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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
When Sierra Simpson was in college, she was sick for a year with recurring fevers and vomiting. Her doctors couldn't figure out what she had. Suspecting a bacterial infection, they tried treating her with high doses of antibiotics.
"It turned out I had malaria and needed a different treatment," Simpson said. "But by then the antibiotics had messed with my stomach and I felt more anxious than I had before."
Antibiotics kill disease-causing bacteria, but they also destroy many of the beneficial bacteria living in our guts, a side effect that has been linked to a number of long-term health issues. That experience was the impetus for Simpson's interest in microbiome science and the gut-brain axis -- studies of the many ways that bacteria, viruses and other microbes living in our bodies influence our physical and mental well-being.
As a now-healthy graduate student, Simpson first worked on techniques to visualize molecules in the brain. But she couldn't shake her interest in the gut microbiome and its connections to the brain.
"So one day, Sierra just walks into my lab and asks me if I'd be interested in exploring potential connections between the gut microbiome and what my lab typically studies -- drug abuse and addiction," said Olivier George, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at University of California San Diego School of Medicine. "I was reluctant at first. After all, I figured if there was something there, someone would've discovered it by now. But we decided to give it a try."
In a study published April 27, 2020 in eNeuro, Simpson, George and team discovered that the gut microbiome influences the pattern of activation in a rat's brain during opioid addiction and withdrawal.
[...] As for Simpson, she earned her PhD just a week and a half ago, after successfully defending her thesis virtually -- presenting her research findings to her advisory committee, family and friends while sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, Simpson will turn her attentions to a startup company she is launching to further advance and commercialize her research findings.
Additional co-authors of this study include: Kokila Shankar, UC San Diego and Scripps Research; Adam Kimbrough, Brent Boomhower, Rio McLellan, Marcella Hughes, and Giordano de Guglielmo, UC San Diego.
-- submitted from IRC
Journal Reference
Sierra Simpson, Adam Kimbrough, Brent Boomhower, et al. Depletion of the Microbiome Alters the Recruitment of Neuronal Ensembles of Oxycodone Intoxication and Withdrawal [open], eNeuro (DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0312-19.2020)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 04 2020, @02:57PM (1 child)
> Can one produce any useful science in this context? The very likely answer is no.
You're sure of yourself. Why are you so sure? Studied this area extensively, have you? No? Then, is it the Dunning-Kruger effect?
The likely answer is "yes". There's a great deal we still don't know, as well as much that we got wrong. Sadly, seems a lot of people really would rather not know, even if that means a lifetime of being miserable thanks to conditions such as obesity, compounded by smug, self-righteous jerks telling them it's all their own fault.
I grant that there has been a great deal of medical fraud. But in this case, I trust that the school is honest. The simple fact is, that fraud in science is very hard to conceal. If the school routinely let fraud pass, they would soon be found out, and their reputation damaged. Everyone who ever earned a degree from them would suddenly find their degrees were suspect. If you think the alumni or the professors want that, you are very much mistaken. Way too many people have a stake in the endeavor being honest to let dishonesty slide. UC San Diego is not some new, private, for-profit university created by a rich hack, this is a state supported institution that must undergo constant inspection to make sure they are staying honest.
(Score: 0) by Occam_s_blade_runner on Monday May 04 2020, @05:52PM
> You're sure of yourself. Why are you so sure? Studied this area extensively, have you? No? Then, is it the Dunning-Kruger effect?
I am a lapsed neuroscientist. Lapsed for I was surrounded by people with a total lack of honesty and/or critical thinking. Sorry but I do not belong to the Dunning-Kruger club.