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Malaria Parasites Killed Quickly by Blue Dye

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:So, not for Americans? Vision effects? Re:So, not for Americans? Vision effects? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @04:47PM (#635554)

  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.

  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?

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• Re:So, not for Americans? Vision effects? (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:36PM

  by VLM (445) on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:36PM (#636040)

  But what about solvents that are less than healthy?

  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.

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