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posted by janrinok on Friday February 09 2018, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the blue-pee dept.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria is responsible for approximately 445,000 deaths every year. That number may be due to drop, however, as scientists have found that a human-safe blue dye kills parasites in patients' bloodstreams within two days – that's faster than has ever been possible before.
...
That's where the methylene blue dye comes in.

In field tests conducted in Mali, it was added to artemisinin-based medication, and was found to eradicate all gametocytes in patients' bloodstreams within as little as 48 hours. The dye is typically used in laboratories to distinguish dead cells from living cells, and was reportedly well-tolerated by the test subjects. It does, however, have one interesting side effect.

According to the lead scientist it turns your urine blue, which is reason enough for anybody to take it, really.


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  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday February 09 2018, @10:18AM (1 child)

    by Aiwendil (531) on Friday February 09 2018, @10:18AM (#635462) Journal

    Considering the sideffects it might have on other life the blue colour* might end up being a tad bit more permanent than just dosing humans**

    However, since it seems that humans are the preferred (only? the langauge is vague in the articles I find) host for malaria in one of its stages it seems easier to just dose enough humans rather than finding every single bit on standing water (you know that old jar lid that seems to always have water in it in the shed...)

    * = blue is the "desert colour" of water
    ** = in countries with poor sanitation the stuff will reach waterstreams anyways, so we might end up running that test accidently anyways.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday February 09 2018, @06:27PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 09 2018, @06:27PM (#635632) Journal

    I'm rather certain that humans aren't either the preferred or only host for malaria (in any of its stages), but given their number and size of people they're probably the most common one. Not quite the same thing.

    I'd be quite cautious about indiscriminately dousing the landscape with methylene blue, but it's certainly been used for human consumption for a very long time. I expect that as soon as it was discovered it was used for a practical joke that involved people consuming it. So while it may, over time, have bad effects on humans, a short course shouldn't pose any problems. (As has been pointed out, it's already used as a medicine...and several people in my organic chem class reported on it's use in practical jokes. In fact, I think my wife reported on using it as a food dye when she was a kid...and neither she nor the folks in my chem class would have had access to pharmaceutical grade.)

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