Stem Cells and Symbiotic Behavior

The July 22, 2011 episode of Science Friday was about putting stem cells in damaged heart muscles to repair them.

After a person has a heart attack, the blood gets cut off to portions of heart and this causes those portions to die and scar tissue to form.  Some scientists are working with a new cure where they inject the patient's own stem cells into the heart to repair it.  The part of the heart that dies and forms scar tissue makes the heart swell up like a balloon and then it can't flex as easily, so it has a hard time pumping.  The stem cells actually start to replace the scar tissue, the heart's shape returns to normal, and the heart becomes healthy again.  They have only just started human trials, so the therapy will probably be available to the general public in a few years.  This will reverse the old way of thinking that heart attack damage was permanent and that someone that survived a heart attack would have a permanently decreased quality of life.

Stem cell research has a lot of promises, and it surprises me how they come to be expressed.  In this case, the stem cells being used are blood stem cells of the patient, being conditioned and transplanted after being harvested.  There is very little research resistance for this type of procedure from the standpoint that you are not introducing something foreign or potentially toxic to the body, so much of the barriers inherent in other drug or transplant therapies are not present here.  They are already studying to see if they can copy this procedure in other organs.  The procedure is extremely simple, and training medical professionals to do it would be simple.

The bulk of the funding came from NIH, so here's another example of big government totally wasting taxpayer's money (not).

The second story I heard was from the same July 22, 2011 episode of  Science Friday was about all the bacteria that are found in and on the human body.  Scientists are just starting to study these bacteria, surveying them and trying to discover what they are for.  They think they are going to find that rather than being something unwanted that has "infected" their human hosts, that many of these bacteria will prove to be beneficial in some way.

It's interesting to consider that we probably co-evolved with many of these species and may even share some genetic traits with them.  We are in symbiosis with many types of bacteria and probably viruses and maybe some parasites, yet we've never really considered this or studied it before.  There is some evidence that wiping out populations of bacteria, either through the use of antibacterial soap when we wash, or through taking antibiotics, may take away some of our protection and make us more susceptible to getting sick.  We may also have more allergies due to living in an environment that is too clean.  Early studies are finding huge numbers of bacteria that have never been cataloged before.  Some scientists are theorizing that the appendix, rather than being this useless vestigial organ that is no longer useful, is actually there to provide a refuge for your healthy bacteria strains.  They think that the body gets exposed to things from time to time that wipe out your healthy bugs (not just modern antibacterial use) and that this provides a refuge to repopulate those bugs after they are wiped out.  The study of all these passengers on our body is another field in its earliest stages and is bound to uncover a lot of discoveries in the coming years.