Bengaluru's first autopsy on COVID-19 victim shows leathery lungs with blood clots

These findings will soon be published in a scientific journal, though a lot more research is needed to understand the disease better and reduce fatality rate. 

Fifteen hours after the Covid-infected patient’s death, forensic expert Dr Dinesh Rao found no trace of the virus on the skin of the face, neck, or internal organs like the respiratory passage and lungs – the many swabs he took threw up nothing.

But an RT-PCR test found the virus lurking in the nose and throat. Dr Rao, head of forensic medicine in Oxford Medical College, carried out Bengaluru’s first autopsy on a 60-year-old male Covid victim, on Wednesday. 

Image used for representation, (Photo | EPS)

He found that the lungs, which are normally like a soft sponge ball, were more like a leather ball.

“Lungs normally weigh about 600-700 gm, but this Covid victim’s lungs together weighed 2.1kg, and the texture was leathery, not soft and spongy. There were blood clots and it was shocking to see what the virus had done to the lungs, “ said Dr Rao. The patient had suffered the infection for more than 14 days. 

Studies have shown that the virus strain in India is different from what is seen in Italy or other parts of the world, for example, the way the virus attacks the lungs differs, Dr Rao said.

These findings will soon be published in a scientific journal, though a lot more research is needed to understand the disease better and reduce fatality rate, he added.  

Asked if relatives could be allowed to touch the victim’s body, he said the virus appears to die too, but there is also rampant bacterial infection, and more research is needed in this area.  

Having headed forensic medicine in Jamaica for many years, trained in Edinburgh, and practised in the UK, Dr Rao said that forensic examination helps study the disease process.

A study of internal changes brought about in a human body by plague, malaria, HIV, ebola and other diseases allows doctors to understand it clinically, and treat the patient in a better manner. 

Dr Rao, who togged up in a heavy-duty PPE kit with all precautions firmly in place, carried out the autopsy alone, simply because no one was willing to join him in his venture.

(Source: TNIE)

Coronavirus: How 'immunity passports' could create an antibody elite

Governments around the world are testing citizens for coronavirus antibodies, to work out whether people have had the deadly Covid-19 disease.

Some countries are setting up so-called "immunity passports" and others may follow suit.

The idea is that a passport would certify that you have had coronavirus and will not carry or contract the disease again, opening up a way out of lockdown restrictions for the holder.

But is this theory correct? And will it create a group of antibody-carrying elite who can date, travel and work as they wish, while others are still limited by health precautions?

'I know I'm clear, we should meet!'

Pam Evans, from Aberdeen, has just had a rude awakening to the new reality of internet dating. She says that a man who was interested in meeting her took a novel approach.

Pam Evans does not want to break lockdown rules by meeting men who think they are immune to Covid-19

"I had one guy at the weekend: 'I've just been tested last week for Covid so I know I'm clear, we should meet up' And I said: 'Oh no, absolutely not'... he became just absolutely abusive straight away."

Pam's hopeful date was trying to take advantage of his apparent negative coronavirus test result as a reason to break lockdown rules to visit her.

Is this a sign of how those who get a certificate stating they've already had coronavirus might use their privileged position in society?

In New York, people are using antibody tests - showing that they have been exposed to the virus and have recovered - as a way of suggesting they are safe to date.

They are photographing positive test results to use as a kind of improvised "Covid-immunity passport".

If you have antibodies, the theory goes, you will not get the disease again.

Dating aside, what if we could decide who is safe to return to work or get on an aircraft? For those people. the Covid-19 lockdown could be over.

'Immunity passports'

The idea behind immunity passports, is that of a certificate confirming that you have had Covid-19. It could be used to enter places that those people without one are barred from.

To get one, you'd have to test positive for antibodies created after exposure to the virus.

A mock-up of a Covid-19 immunity passports - a way to avoid quarantine after flying?

Estonia is building an "immunity passport" system, and Chile is also planning what it calls a "release certificate", following such principles.

Tavvet Hinrikus, co-founder of the money exchange firm TransferWise, helped in the development of Estonia's phone app-based system.

