TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, IN ANCIENT GREECE, the early philosophers, such as Hippocrates and Galen, became the first to apply science rather than superstition to the study of human health. They came up with a fair amount of claptrap along the way, but their efforts set the stage for the development of modern medical science as we know it. At least, they did eventually.
During the Middle Ages (around the 5th to the 15th centuries CE), developments in medicine cooled off somewhat as science was sidelined by the growing preoccupation of humans with other activities—mainly those involving fighting and fucking. Order was later restored after just a millennium or so with the beginning of the Renaissance, in the 16th century. At this time, big developments in medicine started to happen. In 1543, Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius published his magnum opus, On the Fabric of the Human Body, in which he described the results of countless human dissections.
In the 1830s, the germ theory of disease was pioneered, proving that many ailments were caused by the action of microorganisms. This led to the introduction of good hygiene practice and the development of antiseptics. In turn, this proved revolutionary for surgery, as did the development of anesthetics at around the same time, which allowed surgeons to work with care and attention, rather than simply getting the job done as quickly as possible so as not to prolong their patient’s agony.
The 20th century saw significant advances in medicine, such as the development of antibiotics, insulin for the treatment of diabetes, as well as painkillers such as ibuprofen and naproxen. It also ushered in the age of genetic medicine—all the information needed to build a human is coded into the structure of your DNA, a copy of which lies at the heart of every cell in your body, and it was discovered that this DNA can be manipulated to treat certain ailments. Meanwhile, universal healthcare became a thing at around this time, as it gradually dawned on world governments that investment in the health of their citizens promotes the greater good.
Recent decades have seen the growing realization that our health is as much an issue of personal care as it is of medical science. We’re all responsible for looking after ourselves, and are thus urged not to smoke, to cut down on alcohol consumption, to eat healthily, and engage in regular exercise. Fair enough, though the research on which such advice is based is sometimes far from clear-cut. Do an internet search for “coffee health” and you’ll find umpteen reports of studies claiming that coffee is variously good for you and bad for you. Take your pick. The situation’s not helped by that other great symptom of our wellness-obsessed age: the health fascist. That is, those folks who seek to enforce their lifestyle standards on others—in some cases, to liberty-infringing levels. We recommend that such censorious finger-waggers be brought down from their perceived moral high ground and placed on the pleasingly firm asphalt far below. Stay healthy, for sure, but if one or two drinks a week makes for happy times with friends that chase away the blues and keep life worth living, then more power to you, we say.
The toxicological status of coffee isn’t the only health mystery awaiting a solution. For example, to this day, no one’s exactly sure how general anesthetics work. Work they clearly do, though, and, if you’re like me, you probably don’t even want to contemplate going under the knife without one. Sleep is another. Scientists are still unsure about the reason we do it; however, some rather disturbing experiments with rats have demonstrated what happens when we’re deprived of sleep—proving that going without sleep for more than a week or so can be fatal.
Recent years have seen a raft of new medical breakthroughs, many of which you can find illuminated in IFLScience style over the following pages. You can read about the switch discovered inside the human body’s RNA—the molecular cousin of DNA—that can halt cancer in its tracks. Meet the transplant patients who appear to have inherited allergies from their organ donors, and the unfortunate man who literally coughed up one of his lungs.
We’ll also be tackling the issues that really matter. For instance, which is worse for you—marijuana or booze? Possibly a big surprise here, unless you happen to live somewhere where possession of the former carries a prison term. You can discover the latest trend sweeping Thailand: penis-whitening treatments. Yes, you read that right. And find out what happened to the unfortunate fellow who, for reasons best known to himself, decided to consume a massive overdose of Viagra, and has never been quite the same since.
Scientists often go to extraordinary lengths to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. And these lengths are quite often brown and smelly. We meet the team who embarked upon the ultimate quest for truth by eating Lego bricks and then looking for them in their own poo—the aim being to figure out just how long it takes those little Danish building blocks to make their way through the human digestive system. Cutting-edge stuff.
Plus, we report on the intrepid researchers who took bacterial swabs from self-service touchscreens in McDonald’s burger restaurants—and discovered more than they bargained for. Now go wash your hands.
