6 January, 2016

British woman fitted with ‘bionic eye’ sees for first time in 6 years

London: A revolutionary 'bionic eye' has changed the life of a visually impaired British woman.

As a part of a trial at the Oxford Eye Hospital, Rhian Lewis, 49, was offered the retinal implant. Surgeons based there fitted a tiny electronic chip at the back of her right eye’s retina in a bid to restore her sight.

 Lewis has suffered from retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disorder since she was five years old. This inherited causes gradual deterioration of photoreceptors in the retina, which are responsible for detecting light.

Lewis is completely blind in her right eye and has virtually no vision in her left eye. The implant, made by a German firm, Retina Implant AG, was placed in Lewis’s eye in June in an operation that can last six to eight hours.

During follow-up tests, Lewis was asked to look at a large cardboard clock to see whether she could tell the time. She had not been able to tell the time with her right eye in 16 years or with her left eye for about six years.

She said “Oh my god” when she realised she had managed to recognise it was three o’clock. She added: “Honest to god, that felt like Christmas Day.”

Source: www.zeenews.india.com

06.01.2016

Study shows higher cancer risk among twins, siblings

Twins share the same genes, and when one gets cancer, the other faces a higher risk of getting sick too, according to a study today that included 200,000 people.

But just because one twin falls ill does not mean that the other is certain to get the same cancer, or any cancer at all, according the report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

In fact, the amount of increased risk of cancer was just 14 per cent higher in identical pairs in which one twin was diagnosed with cancer. Identical twins develop from the same egg and share the exact same genetic material.

Among fraternal twins, which develop from two eggs and are as genetically similar as typical biological siblings, the risk of cancer in a twin whose co-twin was infected was five percent higher. The twins in the study hailed from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway -- all countries that maintain detailed health registries -- and were followed between 1943 and 2010.

When researchers looked at the group as a whole, they found that about one in three individuals developed cancer (32 per cent). Therefore, the risk of cancer in an identical twin whose twin was diagnosed was calculated to be 46 per cent.

In fraternal twins it amounted to a 37 per cent risk of developing cancer if a co-twin was diagnosed. The exact same cancer was diagnosed in 38 per cent of identical twins and 26 percent of fraternal pairs.

The cancers that were most likely to be shared among twins were skin melanoma (58 per cent), prostate (57 per cent), non melanoma skin (43 per cent), ovary (39 per cent), kidney (38 per cent), breast (31 per cent), uterine cancer (27 per cent).

"Because of this study's size and long follow-up, we can now see key genetic effects for many cancers," said Jacob Hjelmborg, from the University of Southern Denmark and co-lead author of the study. Researchers said the findings may help patients and doctors understand more about the hereditary risks of cancer, a disease that kills eight million people around the world each year.  

Source: www.zeenews.india.com

06.01.2016

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right

Rosa Parks