SCItations

If you know me, you know that I am passionate about antibacterial soap. Passionate about how much a hate it, that is. I know it has it's place, like in hospitals, or in the homes of immunocompromised people, probably. But you won't find it in my house because I happen to think of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a real life boogey man, and as a healthy enough individual I want to do my best to not contribute to that particular monster. Development of, and access to novel antibiotics is a recognized unmet global public health need . That's one reason I found this study published last month so exciting. Ok, it was also because it overlaps with my interests in sensory neuroscience, but I won't be talking about that here. The Indiana University authors of the linked paper are searching for a therapy that, when used prior to or in combination with aminoglycoside antibiotics, will prevent drug-induced hearing loss. You see, aminoglycosides (AGs for short) are a class of ant...

A non-zero amount of what we call ‘medicine’ could be described as just controlled cell murder.  This was my revelation after researching a new treatment for certain cardiac arrhythmias called Pulsed Electric Field Ablation, which I became interested in when my father-in-law asked me how it worked during our Christmas visit. “How can it kill the heart cells and leave the nerves and blood vessels intact?” I had no idea. I know next-to-nothing about medical treatments for cardiac patients, much less how this Pulsed Field Ablation technique could have fewer side effects than the standard-of-care ablation techniques. A quick Google search piqued my curiosity when I learned that PFA is also sometimes called “high frequency irreversible electroporation”. While less catchy, that name revealed a bit more about the mechanism of action behind PFA - electroporation - which happens to be something I actually do know something about. Electroporation refers to the formation of holes (pores) in c...