Blue M&M dye cures spine injury

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Original article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/bluerats/

The same blue food dye that gives your Gatorade its turquoise tint and turns your tongue a peculiar shade of purple might also protect your nerves in the case of spinal cord injury.

By lucky accident, researchers discovered that the commonly used food additive FD&C blue dye No. 1 is remarkably similar to a lab compound that blocks a key step in nerve inflammation. When rats with spinal cord injury were given an infusion of blue dye, they recovered much faster than rats that didn?t get the treatment. And researchers reported only one adverse effect: The rats turned blue.

?One of the reasons no one had done this before is that food science is very separate from neuroscience,? said neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center, who co-authored the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. ?Those two fields don?t interact at all.?

Approximately 12,000 people suffer spinal cord injuries each year in the United States, mostly in car accidents or catastrophic falls. After an initial blow to the spine or neck, swelling around the spinal cord can cut off blood supply to the cord and kill additional nerve cells. A small number of patients benefit from steroids given immediately after the injury, Nedergaard said, but most continue to get worse because of secondary swelling.

?We have no treatment at all right now for most patients with spinal cord injury,? she said. ?Right now we?re just observing patients get worse.?

In 2004, Nedergaard and colleagues discovered that swelling around the cord is caused by the rapid release of ATP, the molecule that normally provides energy for the cell. Excessive amounts of ATP overstimulate nerve cells and cause them to die of metabolic stress. The researchers found that blocking an ATP receptor called P2X7 prevented much of the inflammation associated with spinal cord injury. But until now, they hadn?t identified a clinically useful drug that could block the receptor.


?We just had proof of principle,? Nedergaard said. ?We didn?t have anything we could give to patients.? Then, while searching for chemicals with structures similar to the P2X7 receptor, the scientists came across FD&C blue dye No. 1, completely non-toxic and approved by the FDA in 1928.

?Each of us in United States eats about 14 milligrams of blue dye per day,? Nedergaard said. ?It?s in anything blue, in M&Ms, in Gatorade, in Jell-O. We eat 100 million pounds a year in the U.S., so we already know that there?s no toxicity.?

Another benefit of blue food dye is it crosses the blood-brain barrier. So instead of injecting the medicine into the spine, which would be dangerous in an injured patient, blue food dye can be delivered into a vein.

To test whether the compound could improve recovery after spinal cord injury, rats were given an intravenous infusion of Brilliant Blue G, which is nearly identical to blue food dye, 15 minutes after a 10-gram weight was dropped on their spinal cords (under anesthesia). Animals who received the blue dye recovered much faster than animals who didn?t: By six weeks, the treatment group could walk with a limp, while the no-treatment group never recovered the ability to walk.

?The paper presents novel findings, in a convincing manner,? wrote neurosurgeon Michael Fehlings of the University of Toronto, who specializes in spinal cord injury but was not involved in the research. When given 15 minutes after injury, the food dye appears to improve recovery and reduce inflammation, Fehlings said. But he pointed out several issues that need to be addressed before assuming the treatment could work in people.

?The time window of 15 minutes post-injury is not clinically relevant,? Fehlings wrote in an e-mail. Most patients don?t make it to the emergency room within 15 minutes of getting hurt, so for the treatment to work, he said, it would have to be effective at least two hours after an injury. In addition, the rats experienced injury to their middle back, while most spinal cord injuries in humans are caused by damage to the neck and upper back.

Nedergaard agrees that more research is necessary, and her group hopes to pursue a phase I clinical trial as soon they can get funding. Unfortunately, because blue food dye is so cheap, they?re not likely to find a drug company to sponsor the trials. ?There?s no commercial interest because you can buy it by the pound,? Nedergaard said. ?We?re planning a clinical trial here in Rochester, but we?ll have to wait for funding from the government.?
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And they said surgeons should be banned from eating at the job.

The sad part is at the end when they mention funding will be hard to find because there isn't enough profit.
 
Any word on whether it has the side effect of giving you impeccable rhythm playing odds and ends? :lol:
 
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argatoga said:
The sad part is at the end when they mention funding will be hard to find because there isn't enough profit.
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Yup, no patent = no potential profits = no funding

People think science is all about research and figuring stuff out and making life better. In reality it's just people making money, honestly or otherwise, just like anywhere else.
 
People think science is all about research and figuring stuff out and making life better.
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To be fair, science takes an expensive, lengthy education, personal sacrifice and dedication. People wouldn't do certain things if they didn't have a passion for it.

But, yes, to do anything, you need money and, therefore, everything is ultimately about money.
 
epp_b said:
To be fair, science takes an expensive, lengthy education, personal sacrifice and dedication. People wouldn't do certain things if they didn't have a passion for it.

But, yes, to do anything, you need money and, therefore, everything is ultimately about money.
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I have two very unfortunately science degrees and also unfortunate employment experiences, colleagues, and professors that seems to point otherwise. People are driven very, very much by money. It's sad when you hear conversations discussing how dying people don't make good markets but fat people do.
 
I have two very unfortunately science degrees and also unfortunate employment experiences, colleagues, and professors that seems to point otherwise. People are driven very, very much by money.
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I didn't disagree with you that everything is driven by money, but that doesn't discount that there are people who have a genuine passion for some things.

It's sad when you hear conversations discussing how dying people don't make good markets but fat people do.
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Sad, pathetic and wrong... but, as you're in the US, seems par for the course with the healthcare "system" (if you can call it that) the way that it is :(
 
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https://pic.armedcats.net/q/qu/quiky/2009/09/21/BlueManGroup.jpg
 
I think being blue is a small price to pay to have the use of your legs back.

Even if big pharma won't fund the studies, I'm sure there is enough money in the private sector to get something going. If Susan G. Komen can get thousands of ladies to run around the block under the guise of curing cancer, surely somebody can put together a nice charity benefit to raise the dough for a couple of double-blind drug trials, right?

And flydiscovery, sorry you've had a bad experience, but some of us really are in it for the good of humanity. Probably more than you'd think.
 
I like how when I post this article here on the great FinalGear forums, I get srs discussions.

And then when I post it on physics forums, I get a bunch of nerds and science-y people going "awww blue mouse :wub:"


Addendum: Since we're getting into the serious business that is science, I'd just like to say that there are a few people in my mom's lab that are selfish egotistical money-crazed douchewhores. Then there are people like my mom and her collaborators who are really digging deep and working hard every day to find something new. My mom currently has found an antibody that stops and reverses the growth of colitis in mice. Hopefully that will progress into something good, who knows.
 
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LurkerPatrol said:
And then when I post it on physics forums, I get a bunch of nerds and science-y people going "awww blue mouse :wub:"
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Hey! I resent the implication that we're not nerds and sciencey types! [pulls out erlenmyer flask and does some science]
 
Nerds and geeks are cool, most peeps are just to ignorant to understand it.
 
Hey, as someone who is paralyzed from the chest down, I'm willing to turn blue if it means getting the other 2/3 of my body back :thumbup:

However, it's most likely too late for me since treatments such as this will probably need to me administered right after the injury as the article mentioned, but I'm glad advances like this are being made for those who will unfortunately suffer spinal injuries in the future.
 
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I'm anything but sciencey, so here goes:

AWWW BLUE MOUSE! Presh. :wub::wub::wub:
 
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With my Bachelor?s degree in Biology in my hand, I say: Aaaaawwww, Blue mouse! :happy:
 
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