34
SOMEBODY LITERALLY COUGHED UP A LUNG
by Katie Spalding
NORMALLY, THE PHRASE TO COUGH UP A LUNG IS JUST a figure of speech—but for one person in 2018, it proved to be gruesomely accurate.
In a bizarre case reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, a 36-year-old man managed to “spontaneously expectorate” an intact cast of 10 branches of his bronchial tree. Basically, he coughed up a model, made from his own coagulated blood, of the inside of his lung.
Now, it’s fair to say that this guy wasn’t exactly the picture of health in the first place. He had already suffered heart failure so severe that only one-fifth of the blood in his heart was being pumped into his body—a normal amount is around three times that figure.
After arriving in the ICU, doctors fitted a device to help his heart pump enough blood into his body, and administered Heparin, an anticoagulant used to treat blockages in arteries.
However, in the days after his operation, the patient grew more and more reliant on oxygen administered by his doctors. He started coughing up blood, and experienced increasing respiratory distress—meaning fluid was leaking out of the blood vessels in his lungs, and into the tiny air sacs that would normally oxygenate the blood. And then, during what the medical report describes as “an extreme bout of coughing,” out it came: a complete, intact cast of the bronchial tree of his right lung.
After the cast came out, doctors quickly intubated the patient’s windpipe and examined his airways using a camera attached to a flexible tube. Although there was a small amount of blood left in the lower branches of the lung, within two days the patient had stopped coughing up blood, and doctors took the tube out of his throat.
But, unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite these promising signs, the patient eventually died just a week later.
35
THIS IS WHAT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING WHEN A WOMAN “SQUIRTS” DURING SEX
by Janet Fang
WHEN AROUSED DURING SEX, SOME WOMEN MAY EXPERIENCE squirting, or a rather noticeable discharge of fluid. What it is exactly and where it comes from has been hotly debated: female ejaculation or adult bed wetting? Researchers, however, have proof that squirting is essentially involuntary urination.
Female ejaculate is technically the small amount of milky white fluid that’s expressed when climaxing, New Scientist explained. Squirting, on the other hand, results in a much larger gush of a clear fluid, which comes from the urethra, the duct where urine is conveyed from the bladder. The findings, which combine biochemical analyses of urine with pelvic ultrasounds, were published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2015.
A French team, led by Samuel Salama from Hôpital Privé de Parly II, recruited seven healthy women—who’d reported recurrent and massive fluid emission (enough to fill a cup) during sexual stimulation—to undergo “provoked sexual arousal.” The team conducted pelvic ultrasound scans after urination and during sexual excitation just before and after the squirting event.
All of the women had empty bladders before sexual excitation, having given a urine sample. However, an ultrasound scan just before squirting showed that the bladder was filling up. Then a final scan after squirting revealed that the bladder had been emptied again, confirming the origin of the squirted liquid.
The researchers analyzed chemical concentrations in the urine sample gathered before arousal as well as in the squirted sample itself. These included urea, uric acid, creatinine (a by-product of muscle metabolism), and prostatic-specific antigen (PSA). The latter is a protein that’s produced in men’s prostate glands and in the “female prostate” called the Skene glands; PSA is found in “true” female ejaculate. Urea, uric acid, and creatinine concentrations were comparable in all of the urine and squirt samples. PSA was not detected before sexual simulation in six of the women’s urine samples, but was present in tiny amounts in the squirt sample in five of the women.
Squirting, they found, is essentially the involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity—though there’s also a small contribution of prostatic secretions as well.
36
GENETIC ANALYSIS FINALLY SOLVES THE MYSTERY OF THE “ATACAMA ALIEN”
by Aliyah Kovner
AFTER FIVE YEARS OF GENETIC RESEARCH, A MYSTERIOUS mummified skeleton, discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert, has been confirmed as human—quashing theories about supposed extraterrestrial origins.
Although the results may be disappointing to “I want to believe” types, the complete genome sequencing has yielded fascinating insights into the medical causes of the specimen’s never-before-seen deformities.
