Medical tools

Chemical engineers at MIT are designing carbon nanotubes that can be injected beneath the skin to reveal continuous blood glucose levels in real time. If it works, people with Type I diabetes may not have to prick their fingers multiple times a day to monitor their glucose levels.

Dubbed a "tattoo" that's designed to detect glucose, the nanotubes are wrapped in a polymer that is sensitive to glucose concentrations. A wearable device roughly the size of a wristwatch shines infrared light through the skin and onto the nanotubes, which fluoresce when in contact with glucose.

So it's really a tattoo in hiding. And at this point the sensor is estimated to have a shelf (or is it skin?) life of roughly six months.

But the team, which plans to start testing on animals soon, says that if the readings are accurate enough to pass the Clarke Error Grid analysis for glucose sensor accuracy, the system could revolutionize continuous glucose monitoring.

"The most problematic consequences of diabetes result from relatively short excursions of a person's blood sugar outside of the normal physiological range, following meals, for example," said Michael Strano, a professor at MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering. "If we can detect and prevent these excursions, we can go a long way toward reducing the devastating impact of this disease."… Read more

I'll admit it. The seeming lack of scientific evidence that acupuncture actually relieves pain has left me skeptical since I first learned of the ancient Chinese technique. And to this day, it's possible that much of the relief patients feel during and after an acupuncture treatment results from the placebo effect.

But new research published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience finds that the natural compound adenosine, known for its anti-inflammatory properties, floods tissue that is punctured or aggravated, and may be the secret ingredient in acupuncture.

"Acupuncture has been a mainstay of medical treatment in … Read more

A senior research fellow in the U.K. says he has become the first person in the world to be infected by a computer virus.

Technically, the chip Mark Gasson inserted into his hand is infected, which one could argue keeps the virus limited to the domain of the chip even though it lives inside the man.

But Gasson, of the University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering, suggests this argument is immaterial because he is demonstrating that increasingly sophisticated medical implants will become vulnerable to computer viruses. Which means that those implants that are vital to a human'… Read more

If you're one of the 17 percent of American adults who reportedly suffer from some type of hearing loss, listen up: hearing aids--and earphones--may be about to enter a new generation of superior fit and functionality, thanks to molds based on a 3D imaging technique instead of plaster.

Time was, getting fitted for a hearing aid took an hour in a chair with an audiologist, who would fill a patient's ear canals with a silicone substance that hardened into a mold from which the aid would be constructed. The molds are only so detailed, which means the fits … Read more

For nearly two years, 43-year-old Charles Okeke has tried to live a normal life in the hospital tethered to a 400-pound machine.

"It sort of overwhelms you to think, 'I'm stuck to a machine,'" he says.

Okeke was barely 30 when a blood clot destroyed his heart, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton. He had a transplant and for 10 years, life was good for this computer consultant and father of three.

But in 2008 his body rejected that heart and at that time another transplant was out of the question.

Okeke now has what … Read more

If the thought of menstrual blood makes you squirm, click the back button now. Consider yourself warned. A senior at Parsons The New School for Design, Chelsea Briganti, says the device she's designed is for "young, exuberant, active, strong, empowered" women anyway.

The device, essentially a menstrual stem cell collector, looks like an extra thick, artsy condom and functions much like a tampon; it is inserted, and its purpose is to sop up menstrual blood. Only Briganti's device, named the Mademoicell, is intended to be shipped to a lab, where the stem cells could help create … Read more

For those with weakened leg muscles who don't need or want to use wheelchairs, there's a strange-looking new mobility device on the market, and Honda is its maker. As the Japanese multinational corporation (and the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles) writes on its Bodyweight Support Assist product page, "Most people think of Honda as an automobile company. But our main focus is and always has been human mobility."

Potential users can be assured that what Honda didn't spend on a catchy name campaign it did invest in the design. The Bodyweight Support Assist device … Read more

The developers of a tiny silicon chip that can be embedded in cell phones say it could detect and then map the location and extent of gas leaks and toxins in the air.

"Cell phones are everywhere people are," says Michael Sailor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego, who heads the research effort. "This technology could map a chemical accident as it unfolds."

Sailor's team at UCSD is working with a San Diego start-up called Rhevision to develop the tiny sensor. They're currently building a prototype that … Read more

Researchers have been working on the problem of tissue engineering for years because the payoff would be so great. The ability to construct new organs would mean that patients won't necessarily have to wait for transplants.

But growing cells in lab dishes that are three-dimensional instead of flat has proved to be incredibly tricky. One group, however, claims to have made a major breakthrough.

The solution, according to a team at the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), could be as simple (but incredibly elegant) as building the equivalent of biological Legos, whose structures far more closely … Read more