Melinda Wenner on February 5, 2008 4:33 PM
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Autoimmune diseases have become the third biggest category of disease in the U.S. after cancer and heart disease, and some say that the prevalence is still rising. Now the CDC tells us we've got another gem to add to the mix: "progressive inflammatory neuropathy." It's a fancy if vague name for a collection of symptoms ranging from mild weakness to total short-term paralysis, and it's thought to be caused by the inhalation of pig brain. Yep, you read that right.
Continue reading 'New CDC memo: don't go around snorting pig brains' >
Ted Alvarez on January 30, 2008 4:00 PM
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Someone once called me "cute as a mole-rat," and I thanked them for the complement. Then I found out what mole-rats looked like, and I cried in the shower for a few days.
But I shouldn't have been so hasty to dismiss my homely likeness: The African naked mole-rat is immune to certain types of pain.They respond to mechanical pain like pinching, but don't respond to pain caused by capsaicin (the hot element in chili peppers), hot objects, and even burns from acid.
Thomas Park of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gary Lewin at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and their colleagues discovered that mole-rats lack substance P, a compound that transmits information relating to chronic pain in between nerve cells. The team hopes to apply this discovery in gene therapy to help humans who suffer from chronic pain.
“Instead of going to the pain region of the spinal cord as we would expect, the nerves that lead from acid and capsaicin sensors go to the touch region,” says Park. “And their nerve fibres do not respond to acid at all.”
Did you hear that? At all.
Continue reading 'Mole-rats can't feel certain types of pain, still 'pretty on the inside'' >
Christopher Mims on October 22, 2007 1:57 PM
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Apparently it's been known for some time that the immune system, specifically T cells (which are a kind of white blood cell), gets tired when fighting the same foe for a long time, such as HIV or Hepatitis.
New research is helping to nail down the way in which this happens.
Continue reading 'Immune systems get tired, too' >