According to a study published in 2018 in the journal Genome Research, DNA extracted from the remains, nicknamed Ata, bears mutations in seven genes associated with bone and facial malformation, premature joint fusion, and dwarfism. Several of the novel abnormal sequences occurred in genes that were previously not known to affect physical development.
The backstory to this scientific puzzle began in 2003, when an artifact hunter reportedly dug up Ata, wrapped in a white cloth bundle, from the grounds of an abandoned church in the mining ghost town of La Noria. A wave of media sensationalism followed, which was somewhat justified. Who wouldn’t be shocked by a 6-inch (15-cm) tall, cone-headed humanoid skeleton with sinisterly slanted eye sockets and the wrong number of ribs?
The senior author on the study, Garry Nolan, PhD, from Stanford University, was immediately fascinated.
“I had heard about this specimen through a friend of mine, and I managed to get a picture of it,” he said in a statement. “You can’t look at this specimen and not think it’s interesting; it’s quite dramatic. So I told my friend, ‘Look, whatever it is, if it’s got DNA, I can do the analysis.’”
His team’s initial investigation, completed in 2013, provided some answers yet also raised new questions. Many had speculated that Ata was an ancient, desiccated, premature fetus, but multiple examinations revealed that it must have died only about 40 years ago. Moreover, the state of the specimen’s bones suggested that it would have been six to eight years of age.
To definitely determine who (or what) the skeleton is, Nolan enlisted University of California, San Francisco pediatric genomics expert Atul Butte, MD, PhD.
Their full genetic analysis, which compared Ata’s DNA sequences to those from both healthy and diseased references, proves that Ata is a female of South American descent and strongly implies that she was a preterm birth with a severe form of skeletal dysplasia and a bone-aging disorder that caused early growth-plate fusion (which normally doesn’t occur until near adulthood).
“While the extraordinary phenotype of the specimen drove broad discussion as to its origin, and no hypothesis was left off the table during analysis, the specimen is shown here to have a purely earthly origin with mutations that reflect the visual determinations,” the paper stated.
How a fetus harbored so many genetic defects, however, is likely to remain mysterious, considering that no one has yet come forward with insider knowledge.
The paper concluded, “While we can only speculate as to the cause for multiple mutations in Ata’s genome, the specimen was found in La Noria, one of the Atacama Desert’s many abandoned nitrate mining towns, which suggests a possible role for prenatal nitrate exposure, leading to DNA damage.”
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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO POOP LEGO?
by Rosie McCall
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW LONG IT TAKES FOR a little yellow Lego person’s head to pass through the human body? No, us neither. But an international team of pediatricians decided to find out anyway.
The answer: an average of 1.71 days.
In the name of science, six healthcare professionals volunteered to swallow a Lego head and spend the next few days sifting through their bowel movements to retrieve the evidence. To meet the grade for participation, the volunteers had never had gastrointestinal surgery and were able to demonstrate they could swallow such an object—and, perhaps most importantly of all, were fine about rummaging through their own poop.
The results have been published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health in an article titled “Everything is awesome: Don’t forget the Lego.” A reference, in case you haven’t seen The Lego Movie, to the song “Everything Is AWESOME!!!” as well as the pediatricians’ blog, Don’t Forget the Bubbles.
To account for any individual differences, preingestion bowel habits were standardized by an appropriately named scale, the Stool Hardness and Transit (or SHAT) score. The amount of time it took the head to travel from mouth to toilet was also aptly titled—the Found and Retrieved Time (aka the FART) score.
So, what did they find? It took an average of 1.71 days for the Lego head to exit the body, with a varied FART score between 1.14 and 3.04 days. The researchers also noted that “Females may be more accomplished at searching through their stools than males,” adding that this “could not be statistically validated.” Presumably, this is referring to the fact that one male volunteer never found his Lego head. Let’s just hope it made it out OK.
Although extremely tongue in cheek, there is a point to this research. The team hope parents can now rest safe in the knowledge that their kids’ extra-mealtime habits will likely not cause any nasty health complications.
