The last thing you remember is crashing your car. You end up in the hospital with major brain damage and slip into a coma for an extremely long time. When you wake up, you can finally see and hear what’s going on around you– your family and friends and doctors talking to you and asking questions. You understand exactly what they are saying, but your body just won’t move the way it should and you can’t even turn your eyes to glance at them. You can’t wiggle your toes to prove to your doctor that you’re “in there,” and after nine or ten years, the people around you start giving up hope.

Sound like a pretty bad situation? Unfortunately, this might be a true story for many survivors of serious accidents or illnesses who are classified as “vegetative” (they haven’t shown signs of awareness for six months). “Vegetative” people have basic reflexes and can breathe, make noises, and move their eyes, but are unable to track movements with their eyes, or perform voluntary movements when they are told to.

Until recently, there hasn’t been much evidence that vegetative people were truly aware of their surroundings. But this changed in 2006, when Dr. Adrian Owen found a way to communicate with people who couldn’t move; using an fMRI machine (functional magnetic resonance imaging), he identified two different brain areas that were activated when the patient imagined herself playing tennis, and when she thought about walking through her house. Playing tennis caused parts of the motor cortex to light up, while exploring the house activated another area in the center of the brain. Dr. Owen then asked several vegetative people obvious questions, like “Is the sky blue?” or “Do you have three siblings?” and they would think about tennis for yes, and house for no. The patients shocked doctors and scientists everywhere by answering almost all of the questions correctly.

Terri Schiavo– could fMRI have allowed her to communicate with her family?
(Photo courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com)

As soon as the public realized that fMRI can be used to communicate with vegetative people, everyone wanted this technology to become more accessible so they could use it. Right now, Dr. Owen is working on making fMRI machines more portable and user-friendly so family members of these accident victims could take advantage of it.

fMRI machines are bulky and expensive to run.
(Photo courtesy of Bing Images)

This discovery also brings up many more questions. What brain areas can be activated by other simpler thoughts (since walking through your house or playing tennis would take at least 30 seconds to imagine)? Will fMRI technology become advanced enough that you can guess exactly what the person’s thoughts are, without having to ask yes-no questions? And on a more serious note, can we rely on these machines to ask patients if they want to end their life support? There are lots of possibilities, and I’m excited to see where this will go in the future!

Sources:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/man-supposed-vegetative-state-communicates/story?id=17716726&singlePage

http://www.nature.com/news/neuroscience-the-mind-reader-1.10816

What kind of blog would this be if it didn’t at least mention the biggest sporting event in the world this month? The Olympics in Sochi started on February 6th with figure skating, and the closing ceremony will take place this Sunday, February 23rd. Most of these athletes have been training for their whole lives for their events and are unquestionably awesome at them. But some people might want to get an extra boost by trying performance-enhancing drugs before they compete.

So far, at least three athletes have failed doping tests in Sochi. One of them is a Russian biathlete who stepped down shortly before the games began; another is a German competitor who was found out this Friday; the third is an Italian bobsledder who was sent home on the 18th.

Elite Russian biathlete Irina Starykh failed a steroid test and was disqualified at the beginning of the games.  Picture courtesy of RiaNovosti (http://en.ria.ru/)

The purpose of drug testing isn’t just to even the playing field; steroids can have harmful effects on athletes’ health. One of the most common drugs is Oral-Turinabol, which does a great job boosting physical abilities. However, it also causes long-term heart and liver problems, along with more minor side effects like body hair and voice deepening.

Early in the games, chairman of the medical commission Arne Ljungqvist, expressed his confidence in Russia’s drug testing system: “Who knows who is the smartest, the athletes and their entourage or our scientists… I [personally believe that] our scientists are probably smarter than those around the athletes.”

And indeed, Russia has promised to implement the toughest drug testing system in Olympic history. They are using a new procedure called the “long-term metabolites method,” which can detect anabolic steroids more than six months after athletes take them. This method is apparently so effective that the IOC (the Russian committee responsible for drug testing) are starting to use it on frozen urine samples from the 2006 Olympics. But there is always the question, how many athletes have used performance-enhancing drugs, but for some reason were never discovered?

Right now, it seems that science is being used to both develop better performance-enhancing drugs and better ways to test for them. Do you think that maybe this is a no-win cycle and we should just allow steroid use in sports competitions? Or should there be stricter punishments for drugs so athletes and coaches would be less willing to try them?

