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- Physicians' stethoscopes more contaminated than palms of their hands
- Circadian clock in the ear: Time of day of hearing damage affects healing
- Can non-invasive electrical stimulation of brain help patients regain state of consciousness after coma?
- Vinegar kills tuberculosis, other mycobacteria
| Physicians' stethoscopes more contaminated than palms of their hands Posted: 27 Feb 2014 10:48 AM PST Although healthcare workers' hands are the main source of bacterial transmission in hospitals, physicians' stethoscopes appear to play a role. To explore this question, investigators assessed the level of bacterial contamination on physicians' hands and stethoscopes following a single physical examination. Two parts of the stethoscope (the tube and diaphragm) and four regions of the physician's hands (back, fingertips, and thenar and hypothenar eminences) were measured for the total number of bacteria present in a new study. The stethoscope's diaphragm was more contaminated than all regions of the physician's hand except the fingertips. Further, the tube of the stethoscope was more heavily contaminated than the back of the physician's hand. |
| Circadian clock in the ear: Time of day of hearing damage affects healing Posted: 27 Feb 2014 09:52 AM PST Researchers have identified a biological circadian clock in the hearing organ, the cochlea. This circadian clock controls how well hearing damage may heal and opens up a new way of treating people with hearing disabilities. By measuring the activity of the auditory nerve, the researchers found that mice exposed to moderate noise levels during the night suffered from permanent hearing damages while mice exposed to similar noise levels during the day did not. The ability to heal after hearing damage was therefore linked to the time of day during which the noise damage occurred, and here the ear's circadian clock played an important role. |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2014 01:51 PM PST Researchers have shown that transcranial direct-current stimulation allows patients in a minimally conscious state to recover cognitive and motor skills. This simple, safe and relatively low-cost technique could offer clinicians a new way to help these patients recover, even several years after their coma. However, the positive effects appear to be temporary at this stage of research. "These results are all the more impressive because they can occur in chronic patients, i.e. years after their accident, when their state is often considered as no longer being able to evolve. On the contrary, our study shows that the state of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients can improve following short cortical stimulation. However, this improvement is only temporary and patients return to their initial state after several hours," the authors explain. |
| Vinegar kills tuberculosis, other mycobacteria Posted: 25 Feb 2014 07:15 AM PST The active ingredient in vinegar, acetic acid, can effectively kill mycobacteria, even highly drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, an international team of researchers reports. It is possible that acetic acid could therefore be used as an inexpensive and non-toxic disinfectant against drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) bacteria as well as other stubborn, disinfectant-resistant mycobacteria. Research continues into its potential uses, from sterilizing medical equipment to being used as a common disinfectant. |
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