“It is possible that childhood bowel transit time is fundamentally different from adult, but there is little evidence to support this, and if anything, it is likely that objects would pass faster in a more immature gut,” the study authors wrote. “This will be of use to anxious parents who may worry that transit times may be prolonged and potentially painful for their children.”
And if a Lego head or a similar object does go mysteriously AWOL, the pediatricians’ advice to parents is not to go looking for it.
The study authors concluded, “If an experienced clinician with a PhD is unable to adequately find objects in his own stool, it seems clear that we should not be expecting parents to do so—the authors feel that national guidance could include this advice.”
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DOCTOR ISSUES WARNING OVER DANGEROUS AND DEADLY MASTURBATION—BUT DON’T WORRY, IT’S SAFE IF YOU DON’T DO THIS!
by Tom Hale
GONE ARE THE DAYS OF MASTURBATION BEING VIEWED as a shameful act, linked to madness, disease, and general nastiness. Nowadays, even the most prudish of medical professionals would agree that masturbation has numerous health benefits.
That said, there is harmless fun and then there are downright dangerous delights.
Speaking to the German daily newspaper Bild, forensic physician Dr. Herald Voss has warned that between 80 and 100 people in Germany die each year from risky masturbation practices.
The most common cause is oxygen deficiency, from autoerotic asphyxiation, where people strangle themselves during masturbation for an added sexual euphoria. The problem is that asphyxiation, being deprived of oxygen, can arise much faster and more easily than you think. Complete constriction of the carotid arteries, the major arteries that run up the side of your neck and supply oxygen to your brain, can leave you unconscious within 15 seconds and dead within minutes.
A separate study of autoerotic deaths in northern Germany found that the most common way to asphyxiate was through strangulation or hanging, although people often used plastic bags, masks, or drugs.
Most autoerotic deaths occur in men, according to Dr. Voss, although statistics are hazy, since many of the deaths are undocumented or misreported. In suspected autoerotic deaths, police typically look for clues, such as pornography, exposed genitalia, shackles, and lack of a suicide note. However, it’s often easier to classify the death as a straightforward accident or a suicide.
“Relatives who find the body sometimes put things away, because the shame is so great,” Dr. Voss told Bild.
A urology study from the US in 1985 set out to discover the prevalence of injuries caused by people masturbating with vacuum cleaners. It concluded: “Unfortunately, and contrary to apparent public appreciation, injury due to this form of autostimulation may not be unusual. Five cases of significant penile trauma resulting from this form of masturbation are presented, with a spectrum of severe injuries, including loss of the glans penis.”
Voss added another story of a woman from the German city of Halle who reportedly found her son with Christmas tree lights clamped to his burnt body.
The moral of the story: Masturbation is a wonderful thing that everyone enjoys, but whatever your tastes or kinks, apply some common sense and stay safe.
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A MAN TOOK WAAAAAAAY TOO MUCH VIAGRA. HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM
by Rosie McCall
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS COME WITH RECOMMENDED DOSES for a very good reason, as one man has found out. The 31-year-old was admitted to an urgent care clinic with red-tinted vision two days after taking a little too much of the erectile-dysfunction medication Viagra. The condition, medics say, is irreversible.
In a first-of-its-kind study led by Mount Sinai, published in 2018 in the journal Retinal Cases, researchers have confirmed that high doses of sildenafil citrate (sold under the brand name Viagra) can damage your vision—and that the effects may be permanent. (Older research suggested the drug could cause permanent damage to vision in people with retinitis pigmentosa, but this was based on studies of mice.)
“People live by the philosophy that if a little bit is good, a lot is better,” Richard Rosen, director of Retina Services at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai and lead investigator, said in a statement. “This study shows how dangerous a large dose of a commonly used medication can be.”
Rosen and his team examined the retina of the 31-year-old man to check for structural damage right down to the cellular level (apparently, a world first). To do this, they used an electroretinogram, optimal coherence tomography, and adaptive optics, which lets scientists analyze microscopic optic structures in extremely high detail in real time. This meant they were able to pinpoint areas showing microscopic injuries to the cones in the retina, the very cells essential for color vision.
