Questions tagged [medicine]
Medicine is the doctrine of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases and injuries in humans and animals. Health and medicine questions are off-topic unless dealing with the biology underlying health and medicine. Please carefully explore the tour, help centre, and meta before posting health and medicine questions.
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How can Clostridium tetani proliferate in relatively minor wounds?
It is often reported (NIH) that some of the most common infections by Clostridium tetani are in minor wounds where, in theory, blood (hence oxygen) supply should not be completely disrupted.
How can ...
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Statistical significance set at $p < 0.05$ or $\alpha = 0.05$?
Obviously, both refer to the same thing. But, which is more correct/more common in biomedical papers? By alpha, I mean alpha level (Also see one). (And, should it be $p < 0.05$ or $p = 0.05$ if it'...
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Can simultaneous double pathogen infections happen, or are they prevented?
Is there something in immunology that prevents a simultaneous infection with a 2nd pathogen? For example, I've never heard of someone getting both dengue and malaria together. Or, say, Ebola and ...
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Is the Malaria vaccine the first vaccine against a Eukaryote?
RTS,S or Mosquirix was recently released to the public, offering the first Malaria vaccine. This struck me as particularly important because I don't know of any other vaccine that protects against ...
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Why do bacteria in a urinary tract infection (UTI) cause bleeding?
It seems that when a urinary tract infection happens, bacteria will cause inflammation to the lining of the urinary tract, and this will cause bleeding.
What is the exact process for the inflammation ...
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Have the potential therapeutic applications of cell fusion between cancer cells and neural cells been investigated?
Studies have appeared on the possible role that cell fusion plays in the formation of certain cancers. For instance, Sitar et al. (2019) have looked into the process of cell fusion in the formation of ...
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Why does the Left Ventricle transmural pressure contribute to afterload?
I've always understood how and why the aortic pressure contributes to afterload on the left ventricle (LV) as follows: a higher aortic pressure means a greater pressure that the LV must overcome to ...
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Conjugate vaccines in the context of the original antigenic sin and antibody feedback inhibition
How come we can get an antibody response against a polysaccharide bound to a carrier protein, that we have antibodies towards, when antibody feedback inhibition exists?
If we have antibodies against ...
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Why haven't we cured the common cold yet?
Researchers think they’re close to a cure for the common cold, but they first need to solve a complex problem that’s perplexed scientists for decades. Polio, smallpox, hepatitis A and B are all ...
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PEGylation safety and hybridomas
PEGylation is the covalent attachment of PEG (PolyEthylene Glycol) to molecules (e.g. proteins). It states in wikipedia ("PEGylation"):
The covalent attachment of PEG to a drug or ...
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Disease-causing allele frequency and modern medicine
I was thinking about what the impact modern medicine might have on human evolution based on a couple assumptions.
If we assume that:
modern medicine has massively cushioned the selection pressure ...
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Why are drug dosages so high in some mice studies?
On reading through some research on the effects of certain drugs I often come across staggeringly high dosages such as in this paper:
Römer, B., Pfeiffer, N., Lewicka, S., Ben-Abdallah, N., Vogt, M. ...
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What Produces the Postive Potenial in the lumen of the thick ascending loop of Henle?
In the Thick Ascending Loop of Henle, Paracellular diffusion of certain Solutes like magnesium and calcium takes place. Such diffusion is a result of the positive lumen potential.
Looking at the image ...
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How do tapeworms aid weightloss?
The 5 second answer people come up with is, "well they consume calories you otherwise would have". This logic works great if we're discussing the impact of my brother consuming part of my ...
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What specific interaction between methylphenidate and quetiapine causes toxicity concerns?
A number of reputable sources on drug interactions posit a potential interaction between methylphenidate and quetiapine, described on Medscape as follows:
quetiapine increases toxicity of ...
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Why are scientists saying that the Omicron COVID-19 variant is a reason to get a booster?
