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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @03:31AM (10 children)
Without a patent, nobody will bother to pay for FDA drug trials. Grrrr...
I also have to wonder what this does to your eyes. That is a damn strong blue dye. I could see people getting some kind of non-standard colorblindness.
Another side effect might be erroneous readings of blood oxygen level. If your blood is blue... you need oxygen ASAP.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday February 09 2018, @04:05AM
If it turns your urine blue, then I would assume your kidneys do a pretty good job of flushing it out of your bloodstream fairly quickly. Seems like a few days of unreliable tests would be a small price to pay for a fast, cheap (I assume?) malaria cure.
Also, turns out it's already used as a medication for several other conditions - including impaired blood oxygen transport efficiency - so presumably they know how to compensate for its presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_blue [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday February 09 2018, @04:10AM (4 children)
Methylene Blue is already used as a prescription drug in both oral and injected form. It is also frequently used as a prank due to the blue pee side effect.
It's a great discovery since it is quite cheap and the places where Malaria is a problem aren't under FDA jurisdiction.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 09 2018, @02:14PM (3 children)
Thats kinda the problem. wikipedia reports $191.40 for a 50 mg dose. I didn't exactly call Walgreens to verify, but, sounds believable.
Carolina Biological sells half a liter of 0.1% for ten bucks for microscope slides, so figure a mL is a gram so 500 mL = 500 g = half a gram aka 500 mg per bottle so microscope slide grade is about $1 per non-human rated dose.
Now personally I wouldn't eat most of the stuff Carolina Biological sells, but think about it for a second, if the microscope slide stain was full of human poop or pathogens it would contaminate the hell out of the slides you're trying to run lab tests upon... its legally not pharma grade, but practically and technologically its probably cleaner than your supermarket produce aisle.
I guess one way to phrase it is a dose costs $1 to manufacture, ship, and deliver, but the markup for malpractice and corruption is about $190.40 in the USA.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)
It surely has nothing structured in it (as that would, as you say, make problems in the microscope images). But what about solvents that are less than healthy?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:36PM
There are impurities that screw up your experiments such that you can "choose your poison" and purchase ethanol that's tested and assayed for biological purity to a level far beyond consumer booze labeled as non-denatured molecular biology grade ethanol thats absolutely DNA-free
OR
you can buy ethanol for organic chemistry foolishness thats been tested and assayed for solvent purity to a level far beyond consumer booze labeled as non-denatured spectrographically pure grade thats proven to have less than a part per billion or whatever of competing solvents (so you don't accidentally methylate a methanol molecule for for ochem experiment or whatever)
I assume you can buy rotgut thats not terribly pure or merely good enough for shellac manufacture. That would be something to avoid! Yet its also easy from an engineering perspective to buy safe to consume stuff.
A good fraction of a century ago I can personally assure you that even back then chemistry supply companies were wise to underage drinkers and refused to ship un-denatured pure "ethyl hydroxl" or WTF smartass analogy to kids.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Friday February 09 2018, @05:39PM
That's not a regulatory markup, it's a fuck you because we can markup. Otherwise, how could other drugs with the same regulatory and malpractice hazards possible sell for less that that $191?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MadTinfoilHatter on Friday February 09 2018, @08:22AM (2 children)
Apparently it can turn the whites of your eyes blueish. The effect wears away as the substance is washed out of your system, though, and it doesn't seem to affect vision even temporarily.
(Score: 3, Funny) by lx on Friday February 09 2018, @01:23PM (1 child)
Perfect for Dune cosplay.
Last one in Ollantaytambo gets their heart-plug pulled!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @05:21PM
I was hoping we'd be able to sell them blue meth. I like your idea better.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Friday February 09 2018, @01:57PM
On the other side, it seems like over the course of my life, all the "cool' microscope stains have been found to cause cancer, but good old methylene blue is still somehow "safe".
I honestly don't remember from quantitative chemical analysis class a quarter century ago, if we used it as a chemistry indicator for some obscure titrations. I think it would work.
A long time ago when kids toy microscopes came with methylene blue to stain your own homemade glass slides, it did a great job of permanently staining your fingers and clothes. I'm somewhat curious if the "temporary tattoo" people use it.