Red Hot Chile Seniors?
When it comes to entitlement programs, who can beat Lo Prado, a working-class suburb of Chile's capital city, Santiago? There, the mayor is handing out free 50-mg Viagra pills to senior citizens who are doctor certified as suffering from erectile dysfunction. No health insurance coverage is needed, but the afflicted age-60-plus citizens do have to register with the Lo Prado health service. Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete, who is a physician and former director of Chile's Institute of Public Health, said that he started the program because “an active sexuality improves the overall quality of life,” and that other mayors in the Santiago area have told him they plan similar programs. The Bureau of Indications' South American office will monitor next year's birth rates in the region.
Bread Mold for Better Health
Certain mold cells have a nifty mechanism that protects the mold organism from genetic abnormalities. Seems some University of Missouri researchers have isolated this “meiotic silencing” device, and see potential for its application in us higher life forms to protect against nasties like the HIV virus. When one chromosome in a pair has an extra gene not found in its partner chromosome, it is a good indication of an intruder, and the fungus will “turn off” all copies of that gene during the sexual process known as meiosis. For this “show me” breakthrough, the Missouri scientists received the Beadle and Tatum Award (named after Nobel Prize-winning geneticists George Beadle and Edward Tatum) for outstanding and original research by a scientist using Neurospora, a type of bread mold. So, the next time you find mold on your sandwich, don't say “Eeeww!” Say “Eureka!”
Hypertension: Stink-Bomb It Away
British researchers (at King's College London and Peninsula Medical School, Exeter) have created a drug that pumps up the volume of hydrogen sulfide gas in the body. Testing on laboratory rats showed that the pungent gas is good at widening arteries, hence significantly lowering blood pressure. Although the scientists' article in Circulation proclaimed the potential of “an entirely new therapeutic approach for the treatment of hypertension,” we are grateful that the authors also foresee the need for much more research, including safety tests. After all, if the gas responsible for rotten-egg odors were to run rampant in some patients and escape, the environmental side effects might again evoke that Hindenberg hydrogen-type disaster cry, “Oh, the humanity!”
Immunity? It's a Swamp Thing
Louisiana biochemists are working not on gaseous cures but on proteins from alligator blood to help fight the infectious ills of humanity. With MRSA-like complications in burns and diabetic ulcers gaining resistance to antibiotics, “The goal of our project is to find the proteins that lead to the exceptionally strong innate immune system in alligators,” said one of the researchers, Kermit Murray, Ph.D., a chemistry professor at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. In lab studies, gator white-blood-cell extracts killed not only MRSA but several strains of Candida albicans, and showed considerable promise as well against HIV. The unanswered research question: How long does a scientist have to wrestle the gator before it consents to give blood?
Is It Sport, or Is It Research?
Now, we know that early-morning fun runs aren't for everyone, but when a bunch of emergency docs pick dodgeball as the extracurricular sport at their annual meeting, are they looking for exercise or for professional practice? The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine held its meeting in Washington last month, and no fewer than 16 teams signed up for the SAEM dodgeball tournament—the proceeds of which, it is noted, are donated to the SAEM Research Fund. The requisite waiver form states, “I assume all risk of injury to my person and property that may be sustained in connection with any activity including the tournament or pickup games.” No word on whether damaged limbs or concussed craniums are considered the property of the Research Fund.