Sources:

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/SOCHI-SCENE-Athletes-vs-scientists-5255219.php

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2012/08/24/why-its-time-to-legalize-steroids-in-professional-sports/

http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/2014/schedule/2014-02-23

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/21/italian-bobsledder-william-frullani-tests-positive/5675687/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/21/german-athlete-doping-winter-olympics-sochi/5671469/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/drugsinsport/10458454/IOC-to-act-after-new-testing-methods-reveal-hundreds-of-positive-results.html

So THON is happening this weekend, and there is no doubt that it’s for an important cause– in the United States in 2007, 10,400 children under age 15 were diagnosed with cancer and about 15% of them will die from it. Cancer is actually the most deadly disease for children in this age group. In 2009, the five-year survival rate for leukemia (the most common childhood cancer) was only 59%. The problem is that the current treatments for cancer often don’t keep the patient from relapsing years later.

The five-year survival rates for leukemia and similar cancers have been increasing over the past few years, but they are still rather low.

Obviously, research needs to be done to not only treat cancer, but to cure it and keep it from reappearing during the person’s lifetime.

One recent development seems promising. An article published in Science Translational Magazine reported the results of a massive clinical trial that tested a new therapy– researchers extracted some of the patients’ T cells (one type of white blood cell), genetically modified them to attack cancer cells, and injected them back into the patient’s body. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia causes B cells (a different type of white blood cell) to divide out of control, but because they look like regular cells, the body’s immune system doesn’t recognize it as harmful. Current treatments don’t work well for this type of leukemia; 70% of patients do not respond to chemotherapy and even those who do respond, or who have received bone marrow transplants, tend to relapse quickly.

The idea behind this new therapy is pretty simple; if the body’s own cells can be trained to fight cancer, the person would have a lifelong anti-leukemia “drug” that works constantly and is not toxic. In the end, it’s true the patient would not have any B cells (even healthy ones) but the health effects of this are much less severe than they would be for leukemia.

So far, 88% of leukemia patients who participated in the clinical trial have recovered completely after receiving this therapy.

One author of this study is very optimistic, saying, “These extraordinary results demonstrate that cell therapy is a powerful treatment for patients who have exhausted all conventional therapies… we are already looking at new clinical studies to advance this novel therapeutic approach in fighting cancer.”

This seems like a rather brilliant therapy and everyone is very optimistic about it. But what do you think? Could it be risky to modify the body’s cells and inject them back inside? What kinds of ethical concerns might come up later? Or is leukemia such a serious disease that these concerns aren’t the main priority?

Sources:

http://www.lls.org/diseaseinformation/getinformationsupport/factsstatistics/

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140219142556.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131211185050.htm

This past Saturday I decided to go to a Frontiers of Science seminar, just to see what it was like and because it involved chocolate. Frontiers of Science is a four part “mini-course” given by Penn State professors for the community. Anyone can attend (in fact there are a lot of awesome old people there), and the topics seem really interesting; next week the talk will be about killer asteroids!

The chocolate talk was given by Dr. Maximova and Dr. Guiltinan, two professors in the department of plant sciences who are trying to genetically modify cacao plants to survive better in warmer environments. This research is important, they explained, because cacao trees represent the livelihoods of many farmers living in Africa and South America. Chocolate is also a major cash crop and supports many local economies (including Hershey). However, global warming has made many regions much warmer than they should be, encouraging the growth of viruses and fungi– including ones that affect cacao trees. As a result, certain regions are becoming unsuitable for cacao growth. This is predicted to be much worse by 2050:

So research is being done to make cacao trees and other cash crops more resistant to warmer temperatures, and the “drought, floods, diseases, and pests” that come with it. Dr. Guiltinan gave an example: Black Pod Rot is a disease that causes cacao pods to turn black and rot, and has become more common as a result of climate change. The Penn State lab identified a gene that helps make trees more resistant to it, and is trying to breed together plants that overexpress this gene.

All in all, this research sounds fascinating, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about the “drought, floods, diseases, and pests” that were mentioned. Are genetically modification and selective breeding of cash crops really our biggest priority right now if we are faced with droughts and floods and diseases and pests? Would farmers in Africa be more affected by crop losses or by malaria? (Floods would help mosquitoes breed and spread malaria.) If global warming could harm cacao in such a significant way, how much would it affect the millions of other organisms that we are not genetically modifying?

Some would even argue that genetic modification of crops is unnecessary. Euloge Agbossou, a professor in Benin, Africa, said: “People are not waiting for engineers, scientists and researchers in order to adapt to climate change. They are aware of the phenomenon, they feel it around them and they have adapted to it.”

Personally, I feel it might help to focus on slowing down climate change. That may prevent a lot of problems. But what do you think? What would be the best way to fix world hunger and save the economy, while preserving biodiversity and the climate? It’s definitely a difficult question.

