Salvation Army taking text donations for Haiti

Canadians looking to donate money to earthquake disaster relief in Haiti through text messages can do so via the Salvation Army.

Cellphone users can send donations of $5 by texting the word "Haiti" to 45678 through a system set up by the Mobile Giving Foundation, a group that enables charities to collect money by text messages.

The Salvation Army is a member of the group, as are several other charities including the Children's Wish Foundation and Princess Margaret Hospital.

According to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, the cellphone industry's trade group, 100 per cent of all donations that go through Mobile Giving are forwarded to their respective charities.

Cellphone users are charged the amount of their donation on their next cellphone bill. There are no additional or ancillary charges, CWTA spokesman Marc Choma said, but standard text messaging rates apply.


Some other text-donation options circulating online, however, are not available to Canadians. One option, where texting the word "Haiti" to 90999 results in a $10 donation to the Red Cross and a matching fee being applied to the user's cellphone bill, only works in the United States, Twitter users reported.

The Canadian Red Cross confirmed that it could not take text donations but added that people could donate online or by phone call, although its website is experiencing technical problems.

"We would love to launch the [text] campaign and it may be something that we roll out in the next couple of days but right now we don’t have one," said spokesperson Katie Kallio.

Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean, through his Twitter account, also urged people to donate to his charity Yele.org through text messages. A spokesperson for Sony Music Entertainment Canada confirmed that the text option is not open to Canadians, but they can still donate through the Yele website.

A spokesperson for Rogers said the company would also have a text donation system up by the end of the day while a Telus representative said he was checking on it. Bell did not immediately respond to an inquiry.

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Nurse fired over refusal to get flu shot, wear mask

Some Central Texas hospitals required employees to get flu vaccinations this year or wear masks while working with patients as the H1N1 swine flu virus spread and seasonal flu loomed. One nurse at the Seton Family of Hospitals was fired for refusing to do either.

Laurie Haw of Cedar Park, who worked at Seton Medical Center, said she has a strong immune system and would go home if sick.

"I don't feel like putting all of that in my body," she said of the vaccine.

Haw said she also did not wish to work all day in the surgical recovery area in a mask.

"They're coming out of anesthesia, and sometimes when people awake, the last thing they need to see is someone wearing a mask," she said.

Haw, the mother of a 17-year-old girl, was initially suspended and given another chance to comply. The 49-year-old was fired last month for refusing.

Seton spokeswoman Matilda Sanchez said Seton's goal is to keep employees and patients healthy. She did not have data on how many others opted out of the vaccine, mask or both. Haw and Sanchez said they didn't know of anyone else fired.

H1N1 sent thousands of Texans to hospitals for treatment. Studies show that health care workers face a higher risk of flu and are easy transmitters of illnesses because of their close contact with patients. Health care workers were on state and federal priority lists for the H1N1 vaccine, but now that vaccine supplies are more plentiful, most venues are offering them to everyone.

This year, Sanchez said Seton required employees in patient care areas at its 10 hospitals, including its psychiatric facility, Seton Shoal Creek, to get the seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccines or to wear a mask until flu season ends (usually in May). Doctors under a special contract with Seton hospitals were required to be vaccinated, and those with privileges in Seton hospitals were strongly encouraged to be immunized, Sanchez said.

Oct. 1 was the deadline for Seton workers to get the seasonal flu vaccine; Jan. 15 is the deadline for the H1N1 vaccine, she said.

Haw said she has never gotten a flu shot and thinks "building it up by exposure is a better way to hone your immune system."

St. David's HealthCare, which has five acute care hospitals in Travis and Williamson counties, required employees to get vaccinated against seasonal flu only or wear a mask by Nov. 15, said Dr. Steve Berkowitz, chief medical officer for St. David's. A handful of hospital staff members chose masks; none was terminated, he said.

St. David's did not to require the H1N1 vaccine because it became available so late, minimizing its effectiveness, Berkowitz said. He added that the risk of transmitting seasonal flu was higher for people in age groups who are most likely to be in a hospital, including older people.

Scott & White did not mandate flu vaccinations, according to spokeswoman Katherine Voss.

Swine flu is still circulating nationally, but it's fading, and seasonal flu appears relatively mild in Texas. Based on the latest report from the Texas Department of State Health Services, flu activity is "local," meaning that increases in cases are occurring in a single region of the state.

