Scars are an inevitable consequence of surgery, but many people consider them unsightly. In some cases, scars are seriously disfiguring. Now, a group of Stanford researchers has developed a novel wound dressing that significantly reduces scarring caused by incisions, according to a study published recently in the Annals of Surgery.

I report on the study’s findings, and describe how the dressing works, today in Inside Stanford Medicine:

After sutures are removed, the edges of a healing incision are pulled in different directions by the taut, surrounding skin, causing scar tissue to thicken and spread. The novel dressing, which the authors refer to as a “stress-shielding device,” eliminates this tension and hence a considerable amount of scarring. . . .It is made of a thin and elastic silicone plastic that is stretched over the incision. . . .The dressing sticks to the skin with the help of an adhesive. As it contracts, it provides uniform compression across the wound.

In case you haven’t seen it, The New York Times ran a fascinating article today on the key role microbes play in keeping us healthy. It also features some pretty staggering numbers: One scientist notes that there are more than 10 times as many microbes in our bodies than human cells.

Efforts to better understand the tiny, prolific organism are accelerating. Researchers are busy running experiments on human microbes to figure out exactly what they do, as well as gathering and mapping their DNA, in the hope “they will learn enough about the microbiome to enlist it in the fight against diseases,” the article says.

The piece also quotes Stanford “gut expert” David Relman, MD, who comments, “In just the last year, [efforts to learn about the microbiome] really went from a small cottage industry to the big time.”

Joachim Hallmayer, MD, co-author of a widely reported new study on autism, spoke about the findings this morning on KSRO radio.

Hallmayer chairs the committee of senior investigators for the Autism Genome Project, a consortium of 120 international researchers who produced the paper published in Nature. The scientists looked at genetic information from 1,000 people worldwide with autism spectrum disorder and “identified dozens of genetic errors linked to 5 percent to 10 percent of autism cases,” reports the San Jose Mercury News. In the article, Hallmayer says:

The hope is that if we know which genes and genetic pathways are implicated in autism, then we can target them more specifically with treatment.