five courses of injections of botox into specific head and neck muscles every 12 weeks.

After 24 weeks, those treated with Botox had fewer days with a migraine than those who received a placebo injection.

By one year, nearly 70% of those treated with Botox had a 50% reduction in the number of migraines compared with before the trial.

The final results were published in Headache in May this year.

Read more

Yahoo Health

A new study suggests there may be more likely dangers lurking in the bathroom.

Scientists in the US used an ultra sensitive method to detect bacteria in shower-heads in bathrooms across the country.

Results showed that around 30 per cent of shower-heads had “significant amounts” of Mycobacterium avium, a bacterium linked to breathing illnesses that most often infects people in poor health but can also cause illness in healthy individuals.

These bacteria are often found in water. However, in shower-heads the bacteria tend to clump together to form a slimy “biofilm”, at a concentration more than 100 times greater than is found in ordinary water.

Professor Norman Pace, who led the study, said: “If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy.”

These results may also provide an explanation for the rise in Mycobacterium avium infections in recent years, coinciding with people preferring showers over baths.

Read more