'Spider style' blood vessel building

A "living scaffold" made by electrospinning

Another technique has been to take a body part from a dead body, just like an organ transplant, and use a detergent to strip out the native cells leaving a protein scaffold behind. This is then seeded with the target patient's cells. New windpipes have been made through this process.

Spinning

The team at the University College London are using "electrospinning" technology to produce organs. They think it will overcome some of the challenges of seeding a scaffold by building the cells into the transplant in the first place.

It starts with a broth of cells and polymer. A 10,000 volt electric needle is then used to draw out a fibre.

Dr Suwan Jayasinghe told the BBC: "Like a spider weaves its web we are able to draw out this continuous fibre of polymer and cells and weave a web.

"We could make one as thick as a mattress and the cells will be embedded right through it."

The electrospinning technology has been used to create blood vessels by cross-stitching the fibres on to a rotating cylinder which is half submerged in a liquid to nourish the living cells.

The latest studies published in the journal Small showed mouse blood vessels with three distinct layers could be produced.

Dr Jayasinghe said: "At the moment no technology can make an organ, we are coming up with the process to patch up a defective organ not replace an organ."

The idea is that a patch of heart muscle could improve function after a heart attack.

However, it is early days for the field of electrospinning. In comparison, other methods for producing body parts are already being used in patients.

"There have been some successes in the field which is great, but I don't think it is as easy as some people portray and I don't think we'll have it easy either," Dr Jayasinghe said.

Gay blood donor ban to be lifted

Men who have sex with other men will be allowed to donate blood Ban liftedCall to end gay donor blood banHIV test push as UK rates double The lifetime ban on blood donations by homosexual and bisexual men will be lifted in England, Scotland and Wales.

Ministers have agreed to let men who have not had sex with another man in the past 12 months to donate from November.

The restrictions were put in place in the 1980s to prevent the risk of HIV contamination.

However, the latest medical evidence presented to a government panel argued the ban could no longer be justified.

Ministers in the three countries accepted the argument and said they would be relaxing the rules. Northern Ireland is expected to make a decision soon.

The National Blood Service screens all donations for HIV and other infections. However, there is a "window period" after infection during which it is impossible to detect the virus.

In the UK, a lifetime ban was introduced in the early 1980s as a response to the Aids epidemic and the lack of adequate HIV tests.

New blood pressure checks at home

Patient Sheila Milson tries out the blood pressure recording device. Prof Mark Caulfield, from Queen Mary University of London, explains how works.

Continue reading the main storyRelated StoriesHome blood pressure checks call Patients thought to have high blood pressure should have the diagnosis confirmed at home, according to new guidelines.

Patients in England and Wales will be offered extra checks using a mobile device that records blood pressure over 24 hours, says the watchdog NICE.

A quarter of patients may find visiting a GP stressful, leading to misdiagnosis and being given drugs they do not need.

Drop in young blood donor numbers

Sophie Ellis-Bextor gave blood in support of the campaign Blood service appeals to young donorsBlood donor honour after 40 yearsPaid leave plea for blood donors Experts are worried about a generation gap in blood donors as figures show a 20% drop in the number of young people giving blood during the past decade.

There were 297,539 donors aged 17 to 34 in 2001, and now there are 237,520.

Research by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) suggests many young people are either too busy or daunted to donate.

Only 4% of eligible donors give blood, and most of these are above the age of 40. Just 14% of those who donate regularly are aged below 30.

The poll, of more 1,700 people across the country and 1,000 current NHSBT donors, suggests fear and ignorance, as well as time pressures, may be to blame.

'Too busy'

One in 10 young people aged 18 to 24 said they were too busy, even though nearly three-quarters said everyone who met blood-donation criteria should give blood.

More than a third of the 184 people falling into the "young" age bracket said they did not donate because they had a fear of needles, while about a fifth said it was because they did not know where to go.

NHSBT is also concerned many blood donors fail to give on a regular basis.

Third of high blood pressure fake

Having blood pressure checked by a doctor can make the reading spuriously high A third of hard-to-treat high blood pressure may actually be 'fake' and instead a patient's nervous response to being seen by a doctor, say experts.

They made the discovery when they continuously monitored the blood pressure of nearly 700,000 people as they went about their normal lives.

Some 37% of 8,295 patients thought to have stubborn or resistant hypertension actually had "white coat" hypertension.

The experts call for mandatory 24-hour checks, Hypertension journal reports.

The NHS advisory body NICE has recently proposed that patients suspected of having high blood pressure will get another check at home because of fears that nerves from being at a GP surgery may be leading to too many people being diagnosed.

It says so-called white coat hypertension affects a quarter of all people.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuotePatients benefit by knowing whether their blood pressure is normal during daily activities or still needs the reinforcement of dietary and drug measures”

End QuoteThe study authors But the latest research suggests that the phenomenon may be more common and is leading some people to have aggressive medical treatment that they may not actually need.

Resistant hypertension occurs when a patient's blood pressure remains above treatment goals, despite using three different types of drugs at the same time.

It was these patients that the researchers focused on.

They asked the patients to wear a portable "ambulatory" monitoring device that takes blood pressure readings every 20 minutes day and night.

This revealed only 63% had true resistant hypertension. These tended to be patients who either smoked or had diabetes or a heart condition.

Study leader Dr Alejandro de la Sierra, from the University of Barcelona in Spain, said: "Physicians should be encouraged to use ambulatory monitoring to confirm resistant hypertension in their patients as it would ensure the most effective treatment options are used.

"Patients benefit by knowing whether their blood pressure is normal during daily activities or still needs the reinforcement of dietary and drug measures."

Ellen Mason, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said the findings suggest that medication can work for more people than realised.

"Visiting the doctor seemed to make some people falsely appear resistant to the effects of these drugs so the study was helpful in trying to identify which people seemed to be truly resistant and therefore more at risk of organ damage.

"It also adds weight to new draft guidelines to include a home blood pressure test for hypertensive patients here in the UK."

But she said: "More worryingly though, nearly half of us who do have high blood pressure in the UK are not being treated for it.

"While the increasing use of home blood pressure monitoring is helpful for some, it will not target those who are unaware of the silent condition because it may have been many years since they had their blood pressure taken or because they simply think they are not at risk."

Blood donations halted due to snow

Across the UK, thousands of blood donations have had to be cancelled because of the freezing weather and heavy snow.

There is now growing concern about blood supplies running even lower than they usually do at this time of year.