Sweat may protect against Lyme disease:
Most people's sweat contains a protein that can prevent Lyme disease, researchers at MIT and the University of Helsinki have discovered. They also found that about one-third of the population carries a less protective variant that makes the tick-borne infection more likely.
By running a genome-wide association study, the researchers identified three variants more common in people who'd had Lyme disease. One—in a gene for a secretoglobin, a type of protein that in this case is produced primarily in the sweat glands—was previously unknown. In vitro, it significantly inhibited growth of Lyme-causing bacteria, but a variant version required twice as much to do so. And when mice were injected with Lyme bacteria that had been exposed to the normal version of the sweat protein, they did not develop the disease.
It's unknown how the protein inhibits the bacteria, but the researchers hope it can be used in preventive skin creams or to treat the 10% or so of Lyme infections that don't respond to antibiotics.
"We think there are real implications here for a preventative and possibly a therapeutic," says Michal Caspi Tal of MIT's Department of Biological Engineering, one of the senior authors of the new study. She also plans to study whether the 10 other secretoglobins in the human body could have antimicrobial qualities too.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday June 27 2024, @03:15PM
Got into a chat with a nurse at one of the major hospitals in Antwerp, a couple of years ago, about Lyme disease. Since a few years they had a dedicated team tracking Lyme disease cases, after an exchange with German colleagues.
Anyway, the good people at Johns Hopkins have made an interactive map of Lyme disease reports, both in the US and globally: you can find it here [hopkinslymetracker.org].
Which reminds me that I'll need to have a blood work check, come this Autumn, for the disease: the last tick had sucked itself on a place few people ever get a decent look at.
Unfortunately for him, I tend to scratch myself there regularly -- but perhaps that's too much info.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday June 27 2024, @04:46PM (1 child)
20 years ago this disease didn't exist, and if you said otherwise you're a hypochondriac and a conspiracy theorist.
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday June 27 2024, @10:44PM
Apparently incidence of Lyme disease has approximately doubled in the last 30 years.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-lyme-disease#:~:text=The%20incidence%20of%20Lyme%20disease,2018%20(see%20Figure%201). [epa.gov]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday June 27 2024, @04:48PM
The more I read, the more I hear about the bad effects of our current lifestyle. Shower every day, change clothes every day, shave off body hair, heat junky food in plastic containers and eat with plastic utensils, and so on. The beneficiaries of all this are the merchants who peddle all these soaps and other personal hygiene products, and medicines. Lawn care is another insane industry pushing us to do way too much there when the yard would be better off not so intensively cut, watered, fertilized, weeded, and treated with herbicides and pesticides. Home and car maintenance are more areas commercial interests have done all in their power to make as costly and painful as possible, doing their utmost to discourage citizens from doing it themselves, and steering people towards the most expensive options. Witness the war over the Right to Repair. Tax prep is yet another such industry. This kind of commercialism is everywhere. I find the typical big chain drug store creepy, stocking their small grocery section with food that is mostly junk, and selling tobacco products. Conveniently get your vices and treatments for those vices in one place!
Showering every day disrupts the natural microbiome on our skins, ironically making us stinkier, which then requires more deodorant and perfume. Ka-ching! As for body hair, humans are not hairless, far from it. We have very fine hair all over our bodies, and what this does is slow down parasites trying to get a piece of us. Takes mosquitos and ticks about twice as long to reach our skin when they have to get past all that hair. The hair also insulates us from cold. Goosebumps, you know. I can only smh at these people who spend all this time and effort shaving leg hair and even arm hair.