The Medical Thread

Blood sugar levels in response to foods are highly individual: "Scientists have released new results underscoring the importance of a personalized diet, prepared based on complex factors such as your gut microbes and lifestyle. Surprisingly, the foods that raise blood sugar levels differ dramatically from person to person."

Sensory illusion causes cells to self-destruct: "Magic tricks work because they take advantage of the brain's sensory assumptions, tricking audiences into seeing phantoms or overlooking sleights of hand. Now a team of researchers has discovered that even brainless single-celled yeast have sensory biases that can be hacked by a carefully engineered illusion, a finding that could be used to develop new approaches to fighting diseases such as cancer."

Electric fields remove nanoparticles from blood with ease: "Engineers at the University of California, San Diego developed a new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood. The technology could serve as a general tool to separate and recover nanoparticles from other complex fluids for medical, environmental, and industrial applications."

This new fertility test can warn women if they're running out of eggs: "These days, many women are hoping to have children later in life, but this brings with it the looming pressure of waning fertility once you hit 31. While some women have no trouble conceiving well into their late 30s and early 40s, others have to seek out alternatives such as IVF, and even then, they can experience varying levels of success.

So researchers at the Centre for Human Reproduction in New York have designed a new fertility test to help young women better plan their pregnancies. Called 'What’s My Fertility', the test can be taken between the ages of 18 and 35, and can identify women who are at high risk of low fertility later in life, giving them the chance to freeze their eggs for use in IVF later on."

... Sensory illusions that can destroy cells? Now that is just plain OP.

"Is this your card? Yes? Congratulations, now your cancer is gone"

... And now I just realized that this may make several SCPs with auditory-based cognitohazardous properties a lot less far-fetched than they seem.

edited 24th Nov '15 7:40:32 AM by MarqFJA

Apparently this kid is waking up from anesthetics.

Yeah, I remember (very vaguely) saying all sorts of nonsensical thing while waking up.

I was put under general anesthesia once while undergoing an eye surgery. Waking up was horrible, a strong yet unclear sense of fear overtook me and according to my parents, I started to scream and cry like a little bitch (paraphrased).

How the introduction of farming changed the human genome: "Genomic analysis of ancient human remains identifies specific genes that changed during and after the transition in Europe from hunting and gathering to farming about 8,500 years ago. Many of the genes are associated with height, immunity, lactose digestion, light skin pigmentation, blue eye color and celiac disease risk."

Gut microbes signal to the brain when they're full: "Don't have room for dessert? The bacteria in your gut may be telling you something. Twenty minutes after a meal, gut microbes produce proteins that can suppress food intake in animals, reports a study. The researchers also show how these proteins injected into mice and rats act on the brain reducing appetite, suggesting that gut bacteria may help control when and how much we eat."

Stored fat fights against the body's attempts to lose weight: "The fatter we are, the more our body appears to produce a protein that inhibits our ability to burn fat, suggests new research. The findings may have implications for the treatment of obesity and other metabolic diseases."

New fingerprint technique can reveal whether you’re male or female: "Long before TV shows like CSI made us aware of high-tech forensic techniques at crime scenes, pretty much everybody already had some basic familiarity with the concept of fingerprinting, an identification method with roots going as far back as the 19th century.

While fingerprinting is still a thoroughly useful method for discovering who may have been present at the scene of a crime, the basic premise of the technique used by crime scene investigators – visual comparisons between two sets of fingerprints – hasn’t changed in a very long time. However, a new way of taking people’s prints not only records what their fingerprints look like, but could help investigators determine whether the person was a man or a woman – and maybe even a lot more about them too."

With all the E. Coli news, I've been wondering how many of the reported cases were attempting to switch to a more healthy diet.

Cause I would expect that their gut flora would be less... prepared. Unfortunately, even though most E. Coli bacteria is harmless to humans, some are even downright friendly, there are E. Coli which don't get along with us. It's practically impossible to completely clean raw veggies of E. Coli.

Loneliness triggers cellular changes that can cause illness, study shows: "The serious dangers of loneliness have long been known, but the cellular mechanisms by which loneliness causes adverse health outcomes have not been well understood. Now, a team of researchers has released a study shedding new light on how loneliness triggers physiological responses that can ultimately make us sick."

Ancient viral molecules essential for human development: "Genetic material from ancient viral infections is critical to human development, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

They've identified several noncoding RNA molecules of viral origins that are necessary for a fertilized human egg to acquire the ability in early development to become all the cells and tissues of the body. Blocking the production of this RNA molecule stops development in its tracks, they found.

The discovery comes on the heels of a Stanford study earlier this year showing that early human embryos are packed full of what appear to be viral particles arising from similar left-behind genetic material."

Words can deceive, but tone of voice cannot: "An analysis of the tone of voice used by couples during therapy allowed a computer algorithm to predict whether a relationship would improve. In fact, the algorithm did a better job of predicting marital success of couples with serious marital issues than descriptions of the therapy sessions provided by relationship experts."

edited 26th Nov '15 1:11:36 AM by rmctagg09

Functional human liver cells grown in the lab: "A new technique for growing human hepatocytes in the laboratory has now been described by a team of researchers. This groundbreaking development could help advance a variety of liver-related research and applications, from studying drug toxicity to creating bio-artificial liver support for patients awaiting transplantations."

