Category Archives: Health

A Human on a Bicycle: Incredibly Efficient

Graph showing how efficient a human travelling on a bicycle is, more efficient than a horse

With the recent Israeli and American attack on Iran the price of oil has shot up and shows no signs of going back down. This seems like a good time to remind people that a bicycle is the most efficient form of human-powered transportation. Indeed, the graph above is an update to a popular graph showing efficient transportation, but grouped into the animal kingdoms. Save gas, save money, and get fit by riding a bike this summer.

Travel involves two main expenditures of energy: fighting gravity and propelling yourself forward. Most terrestrial animals must expend energy first to stand up, then to take each step forward. (Longer-legged land creatures tend to be more efficient because they get more distance out of each step, which explains why mice are so inefficient.) Flying animals, though, can move forward cheaply by gliding through the air, carried more by currents than by their own power. Swimming animals can similarly glide through water while letting their natural buoyancy minimize the need to fight gravity.

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Successful Treatment for Huntington’s Disease

nurses walking in a hallway

Huntington’s disease is a neurological disease that combines dementia and motor neurone issues, making for a very unpleasant experience. Historically, people suffering from Huntington’s disease had low prospects for living their lives as they normally did and a shorter lifespan. A UK team has developed a very interesting solution to treat Huntington’s disease by injecting modified viruses directly into the brain, the really cool thing is that these little viruses then block the ability of Huntington’s disease to spread. It’s a novel and very 21st century approach and good news not only for people who may get Huntington’s but also for related neurological diseases.

It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA.

This is infused deep into the brain using real-time MRI scanning to guide a microcatheter to two brain regions – the caudate nucleus and the putamen. This takes 12 to 18 hours of neurosurgery.

The virus then acts like a microscopic postman – delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells, where it becomes active.

This turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death.

The cells produce a small fragment of genetic material (called microRNA) that is designed to intercept and disable the instructions (called messenger RNA) being sent from the cells’ DNA for building mutant huntingtin.

This results in lower levels of mutant huntingtin in the brain.

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Plant Based Diet Connected to Lower COVID-19 Rates

Covid-19 Transmission graphic

It’s been years that we’ve been living with COVID-19 and it looks like we missed the window to fully eradicate it, which means we need to adapt our lifestyles to ensure that rates of transmission are as low as possible. Of course, the obvious things involve collective action like improving indoor air quality and filtration. As an individual you should consider switching to a plant based diet.

Plant-based and vegetarian groups had a higher intake of vegetables, legumes and nuts, and lower intake of dairy and meat. After adjusting for important confounders, such as body mass index, physical activity and pre-existing medical conditions, the plant-based diet and vegetarian group had 39% (OR=0.61, 95%?CI 0.44 to 0.85; p=0.003) and 39% (OR 0.61, 95%?CI 0.42 to 0.88; p=0.009) lower odds of the incidence of COVID-19 infection, respectively, compared with the omnivorous group. No association was observed between self-reported diets and COVID-19 severity or duration.

Conclusion Plant-based and mainly vegetarian diets were associated with a lower incidence of COVID-19 infection. These dietary patterns may be considered protective against COVID-19 infection. (Study protocol registered in CAAE: 54351421.4.0000.0068.)

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mRNA Vaccine Used to Fight Brain Tumour

Brain tumours are scary and very difficult to deal with, current treatments include invasive surgery and/or radiation. The advent of mRNA based vaccines is making a difference in how we can treat various brain cancers and the early results are looking promising. A team just found a way to get the body’s immune system to start to find and address cancer within the brain. While the results are not yet usable the outlook is very promising.

“The demonstration that making an mRNA cancer vaccine in this fashion generates similar and strong responses across mice, pet dogs that have developed cancer spontaneously and human patients with brain cancer is a really important finding, because oftentimes we don’t know how well the preclinical studies in animals are going to translate into similar responses in patients,” said Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the UF Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program and a co-author of the paper. “And while mRNA vaccines and therapeutics are certainly a hot topic since the COVID pandemic, this is a novel and unique way of delivering the mRNA to generate these really significant and rapid immune responses that we’re seeing across animals and humans.”

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Cancer Causing Roundup Maker Monsanto Must Pay $2.25 Billion in Damages

Bayer, the corporate owner of Monsanto, must pay $2.25 billion in damages due to Monsanto’s product called Roundup. The chemical spray kills insects very quickly (which is really bad for the planet) and due to it being permitted to use on residential properties the harm it has caused seems pretty great. One regular user of the chemical soup got cancer due to it and sued the company, thus leading the court ordering the payment. The lesson here: don’t use pesticides on residential properties. It’s good to see a massive corporation being held to account for its damaging actions.

“The jury’s punitive damages award sends a clear message that this multi-national corporation needs top to bottom change,” they said, calling the verdict “a condemnation of 50 years of misconduct by Monsanto.”
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The claims rest on the ingredient glyphosate, introduced as a herbicide by Monsanto in 1974, which inhibits a certain enzyme in most plants, preventing them from growing. Monsanto also introduced genetically modified crops that are resistant to glyphosate.

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