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Dye Used In Blue M&Ms Can Lessen Spinal Injury
SydShamino writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that the dye used in blue M&Ms and other foods can, when given intravenously to a lab rat shortly after a spinal injury, minimize secondary damage caused by the body when it kills off nearby healthy cells. The dye is called BBG or Brilliant Blue G. Given that 85% of spinal injury patients are currently untreated (and some doctors don't trust the treatment given to the other 15%), a relatively safe treatment like this could help preserve some function for thousands of patients. The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue." The researchers are "pulling together an application to be lodged with the FDA to stage the first clinical trials of BBG on human patients."
"... so every year we have a bring-your-child-to-work day where we inject some M&M dye into the lab rats and let the kids play with them. And Gunderson's kid has this nasty tendency to just baseball them into the wall and, well, we noticed the blue colored mice were recovering much better from the wall impact injuries ..."
Seriously though is there like a lab out there giving rats spinal injuries and jacking them full of chemicals? Cause if there is, I've got my resume handy!
My work here is dung.
Can be considered healty now?
At least if you have a spinal injury or possibly other type of nerve damage?
Or will you have to eat a truckload of M&M before there is any effect?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I give you my red one, you give me your blue one?
Notice that the eyes have completely changed color as well. I'm thinking I do not want my eyes filled with blue tint.
If you take the red dye nothing happens. You will never know. :O
Please visit http://www.mederbil.com/ i7, GTX 275, 4 1TB Caviar Green in RAID 0+1 array, EVGA X58 3X SLI Board, Silver
Time to buy more blue products.
...I've been focusing on the green ones!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Don't take the red pill. Take the blue pill. It's better for your spine.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue.
Do they also start taking part in voiceless percussion stage performances?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Glad to see the blue M&Ms won't be going the way the red ones did in 1976.
M&Ms are good for your health... provided that you've just suffered a crippling spine injury.
There aren't enough dang Blue M&M's!
Seriously! Enough Red, Brown, and Yellow! I get like an entire bage of those!
my spinal cord is now impervious to injury. also, my arteries are impervious to blood flow and my waist is impervious to pants.
A neut, too.
Isn't blue the sexy girl M&M that makes Red and Yellow act stupid all the time?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Akira?! I for one look forward to our blue-skinned gut-bar-arm having pyscho-kinetic energy wielding japanese manga overlords!
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
nat geo posted an article. basically, the blue dye helps prevent the initial swelling which compresses spinal cord tissue to the point of tissue death. less tissue death = better recovery.
The summary and CNN article don't mention it in detail, but other articles on this study have said that the first application of BBG has to come within 15 minutes of injury for it to have any benefit. If it does get approved at some point, you'd almost want carried by first responders instead of having to wait until you reach the emergency room.
Instead of being nuked blue when you smoke at LSC, you also get nuked blue when you get a spinal injury.
Cool.
Fight Spammers!
I would prefer to be called The Blue Max than ... matt.
All the dye does, according to the article, is prevent the body from damaging itself further following a spinal cord injury. It must be injected before that additional damage can occur--I wonder if this will end up in every first-aid kit? That's the only way I see it helping.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Now can we really make M&Ms (and tons of other foods) better by getting rid of the awful yellow dye garbage (tartrazine)? It's been shown to affect tons of people negatively and some even link it to childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder and hyperactivity.
Seriously, we can do without yellow foods or find something much safer, can't we? Why do we continue to put use this as a food dye when there are so many issues with it?
It's a real pain in the ass to analyze ingredient lists of every single thing I buy to make sure it doesn't have that in it, and it's in very non-obvious things as well (things that don't even look that yellow). Plus they don't draw attention to it like other food allergies, it's just hidden near the bottom of ingredient lists. And I'm sure I've accidentally had it at restaurants causing me to feel like crap and get headaches and feel sick afterwards.
Ban tartrazine.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
"Well sir, you have a choice; you can turn blue and maybe regain some function or you can stay paralysed and not look like an alien".
I'd need to be pretty damn convinced before I willingly had myself turned a light blue.
I'm sure there are sound methods involved in this, but it sounds kinda like some lab techs have two dartboards, one labeled "thing to do to mouse" and another labeled "thing to inject into mouse to see if it gets better" and are playing a drinking game.
"Well, the Tide With Color-Safe Bleach injection didn't fix Squeaky's 'beetus. Your turn, Roy!"
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp.
Isn't it nice that they leave out the part where they break the backs of the animals first. Makes it sound almost like an animal hospital taking in injured creatures and saving them with the food dye.