In a Twitter post Dec. 18, Seton reported: "Virtually zero swine flu in Austin currently."

That could change, and public health authorities are urging people to get immunized in case the H1N1 virus makes a comeback. For medical supplies including H1N1 supplies, please visit Cristia Medical Supply. They are a well known and trusted source for thousands of medical supplies

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Stem Cells Bring Light to Burned Eyes

Stem cells are making headlines again with the recent $111 million purchase of an experimental inflammatory bowel disease treatment by Pfizer. And now, a study comes out of the UK showing how researchers used stem cells to restore sight to patients with damaged corneas.

In work published last week in Stem Cell, doctors at the North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle upon Tyne, England dramatically improved sight in five out of eight patients who had partial vision loss in one eye because of chemical or physical burn damage.

The researchers helped the singed corneas heal by transplanting stem cells to make up for limbal stem cell deficiency. This condition happens when through injury, such as burn damage, the cornea lacks the stem cells needed to repair itself.

Grown on membranes

The method of growing the cells was ingenious. First, tiny strips of stem cells one millimeter by one millimeter in size were harvested from one of the patient's healthy eyes, and then grown in a lab on plots of stem-cell-rich amniotic membrane. The membrane, from the sac lining of newly delivered babies, had been donated by mothers to the the lab. Historically, the lining has been used to treat the surface of eyes damaged by burns to slow down injury.

Once on the membrane, the strip of cells grew exponentially.

"It expands 400 times, and then what happens, that expanded tissue is transplanted to the eye that has the disease," Dr. Sajjad Ahmad, clinical lecturer at the institute and co-first author of the study, tells DOTmed News.

Seeing is believing

The patients who had the stem-cell transplants were followed for a year and a half on average, although at least one patient was studied for three years.

Some of the patients showed remarkable recovery of sight, with some having their vision nearly restored to normal.

Dr. Ahmad notes that one patient went from only being able to see halfway down the famous Snellen eye-chart to reading near the bottom line, or almost 20/20 vision. Other patients who could only see hands moving in front of their eyes could see the top lines of the chart after treatment.

"A lot get considerable improvement," says Dr. Ahmad. "You go from an eye that can't see to one that can see almost normally."

Of course, sight improvement varied tremendously, and the only one of the eight patients who had a thermal, not a chemical, burn, experienced almost no improvement in vision. Dr. Ahmad notes that this subject's lids were burned off, and lidlessness makes it harder for stem cell therapy to work.

Healing, too

But even for those patients whose sight didn't improve, there was perhaps a more important change: pain relief.

"They're all burn patients," says Dr. Ahmad. "What they get is not only blinding, it's painful. Every time they blink, they get irritation to the eye."

Dr. Ahmad says that all of the patients had less pain after the study was over. "For some, improvement in their pain is enough for them to consider it successful," he says.

Real breakthrough

Although restoring sight seems revolutionary enough, the real advance of the project, according to Dr. Ahmad, is that the stem-cell therapy didn't use products derived from animals, something that had previously happened in similar earlier studies such as one done at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London last year.

"This is the first technique to grow the cells that is animal-free, no animal cells or products," says Dr. Ahmad.

"One of the main hurdles in getting stem cells to clinic is you have to overcome the requirements of using animal cells or products which might result in the transmission of pathogens of one species to another. This eliminates that sort of risk," he says.

Next steps

The UK's Medical Research Council has just funded the project to study 25 more patients for the next three years.

But the real challenge could be making the therapy available to more than just the next batch of patients. Creating the corneal cells requires advanced techniques and high-tech laboratories, which are not widely available, and the stem cells, after growing on the amniotic membrane, won't survive travel. To lengthen their shelf-life, Dr. Ahmad hopes to work on a way to freeze the cells so they can be shipped across Europe, or even to developing countries, where they can be thawed and used to restore sight.

"That would be the longer-term plan for how we'll make this much more accessible for other places," he says.

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Researchers Check Suspicious Looking Mole (Rat)

There is one species that's winning the rat race against cancer, and researchers are uncovering why the hairless animal is so superior. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York are studying the naked mole rat, the only known animal immune to cancer; and they hope the buck-toothed creature will unlock long-standing mysteries surrounding the disease -- and help humans find a cure.

The naked mole rat is among several types of burrowing rodents, a diverse species widely used for scientific research. Their lifespan of up to 30 years is staggeringly long for the species. And three decades of life is certainly enough time for most animals to develop cancerous cells. However, unlike mice and humans -- two species often used in cancer research -- cancerous tumors have never been found in the mole rat.

