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You Have Taste Receptors In Your Lungs
timothy points out news of a study from the University of Maryland's School of Medicine that found bitter taste receptors on the smooth muscle lining airways in the lungs (abstract in Nature). Quoting:
"The taste receptors in the lungs are the same as those on the tongue. The tongue’s receptors are clustered in taste buds, which send signals to the brain. The researchers say that in the lung, the taste receptors are not clustered in buds and do not send signals to the brain, yet they respond to substances that have a bitter taste. ... 'I initially thought the bitter-taste receptors in the lungs would prompt a "fight or flight" response to a noxious inhalant, causing chest tightness and coughing so you would leave the toxic environment, but that’s not what we found,' says Dr. Liggett. ... The researchers tested a few standard bitter substances known to activate these receptors. 'It turns out that the bitter compounds worked the opposite way from what we thought. They all opened the airway more extensively than any known drug that we have for treatment of asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).'"
it would not only be safer for children and people in general but vastly cheaper.
Cheaper?
If it can't be patented and net drug companies billions of $$$; I doubt there will be a company to spend the millions for the research required to get "bitter-taste-based medication" through FDA approval.
Once they have the patent on the method of operation ("bitter tasting substance used to treat COPD, or bitter tasting substance used to treat asthma by stimulating lung taste receptors"), they will charge the standard markups all proprietary drugs get.
IOW -- it will probably be more expensive, or we'll probably never see a product based on that come to market that can be legally marketed as such. Just a bunch of studies that show the idea is promising.
It's not very often that researchers stumble onto something cheap and simple that could potentially save hundreds of millions of lives. I sure hope it pans out in practice.
No, but it's every other week that some researcher thinks he has.
The answer is obvious, the fish neuroeceptors bonded with those in your own brain and you are now part fish. Do you find yourself flopping about when you are removed from water? Do you find yourself capable of eating until your stomach literally explodes because you have no receptors that tell you that you're full? Do you find yourself inexplicably drawn to plastic castles? If so you are a fishman, you best be hanging around the basement of draculas castle attacking anyone with a whip and sen ding him flying back into the water.
Monstar L