"There are areas where I think it's a no-brainer we should use this, like… who takes care of our elders; can I go and see my parents?

"If immunity as a concept exists, then I think people who have immunity should be cleared to work with elders, or the same for frontline workers," he says.

Other apps are being developed to display antibody - and potentially immunity - status. One example is Onfido. Its co-founder, Husayn Kasai, says some US hotel chains are now accepting immunity passports via an app.

"It's predominately for guests who want to access some of the services, be it the spa or the gym, where social distancing isn't an option."

Antibody elite

But could there be a sinister aspect: the potential for a supposedly Covid-immune elite to develop?

Estonia's Covid-immunity passport uses mobile phone technology to identify users. Reuters

Robert West, professor of health, psychology and behavioural science at University College London (UCL), fears a "divisive society".

“Certification could create a multi-tier society and increase levels of discrimination and inequity” - Robert West, University College London, UCL

"You can imagine a situation where if you can get hold of some sort of certification, it will open up doors for you that wouldn't be open to people who can't have that certification.

"It could create a multi-tier society and increase levels of discrimination and inequity." Prof West also warns that the entire premise of immunity might be on shaky ground.

"It wouldn't be based on solid scientific foundation. It would be based on a probability that you may or may not be susceptible [to coronavirus] yourself or may or may not be in a position to pass the virus onto other people.

"It would be to the detriment of sectors of society, really being driven by commercial pressures."

Prof West envisages a point where people with recent antibody certificates would be able to work with vulnerable patients in healthcare roles, or that firms might use their workers' immunity passports as a way of competing with other companies.

But he believes there's not enough evidence to show that having antibodies is a reliable way to tell how likely you are to catch or pass on the virus.

'She's OK, she has antibodies'

The air travel sector has been hit particularly hit hard by the pandemic and John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Europe's busiest airport, London Heathrow, wants all countries to recognise antibody certificates.

Chinese shoppers use an app to show they are healthy before enter a shopping centre: Could immunity apps be used in the same way? AFP

"What you really need [is to know that] your health passport... is going to be accepted in the country you are going to, and you'll be allowed to return home safely without having any kind of quarantine."

Carmel Shachar, of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School in the US, fears that people may actually try to catch Covid-19.

A scenario she worries about is: "If you want to go back to work, you're going to have to contract a deadly disease, one that we don't actually want you to have, from a public health point of view or from an individual point of view."

She also worries about privacy. "If my employer can demand medical information about me, have I had Covid, do I have antibodies - are they allowed to do so? If they have that information, are they allowed to share it?"

The commercial benefits of publicising this information for certain industries are obvious, Ms Shachar believes. "If I work at a restaurant, can my employer tell every customer who walks in the door: 'Oh don't worry, she's OK because she has antibodies'?"

Ms Shachar thinks known immunity could be of significant benefit. 

"You might say, for healthcare workers working with Covid patients, or nursing facility workers... we do want to see immunity."

She says that people really want to get back to how things were before the pandemic, or a "new normal" that is close to it, and are prepared to make compromises.

Testing questions

Getting to that "new normal" as quickly as possible is the target for governments around the globe, Many find antibody-testing the entire population a tantalising idea where infection rates are high.

Antibody test blood samples: Countries are gearing up to offer mass antibody tests. Getty Images 

In Germany, the country's disease control and prevention agency, the Robert Koch Institute, is conducting large-scale random antibody testing.

But questions remain about the accuracy of some of these tests. Research published in May by the US-based Covid-19 Testing Project found that 12 antibody tests were accurate between 81-100% of the time.

While the US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that some antibody tests could incorrectly state you had antibodies - up to half the time. Meaning those who'd never had Covid-19 could mistakenly think they had immunity, and might then act riskily because of this false sense of security.

And even if the test correctly identifies that you have antibodies, does that mean you are actually immune? The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed its doubts.

In the UK, for example, concerns were voiced by 14 senior academics in a letter published in the British Medical Journal at the end of June, saying that antibody tests for UK healthcare staff were being rolled out without "adequate assessment".