Basically, I really learned a lot from the talk on Saturday and it was super eye-opening. If anyone is interested in going to the Frontiers of Science series, here is some information about the lectures: http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/lectures-and-events/frontiers

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2011/10/04/an-open-letter-to-climate-change-deniers-and-skeptics-the-final-chocolate-straw/

http://www.facebook.com/notes/connect4climate/are-genetically-modified-crops-the-answer-to-climate-change/297533833605281

Can scientific developments and economic growth cause as much harm as they do good? Recent New York Times articles bring up this question by addressing an interesting topic: the increasing popularity of testosterone creams.

These creams are often prescribed to aging men to reverse the effects of aging; according to one study, people taking testosterone cream became stronger and had better endurance than those who were not. However, their chances of getting heart disease (particularly heart attacks and strokes) increased by about five times. Other studies have shown that this risk is especially high for men over 65– the age group that testosterone marketing is aimed toward.

Testosterone is supposed to be prescribed for men with a condition called hypogonadism, which causes extremely low testosterone levels. However, some physicians have been prescribing supplements to more and more people who have only slightly low levels of testosterone even though many others say there really isn’t a standard level of the hormone that everyone should have, and the risks of using testosterone cream would outweigh the benefits.

Dr. Lisa Schwartz, a professor at Dartmouth University, summed it up with: “We’re giving people hormones that we don’t know they need, for a disease that we don’t know they have, and we don’t know if it’ll help them or harm them.”

So with all the scientific evidence against it, why is testosterone treatment still so popular, and why hasn’t the government tried harder to regulate it? There have been no official, government-funded clinical trials to determine the benefits and risks of taking testosterone. As of now, we don’t know if the bone loss and decreased strength of older people is really due to low levels of this hormone, or if taking supplements would reverse these problems.

However, some people say that clinical trials (which would keep testosterone on the market for at least the duration of the trial) aren’t the best course of action; a Hunter College professor argued, “It’s in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies to have a trial going on for ten years. In that time, they can continue to sell testosterone.” She definitely has a point. Sales of testosterone gels alone (not counting supplements or pills or even nasal sprays) generated about $2 billion in the United States in 2013, and the profit is expected to double by 2017.

So at some point in history, testosterone was isolated and synthesized in large amounts, and then sold to people for a huge profit. But did this development happen for a good cause? Is it doing as much harm as it is doing good? We will definitely need to do more research to find out.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/us/a-push-to-sell-testosterone-gels-troubles-doctors.html?_r=0

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/weighing-testosterone-benefits-and-risks/

Ever since the the first rover landed on Mars decades ago, people have been wondering: what’s next? What else are we going to send to this planet? Could humans go on vacation on Mars, or maybe even live there for years at a time?

These questions have come up again in recent years, when three astronauts landed in Kazakhstan after spending six months aboard the International Space Station. These astronauts, and many others who have gone on previous missions, had experienced similar health issues: their eyeballs were squashed, resulting in farsightedness; they tended to eat and sleep less while in space; and the vestibular fluid in their inner ears, which gives people their sense of direction, made the astronauts extremely disoriented once they returned to gravity. Scientists think these are results of the lack of gravity in space. Fluid would build up in the top of the body, increasing the pressure in the brain, eyes, and chest.

The tricky thing is, it’s very difficult to predict these kinds of effects without sending people into space first. Even now, many decades after the first space mission, scientists have trouble explaining some of the “side effects” that astronauts have developed. And these are definitely major concerns if we want to spend more time in the ISS, or travel to Mars.

An astronaut is strapped to a treadmill aboard the ISS. In an environment with no gravity, exercising is required to keep bones from weakening and being broken down by the body.    (Photo courtesy of innova-pain.com)

Even though farsightedness wouldn’t have a huge effect on someone’s life, and vertigo would probably go away after a few days, NASA is worried about other less obvious, more dangerous, effects that astronauts might suffer. The massive amount of radiation that is normally absorbed by earth’s atmosphere could make astronauts more likely to die of cancer. And what are the long-term effects of having a lot of fluid in your head for a long time?

As Dr. Barratt (a physician who stayed at the International Space Station for six months) put it, “What are the long-term implications? That’s the $64 million question.”

Right now, studies are being done (with mice, and with astronauts who have spent time in space) to find out just what these implications are. Researchers are making solid progress and developing new technologies, like the treadmill-harness, to protect against the effects of space travel. It might be decades before we have learned enough to attempt a mission to Mars, but a program that would send healthy astronauts to Mars, and bring them back in the same condition, is definitely an awesome thing to work toward.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/science/bodies-not-made-for-space.html?ref=science