Rheumatoid Arthritis and the Cell Cycle

This is a paper in which Sci has a certain amount of personal investment. You see, Sci has a family member who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. And when I say suffer, I mean she suffers terribly. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease where you own body attacks the lining of the membranes between your joints. [...]

Walking and Obesity: The City Life vs the Country Life

Sci rather wishes this study were done in mice, if only so she could write “the city mouse and the country mouse” in her title. But it was done in humans, which was really probably a good thing. This post has some background. Sci was sitting around with her lab one day, shootin’ the breeze [...]

Homeopathy: the basics

I feel kind of weird doing a post on homeopathy. But it drives me crazy when people talk about homeopathy as though it is the poor unfortunate soul of modern scientific medicine. So this is an “info” post. I’ve read a lot of blogs out there, and many of them attack homeopathy without explaining why [...]

Zicam and your Nose

Sci saw this post recently at Dr. Pal’s place, and it rang some major bells in her head. So, I figure, I’ve got to cover it myself, now don’t I. Lim et al. “Zican-induced damage to mouse and human nasal tissue” PLoS ONE, 2009. So let’s start with a couple of things: 1) What is [...]

HFCS: the good, the bad, and the sinfully sweet

The big problem, I would say, is that there’s just so much out there that’s just so sinfully sweet. Everything we eat is sweetened, whether it be with sugar or with HFCS, and we’re eating and drinking far more sweetened stuff than any group of people has ever done before.

OMG, oldest TB evar!

This is one of those weeks where there is SO much to blog about and so little time to do it in! How shall I ever get to it all! This article actually came out on Tuesday, which means of course that others have now been there before me, but I like this paper a [...]

Complete speculation on the health of John McCain

Some people have been noticing erratic behavior from republican nominee John McCain lately. His most recent seems to be slight, but rather odd. Specifically, he appears to have developed ptosis— a drooping eyelid— which could of course be related to any number of causes, from an autoimmune attack on cholinergic receptors such as that seen [...]

Depression is all in your head….

…but for those who suffer from it, “in your head” can be more debilitating than other chronic, painful illnesses. A massive WHO survey study of 60 countries reported that 3.2% of people had depression over the course of a year. Interestingly, though… This was a bit lower than for asthma (3.3 percent), arthritis (4.1 percent), [...]

Promising Effects of Statins on Alzheimer’s Pathology

Finally we get some data on changes in AD pathology with statin use! Statins are taken for lowering cholesterol, but they have other beneficial effects such as modulating inflammatory responses. Thus, they could prove beneficial in the treatment of AD given the disease has a significant inflammatory component. According to the press release The two [...]

Do PBDEs cause thyroid disorders in pets?

I’m on a environmental tox kick lately. The latest foray into endocrine disruption in the news is polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. PBDEs are used as flame retardant compounds, and like my earlier ruminations on bisphenol A, they’re in everything. Unfortunately, there’s evidence that they don’t just sit there, but rather, as the LA Times [...]