Back in Aberdeen, Pam is similarly unconvinced by the antibody testing argument.

"We don't know how long this immunity could last for. We don't know if it is 100% right if you've had those symptoms. There's no harm in meeting somebody and sitting and having a coffee in a park," she says.

"I'm not someone who'll kiss on the first date anyway. So to me, having that two metres apart means that a guy can't lunge on you for once!"

(Source: BBC)

Blood type and COVID-19 risk: O may help, A may hurt

A genetic analysis of COVID-19 patients suggests that blood type might influence whether someone develops a severe case of the disease.

Scientists who compared the genes of thousands of patients in Europe found that those who had Type A blood were more likely to have severe cases while those with Type O were less likely.

Wednesday’s report in the New England Journal of Medicine does not prove a blood type connection, but it does confirm a previous report from China of such a link.

“Most of us discounted it because it was a very crude study,” Dr. Parameswar Hari, a blood specialist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, said of the report from China. With the new work, “now I believe it,” he said. “It could be very important.”

Other scientists urged caution.

The evidence of a role for blood type is “tentative … it isn’t enough of a signal to be sure,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego.

Scientists who compared the genes of thousands of patients in Europe found that those who had Type A blood were more likely to have severe cases while those with Type O were less likely. | REUTERS

The study, involving scientists in Italy, Spain, Denmark, Germany and other countries, compared about 2,000 patients with severe COVID-19 to several thousand other people who were healthy or who had only mild or no symptoms. Researchers tied variations in six genes to the likelihood of severe disease, including some that could have a role in how vulnerable people are to the virus. They also tied blood groups to possible risk.

Most genetic studies like this are much larger, so it would be important to see if other scientists can look at other groups of patients to see if they find the same links, Topol said.

Many researchers have been hunting for clues as to why some people infected with the coronavirus get very ill and others less so. Being older or male seems to increase risk, and scientists have been looking at genes as another possible “host factor” that influences disease severity.

There are four main blood types — A, B, AB and O — and “it’s determined by proteins on the surface of your red blood cells,” said Dr. Mary Horowitz, scientific chief at the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research.

People with Type O are better able to recognize certain proteins as foreign, and that may extend to proteins on virus surfaces, Hari explained.

During the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which was caused by a genetic cousin of the coronavirus causing the current pandemic, “it was noted that people with O blood type were less likely to get severe disease,” he said.

Blood type also has been tied to susceptibility to some other infectious diseases, including cholera, recurrent urinary tract infections from E. coli, and a bug called H. pylori that can cause ulcers and stomach cancer, said Dr. David Valle, director of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Bottom line: “It’s a provocative study. It’s in my view well worth publishing and getting out there,” but it needs verification in more patients, Valle said.

(Source: JT)

Thai cave rescuer dies from year-long blood infection

A member of the rescue team that saved 12 boys and their football coach from a flooded cave in Thailand last year has died from an infection he picked up during the operation, officials said.

Petty Officer Beirut Pakbara, a Thai Navy Seal, contracted a blood infection during the rescue at Tham Luang cave.

Beirut was under medical supervision but his condition worsened and he died on Friday, a statement said.

Another rescuer, Saman Gunan, died during the operation.

The rescue operation took 17 days and brought the boys and their coach out alive. Getty Images

Saman, a former Thai Navy Seal diver, had been delivering air tanks and was on his way out of the cave complex when he ran out of air and lost consciousness. A statue of him was later erected near the cave's entrance.

Beirut was buried on Friday in his home province of Satun in a ceremony according to Islamic funeral rituals, officials said.

The Wild Boars youth football team, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach had been exploring the cave on 23 June 2018 when a downpour flooded the tunnels, trapping them deep underground.

They were all eventually freed in a 17-day international rescue effort that involved more than 90 divers and captured the attention of the world's press.

The cave in Thailand's northern Chiang Rai province was only reopened to tourists in November this year. The opening ceremony was attended by monks, government officials and park rangers.

(Source: BBC)

Final donation for man whose blood helped save 2.4 million babies

For every regular blood donation, three lives could be saved; an ordinary plasma donation could save 18.

