Category Archives: Issues in Science

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Trying to lose weight? Avoid the Tapeworm Diet!

 

Humans may use half of their imagination for weight loss. To be slim, all kinds of brain-opening methods of weight loss are endless, such as taking ribs, freezing diet, cutting stomach, swallowing cotton balls, vomiting… Among the strange weight-loss methods, the Tapeworm Diet is the most dangerous.

However, the mite diet is so simple and rude that it always attracts people who want to take shortcuts. Just take a piece of mites, no need for diet and exercise, and wait for the eggs to hatch in the body. These parasites will start their mission to help the body absorb the hateful nutrients. This completely hits the pain point of human beings who want to lie down and get thin.

So, is it feasible to use mites to lose weight? First, let’s understand how terrible aphids are.

Among all parasites, aphids are a heterogeneous species. As an intestinal parasite, they are mainly known as “big” and longer than the human body. However, they can hide in your body for a few years, but you cannot feel their existence. You will not be told by doctors that there are alien invasions until your headache is unbearable, and you are tortured by nausea, vomiting, and convulsions.

Taenia saginata (beef tapeworm) and Taenia solium (pork tapeworm) are mostly used for weight loss. Eggs or gravid proglottids are passed with feces. Thus, Cattle and pigs became infected by ingesting vegetation contaminated with eggs or gravid proglottids.

life-cycle of pig tapeworms and cattle tapeworms ( courtesy of DPDx)

 

Take the pigs (T. solium) as an example. When the mites enter the pig stomach, the stomach acid protease will digest the outer shell. After the egg shell breaks, the aphid larvae will escape. At this stage, the larvae have six hooks. Therefore, they can easily pass through the stomach wall and reach other parts of the body. In general, the destination of them is striated muscle. But some of them will reach other parts of the body, including the brain, liver, eyes and subcutaneous tissues. Once these mites settle down, it grows into a capsule thatprotects them from the immune system. In this stage, they are called cysticercosis.

If people do not fully heat pork before eating them, these capsules will enter the human body alive. They will be encapsulated by digestive juice and transform into adults that have head segments to adsorb on the human intestinal wall. Aphids use fluff to absorb the gut nutrition for their own needs.

However, what happens next is creepy. Aphids’ neck segments will continue to split and produce more body segments which will gradually mature. Adult tapeworms can shed ten segments one day, and each body section contains tens of thousands of eggs. After growing into sic hooks, these mites will enter various tissues and organs. As a result, the host people will have cysticercosis.

If they invade our skin, it is skin cysticercosis.

It can be said that the cysticercosis that normal humans try to avoid, the extreme dieters are open to this. The locusts are not only consuming calories but also consumes the host himself or herself.

 

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Posted on January 28, 2019 by in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science

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Why peer review is so important?

Every science student should know the importance of peer review that it involves other experts in the same field to check the validity of academic paper and suitability of publication. However, in real life peer review still lacks sufficient attention and that has much impact on the public more than you think!

John Bohannon is a journalist and PH.D. in molecular biology of bacteria. He thinks many publishers pay little attention to peer review and one of many reason is for profit.

In 2013, he made up 304 papers about a biologist Ocorrafoo Cobange at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara found some anticancer element collected from a lichen. They are unusual because the biologist and the Wassee Institute of Medicine do not exist, and this anticancer element is fake. John submitted 304 papers to 255 open-access journals worldwide and 157 of these papers were accepted. Only 36 papers were reviewed and 16 of them were still accepted after “peer review”. Certainly, John withdrawal these 16 papers before they actually get published. The results of his “experiment” were quite shocking. Based on this outcome, he published a paper on Science revealed many publishers consider profit from publication before subscriptions.

He did another experiment 1 year later. In 2014 he recruited 15 people through facebook to do a 3-week experiment. They aged from 19 to 67 years old, and 5 of them were male and 10 of them were female. John randomly assigned them to 3 groups. One group followed regular diet. One group followed a low-sugar diet and the other group followed a low-sugar diet plus 40 grams of black chocolate. John with his partners measured 18 kinds of health data for 15 people everyday and after 3 weeks they found that 2 groups followed low-carb diet lost 5 pounds of averaged weight. Between the 2 treatment groups, the group ate a bar black  chocolate everyday for 21 days lost their weight faster than the other group and their cholesterol level had decreased.

John and his partners started to write paper after the defective experiment. After some time they finished the paper ” Chocolate with high Cocoa content as a weight-loss accelerator”, which was a well-formed paper. It has proper format, eligible literature review and figures displaying data. They submitted it to 20 publisher and accepted by some of publishers within 24 hours. In 2015, John published this paper on International Archives of Medicine after he paid 600 euros. John did not stop his “experiment” then. He recomposed his paper and made a news manuscript. In a short time, many newspapers companies reprint it and resulting in a widespread across the world.

After a few months, John wrote an article “I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How.” and explained how bad lacking peer review can impact on everyone’s life.

The paper has been removed from the International Archives of Medicine website but people can still see it online.