The animal has a unique genetic defense against the disease according to head researcher Vera Gorbunova, associate professor of biology; her associate Andrei Seluanov, research professor of biology; and their colleagues at the university. The findings of their studies are shared in the October issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the study, the naked mole rat shares a gene with humans and many other animals called p27, which prevents the overcrowding among cells that can lead to cancer. However, researchers have now uncovered a second defense uniquely possessed by naked mole rats.

As part of the study, Gorbunova and her team attempted to mutate cells in the rodents in an effort to induce tumors. However, they found that the p16 gene found in the creatures provides a highly pronounced cancer-proof effect. Cells refused to replicate in the animals due to their evolved defense system, preventing overcrowding at a rate much earlier than in other animals. Gorbunova explains, "We realized that whatever was doing this was probably the same thing that prevented cancer from ever getting started in the mole rats."

Before stumbling upon the naked mole rat's cancer-proof system, Gorbunova and Seluanov investigated other rodent species around the world in an effort to better understand cancer and its effect. She recalls, "We were interested in comparative biology of aging and were studying short- and long-lived rodent species. (The) naked mole rat stood out by being an exceptionally long-lived and cancer-free rodent. We suspected that naked mole rats may use a novel anticancer mechanism that is not found in mice or humans."

Through their testing methods, any other species would have become cancerous. Gorbunova admits she was stunned by the findings, which she calls "a bit of a surprise."

However, she is hesitant to theorize how her research could affect cancer research in humans and other species. She explains, "It's very early to speculate about the implications." On expanding her research she adds, "We are working to identify the triggers of early contact inhibition with the hope of using those molecules to arrest the growth of cancer cells."


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Skin & Wound Care Tips

Our skin is the first line of defense against disease and injury, yet we often take our skin for granted. Neglecting skin injuries, skin damage and skin wounds can lead to life-threatening conditions such as skin cancer, chronic non-healing wounds, system-wide spread of infection and amputation of limbs. By being alert to skin changes, early skin damage and proper wound care we can treat skin diseases promptly and avoid serious complications.



Treating chronic wounds is estimated to cost Americans $5 billion-$7 billion annually. And the number of patients with chronic wounds increases10 percent every year. Approximately 10-15 percent of diabetics develop chronic wounds, amounting to nearly two million chronic wound patients. As the incidence of diabetes and circulatory disease increases with the growth of the elderly population, the costs of chronic wound care is expected to increase as well.



Any physical injury that breaks the skin is classified as a wound and needs prompt first-aid care. Common causes of wounds include cuts, punctures, scrapes and tears of the skin. Keeping a wound clean is a priority and may help avoid an infection at the wound site. Wash your hands before giving wound first aid. All wounds should be cleaned thoroughly with mild soap and water. Next, apply an antibiotic ointment and a clean bandage. If a wound has an embedded object larger than a splinter, seek medical attention immediately—do not remove the object.

We offer thousands of medical supplies, and a full range of wound care supplies at rock bottom prices. Shop online at Cristia Medical Supply anytime this month and use discount code: Discount44 to receive 5% off your entire order.

H1N1 has killed 3,900 Americans

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – H1N1 swine flu killed an estimated 3,900 Americans from April to October, including more than 500 children, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

Better data than was previously available shows the flu pandemic has infected an estimated 22 million Americans and put 98,000 in the hospital, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Children account for 8 million of the infected, 36,000 of those hospitalized and 540 deaths.

"We think the 540 number is a better estimate for the big picture that we are getting out there," the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat told reporters.

About 82 U.S. children die in an average flu season. The CDC said H1N1 has produced the worst flu season in the United States since 1997, when current measurements started.

"What we are seeing in 2009 is unprecedented," Schuchat said," Schuchat said.

The CDC said doctors need to treat severe cases quickly with antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, made by Roche AG, Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline or for especially grave hospitalized cases, peramivir, made by BioCryst.

Schuchat stressed the pandemic was not worsening but noted that it takes time to gather data on flu cases and deaths. The count released on Thursday is not an actual reckoning of deaths but an extrapolation based on detailed data from 10 states.

CDC's previous estimate of U.S. flu deaths was 1,200.