New test may improve diagnosis, treatment of pancreactic cancers: "Collecting blood samples from the portal vein can provide much more information about pancreatic cancer than taking blood from vein in the arm. Researchers found circulating tumors cells in 100 percent of 18 patients with suspected tumors in the pancreas and bile ducts. Standard samples detected tumors cells in only four patients."

High-fat diet prompts immune cells to start eating connections between neurons: "When a high-fat diet causes us to become obese, it also appears to prompt normally bustling immune cells in our brain to become sedentary and start consuming the connections between our neurons, scientists say."

Blood from small children 'remembers' prenatal smoking exposure: "Blood taken from children up to the age of five contains molecular evidence about whether their mothers smoked during pregnancy, shows new research."

Interventions may temporarily raise kids' IQs, but there is fadeout over time: "The winner of a decades-old debate about what scientists call the fadeout effect — one of the most persistent research mysteries in intelligence and psychological development — may finally have been decided.

Following a meta-analysis of experimental methods to determine whether or not the benefits of early interactions designed to raise intelligence remain over time, UC Santa Barbara postdoctoral researcher John Protzko found that the positive effects on intelligence actually diminish after a particular intervention ends. Protzko's study marks the first quantitative analysis of the fadeout effect across nearly every known intervention that has attempted to improve early intelligence."

Sperm carries information about dad's weight: "Turns out dads are also eating for two. A study reveals that a man's weight affects the heritable information contained in sperm. The sperm cells of lean and obese men possess different epigenetic marks, notable at gene regions associated with the control of appetite. The comparisons, which included 13 lean men and 10 obese men, offer one biological explanation for why children of obese fathers are themselves more predisposed to obesity."

... What do they mean by "intervention" here? The article doesn't bother explaining it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbapenem-resistant_enterobacteriaceae

/desperately need superbugs which at the very least don't end up killing human hosts

C'mon, there has to be at least one beneficial bacteria that got mutated to super(beneficial)bug status.

Is every instance of lactation that is not caused by the normal processes of pregnancy and childbirth classified as the medical condition known as galactorrhea?

And on a different note, what forums out there would you guys recommend for dedicated discussion of medical topics?

edited 5th Dec '15 1:43:29 PM by MarqFJA

Yes and here, respectively.

So the term would apply to a woman who can operate as a full-time wet nurse because she's been lactating ever since she hit puberty (well, more like ever since she reached the puberty stage where regular lactation becomes physiologically possible, to be accurate), with her never experiencing any negative symptoms specifically tied to the malign forms of galactorrhea? I ask because Wikipedia doesn't talk much about the benign form(s) of the condition, and I can't seem to find any other source that discusses the topic, so the general impression I get is that galactorrhea is treated as an inherently bad medical condition (contrast with heterochromia, which can be both benign as well as a symptom of a not-so-benign disorder).

... And when I said "dedicated discussion", I meant places where I could ask the few questions I occassionally happen to ask that seem to go beyond the depth or breadth of expertise of this thread's regular posters. Not that I'm saying you're doing a bad job, of course.

I'm looking for a disease that can cause a coma when it starts getting severe, yet is still survivable (with treatment) when it gets to that point. The disease should have a pretty wide age range as to who it can affect. Does anything match this description?

While I'm here, another coma-related question: Are lucid coma dreams a thing (assuming coma dreams in general a thing)?

Meningitis?

@Yomegami: Basically, anything to do with the brain or anything that alters its blood, oxygen or glucose supply (e.g. meningitis, intracranial bleeds, strokes, hypoxia, hyper/hypoglycemia, etc).

@Marq FJA: You're quite right in that most incidences of galactorrhea - especially ones that last as long as you've described - are virtually always going to be considered pathological. The reason this is the case is because (unlike heterochromia) milk production is hormonally regulated - specifically via prolactin, with the hormone needing to be many times (I think it's around 10x) normal levels in order for milk to be produced. Meaning, in order for milk to be continuously produced, there needs to be a continuous overproduction of prolactin as well, most typically in the form of a tumour or secondary to medication. Granted, a fair number of hyperprolactinemia cases are iatrogenic but these tend to be transient and aren't high enough to cause lactation.

edited 6th Dec '15 10:32:03 AM by peasant

What about genetics being responsible for the unusual production of prolactin?

Hormone levels do feedback. A lot. Genetics that give you that are going to screw something else up that will impact you adversely. -_-

Really? Pregnant women who successfully give birth and breastfeed their babies afterwards have to deal with such heightened levels for well over a year; you'd think if anyone would show such adverse effects, it would be them.

We're kind of built for it. Men, not-so-much. And, even then, it doesn't always work right.

If you push your body into producing milk for longer than 18 months at a time, on your own future osteoporosis and current electrolyte imbalance be it.

edited 7th Dec '15 1:10:18 AM by Euodiachloris

... Wait, what? What does prolactin do that would cause that, exactly?

Prolactin induces milk production. And milk production does consume calcium and other minerals.

OK, so... What if the woman in question had a higher concentration of those minerals in her diet?