 

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Posted on January 28, 2019 by in Issues in Science, Science Communication

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Stop cheating yourself! Probiotics can’t treat your stomach flu

Imagine your cousin is terribly exhausted by a stomach flu that he accidentally got during the weekend, and he pukes everywhere. Which treatment would you choose? One pill full of probiotics so that they can fight away the ‘bad germ’ that roams your cousin’s gut? Or just a simple hot water bag and a bowl of thin soup? Which treatment do you think will help you get rid of the terrible puking faster? I bet most of you would choose to take the probiotics, since from what we learnt on the internet, probiotics are effective in fighting away the ‘bad germs’ that lies inside your gut. They can adjust your gut microbes, make your skin looks better, help you digest food more efficiently, and finally build a well-regulated and healthy gut environment. More importantly, they are not as merciless as the antibiotics, which will kill whatever left in the gut and leave a gut free of both good and bad germs behind. At least, that was what most videos on Youtube say about the benefits of probiotics.

However, is it true? Is it possible for just a small pill of probiotics to have the ability to save your gut? How good are these small, almost invisible to naked eyes creatures? The answer,unfortunately, is no. In the case of a gut inflammation caused by virus or bacteria, the probiotics can do nothing better than simple placebos. According to two recent big studies in the U.S., probiotics are inefficient in preventing the development of moderate-to-severe gut inflammation, and symptoms of the researched subject shows no difference against the placebo group.

One of the research mainly focused on Lactobacillus rhamnosus and L. helveticus, both are commonly used probiotics. Participants of this research are 3 to 48 months old children that has been diagnosed as gastroenteritis, commonly known as the gut flu or the stomach flu. In this study, participants were randomly selected and separate into two groups, one receives the probiotics while the other group receive the placebo for two weeks. At the end of the study, the outcome of the participants were evaluated to determine if the probiotics or the placebo had treated their illness.  Among all the participants who received the probiotics, 26.1% of them developed into a moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis, while 24.7% of the placebo group developed a moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis. This means that the probiotics is of no use in preventing the development of moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis.

cartoon shows how probiotics help us to regulate a healthy life

So what exactly should we do when we are facing a gastroenteritis? And is it true that probiotics are all useless? Researchers have not given a clear answer yet. What is true is that next time when a stomach flu strikes, do not panic, before purchasing the expensive probiotics, keep asking yourself do you really need it.

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Posted on January 14, 2019 by in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

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Starving cancer: testing claims of disease prevention with intermittent fasting

Posted on January 14, 2019 by | 2 comments

As the title suggests, yes I don’t eat breakfast *gasp* so I fast for the majority of the day with the first meal being after 12pm, and my second meal with hopefully no snacks in between at 6/8pm. And might I add, most days I limit my carbohydrates intake, meaning no bread, no rice, no sweet happiness.

And why do I go through this trouble and pain you might ask – after looking at my genetic data and family history of cancer combined with very popular research in nutrition emerging in the media, I decided I can take this matter into my own hands and experiment on myself what works best and maybe see results as these studies progress long-term. I started listening bits here and there of podcasts, particularly first FoundMyFitness and then slowly incorporating The Joe Rogan Experience into the repertoire; so these diet changes have taken over my life, with Dr. Dominic D’Agostino being the keynote speaker of this long conference I’m attending since this summer.

Starving cancer: Dominic D’Agostino at TEDxTampaBay by TEDx Talks

Intermittent fasting can be done in various ways, with only 2 days of the week calorically restricted, or the way that I chose – time restricted – done with 16hrs fast and 8hrs eating frame. This approach has existed for ages really, mostly practiced by some religions, but now we’re seeing not only positive effects in terms of weight loss, but also disease prevention, improved biomarkers like insulin resistance, and simply put a better way of life. Moreover, the diet comes with incredible research supporting cell autophagy and repair, and longevity claims thanks to DNA repair. When combined with a carb-limiting diet like ketogenic diet, tumour cells are under intense metabolic stress leading to apoptosis, as those depend mostly on glucose for their life cycle. Also, since you eat at specific times and limit carbohydrates, your energy levels will have fewer spikes (i.e. no sugar highs and crashes) and your body will run at its optimum levels.

I admit, this is hard to wrap your head around let alone commit to such a lifestyle change, as we cannot imagine giving up sweet glucose; but fear not, our brain is flexible and can adapt to the new energy source *ketones* that we can see in the diagram below as beta-hydroxybutyrate going through Krebs cycle generating ATP for our body’s energy:

Finally, I wanted to point out that while the media makes this seem like the cure-all option with sparkling headlines, this is definitely not the case, as we learn in pharmacology “cure-all = probably BS”. A lifestyle change in diet usually has to come hand-in-hand with an exercise regimen, and of course, this promising research has not yet shown its future face. In the meantime, I will continue to experiment with this and maybe kill my family’s cancer (?) I’ll let you know in some years. Research, investigate, get informed and maybe try yourself?

