Migraines
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US medical panel recommends 3-person embyronic testing
The US National Academy of Medicine recommended Wednesday that the Federal Drug Administration should approve clinical trials for so-called "3-parent embryos." It's a controversial procedure that would transfer mitochondria from a healthy, secondary human egg donor into a fertilized diseased embryo.
Magnetic fields shut down speech, permit love songs (video)
You already know the strange powers of Stephin Merritt, but today we're talking about real magnetic fields. Powerful electromagnets, it turns out, can do remarkable things to the brain -- in this case, prevent a volunteer from reciting "Humpty Dumpty." The carefully directed magnets temporarily disrupt the brain's speech centers; the volunteer can still sing the rhyme using different areas of the brain, but simply can't overcome a series of stammers when trying to merely recite it. Of course, it's not all mad scientist applications: the UK team experimenting with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) thinks it can help us understand and treat migraines (as we've seen before with the Migraine Zapper), depression, and ADHD, among other ailments. But improving physical well-being doesn't make for nearly as entertaining media -- see the British inflict some involuntary quiet time in the video above.
Zelrix electronic anti-migraine patch heads to the FDA for review
We've seen some electronic devices that promise to cure migraines in the past, but NuPathe's Zelrix patch certainly seems to be among the most practical, and it's just gotten one step closer to the US market. The company recently announced that the FDA has accepted its filing for a New Drug Application, and it says it now has a target date of August 29, 2011 for the FDA to complete its review. As for the patch itself, it's a single-use patch that relies on a mild electrical current to "actively transport" the anti-migraine drug sumatriptan through the skin using a process called iontophoresis. That, NuPathe says, not only allows for a more consistent and controlled delivery of the drug, but it also circumvents the nausea and vomiting that can occur when taking the medication orally -- which the company notes can be enough to cause some folks to avoid taking the medication altogether. Head on past the break for the complete press release.