Seems to me we should be contracting out mobsters as researchers. Because they also just 'happen' to find people who suffer spinal cord injuries.
Liberty.
The red dye is made from bugs!
I couldn't find what this blue dye is made out of in wikipedia. It doesn't mention M&Ms but does mention it's used in chemistry for determining protein concentration in a solution, and there's a link to a BBC article about reducing the effects of spinal injury. I wish someone who is knowledgeable about this would update the wiki.
Free Martian Whores!
It would be unfair if only one color was a useful medical treatment.
I guess I'm a little confused. So I'm up on my roof, cleaning my gutters or hanging Christmas lights; I fall off and break my spine in half. The ambulance takes me to the hospital and the doctor says what, "Just walk it off, you'll be fine." What am I missing here?
I would think all those people walking around with broken spines would like at least SOME treatment.
you're slipping guys.
I do love how they replaced the red colouring in M&Ms with cochineal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal_dye - made from insect juice - to placate consumer concerns.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Now available in prescription strength!
Not exactly immortality though...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Back in the 70s, I always thought Frank Rizzo was a little "out there" when he had all of the Philly police vehicles painted bright blue like this one.
Now, with this new finding, over 35 years later, it all starts to make sense.
The actual research article mentioned in the CNN blurb is in the most recent (as in today) issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
or else David Lee Roth would definitely refuse this treatment!
He'd probably trash the OR, too.
Maybe M&M/Mars, thanks to all the free and undeserved publicity, would be willing to help fund the necessary study, since no drug company seems interested in doing so (after all, there's no profit in selling a commodity food coloring.)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
that blue M&M's would be this centuries aspirin?
BBG is lower due to the high binding affinity of BBG for proteins, as is characteristic for all Coomasie dyes (14). Never- theless, BBG outside the lesion was minimal, indicating that BBG primarily entered the lesion via the disrupted bloodspinal cord barrier.
Our mutual friend wikipedia tells us that Coomassie blue started as a fabric dye in Africa.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Notice that the eyes have completely changed color as well. I'm thinking I do not want my eyes filled with blue tint.
Umm, actually that would be AWESOME. You would have a cured spinal injury and you'd look like fuckin' Muadib!
Now I have another reason to keep stuffing my face and getting fatter - jerks! :P
Ave Molech Setting
Now I too, can be blue and walk around naked like Dr. Manhattan.
Lets compare red to blue coloured things:
In Health:
Fire is less healthy when inserted into your body than water (+1 blue)
In money:
20 Euro blue note buys more at Quiznos than 10 Euro red note (+1 blue)
In the Matrix:
Red pill allows you to live in a decrepit city underground, implanted with large amounts of metal in your head and constantly hunted by squid robots itching to place dendrites through your ribcage and/or face.
Blue Pill allows you to live in a nice modern city with noticeable lack of said squid robots. And now it helps you avoid and/or lessen the impact of spinal injuries. (+11!!one1 blue)
Winner? Blue!
Forget the medical advancement. Where can I get me a cool blue/white rat?!
How the *#%)( do you inject a blue M&M. And is that with or without peanut?
Privacy is terrorism.
Finally the blue man won't be singing the bluez all alone
ideopath @ play
In related news, the sexual partners of male lab rats injected with Yellow #5 reported far less damage to vaginal tissue following copulation...
Seriously, I can't believe the shit we put into our food! What other crazy effects do dyes like this have that we don't know about?
All cultures eat bugs, we Americans just like having it hidden behind weird names that sound like any other chemical.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
... sometimes you actually discover something and have to write a paper about it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Which means that restricting it to use in trauma centers is going to end up with a lot of nonurban victims left paralyzed for life. Trouble is, administering it outside of a trauma center is going to cause a lot of problems with licensure etc. Which causes me, as a nonurban first responder, to simultaneously stress out and reach for the popcorn.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Here dude, this will get you HIGH!!!
Next day -
Holy shit dude. You're blue!
This is better than that sleeping drunk girl whose friends write all over her.
...
Gosh, you'd think something that's FDA-approved to be present in visible quantities in foods marketed heavily to children wouldn't need *additional* FDA approval for these clinical trials... you mean, blue dye might not be entirely safe? Who woulda thunk?