-Nicole Bostan

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Phage Display: A powerful Technique and its Applications

Posted on January 14, 2019 by | Leave a comment

An overview

Phage display is a very strong technique in drug discovery and development. It has many applications in improving the immunological studies such as immunotherapy, diagnosis, and development of monoclonal antibodies and peptides. The technique was initially demonstrated by George P. Smith in 1985. Its use for the production of recombinant antibodies was confirmed by McCafferty and his colleagues in 1990. Since then, a number of research groups have represented essential improvements of the technique for its applications in biological sciences. This technique allows for expression of a protein molecule such as an antibody on the surface of a bacteriophage.

Phage display system. Source:https://www.cusabio.com/Phage-display-service.html

Phage expression system

Phage show differs from traditional expression systems in that the foreign gene sequence is spliced into one of the phage coat proteins, so that the foreign amino acid sequence is genetically fused to the amino acids of the coat protein to make a hybrid fusion protein. The hybrid coat protein is included into phage particles or virions as they are released from the cell, so that the foreign peptide or protein area is displayed on the outer surface.The  foreign peptide might be fragments of antibody molecules containing fragment antigen binding (Fab) or single chain fragment variable (scFv). Both Fab and scFv are parts of antibody, which bind to antigen and expression of these parts on bacteriophage could be very helpful for study of antigen antibody interactions.

Phage_basic-WebGrafiken. Displaying of Fab fragment on bacteriophage. Source:https://www.morphosys.com/science/drug-development-capabilities/hucal

Displaying of scFv on bacteriophage. Source:http://www.kck.usm.my/diagnosticbook/?q=content/chapter-24-generation-recombinant-antibodies-display-technologies-diagnostic-applications

Phage display provides selection of specific antibodies

The produced phage antibodies are very important tools. It is possible to select specific antibodies against a desired antigen among phage antibodies, which received different antibody genes in an antibody library. The selected specific antibodies facilitate both immunotherapy and diagnosis.

The following video demonstrates the phage display system and selection of specific antibody in an antibody library.

Video taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqQDZxoCGqE

Application of phage display

Phage antibodies have been useful for immunization therapies, which may lead to development of new tools used for treatment of cancer, autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease. The utilization of some phage antibodies against breast, colorectal and pancreatic cancer shown some promising results regarding the cell growth inhibition of the cancer cells. The usage of phage display antibodies in designing diagnostic and therapeutic agents for autoimmune disease is growing. In Myasthenia gravis Fab antibodies against nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChR) caused reduced function of receptors at the neuromuscular junction. The role of selected phage antibodies in neurological disorders are also reported. Intracellular antibody fragments are potential therapeutic agents for neurological disorders due to their specificity for recognition of unusual intracellular proteins. In addition, the importance of phage display in hematological applications is shown. Anti-ABO, anti-Rh and anti-Kell antibodies were the first antibodies selected against red blood cells for hemagglutination assays.

Phage displayed peptides seem to be better molecular imaging agents compared to radiolabeled antibodies due to their small size, rapid blood clearance and tissue penetration. Recently, the application of phage display technique in the vaccine development and delivery is also described. The prominent role of phage display in healthcare, medicine and diagnostic will continue to expand.

Phage Display Derived Peptides for Osteosarcoma Imaging. Source:http://www.wmis.org/abstracts/2010/forSystemUse/papers/P0844B.html

– Setareh Moazen

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Renewable Energy…How About Poop?

Posted on January 14, 2019 by | 1 comment

Yes, you read that right. In a recently published paper, researchers turned human waste into a carbon-rich material, which they found produced enough energy when burned to be considered a potential energy source in the future.

Human waste is typically thought of as unsanitary and harmful, as it has the potential to carry pathogens and transmit diseases. However, it is also composed of high levels of carbon, so after being processed, it can actually be turned into a carbon-rich coal-like material called hydrochar. This method of processing is called hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), and does not generate any hazardous by-products. It heats the wet biomass, dries it by removing most of the water content, and sterilizes the product by degrading most of the micro-pollutants.

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons

The produced hydrochar can be turned into pellets (as pictured) and used as a biomass fuel. (Photo Source: © Kapilbutani and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

Human waste is typically treated either chemically or biologically. However, many developing countries have difficulty accessing these treatments, making it difficult to handle and sanitize large amounts of human excreta.

One way of reducing it is using it as a soil fertilizer. Human excreta, specifically feces, have actually long been used as a fertilizer, as it contains key plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Humans have repurposed poop before, so why not use it as an energy source? The study found that the amount of energy released as heat from the combustion of hydrochar was high enough to potentially be used as an energy source. If this method is perfected, it would be tackling two problems at the same time – waste and energy.

A man pouring fertilizer onto a field to dry. (Photo Source: © Ahmad Masood / Reuters)

With our climate rapidly changing, it is important to develop new methods of gathering usable forms of energy that are both renewable and sustainable. In my opinion, using human excreta as a potential biomass fuel is very smart, as it is cheap, readily available, can help treat and reduce the amount of human waste in developing countries, and can possibly be used as a sustainable and renewable form of energy in the future.

– Kristy Ip

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