A nurse checks villager Wang Funi at home in Jiaozuo, Henan province, with an all-in-one diagnostic device in March. LI JIANAN/XINHUA ZHENGZHOU - Suffering from coronary heart disease, 79-year-old Wang Funi was amazed to find out that she can have routine medical tests done at her rural home. In the past, it would take 50 minutes to travel by electric tricycle to visit the nearest county hospital, and her husband or children would have to take a break from work on the farm to accompany her. It's time-consuming. Now there's no need for the trip. All the basic tests can be done free at home, she said. With the help of a new portable all-in-one diagnostic device, Zhang Xiaozhan, a doctor in Erpuying village, Henan province, where Wang lives, conducted eight tests on her in about 20 minutes, ranging from measuring the electrical activity of her heart to checking her blood pressure. The device offers the biggest benefits for the elderly and patients with chronic diseases, reducing their need to travel long distances to hospitals and wait in long lines, Zhang said. At the start of this year, the city of Jiaozuo purchased around 600 all-in-one diagnostic devices and offered them to teams of local family doctors. Weighing just five kilograms, one of the devices can run multiple routine tests, from measuring blood pressure to urine and blood analysis. Li Zhenhui, sales manager at mobile healthcare company Garea, which provided the devices, said that the machines can do more tests if auxiliary medical equipment is connected. The company usually sends experts to train village doctors. Test results are stored as electronic files on the city's family doctor service platform as a reference for further diagnosis and treatment. Wang's team of doctors has six members. Liu Yingying, a general practitioner at the health center in Jiayingguan township, is one of them. Liu said the team has signed contracts with more than 4,000 local residents, including a priority group of more than 500 patients. Some have chronic diseases, while others are rehabilitating and need special attention, Liu said. The team needs to visit each patient in the priority group at least four times a year. It's a formidable task. The all-in-one diagnostic device can improve the quality and efficiency of our service, Liu said. Tian Qingfeng, a health management researcher at Zhengzhou University, said there is an uneven distribution of healthcare resources in China, with advanced diagnostic and treatment equipment, and the best doctors, concentrated in big cities. Technology can improve rural access to quality healthcare, Tian said. Xinhua debossed wristbandssilicone bracelets custom cheap canadared rubber braceletsilicone wristbands canadabasketball silicone bracelets
Scientists in Shanghai say they have made a breakthrough in researching an alternative to chemotherapy that would treat tumors in a safe, efficient way with zero side effects for patients.Chemotherapy has long been used in the treatment of cancer and involves one or a combination of drugs being introduced to the patient's bloodstream to kill cancer cells. Yet it affects healthy cells, too, causing lower immunity to infection, fatigue and hair loss.On Tuesday, a team from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced it has devised a therapy using inorganic, nontoxic nanoparticles that can travel around the body and target only tumors, leaving healthy cells unaffected."Laboratory testing on mice has shown that tumors shrank by 85 percent after receiving the therapy," said Shi Jianlin, lead researcher at the institute.For the tests, researchers give two nanoparticles-Fe3O4 and SiO2, the latter being a transport agent-and glucose oxidase through intravenous injection to mice.The particles target tumor cells owing to special microenvironment of acidity and high glucose content, while the chemical compounds combined will trigger reactions in tumor cells and produce a highly toxic active substance that will kill the cells, Shi said.He said his team of scientists has also created a nanoparticle called Mg2Si, which is nontoxic in a neutral environment of healthy tissue and only triggers a reaction in the acid environment of a tumor."The reaction will consume a large amount of oxygen molecules in the tumor cells and block the vascular system in the tumor cells so as to prevent the supply of oxygen molecules and nutrients from outside. The tumor cells will eventually starve to death," he explained.Papers on the research were published in Chemical Society Reviews in February, Nature Nanotechnology in December and Nature Communications in August."This contribution reports a nice overview of nanoparticle-triggered catalytic chemical reactions for cancer therapy. The authors provide a complete state of the art of the topic emphasizing the different approaches that can be used," reads one peer review in Chemical Society Reviews.Chen Qinfen, a doctor specializing in hematology at Fudan University's Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, said the new therapy sounds exciting."During and after chemotherapy, patients of lymphoma and leukemia will suffer from a decrease in blood platelets or white blood cells, or impairment in the liver, kidney or nervous system. More than half of leukemia patients die of complications after chemotherapy," she said."The particular advantage of nanoparticles is that they are small enough to enter the cytoplasm and nucleus, which makes the treatment more precise and efficient."Shi stressed on Tuesday that the research is still at the stage of lab tests and in the future his team may have to pick the most applicable approach for clinical trials."Lab tests also proved that our therapies are able to prevent tumor metastasis. We hope it will also make contributions clinically," he said.
