Posts Categorized: Health

Scientists discover way to fight drug-resistant bacteria using light

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have found a new way to fight drug-resistant bacteria using light-activated nanoparticles.

Bacterial infections are usually treated easily with antibiotics, but some bacteria, known as “superbugs,” can adapt to survive the efforts of drugs like penicillin. According to the CDC, superbugs affect around 2 million people and kill around 23,000 people in the United States every year. The problem is that with each new form of antibiotic that is developed, bacteria quickly adapt to be able to survive whatever new attack is thrown at them.

Researches have now begun to utilize extremely small particles (22,000 times smaller than a human hair) to target and kill infected cells. Previous research has shown some success with using nanoparticles to fight infections, but relied on particles made from metals, which kill all cells rather than just those infected. This new approach uses semiconductor-like particles, which are only activated when exposed to light, making them able to target and kill individual cells. The light-activation property of these particles also allows scientists to tinker with their function and stay one step ahead of bacteria. In short, these nanoparticles are promising because they don’t kill healthy cells and they can adapt just as quickly as the bacteria they are fighting: two things which can’t be said of traditional antibiotics. And these nanoparticles are proving effective, killing 92 percent of drug-resistant bacteria in a lab-grown culture.

Antibiotics are not only baseline treatment for infections like Staphylococcus, E. Coli, and Salmonella, but are also used to treat HIV and cancer, which makes clear how consequential these findings could be.

FDA approves genetically modified chicken

shutterstock_179491004While genetically modified animals are usually looked at as being a bad thing, the United States government has just approved a type of genetically modified chicken that will supposedly improve the health of individuals.  These engineered chickens would make the drug Kanuma in their eggs, which is said to be a treatment for people with lysosomal acid lipase deficiency.  The rare condition prevents people’s bodies from breaking down fatty molecules inside cells but Kanuma works to replace this faulty enzyme.  The disease can be potentially fatal, especially when acquired by infants.

In order to collect the protein, researchers would have to purify the whites of the chickens’ egg.  This means the chicken would have the protein throughout their entire body, making it unsafe to eat.  Researchers have said, however, that because the chickens are raised indoors, it is highly unlikely that they would ever enter the food supply.  The FDA is still looking into whether altering the chickens’ DNA would harm the animal and if the modification could be passed onto future generations.

This isn’t the first time a transgenic animal modified to produce a drug has been approved—six years ago, genetically modified goats that could produce a drug in their milk that would prevent blood clots were approved —and researchers hope it isn’t the last. So why did the chicken cross the road? Maybe the actual answer was always to make a potentially life-saving drug for countless Americans in their eggs????

Tapeworm transmits cancer to Colombia man

shutterstock_183701153Anyone who has ever had, or even heard about, a tapeworm probably agrees that they are just the worst thing ever for numerous reasons. But a man from Colombia had a nasty tapeworm with an even worse side effect than usual. In January 2013, a 41-year-old man visited a local hospital complaining of fatigue, fever, cough, and weight loss that had lasted over several months. The man, who had tested positive for HIV in 2006, had not taken his medication and was open to serious infection, which resulted in countless dwarf tapeworms taking up residency in his body.

As the doctors began to run tests, they noticed extremely tiny, human-like tumors that lined the man’s lymph nodes.  Further tests showed cancer cells were present in the man’s body, but were not human.  As they ran more and more tests in the coming months, they found that the tapeworms had transmitted their own cancer to the man. Scientists were baffled by the findings, as they didn’t know that tapeworms could develop tumors in the first place, calling it one of the strangest cases they have seen.  Unfortunately, the man passed away before proper treatment could take place.

Doctors who worked on the case warn other medical professionals around the world to be on the lookout for strange medical occurrences such as this one. It seems like tapeworms are disgusting and terrible for even more reasons than we previously thought possible.

Scientists recreate functional vocal cords

shutterstock_128575862In a breakthrough study, scientists have grown and recreated functional vocal cords in a lab.  Scientists were able to reconstruct almost 170 vocal cords by using vocal tissue from four patients who had their larynxes removed and used cells from vocal folds to create the new vocal cords.  The cells were able to grow the vocal cords in the lab by themselves over the course of just 14 days.  When scientists tested the vocal cords, they found that blowing air through them made the same humming noise that isolated vocal cords in humans make.

While the study is still in the early stages, the scientists hope that it will help the over 20 million people across the United States who suffer vocal cord damage or have lost their voice all together.  These individuals include Julie Andrews, who lost her singing voice fully in 1997, Adele, and John Mayer.   They believe that through this discovery, they will eventually be able to grow damaged parts of vocal cords and implant them surgically. Tests also indicated that the immune system was surprisingly tolerant to the recreated vocal cords, something that have not seen in many other tests involving recreated organs.

Scientists hope to continue experiments on other animals to confirm that the vocal cords would be safe for use in humans. But I think we can all agree that any medical experiment that may be able to help Julie Andrews sing again is a winner in our eyes.

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You Won’t Like Me When I’m Hangry: The Science Behind Hunger Induced Anger

shutterstock_226371208Everyone has felt it – the short temper that creeps over you when the waiter seems to serve every other table before so much as taking your order; when your first meal of the day is the free samples at Costco and the person in front of you takes the very last artisan meatball; when the fast food drive-though could not move ANY slower. This phenomenon of hunger-induced anger has not gone unnoticed by anyone whose ever gone to the supermarket with an empty stomach.

This state of being “hangry” – a word invented to describe the feeling of being hungry-angry – was previously an unexplained correlation. Now, however, researchers the University of Sydney seem to have found an evolutionary explanation for this feeling. In her book “Don’t Go Hungry for Life,” Amanda Salis explains the chemical mechanisms that lead to this sensation.  Our glucose levels drop as time passes since our last meal. When this occurs, our bodies are alerted to produce other chemicals, most notably, adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) and cortisol. These are stress hormones, the same that one would feel in a fight-or-flight scenario. It’s these hormones that increase ones irritability.

Before you get frustrated at all of this unnecessary stress your body is putting you through, realize that this stress has not always been unnecessary. This chemical reaction originally served as a survival mechanism for early humans. Salis explains how this could have developed over the course of human evolution, noting “if hungry organisms stood back and graciously let others eat before them, their species could die out.” Species that exhibit this stress response, therefore, are more likely to survive.

So next time your “hanger” has you ready to become an uncontrollable rage monster, remember that it’s only natural- natural selection that is.