So, what did they find?
It was bad. The man’s retina showed damage comparable to that found in animal models of hereditary retinal diseases like, for example, cone-rod dystrophy—which was unexpected, the researchers say.
“It explained the symptoms that the patient suffered from,” Rosen added. “While we know colored vision disturbance is a well-described side effect of this medication, we have never been able to visualize the structural effect of the drug on the retina until now.”
Before the experiment, the man admitted to taking much more than the recommended 50-milligram dose of a liquid sildenafil citrate he had bought online, telling medics the symptoms began to appear very shortly after. However, he wasn’t able to specify exactly how much he had taken—instead of using the measuring pipette included in the pack, he drank the solution straight from the bottle.
While it is clearly a good idea to abide by medically approved guidelines, even standard doses of sildenafil citrate can cause “visual disturbances.” Usually, however, the effect is to cast the world into a slightly bluish—not red—haze, and this should only be temporary, with symptoms usually subsiding within 24 hours, the researchers say.
As for the 31-year-old patient, at one year on since his first diagnosis, his vision had not improved. Treatments haven’t helped and doctors conclude that the damage is permanent.
40
One Joint May Be All It Takes to Change the Structure of the Teenage Brain
by Rosie McCall
Smoking cannabis just once or twice may be enough to change the structure of brain areas linked to emotion and memory. So say researchers at the University of Vermont, who have been studying the effects of low-level drug use in a sample of 14-year-olds.
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WOMAN WHO RECEIVED LUNG TRANSPLANT DEVELOPED PEANUT ALLERGY FROM HER DONOR
by Katie Spalding
For one patient in 2018, a lifesaving lung transplant came with an unexpected price: a brand-new nut allergy.
Although the patient, a 53-year-old woman suffering from emphysema, didn’t show the more common allergy symptoms, such as a skin rash or a stomachache, doctors realized that her breathing difficulties and chest tightness were the result of an allergy after she told them when it started—just after she chowed down on a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The thing was, the woman had never had a peanut allergy before. But somebody else had—the 22-year-old man whose left lung had just been transplanted into her chest.
It’s not the first time this has happened. In 2016, a 46-year-old man was given a kiwi fruit allergy along with a bone marrow donation from his sister. And in 2003, one liver transplant recipient inherited the very nut allergy that killed the donor.
Despite these examples, scientists aren’t quite sure what causes the phenomenon.
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WEED OR BOOZE? SCIENTISTS FINALLY SETTLE WHICH IS WORSE FOR YOUR BRAIN
by Madison Dapcevich
POTHEADS AND BOOZEHOUNDS HAVE BEEN DUKING it out for ages, but scientists have finally settled the age-old debate of which is worse for you—marijuana or alcohol.
And… sorry, boozers. It turns out, marijuana may not be as damaging to the brain as previously thought.
Researchers examined the brains of more than 1,000 participants of varying ages by looking at neurological imaging data from MRI scans. Specifically, they used the data to examine the types of tissue that make up the brain: gray and white matter. Gray matter includes cell bodies that, among other things, enable functionality, while white matter allows everything to communicate. A loss of either would mean the brain wasn’t working properly.
The team found that marijuana and cannabinoid products did not have long-term effects. Alcohol, on the other hand, was significantly associated with a decrease in gray matter size and white matter integrity, especially in adults with decades of exposure. The findings were published in the journal Addiction in 2018.
The negative impacts of alcohol on the brain have long been known, and it was assumed that cannabinoids were damaging to long-term brain health as well because of their immediate psychoactive effects.
“With alcohol, we’ve known it’s bad for the brain for decades,” said study co-author Kent Hutchison in a statement. “But for cannabis, we know so little.”
A lot of past research studying the negative effects of marijuana came up with differing results, said Hutchison, who is a professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“The point is that there’s no consistency across all of these studies in terms of the actual brain structures,” he said.
Researchers are quick to add that this doesn’t mean pot is better for you or that the study proves any health benefit from toking up. It just means marijuana might be less harmful than previously believed.
