66 August 29 • 2019
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An international research team led by the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in
Haifa has developed innovative, AI-based soft-
ware to detect obstructive sleep apnea (OSA),
a condition in which people stop breathing for
about 10 seconds or more during sleep.
The prevalence of this syndrome increases
with age and affects more than one in five indi-
viduals in the general adult population — par-
ticularly males and those who are overweight.
OSA is characterized by halts in breathing
during the night and lower oxygen levels in
the blood. The syndrome causes fatigue and
sleepiness during the day, which can lead to
inefficiency and accidents while working and,
in some cases, to traffic accidents. OSA also
increases the risk of developing diabetes and
cardiovascular disease.
“The model we developed is a reliable and
effective tool for identifying sleep apnea in
large populations,
” said Dr. Joachim Behar,
a member of the Technion’
s Faculty of
Biomedical Engineering who led the study.
This model can, in the longer term, be used
to develop a suitable mobile application and
eventually be part of a smart watch or bracelet
that includes an oximeter to extract the nec-
essary biomarkers and perform an accurate
self-examination for OSA, he said.
“Sleep apnea can be treated effectively, but
many sufferers remain undiagnosed,
” said
Behar.
The technology used to diagnose the syn-
drome in sleep labs, called polysomnography,
records brain waves and oxygen level in the
blood, as well as heart rate, breathing, and eye
and leg movements during sleep. But it is costly
and not widely available.
The technology that Behar and his team
developed is based on data and biomarkers
obtained from 887 subjects from the general
adult population in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
After sifting through the patient informa-
tion, the system was able to successfully iden-
tify all the clinical cases of medium or severe
OSA, the researchers said.
Standardized sleep apnea diagnosis ques-
tionnaires, by comparison, missed more than
15 percent of severe cases, while the use of
pulse oximetry only detected the severe cases
but failed to identify some of the medium OSA
cases, the researchers said.
The model the team developed is called
OxyDOSA, and the researchers have made it
available for further research.
Tel Aviv University researchers believe
they have found a “pathway” that causes
melanoma cells to spread to the brain —
and may have found a way to block it.
The study was conducted on mice
but has also been validated on samples
of human brain tissue where melanoma
had spread, the researchers said.
“Melanoma is the deadliest skin can-
cer due to its high rate of metastasis,
frequently to the brain,
” said Prof. Neta
Erez of the Department of Pathology at
TAU’
s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, lead
author of the study. “The prognosis of
patients with brain metastases is very
grim.
”
Patients used to die from metastases
in other parts of the body before they
were spotted in the brain. However,
because treatments have improved and
patients are living longer, “the incidence
of diagnosed brain metastases is increas-
ing. Understanding how and why brain
metastasis occurs is an urgent challenge
facing cancer researchers today,
” Erez
said in a Times of Israel story.
In their work, they took mice with
spontaneous melanoma brain metasta-
sis and studied how it reacted with the
brain.
“We discovered that melanoma cells
can activate inflammatory pathways that
lead to the brain and then hijack this
pathway,
” Erez told Times of Israel.
When the researchers used genetic
manipulation to neutralize the receptors
in the melanoma cells, they successfully
blocked the ability of the tumor cells to
respond to the hijack.
The research, emphasized Erez, was
done on mice and not humans. But the
researchers validated their results in the
brain metastases of patients who had
undergone brain surgery. They found
that in humans, the astrocytes cells in
the brain express the same inflammato-
ry factor and the same receptor.
“Our findings suggest that blocking
this signaling pathway may prevent
brain metastasis,
” Erez said. They now
are studying what could be the trigger
that instigates inflammation in the
brain, which promotes metastasis.
health | Israel’
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COURTESY TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Apnea Detection Study
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Melanoma Study Explores
Melanoma Study Explores
Spread to Brain
Spread to Brain
A team of students from the
ORT Herzl Technological
school in Kishinev, Moldova,
are among those honored with
the 2019 World ORT Gina
and Joseph Harmatz Award
that recognizes youngsters at
ORT schools worldwide who
have excelled in social respon-
sibility.
The Moldova students cre-
ated a wearable device that
can constantly monitor the
condition of people with long-
term medical issues and then
notify loved ones and emer-
gency services if the person
suffers a heart attack, stroke,
fall or other medical concern.
The device is fitted to a
simple vest or T-shirt, mean-
ing the user can easily wear it
daily.
Their smart T-shirt features
integrated temperature and
pulse sensors, as well as a
gyroscope and accelerometer
to detect severe changes in
body position — if the patient
has fallen or lost conscious-
ness, for example. If an inci-
dent occurs and the wearer
cannot respond within 15 sec-
onds, a mobile app triggers an
alert to notify family members
and transmits the person’
s
location by GPS. It can also
send real-time health data and
vital signs to assist medical
teams via Bluetooth.
Sandu Chirita, the team’
s
lead developer, said, “We
have developed an early stage
prototype that has all the
initial features. We have to
gather feedback from those
the shirt would help and then
adapt our design to fulfil their
needs.
“We plan to make the
device smaller, more accurate,
more reliable and more con-
venient for the wearer, as well
as integrating textile changes
to get rid of wires. We need
to find resources to make the
device fully washable as well.”
Sandu said the team
was sorry not to be able to
“improve the life of every
person and cure every disease,
but even helping a single per-
son is a step toward making
the world a better place to live
in — and that’
s what tikkun
olam is about.”
Students Create Smart T-Shirt
Dr. Joachim Behar,
a member of the
Technion’
s Faculty of
Biomedical Engineering
TAMAR SHAMI
Tel Aviv University researchers: Malak Amer, Prof. Neta
Erez and Dr. Hila Doron.