I was watching Vox’s video, Big questions about the Covid booster shot, answered, which references the New York Times article Omicron Prompts Swift Reconsideration of Boosters Among Scientists.
In ...
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Monoclonal antibody mass production
There is a long conversation taking place these days about monoclonal antibodies against COVID-19. From a few biology courses I had a long time ago, I remember that the process of creating mAbs was a ...
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Why is syphilis not resistant to penicilin?
How is it that we are dealing with so many antiobiotic resistant infections in iatrogenic settings, and yet this very old bacterial pathogen has still not acquired resistance to penicilin (the oldest ...
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Why is heparin contraindicated in patients with severe uncontrolled hypertension?
Heparin is a parenteral anti coagulant- prevents clot formation by inhibiting factors 2 a and 10 a mainly. Now, patients with severe uncontrolled hypertension- have persistent bp of more than 140/90. ...
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Ingredients in Pfizer vaccine
The ingredients in the Pfizer vaccine have been listed in a number of websites, including government healthcare ones. This site claims that the list includes ALL of the ingredients of the vaccine. ...
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Safety in Liposomal Amphotericin B
From reading about Amphotericin B antifungal, I understand it is quite a toxic medicine for kidney, but I am not able to find any details as to how Liposomal version of same medication is so safe, in ...
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Concentration of active ingredient
For some time now, I have been wondering why, when a tablet is taken, the concentration of active ingredient undergoes an exponential decrease after the maximum concentration value in the blood is ...
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Why does warfarin decrease biological activity of protein C?
Warfarin inhibits VKOR. Hence it disrupts vitamin K dependent $\gamma$-carboxylation of Fc- II, VII, IX, X.
But what exactly it does to Protein C and Protein S? How does it also affect anticoagulant ...
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How do APCs find their specific T-cells in the lymph nodes?
My understanding is that when an APC (more specifically a dendritic cell) encounters an antigen in the periphery, it ingests it and presents it on its surface. It then migrates to lymph nodes to ...
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What exactly makes red meat (probably) unhealthy?
It seems generally agreed that (even fresh, unprocessed) red meat is at least somewhat bad for human health. But why exactly is this the case? It's difficult to find any attempt at an explanation, ...
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How do physics notions of fluid dynamics relate to pressure gradients in circulation?
I'm having a hard time comprehending why sometimes physiology notions seem to contradict each other and contradict physics teachings.
More specifically I don't understand why aortic coarctation causes ...
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Why exactly does UMN lesion cause hypertonia?
The corticospinal tracts are excitatory in nature (Glutaminergic). So damage of the CST would mean less excitatory input to the LMN. By this logic, there should not be hypertonia. What is the ...
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Does Topiramate work by supplanting Pyridoxal phosphate in enzymes?
I have seen it said that the precise mechanism of action of migraine medicine Topiramate is not known. But I certainly see a resemblance between that molecule and PLP (Pyridoxal phosphate, the ...
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Why is half dose of Oxford's vaccine of covid more effective than full dose?
I recently read in a newspaper that the half dose of the Oxford's vaccine is 90% effective while the full dose is only 62% effective.
Why is this the case ?
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The relation of a schizophrenia drug side effect and caffeine intake
I am listening to the book Surviving Schizophrenia and in the book, it is mentioned that drugs like Clozapine increases in blood level if the patient takes Caffeine, and can have side effects due to ...
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Why is the current flow shown to be flowing from the negative area towards the positive area?
When I was studying the ECG chapter in the book "Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology", I noticed something odd in one of the pictures:
As you can see the current is shown to be ...
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What is the mechanism of aspirin as an anticoagulant? [duplicate]
I understand that aspirin prevents blood clots from forming by interfering with the clotting action. I want to know at which stage aspirin interferes with clot forming and what really happens in the ...
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Are there any real life instances of kidney organoid transplants in human?
Googling the terms "kidney organoid", "artificial kidney" etc. shows quite a huge amount of research papers regarding studies about kidney organoid synthesis from pluripotent stem ...