“Particularly with marijuana use, there is still so much that we don’t know about how it impacts the brain,” said Rachel Thayer, a graduate student in clinical psychology at CU Boulder and the lead author of the study. “Research is still very limited in terms of whether marijuana use is harmful, or beneficial, to the brain.”
The researchers say the study could help to better inform potential alternative pain treatments in the face of the ongoing opioid epidemic—the vast increase in the use of opioid-based analgesics.
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Study Finds Spanked Children Are More Likely to Have Developmental Delays
by Robin Andrews
In January 2018, a study by the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell found that children punished by spanking were five times more likely to experience developmental delays. The finding dovetails with other work suggesting that corporal punishment slows cognitive development and leads to antisocial behaviors.
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THERE’S SOMETHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE MCDONALD’S TOUCHSCREENS
by Tom Hale
NEXT TIME YOU USE A SELF-ORDER TOUCHSCREEN AT McDonald’s, you might also get some “free side orders” of Listeria, Staphylococcus, and a bunch of other bacteria found in poop. Mmmm, I’m lovin’ it!
An investigation in 2018 found that McDonald’s touchscreens are covered in a number of potentially worrying and contagious strains of bacteria.
Microbiologists from London Metropolitan University carried out a swab analysis of touchscreens in eight McDonald’s restaurants in the UK—six in London and two in Birmingham—as part of an investigation by Metro.co.uk.
Samples from all of the branches contained coliform bacteria, a broad class of bacteria found in the poop of all warm-blooded animals and humans. They also discovered Listeria in two London branches. Typically associated with causing a food poisoning–like sickness, this can be potentially life-threatening if you’re pregnant or have a weak immune system.
“Listeria is another rare bacterium we were shocked to find on touchscreen machines as, again, this can be very contagious,” Dr. Paul Matewele, a London Metropolitan University microbiologist who worked on the investigation, told Metro.
A screen at one branch was found to harbor Staphylococcus, a group of bacteria that can be responsible for skin infections as well as food poisoning. Other bacteria discovered on the screens include Pseudomonas (responsible for chest infections), Enterococcus faecalis (found in the gastrointestinal tracts of humans), and Klebsiella (associated with urinary tract infections, septicemia, and diarrhea).
“Enterococcus faecalis is part of the flora of gastrointestinal tracts of healthy humans and other mammals. It is notorious in hospitals for causing hospital-acquired infections,” added Dr. Matewele.
A McDonald’s spokesman commented: “Our self-order screens are cleaned frequently throughout the day. All of our restaurants also provide facilities for customers to wash their hands before eating.”
So just how worried should you be?
Well, bacteria are an inescapable part of our world. They are literally everywhere, from your face to the openings of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, or that ATM you got money out of this morning. Some of these are harmless, some are harmful, and some are actually beneficial.
Obviously, the idea of touching a slightly greasy screen covered in germs just before you eat is not very appetizing. However, as long as your immune system is in good shape, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about. Many of these bacteria sound scarier than they are and, in small numbers, won’t do you any harm.
That said, having a quick hand wash with soap and warm water before you eat anywhere in public probably isn’t the worst idea in the world.
Bon appétit!
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A CANCER “KILL SWITCH” HAS BEEN FOUND IN THE BODY—AND RESEARCHERS ARE ALREADY HARD AT WORK TO HARNESS IT
by Aliyah Kovner
AFTER EIGHT YEARS SPENT ANALYZING THE HUMAN genome and its many regulatory molecules, in 2018 a team from Northwestern University discovered a seemingly foolproof self-destruct pathway that can be used to knock out any type of cancer cell.
The mechanism involves the creation of small RNA molecules (called siRNAs) that interfere with multiple genes essential to the proliferation of fast-growing, malignant cells, but have little effect on normal, healthy cells. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is normally used by the body to transmit genetic information from DNA to sites where new protein cells are created.
Research leader Marcus Peter and his colleagues characterized the fatal cascade of events these siRNA molecules trigger—dubbed DISE, for “Death by Induced Survival Gene Elimination.” They found DISE-associated genetic sequences were present in many naturally occurring RNA molecules in the body.
