The threat of Covid-19 has led people to do crazy things, but along with the idea of injecting bleach into the body, one of the craziest things I’ve seen is that people self-medicate with a drug that is usually s ‘used to treat parasites in horses, chickens and cattle.
Sales of ivermectin, a drug that is also used topically in humans against the scalp (i.e., rub it on the scalp, not drink it), have risen in the United States and Australia, thanks to the widespread rumor that it is a safe and effective treatment for Covid.
These rumors were fueled by a study conducted in Egypt that claimed that the death of Covid patients in the hospital was reduced by 90% when ivermectin was used. The study has since been withdrawn due to “ethical concerns,” but that hasn’t stopped the frenzy.
In a desperate situation, with people dying in the hospital for Covid, it is reasonable enough to see if medications such as ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine (an antimalarial drug also known as Covid treatment) can help.
Viagra began as a treatment for angina, but later participants in a trial at Morriston Hospital in Swansea reported an unexpected side effect: erections
The U.S. Drug Administration, Food and Drug Administration, has warned that in high doses (of the type used by veterinarians), the drug can be toxic, as it put it in one of its strange warnings: “No you are a horse, they are not a cow.Really, everyone.Stop it.
There are new trials investigating ivermectin, including that of Oxford University PRINCIPLE, which seeks treatments at home, and it may be as effective as social media experts claim, though I doubt it. In the meantime, I definitely discourage self-medication.
Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong about seeing if a drug developed for a purpose could be used for something completely different, known as “reuse”. This is how some of our most successful treatments came about.
Years ago, when I was doing a TV series about the search for modern medicine, I examined life-saving drugs that started with a different purpose.
Chemotherapy drugs, for example, originated from the poison gas attacks of World War I. During World War II, for fear that the Germans would use poison gas against Allied troops, two doctors at Yale University in the United States were asked to study mustard gas to find an antidote.
Instead of an antidote, what they discovered was something far more surprising: Doctors who had treated soldiers exposed to mustard gas during World War I observed that this killed many of their white blood cells, an important part of the our immune system.
Yale doctors came up with the idea that mustard gas could help patients with lymphoma, a cancer where the body begins to produce a large number of abnormal white blood cells. They were right: mustard gas binds to the DNA of cancer cells, which then self-destruct.
The chemotherapy drugs that were followed – and are used today – have the same basic mechanism: they are cytotoxic, poisonous to dividing cells.
Because cancer cells divide faster than healthy cells, they are poisoned more quickly.
A more recent example of a reused drug is Viagra, which began as a treatment for angina, but later participants in a trial at Morriston Hospital in Swansea reported an unexpected side effect: erections.
Therefore, in a desperate situation, with people dying in the hospital for Covid, it is reasonable enough to see if medications like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine (an antimalarial drug also known as Covid treatment) can help.
But you need to do proper clinical trials, not have a lot of people swallow them because of some posts on social media. In fact, along with the creation of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, clinical trials quickly tell us whether or not a reused medicine helps has been one of the UK’s major scientific contributions to the current crisis.
The advantage of using an already authorized drug for something else is that you don’t have to go through all the safety tests, which can take years and cost huge amounts.
The RECOVERY trial is a particularly important example, of which we should be proud, as it has already saved millions of lives. It was created in the UK in March 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, to investigate what treatments are effective against Covid19. Many of the drugs examined have been reused.
Research that would normally take years is compressed into months. Once a drug is shown to be safe and effective, doctors can use it with confidence, knowing that it will really help.
To date, more than 42,000 patients have been involved, recruited from 186 NHS hospitals, with surprising results. The RECOVERY trial was the first to show that an inexpensive steroid, dexamethasone, which is commonly used to treat allergies and skin conditions, can reduce a patient’s risk of dying if they are on a ventilator. of a third.
The trial also convincingly showed that taking hydroxychloroquine does not help and can be harmful, as hospital patients die in slightly higher amounts: high-dose aspirin and convalescent plasma (blood drawn from donors who have had Covid and containing many antibodies) was also found not to help.
One thing Covid has exposed is a growing gap between people who rely on science that comes from rigorous testing and people who prefer to rely on the advice of anti-vaxxers or influencers on social media.
Among the drugs they are investigating is baricitinib, which usually treats rheumatoid arthritis.
Separately, we can also find out soon if melatonin, widely used to treat insomnia, can also help patients with covid. There was some excitement after a small study in Open Heart magazine that showed patients who had been taking melatonin were less likely to die in the hospital.
But before you look for it online, you should know that while melatonin has some anti-inflammatory properties, these results could be due to chance.
One thing Covid has exposed is a growing gap between people who rely on science that comes from rigorous evidence and people who prefer to rely on the advice of anti-vaxxers or influential social media. I know who to trust.
It is a test that effective treatments are found in very amazing places, but we have to wait for the tests before using them.
The growing gap between the performance of boys and girls at GCSE and A levels is disappointing.
Sure, it’s worth celebrating the girls ’results, but what can be done to help the boys? A recent study suggests a new approach: raising their levels of “good” bacteria as babies.
Canadian scientists have been tracking thousands of babies since 2009 and found children with the highest levels of intestinal bacteria Bacteroidetes when they were one year old, had more advanced linguistic and cognitive knowledge at two years old.
Ttheirs was only true for boys (although girls also tended to have higher levels, so maybe they already had enough amounts).
Bacteroids produce sphingolipids, which nourish nerve cells in a growing brain. Levels can be increased in infants by eating a high-fiber diet and exposing themselves to nature.
Why does lack of sleep make you crave cookies?
I dream a lot, but recently issues have been largely related to stress, for example, I’m driving too fast on a narrow road with a steep drop to the left (on which I inevitably sink) or trying to get to somewhere and feel frustrated non-stop by the lack of trains.
I tell you this, despite knowing that other people’s dreams are boring, because new research suggests that important things happen in our brain while we dream.
We already know that dreams play a crucial role in helping to process our emotions and now it seems that they also help to sharpen our hunger.
If you deprive people of REM sleep, they are increasingly irritable. They are also hungry and want cookies
Most dreams occur in the stage of REM sleep (rapid eye movement), when we are almost completely paralyzed and move little, apart from the eyes that blink from side to side (hence it is called REM) .
This will probably keep us from stepping while we are in the hands of a dramatic and particularly intense dream.
Dreaming is a bit like free psychotherapy, where unpleasant memories and events of the day just happened are repeated, but it stays calm. This allows you to process and turn off your emotions.
If you deprive people of REM sleep, they are increasingly irritable. They are also hungry and want cookies.
This could be due to a newly identified circuit in the brain that is particularly active in REM sleep.
Studies on mice have shown that altering the activity of this circuit causes mice to eat more, suggesting that REM sleep plays an important role in controlling hunger. Another reason to sleep well and enjoy these dreams!