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A multitude of professional drivers suffer from back problems. One cause: driver seats that are inadequately adjusted to each driver's ergonomic needs. Fraunhofer's researchers, in joint collaboration with Isringhausen GmbH & Co. KG, engineered a driver's seat whose shape and position can be adjusted by using simple hand gestures.

Sitting for hours on end with little movement: it's part of everyday working life for the professional driver. On average, they spend nine hours a day in the vehicle cabin. As a result, at some point a number of drivers develop problems with their back. In study after study, statutory health insurance was able to demonstrate that a driver's seat that is adjusted to the person at the wheel in terms of shape and position, can be an effective countermeasure to back pain.

A new study initiated this month by five leading research funders and institutions will estimate the health and economic benefits of UK investment in medical research into musculoskeletal conditions.

Supported by Arthritis Research UK, The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, the Department of Health and the Academy of Medical Sciences, this is the third in a series of health economic studies which have focused on the return on public and charitable investment in medical research.

Following previous studies on cardiovascular disease and cancer research, which demonstrated that medical research investment generates significant health and economic gains over the long term, the new study will focus on research into musculoskeletal conditions, including inflammatory forms of arthritis, conditions of musculoskeletal pain such as osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis.

Patients with type 1 diabetes have significantly lower blood levels of four proteins that help protect their tissue from attack by their immune system, scientists report.

Conversely, their first-degree relatives, who share some of the high-risk genes but do not have the disease, have high levels of these proteins circulating in their blood, said Dr. Jin-Xiong She, director of the Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.

Healthy individuals without the risky genes also have higher levels of the four proteins, IL8, IL-1Ra, MCP-1 and MIP-1β, according to the study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Patients with back pain that doesn't go away despite therapy may have a spine infection that could lead to paralysis or death if not diagnosed and treated correctly, note the first U.S. guidelines on vertebral osteomyelitis, released by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and published in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Vertebral osteomyelitis is fairly rare, and therefore often is overlooked because it causes back pain, a common ailment usually triggered by a pulled muscle or spine injury. Because the consequences of the infection are dire, it's important that an expert such as an infectious diseases (ID) physician help manage the patient.

Chronic back pain is widely reported around the world, with 1 in 4 Americans said to suffer from some kind of pain.

An estimated 1 in 4 people in the US suffer from some type of chronic pain in their lifetime. The duration of chronic pain can vary drastically for some, from several weeks to many years.

Anika Therapeutics, Inc., a leader in products for tissue protection, healing, and repair based on hyaluronic acid (HA) technology, have reported positive results from the CINGAL® 13-02 study evaluating the safety of a repeat injection of Cingal for symptomatic relief of osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. CINGAL combines the Company's proprietary cross-linked sodium hyaluronate (currently marketed as the single-injection viscosupplement MONOVISC®) with an FDA-approved steroid, triamcinolone hexacetonide. Earlier this year, Anika announced positive results from CINGAL 13-01, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 study, which demonstrated the efficacy and safety of a single injection of CINGAL for treatment of pain caused by OA of the knee.

Surgeons making reconstruction choices for an injured ACL can consider both bone-tendon-bone grafts and hamstring autografts as equally viable options in regards to healing, as reported in research today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Orlando, FL.

"We compared the graft-tunnel motion of patients receiving either kind of graft, and noted both groups had similar graft motion at six weeks and one year from surgery, both ranged between 1-2 mm," commented Justin W. Arner, MD, from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). "Often surgeons will recommend earlier return to play in patients receiving a BTB graft, but with these findings we cannot support the commonly perceived assumption of earlier healing with BTB.

An athlete's use of silicone ankle sleeves (SAS) and lace-up ankle braces (LAB) during sports participation can improve neuromuscular control, according to research presented July 9 at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Orlando, FL.

"Athletes often use prophylactic sleeves or braces, and this study used markerless motion analysis to determine whether these support aids are beneficial," said lead author Seth L. Sherman, MD, from the University of Missouri - Columbia Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.

The study examined 10 subjects - five female and five male - who performed tests including the drop vertical jump (DJV), 45 degree bound, and various timed cutting maneuvers.