Common Science

In a moment of rare foresight I decided to spend my 1 hour waiting for a connecting train at Euston station, visiting the latest exhibition on brains at the Wellcome collection . Previously I'd visited the exhibition on skin (unsurprisingly named SKIN ), which served up the right amount of visual and mental stimulation. This latest exhibition proved to be as interesting, but didn't live up to my own hype after the last visit. Security staff greeted me with the deferential smile of 'I'm just doing my job mate', as they politely searched my bag. After being established as benign, I entered through glass doors to be welcomed by an aptly simple title for the show: BRAINS. The familiar blurb preceeding the exhibition provided a précis and rationale for the show. The latter, as you can imagine, was due to a lack of understanding by the public and the obvious importance of the brain. I particularly enjoyed the boldness of the neuroscientists sentiment - to prove that per...

Novocaine, the commercial name for the anaesthetic Procain, has been sung about continually within the 20th century, from Alice Cooper and Bon Jovi, to Modest Mouse and King's of Leon. My favourite testament to the drug is by the UK's Eels, enjoy!

One of the most pressing needs in organ transplantation is the availbility of matched donor material - what this 'matching' specifically means is explained below. Mis-matching of donors and rejection of organs unfortunately happens quite often, and recipients require life long immunosuppressents to dampen the ensuing rejection, or in severe cases a new transplant. The reality and severity of donor mis-matching was clarified recently when  I saw an image of a patient with graft vs host disease (GVHD). In this setting it is the transplanted donor material which attacks/rejects the recipient, rather than the recipient rejecting the donor organ. Previously I had been taught about whole organ GVHD, whereby the transplanted organ harbours immune cells capable of attacking the recipient. This is especially serious when the transplant recipient is immunocompromised. However, the more serious aspect of this disease occurs in patients who...

Solid drawing skills, and only 5 likes on youtube!

Having attended a lecture about the potential benefits of peptide therapy for controlling aberrant immune responses, I was interested to hear about how a radical therapy for curbing allergies could be employed in this treatment. The lecture focused upon peptide immunotherapy as a treatment for curing autoimmunity (i.e. the host immune system attacking itself), this works by providing the individuals immune system with a piece of protein targeted by the response which switches off the destructive process. This mechanism of ignoring self is known broadly as tolerance, in healthy individuals the process of tolerance is successful and occurs around birth, whereas in individuals with autoimmunity 'something' goes wrong. Chinese bee beard competitor People with an autoimmune disease targeting a self protein - like insulin in type 1 diabetes, which results in destruction of beta-cells - have immune cells which have esca...

Viruses: Friend and Foe A sniffle and a sneeze, maybe some vomit on the pillow and a seemingly innocuous fever. Or, a pool of blood haemorrhaged from your precious organs.  Waking up with any of these symptoms is going to put a crimp on your day, most notably the latter, but all of these are potentially caused by viral infections. However not all viruses offer up such conclusive evidence to their presence, and why do their symptoms range from the benign to the sensational? Take for example HIV, which has two common strains in humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. Untreated HIV-1 eventually leads to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), whereas HIV-2 does not have the same devastating impact on the immune system, fulfilling the role of a quiet “keeps themselves to themselves” lodger. Even HIV-1 will not progress to AIDS for up to 20 years in some infected individuals. Charles Darwin, the veritable godfather of evolution based his hypothesis on fossilised bones of animal and plants, but th...

A friend unfortunately told me one of his family had been diagnosed with this rare disease and that there was no detailed information whatsoever on-line. This lead me to create my first  Wikipedia entry about HUV . When I was doing this I realised how vital Wikipedia is. I could have just emailed my review of some literature on the disease to my friend but by using Wiki other contributors can correct any mistakes and add more information as research continues into this intriguing autoimmune disorder.