In an average flu season, about 36,000 Americans die and 200,000 are hospitalized with 90 percent of deaths and hospitalizations among people over 65.

With H1N1, 90 percent of those infected and seriously ill are younger adults and children.

Schuchat said the pandemic would likely continue through the winter and early spring. "We have a long flu season ahead of us," she said.

Most confirmed flu cases are H1N1 and about 30 percent of people who show up at the doctor's office and are actually tested for influenza turn out to have flu, as opposed to some other infection.

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Scientists Make Mice Immune to Radiation

In a breakthrough that could change the lives of cancer victims, pilots and nuclear power plant workers, researchers might have found a way to protect cells from radiation damage.

In a study published in the new AAAS journal Science Translational Medicine (see video below), researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute found that they could protect healthy cells from radiation injury by turning off an inhibitory pathway that regulates nitric oxide.

"[Nitric oxide] is a bio gas, produced by enzymes in cells, and flies around almost at light speed compared to other processes," Jeff Isenberg, M.D., a professor at Pitt's school of medicine, tells DOTmed News.

While nitric oxide mostly works to prevent clotting of arteries, it also appears to help animals survive stress conditions.

But Dr. Isenberg and his team made the discovery that by switching off a related inhibitory pathway that controls nitric oxide, they could give animals "near immunity to record levels of radiation," he says.

In mice, when Dr. Isenberg and his team introduced a drug that prevented a protein, thrombospondin-1, from binding to a surface cell receptor called CD47, the animals could endure almost unheard-of doses of radiation with virtually no ill effects.

In cellular studies, cells could withstand up to the tested amount: 60 Gy. And in whole animal studies, mice could endure the limit they were given: 40 Gy.

"Primarily, [on mice] people are using 5-10 Gy. This is off the scale from what they've published," he says.

Shockingly, the irradiated rodents were almost completely unharmed. Other than some mild hair loss at the site of dosage, there was almost no cell death or damage when histological samples were checked.

"There was no skin laceration or muscle loss," Dr. Isenberg says. "When we stained for cell death, we didn't even see significant loss of bone marrow, which is exquisitely sensitive...to radiation damage."

In comparison, control mice -- who didn't get the pathway-blocking treatment -- were eaten away with tissue loss and "frank necrosis of the limbs."

In fact, one reason Dr. Isenberg doesn't know the upper-limits of protection the drug confers to a whole animal is that ethics boards refuse to give permission to expose mice to much more than 40 Gy. (Whatever he gives to the treated mice -- who will be fine -- he has to give to the untreated mice, who will not.)

However, he says at some point radiation would damage tissue through thermal energy, which this process might not be able to stop.

Clinical benefits

Perhaps equally exciting, Dr. Isenberg and his team found that while his technique protected healthy cells from damage, it actually increased the effectiveness of radiation treatments on cancer cells.

The reason, Dr. Isenberg suspects, is that while the tumors were not protected by inhibitory-pathway blocking actions, the immune cells surrounding them were, and are thus able to attack the weakened tumor following radiotherapy exposure.

The potential applications of this technique are manifold, from protecting patients getting CT or X-ray exams to helping certain workers, such as commercial airline pilots and engineers at nuclear power plants, from higher-than-normal radiation exposure in their job. Because of the diverse ways that the pathway can be blocked, sunscreens could even be developed to help protect skin cells from UV rays.

Future research

Dr. Isenberg believes that in addition to radiation, this pathway has profound implications for heart disease and other disorders "perhaps on a scale not yet appreciated," he says.

Currently, his lab is working toward getting funds for toxicology tests so at some point drugs could be developed for humans. He also plans studies to see how long an effective dose lasts -- would someone get one-month, or one-year immunity following a dose?

Also, a bigger mystery is figuring out how, by blocking this pathway, cells are able to fix the damaged DNA within. Dr. Isenberg says they know that following radiation exposure, the DNA is scrambled, but somehow, with this treatment, the cells are able to get themselves right.

"It's not that we're blocking radiation from hitting the tissue," he says. "Somehow...they repair themselves, and go about their business."

And finally, research may reveal why we aren't born with the inhibitory pathway already blocked. Dr. Isenberg says the process probably evolved when deep sea fishes emerged on land, and somehow was used to regulate changes in internal pressure. So would turning it off create other, unwanted effects? Although none were seen in the studies, nitric oxide is a powerful vasodilator, he says, and maybe the body needs some way to control it.

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