Slashdot Mirror
'Bad' Protein Linked to Numerous Health Problems
nbahi15 writes "A report in the July 13th edition of the online Journal of Clinical Investigation has linked the aP2 protein to asthma and several other diseases. It also suggests a connection between the metabolic and immune systems and these diseases." From a related Forbes article: "To study the effects of aP2, the researchers created genetically engineered mice that could not produce the protein. 'They're metabolic supermice,' Hotamisligil said. 'We cannot make them obese, diabetic or atherosclerotic. They don't develop fatty liver disease, and they don't develop asthma.' In mice with an animal model of asthma, the researchers found that aP2 regulated the infiltration of inflammatory molecules into the lungs."
Called aP2, the protein has no useful function in the body. It only appears during the course of disease, and seems to cause adverse effects on blood sugar levels and fatty acid metabolism.
Proteins without useful functions tend not to stay around in populations. Chances are that this protein is important for something. Good candidates are fighting off various parasitic infections, or dealing with some kind of physiological stresses. Those conditions may not arise much in Western lifestyles, and hence getting rid of aP2 may be a good idea for us, but the protein almost certainly has some kind of useful function under some conditions.
The Drosophila version of this protein has been shown to be absolutely required for creating leg joints. Without it, you get flies with short stubby legs that can't walk, and as a result die. See this paper for details.
The knockout mice mentioned above also have major problems, from a brief search of the literature. See this and this for example. This implies that the protein has critical functions that are so important that they are somewhat conserved all the way from flies to humans. So important, it seems, that the negative effects of having the protein don't outweigh the positive ones.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Actually, that particular conjecture in the study is piss poor if you look at it closely. The conjecture is based on a survey conducted on members of Mensa. Mensa is nowhere near a good representative cross-section of smart people. It boggles the mind, really, how the authors made the leap from the fact that Mensa has a higher percentage of asthmatics and myopes than the average to a correlation between asthma and myopia and intelligence. That is grossly inaccurate.
The only conclusion that you can draw from their study, with respect to this particular topic (which, incidentally, is just a small sidenote in the study), is that there is a correlation between asthma and myopia and Mensa. That's a no-brainer, really. Mensa is self-selected for people whose primary interests are purely intellectual. Myopes and asthmatics are physically predisposed towards activies like those conducted by Mensa. Duh. They seem to have forgotten that there are many people, such as myself, who've posted scores that would allow them into Mensa, but decline to join because their interests lie in areas other than brainteasers and discussions.
You cannot draw statistically valid conclusions about an entire population by studying a self-selected subset of that population.
Could it actually be a secondary side effect? That because someone is asthmatic, they're more likely to engage in more mentally stimulating activities, due to the fact that physical stimulation is off limits?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses