In an experimental procedure on 10 patients with knee injuries, Swiss doctors extracted cartilage cells from their noses and used them to create cartilage transplants to repair ailing joints.

Damaged cartilage doesn't heal well on its own because it lacks its own blood supply. It derives nutrients through diffusion from neighboring tissues. In the test transplants, doctors plucked cartilage cells from the patients' nasal septum and then cultured the cells with growth factors, seeding them into collagen membranes to form grafts.

The grafts were cut to the exact shape of injured articular knee cartilage, which pads the joint, and implanted. Two years later, MRI scans showed the implanted tissue was similar to naturally grown cartilage, with nine out of 10 patients reporting less pain and better functionality. Larger, randomized trials of the procedure are planned.

Body of Knowledge

The lifespan of a human hair (before it naturally falls out) is three to seven years. Each strand of hair grows from a follicle with an alternating cycle of growth and rest. Each follicle goes through these cycles for 25 to 30 times over a lifetime, although environmental factors and genetics can interrupt or disrupt the process.

Life in Big Macs

One hour of trimming trees burns 612 calories (based on a 150-pound person) or the equivalent of 0.9 Big Macs.

Counts

42: Number of days donor blood can be stored before being used in a transfusion

Source: American Red Cross

Stories for the Waiting Room

Former pro wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is famous for both his physique and the regimen he maintains to keep himself massively buff. Johnson (6-foot-5, 260 pounds) works out 2.5 hours a day, six days a week (1 hour of cardio, 1.5 hours of pumping iron). He consumes more than 5,000 calories a day (more than twice the recommendation for average men), primarily cod, eggs, steak, chicken, vegetables and potatoes — about 10 pounds of food per day. One-fifth of the total is cod. In a year, Johnson consumes more than one-third of a ton of cod alone.

Doc Talk

Abduction: Among kidnappers, it means to forcibly take someone away against their will; among physicians, it means to move a limb or other body part away from the midline of the body

Phobia of the Week

Peniaphobia: fear of poverty

Never Say Diet

The Major League Eating record for garlicky greens is 7.5 pounds in 5 minutes, held by Pete Davekos. Not surprisingly, Davekos finished his feat alone.

Best Medicine

A patient came to a clinic for an MRI. He was put inside the machine by a young, attractive female technician. Sometime later, after the procedure, a much older woman helped him out of the machine. The patient looked at the gray-haired woman and asked, "How long was I in there for?"

Observation

"The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat." —Albert Einstein, 5-foot-9, 198 pounds (1879-1955)

Medical History

This week in 1984, Baby Fae died, an infant born one month earlier. Fae lived for 20 days with a transplanted walnut-sized heart from a young baboon. At birth, she had been diagnosed with an invariably fatal heart deformity. Leonard L. Bailey, a heart surgeon at Loma Linda University Medical Center, proposed the experimental xenotransplant to the mother. Three animal-heart transplants into adults several years earlier had provided less than four days of life, but Bailey believed the infant's underdeveloped immune system would be less likely to reject alien tissue, and a new drug called cyclosporine would help. Fae died of complications from the procedure, but the heart itself was not rejected.

Medical Myths

Oral birth control pills do not need to "clear" a woman's system before she can get pregnant. They work because they provide an extra dose of pregnancy-preventing estrogen or progestin hormones. If a woman misses a day, hormone levels drop and risk of pregnancy increases. A 2009 study found that one in five women were able to become pregnant one cycle after they stopped using birth control.

Med School

Q: What is the hyoid bone? Bonus points: Name a bone connected to it.

A: The hyoid is a U- or V-shaped bone located at the base of the tongue between the mandible and the voice box. Its function is to support the tongue and its anchoring muscles. No other bones are connected to the hyoid bone, making it unique in this respect in the human body.

Curtain Calls

Formula One racecar driver Tom Pryce was killed at the 1977 South African Grand Prix when he was struck in the face by a track marshal's fire extinguisher. The marshal, Frederik Jansen van Vuuren, was running across the racetrack to douse flames from the crashed car of a teammate of Pryce when he was hit by Pryce's car. Van Vuuren was killed instantly, his fire extinguisher flying into the air and fatally striking Pryce.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.