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Why do beta-1 and beta-2 adrenergic receptors result in two completely different effects (though both use Gs pathway)?
$\beta_2$ adrenergic Receptors are $G_s$-coupled 7-TM proteins. Considering that $G_s$ , by activation increases $[\text{cAMP}]_\text{cytosol}$ which inhibits MLCK of smooth muscles (and causes ...
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What are the physiological effects of retinal exposure to 380–400nm light?
There are two categories of sunglasses: UV380 sunglasses block all light with wavelength 380nm or lower, while UV400 sunglasses block all light with wavelength 400nm or lower.
This made me wonder, ...
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About how many covid-19 virus particles is required in the human body before infection and sickness follows?
Our immune systems are often able to destroy germs and virus particles.
About how many of them does it take to make a 70 year old healthy male sick ? Any ideas ?
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Why is there no herd immunity against common cold coronaviruses?
In discussions of herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 the underlying assumption usually appears to be that the virus basically stops spreading once a sufficient percentage of the population has overcome ...
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What causes rashes to appear in specific parts of the body without a site specific trigger?
Why do rashes appear randomly at highly specific locations (and not others), without location specific triggers? Like, if it's a systemic issue, then it should be distributed to other areas on the ...
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Alzheimer's disease - Hyperexcitability
I am trying to read literature on Alzheimer's disease.
A very important phenomenon that occurs in AD patients, is hyperexcitability in neurons close to A-beta concentrations.
Some authors only ...
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What fraction of human cells gets infected during a viral infection?
As I understand, if a cell gets infected during a viral infection then it eventually dies. If an individual does not die of an infection, the percentage of cells that gets infected in the course of ...
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Why is prothrombin time used to monitor warfarin and not activated partial thromboplastin time?
Warfarin is said to change prothrombin time (PT) but not activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) (for practical purposes at least anyways, not really sure). But looking at the mechanism of action ...
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What are some good books on oncology?
I'm looking for some book suggestions on oncology, preferably I want them to be fairly recent. I am not worried if they are fairly technical, as long as they have good accurate content and layout.
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Edema and hydrostatic pressure
I'm currently studying Robbins basic pathology, and I'm confused about a specific statement:
It states in the book that when hydrostatic pressure is low due to a lack of albumin synthesis, it leads ...
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How does the surface of the eye remain moist during sleep?
When we are awake, blinking helps distribute the tears so the cornea and the entire conjunctiva are wet and moist. But how is this maintained during the night, when we are sleep and there is no ...
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How far can free radicals from UV radiation diffuse through the skin?
UV radiation damages DNA through two separate mechanisms. Direct damage occurs when a photon is absorbed by DNA. Indirect damage occurs when a photon is absorbed by a chromophore, and the excited ...
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Can far-UVC light be safely used as germicide? (help understanding a paper)
I've been trying to familiarize myself with the literature on far UVC light as a germicide. My question mostly pertains to figure 4 of this paper. The paper investigates the efficacy of 207 nm light ...
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Can erythrocytes Function without plasma?
my title is not very specific. So i will proceed to clarify it.
I am trying to make sure that the only blood cells in a sample are Erytocytes, since i want to evaluate their metabolism, I am aware ...
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Why is Ibuprofen contraindicated in asthma patients?
So yesterday a patient showed up at the clinic with a massive swelling in his left face region. Upon examination it was found to be due to infected first premolar. Dentist recommended him to get the ...
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Inability of vultures to digest diclofenac
The population of Indian vultures has been rapidly declining since 2003. This is attributed to the diclofenac present in the carcasses which the vultures eat. Vultures seem to digest all sorts of food ...
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How does the age of a parent affect the chances of occurrence of certain genetically transmitted diseases?
Do genetically transmitted age-related diseases (like hypertension, arthritis etc.)have the probability of occurring at an earlier(younger) age in the offspring if they are born at a later age to ...
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