“We think this is how multicellular organisms eliminated cancer before the development of the adaptive immune system, which is about 500 million years old,” Peter said in a statement. “It could be a fail-safe that forces rogue cells to commit suicide. We believe it is active in every cell protecting us from cancer.”
Peter and his team observed the process by which our cells chop a larger RNA strand into multiple siRNAs. Remarkably, they found that about 3 percent of all our coding RNAs could be processed to serve this purpose.
“Now that we know the kill code, we can trigger the mechanism without having to use chemotherapy and without messing with the genome,” Peter said in a press release.
The DISE pathway kills cancer cells in a brutal, simultaneous attack. “It’s like committing suicide by stabbing yourself, shooting yourself, and jumping off a building all at the same time. You cannot survive,” he explained in 2017. And all the research conducted thus far indicates that cancer cells cannot acquire resistance to DISE.
In a separate proof-of-concept study, published in Oncotarget in 2017, the Northwestern team used nanoparticles to deliver DISE siRNAs to the cells of human ovarian tumors that had been implanted in mice. The treatment resulted in a profound reduction in tumor growth without harmful side effects.
“Based on what we have learned in these [past several] studies, we can now design artificial microRNAs that are much more powerful in killing cancer cells than even the ones developed by nature,” Peter concluded.
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FIRST-EVER BABY BORN FOLLOWING A UTERUS TRANSPLANT FROM A DECEASED DONOR
by Tom Hale
IN 2018, THE FIRST-EVER BABY WAS BORN FOLLOWING a uterus transplant from a deceased donor. The case was documented in the medical journal Lancet. With live donors often in short supply, this breakthrough could offer hope to the 1 in 500 people who experience infertility problems arising from uterine anomalies.
The healthy baby girl was born via cesarean section at Hospital das Clínicas, at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine, Brazil, after her mother underwent a uterine transplant followed by an in vitro fertilization (IVF) pregnancy just seven months later.
The mother, a 32-year-old woman, was born without a uterus, due to Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a condition affecting 1 in 4,500 women. She received the new uterus during a 10 1/2-hour surgery in September 2016 from a 45-year-old donor who had died of a stroke. This uterus was later removed during the live birth to curb the chance of any issues with organ rejection.
The mother and child were able to leave the hospital just three days after the birth, and the following months were gloriously uneventful.
“The use of deceased donors could greatly broaden access to this treatment, and our results provide proof-of-concept for a new option for women with uterine infertility,” said Dr. Dani Ejzenberg of the São Paulo School of Medicine, lead author of the report.
“We are authorized to do two more cases and we are focused on improving our protocol to be able to repeat this success story,” Natalie Ehrmann Fusco, a spokesperson for the doctors on the project, told IFLScience.
There have been 11 births following uterine transplantation from living donors, the first of which took place in Sweden in September 2013. But all previous attempts to birth a child using a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor have proved unsuccessful.
As if this new case study is not impressive enough, it is also the first uterine transplantation of any kind to take place in Latin America.
The downside of the surgery is the high dose of immunosuppressant drugs, required to prevent the mother from rejecting the transplanted uterus, and the moderate, although manageable, levels of blood loss. The researchers state that transplants from deceased donors might have some benefits over donations from live donors. Most obviously, doctors do not have to worry about the donor’s health. They also note that it could potentially make uterus transplants more widely available, especially in countries that already regulate and distribute transplant organs from deceased donors.
“The first uterus transplants from live donors were a medical milestone,” added Dr. Ejzenberg. “However, the need for a live donor is a major limitation, as donors are rare, typically being willing and eligible family members or close friends. The numbers of people willing and committed to donate organs upon their own deaths are far larger than those of live donors, offering a much wider potential donor population.”
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Hand Dryers Spread Bacteria So Dramatically That Scientists Think They’re a Public Health Threat
by Aliyah Kovner
Researchers from the University of Leeds, UK, have found that the no-touch jet-air dryers in public restrooms blast bacteria from people’s poorly washed hands into the air and onto nearby surfaces in disturbing quantities. They introduce 27 times more bacteria into the air, which then circulate for 15 minutes afterwards.