I prefer my chocolate to be chocolate-covered, thank you. Artificial chemicals are best left to things like debilitating spinal injuries or cancer treatment.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
guess I should have eaten a large amount of blue M&M's right before the wreck that left me a T10 - T12 paraplegic
And since it's an injected drug, there are all sorts of legal restrictions on who can administer it. The list does not include EMT-Bs (basic emergency medical techs), only full paramedics [1] -- who are not always around when you need one.
[1] Training for paramedics beyond the standard "field medic" is extensive, including cadaver labs and stuff like that. Even so, they don't administer drugs without explicit direction from medical control (typically nearby ER doc.)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Indeed.
"The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue."
If they test this on fat people, don't blame me if I have the sudden urge to start singing an Oompa Loompa song.
So, this *explains* how Desslok could survive being blown to smithereens every season and then come back next season for more punishment. "I do so hate a man who laughs at his own jokes..... HAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA"
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Nuf said.
Why mod this informative? It's a value judgment, people; I know almost all of us agree with it, but it's not informative. We're scientists for goodness sakes! We should know the difference between information and opinion.
Amazing that so far no one has made any Dr. Manhattan jokes. I'm seriously disappointed.
Rat meat if very good and tasty for you: http://www.snopes.com/photos/food/rats.asp Just think of how blue meat would sell!
No, it's made from an extract from their exoskeletons...
Bug juice has a proud military history and is Disney approved.
The juice is made from boiling their dried bodies, if I recall correctly.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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So is aspirin -- and it's off-limits to EMT-B or equivalent personnel. I kid you not -- if I'm treating someone who has an epi pen, asthma inhaler, or even oral aspirin, I can "help" them do it themselves but not actually administer it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
There are some minor differences between "ingested" and "injected" that come into play. For instance, Coca-Cola is approved for ingestion, but I really don't think you want it squirted directly into your bloodstream.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This articles begs to be tagged "smurf".
I mean, healing people with blue dye...
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Are these humans lawyers, music industry executives, or Microsoft programmers? Context is key.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
cornhole, not piehole.
I want to know how much blue dye is needed on an ongoing basis to keep the mice blue. I like the look! Better yet, can we just genetically engineer blue-tinted white mice?
Great. Now I'm paralysed from the neck down and I look like Dr. fucking Manhattan.
It's been a long time.
This is why you eat the red ones last?
Ozzie won't go on stage without a brandy glass of one fousand bvown M&Ms. Maybe his stagehand just misheard the colour.
All those stage antics do carry a high risk of spinal injury, after all.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And my "office" (a ski resort) is a minimum of 30 minutes from the nearest hospital, and even by helicopter more often an hour.
Did I mention that we get a lot of cerebrospinal injuries?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The fact that an artificial food additive possessing chemical side-effects gets into our food supply without detection for decades is worrisome. This time it was a lucky happenstance with a positive outcome. Other times it's not (red dye). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye)
Camping on quad since 1996.
This is pretty scary, actually. We're randomly adding this stuff to food for no reason other than to turn it blue. So it turns out it has some sort of medicinal power, but it could just have easily caused cancer or horrible birth defects.
If our factory food looks so disgusting that it needs dyes, maybe we shouldn't be eating it in the first place.
And, for human testing, you (ostensibly at any rate) need informed consent, and various safeguards, IRB oversight, etc.
Interesting thing is that the Institional Review Board (IRB) only has jurisdiction over (U.S.) federally-funded research.
... will be filing a lawsuit shortly to block this attempted copyright infringement.
What's that with the colour blue?
Brilliant Blue G in this case, Prussian Blue in case of radiation poisoning (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/prussianblue.asp).
hahahah
... how does it behave and what does it do to you when ingested?
why are we posting April Fools stories today?
Seriously though, it really does read like an April Fools story!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
The federal statute regulating IRBs only imposes their authority on federally-funded research, but almost every institution applies those regulations to ALL research conducted at the institution. In other words, if you want to do human testing, you'll almost certainly need to get the approval of your IRB, whether you're getting federal funds or not.
Indeed. Text link, for those who can't watch youtube where they are:
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75acarlin2.phtml
So George Carlin was at least partially right about the blue food!
That's obviously just a cryorat. Cryorats are like normal rats, except they're slightly stronger and deal frost damage.
All of the ski patrol (/me included) are at least EMT-B equivalent [1]; several are paramedics and a couple are MDs. None of which is much help when the nearest trauma center is 150 miles by air and the altitude is enough that choppers are just short of ceiling. [1] OEC is a nonurban equivalent to EMT-B.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Nope. Drug administration (other than oxygen) is beyond the scope of practice for EMT-Bs.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,