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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.
Ok.. my father-in-law died from ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) - I wonder if this might be relevant in the nerve death suffered there.
meh
...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.
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.
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?
Depends, if you can eat blue smarties INTRAVENOUSLY they might be helpful. I would work up to it by taking them in suppository form first.
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.
Notice that the eyes have completely changed color as well. I'm thinking I do not want my eyes filled with blue tint.
Yeah, given the choice between blue tinted eyes and spinal injury most people will chose spinal injury, I know I would.
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."
Do rats with blue eyes pray to earthworms?
I wouldn't mind being a Fremen myself...
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Did he possibly play blues?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That is the nature of research with animals. There is regulation (here in the U.S) that attempts to minimize pain when possible and guidelines that must be followed to acquire animals for research, but there has been substantial progress made through animal research. If you've got a viable alternative I'm sure it would be considered. Take a look at the wiki page for more info.
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.
I wish someone would invent something that creates light ... like ... well ... a bulb of some sort ... maybe .. ahh... a light bulb? No too crazy, yes much better to be in a wheel chair pissing all over yourself than potentially have your night time vision affected for a short while. The lil rodents turned blue for only a short time, it wasn't permanent, even a year is a short while vs permanent spinal damage.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
Seems to me we should be contracting out mobsters as researchers. Because they also just 'happen' to find people who suffer spinal cord injuries.
That's a good idea. They'd probably do it for free, too, because if there's one thing mobsters hate, it's a rat.
The enemies of Democracy are
The spice must flow!?
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,
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.
As someone who has permanent nerve damage in my back that makes me unable to feel my legs below the knee I can tell you exactly what several doctors have told me.
"At least you can walk." "Let me know if it gets worse."
Consider hiring people to clean your gutters or hang your Christmas lights.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice doggie!' till you can find a rock.-- Wynn Catlin
We can fix the mechanical damage to the bones and ligaments, but the current best-practice treatment for the nerve damage consists of waiting to see how bad it is, followed by physical therapy. After hundreds of years of research, we haven't found anything more effective, which is what makes this such big news.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
According to TFA, the blue tint disappeared within a week, and the regained mobility didn't manifest till the sixth week (at which point they killed the rat to dissect it) - so I doubt that this will be a long-term problem.
They did mention that they were surprised, upon dissection, to find out that the spinal cord was still blue even at the six-week mark. I imagine that even that would go away with time, though.
-- The Wanderer
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.
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.
... will be filing a lawsuit shortly to block this attempted copyright infringement.