Articulatory Loop

We all know that being too fat is bad for you, and a UCSD study may help understand pert of why. The researchers found that human colon cancer cells have leptin receptors which, when activated, cause the cancers to grow. The more body fat you have, the more leptin you have, which could explain why obesity is such a strong risk factor for colon (and maybe other types of) cancer.

Another problem with being too fat is the likelihood of developing the beetis. Well, if you do, there may be good news: New Zealand doctors say that a man who had piglet islet cells injected into him ten years ago to help control his diabetes still has some of them alive and producing insulin in him. This result is quite promising for future xenotransplantation procedures, which could perhaps actually cure, rather than merely reduce the symptoms of, disease.

But, if taking insulin remains necessary, that drug may soon be cheaper and easier to get: a Canadian firm claims that it's gotten safflower plants to produce human insulin in their oil. If true, this would be a massive breakthrough. And yes, I understand the environmental concerns (and am very wary of corporatizing food production), but I think this is worthwhile.

Speaking of plants, it appears that an herbal remedy may be helpful in clearing urinary tract infections: Duke researchers found that high doses of forskolin (which agonizes c-AMP receptors in the bladder) seem to force E. coli out of hiding to be cleared. Now remains the question of whether this works in humans too. And of course the question of what side effects such potent c-AMP agonism might have.

Labels: Beetis, bladder, bladder cancer, c-AMP, colon cancer, diabetes, GM crops, infection, insulin, leptin, obesity, UTI

Well, it's one option. Definitely better off will be the women (and ultimately the men too) of Eritrea, which has just officially banned the practice of female circumcision. Unlike male circumcision, which has generally no ill-effects and may or may not be good for you, female circumcision is just mutilation and torture, plain and simple. So good for you, Eritrea! (P.S. - please send someone to open a restaurant in Atlanta...I miss my Harambe!)

The good news for older folks (and younger too) is that it seems Tai Chi may help improve immunity. The study focused on resistance to varicella (shingles, chickenpox), but it's likely that the effect is not so specific. Granted, they didn't seem to control for the effects of exercise alone, but in that I think Tai Chi is amazing, I say people should do more of it! (Including me)

Also potentially good for all of us is a New Zealand group's proof-of-concept breakthrough in solar power: they've found a way to make solar cells that don't need direct light, and can be pigmented in ways to look good. Awesome!

Cancer patients may get some good news from the bad today; researchers have confirmed how cancer treatments can spur the disease's spread, but also how that process seems to work, and a possibly way to stop it. It seems that primary tumors release TGF-beta, which inhibits secondary tumors' growth until the primary is removed. Treating patients with TGF-beta could, in the future, suppress growth of these (and maybe even of the primary) tumors.

The real bad news today may be for HIV, which means good news for HIV patients, and maybe the rest of us!
A Spanish study tested a new protease inhibitor in advanced HIV patients, and found that it resulted in significant viral load decreases and improved CD4 counts. This is pretty early data, but still super encouraging! Secondly, US researchers used a rabies vector to deliver SIV/HIV proteins to monkeys, resulting in a good immune response to viral challenge. The vaccine doesn't protect from infection, but it did appear to reduce disease development, and could direct future work to find a preventative vaccine.

Labels: Africa, bladder cancer, circumcision, Eritrea, female genital mutilation, health, HIV, science, shingles, SIV, Tai Chi, TGF-beta, vaccine, varicella

Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative autoimmune disease, causing severe pain and disability in its victims. Like other autoimmune conditions, its causes are unknown and treatments are scarce. Argentine researchers are reporting the results of a small cohort of MS patients (24), some of whom showed sign of parasitic infection and some of whom did not. The parasite hosts had much less severe MS symptoms and fewer relapses than did non-hosts. Similar to previous findings that intestinal parasites relieved Crohn's, this result is in support of a 'hygiene hypothesis' of autoimmune disorders: relatively unchallenged by our germ-free modern environment, our immune systems have started 'looking' for things to attack. Such as ourselves.

On a different (and mysterious) causal chain, a large sample study has found that men with gum disease are 63% more likely to suffer hard-to-treat pancreatic cancers. One idea is that this could be due to the inflammation of gum disease 'spreading' to other parts of the body, but that seems a bit far-fetched to me, in terms of cancer. The findings are really fascinating, but I can't help but wonder if there's not a confounding factor in the mix.

In to good news: Canadian researchers have found that the old, apparently safe, off-label (read: cheap) drug dichloroacetate (DCA) may be a potent cancer killer. The compound acts by reactivating cancer cells' mitochondria, which are normally shut off in favor of cellular metabolism glycolysis in cancer cells, and which subsequently initiate apoptosis of the unhealthy cells.

Business, union, and retiree leaders in one room, agreeing on something?!?! It seems so. The group met in Washington to send a message to the politicians: the time has come for universal health care. This needs to happen, and it needs to be done right (or it'll be a disaster akin to what we have now, only even harder to fix), and it needs to be done now. Neither side of the aisle in Congress or the White House has been really willing to step up yet, but hopefully this meeting will prompt them to do so.

Finally, everything you didn't want to know about molecular gastronomy cooking-using-funny-tools-and-ingredients. I've never been to any of the places mentioned, but I get the idea, and am pretty much already bored with it. Like avant-garde art, there comes a point when you're just doing to be shocking, or contrary, or because you can.

For some I guess this is part of the fun, but for me I think it ends up detracting from the actual flavor of the food. Butterscotch bacon? Sounds awesome. Edible menus? Once, cool, twice, yawwwnnn. Soup in a pipette? No thanks.

Labels: autoimmune, bladder cancer, food, gum disease, health care, hygiene, molecular gastronomy, MS, parasites, politics, science

Scientific investigation into the occurrence of deja vu has been pretty sparse. The main prevailing theory, that information from one eye might sometimes reach the brain's processing centers before information from the other eye, has little real evidence behind it. University of Leeds researchers have, amazingly, found evidence of deja vu-like phenomena in blind subjects, forcing them to reconsider the very term itself (blind people being famously inept at the whole vu bit).

The subjects seem to be having the deja-whatever sensation from aural, olfactory, and tactile stimuli. This is really cool.

Unrelatedly, a Harvard cohort study suggests that eating bacon five days a week might up your bladder cancer risk. Ditto for skinless chicken. There seems to be all kinds of confounding in the study, but maybe it's a good excuse to switch to the (tastier) skin-on variety of chicken.

Labels: bacon, bladder cancer, chicken, deja-vu, diet, neuropsychology