We’ve all heard of solid, liquid, and gas. But what about plasma?
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Bone marrow is a soft spongy material that is located inside of the bones. Bone marrow is necessary for the transition that stem cells make to become one of the types of blood cells (red blood cells, platelets or white blood cells). Bone marrow disease occurs when there is some kind of abnormality or interference with the production of blood cells. Leukemia, aplastic anemia and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are three types of bone marrow disorders that affect the production of blood cells and the bone marrow. Symptoms of each type of bone marrow disease will vary according to its severity, but tend to be similar in nature.
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Why didn’t it tell the world? Drug companies frequently have been pilloried for not fully disclosing negative side effects of their drugs. What happens when the opposite is the case?
A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.
The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed.
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CHICAGO (AP) — Newer drugs are substantially improving the chances of survival for some people with hard-to-treat forms of lung, breast and prostate cancer, doctors reported at the world’s largest cancer conference.
Among those who have benefited is Roszell Mack Jr., who at age 87 is still able to work at a Lexington, Kentucky, horse farm, nine years after being diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to his bones and lymph nodes.
“I go in every day, I’m the first one there,” said Mack, who helped test Merck’s Keytruda, a therapy that helps the immune system identify and fight cancer. “I’m feeling well and I have a good quality of life.”
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Are We Living Too Long?
Posted in biotech/medical, life extension
Medicine’s ever-increasing focus on longevity is bad for society, says a prominent physician. (But, who’d voluntarily give up those bonus years?)
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Curbing air pollution
Posted in sustainability
Today, on World Environment Day, we are encouraged to consider the theme for 2019—air pollution—and its effects on the global human population. We are told of the impacts of breathing in polluted, urban air and we hear governments around the world promising to tackle it.
🤔👀😂
Yes, seriously.
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Today, we wish to highlight a new open access publication in which the researchers take a novel approach to the regeneration of the thymus, a small but vitally important organ that is key to our immune system.
The thymus shrinks as we age
The thymus is one of the most important organs in the body, and it is where thymocytes produced in the bone marrow travel to become new T cells before being trained in the lymph nodes to become the defenders of the adaptive immune system. However, as we get older, the thymus increasingly turns to fat and starts to shrink, causing its ability to produce new T cells to fall dramatically. This process is known as thymic involution and actually begins shortly after puberty, so this is one aspect of aging that begins fairly early in life, although it is many decades later before its decline causes serious health issues.
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