But James Harrison is extraordinary. His blood has helped save the lives of 2.4 million babies.

The 81-year-old's plasma contains a potent antibody used to create a remarkable treatment known as Anti-D that protects unborn babies from the potentially deadly Rhesus D Haemolytic Disease (HDN).

On Friday, after more than 60 years and 1173 donations, Mr Harrison made his final benefaction.

“It’s a sad day for me. The end of a long run,” Mr Harrison says as his blood flows from the crook of his right arm to the plasmapheresis machine at the Town Hall Donor Centre.

When a pregnant woman with an Rh negative blood type is carrying a baby with Rh positive blood, her body registers the baby’s red blood cells as a foreign threat (an invading virus of bacteria) and produces antibodies to destroy the invader.

The effects can be devastating. The disease causes multiple miscarriages, still births, and brain damage or fatal anaemia in newborns.

James Harrison (centre), surrounded by mothers of Anti-D babies at his final donation. L-R: Christine Damiandis and Georgio, Michelle Dibbs and Eloise, Tanya McLaren and Brianna, Sarah Doyle and Grace

HDN killed thousands of Australian babies every year before scientists made their breakthrough Anti-D discovery in the 1960s.

The breakthrough came when Australian scientists realised they could head off HDN by injecting Rh- mothers with low levels of donated RhD immunoglobulin. The antibodies mop up any Rh+ blood cells without harming the baby.

Mr Harrison naturally produces the rare combination of RhD-negative blood and Rh+ antibodies, making him the ideal donor.

“Every ampule of Anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it,” said Robyn Barlow the Rh program coordinator who recruited James, the program's first donor.

“Since the very first mother received her dose at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1967.

“It’s an enormous thing ... He has saved millions of babies. I cry just thinking about it,” she said.

Jemma Falkenmire at the Australian Red Cross Blood Donor Service said “very few people have the these antibodies in such strong concentrations.

“His body produces a lot of them and when he donates his body produces more,” Ms Falkenmire said.

"He has saved millions of babies. I cry just thinking about it." - Robyn Barlow

Scientists suspect this has something to do with the 13 units of blood transfusions he received after undergoing major chest surgery when he was 14 years old.

Mr Harrison did not hesitate when he was asked to join the Anti-D program. It was his way of giving back after receiving his own life-saving transfusion.

“They asked me to be a guinea pig, and I've been donating ever since,” Mr Harrison said.

HDN still has the potential to affect one in six newborns in Australia. Roughly 17 per cent of pregnant women receive Anti-D, including Mr Harrison’s own daughter.

"They asked me to be a guinea pig, and I've been donating ever since. I'd keep on going if they'd let me." - James Harrison

The Red Cross Blood service pulled Australian birth data since 1964, factored in that 17 per cent of women received anti-d injections and calculated the risk of HDN deaths.

Almost every week, the 81-year-old dubbed “the man with the golden arm” has donated 500-800ml of blood plasma. He retires with 1162 donations from his right arm and 10 from his left.

The Blood service calculated Mr Harrison has helped prevent 2.4 million deaths by analysing national birth data since 1964 and the proportion of the population that received Anti-D injections and the HDN mortality risk.

'He really is remarkable'
“I'd keep on going if they'd let me,” Mr Harrison said.

But he has already surpassed the donor age limit and the Blood Service made decision to protect his health.

Mr Harrison draws out the process as he reclines in a chair, squeezing a firm sponge absent-mindedly and enjoying the gaggle of half a dozen Anti-D babies cooing in their mothers arms; families who have come to thank him on his last day.

Beth Ismay had four Anti-D injections during her second pregnancy with daughter Layla.

“He really is remarkable,” Ms Ismay says, “keeping our babies safe.”

Ms Barlow agrees. “We’ll never see his kind again ... that he has been well and fit and his veins strong enough to continue to donate for so long is very, very rare,” she said.

Australia’s Anti-D program is wholly dependent on just 160 donors. Recruiting new donors is a laborious task.

Attempts to create a synthetic version has so far failed. The Blood Service recently started a three year research project to harvest Mr Harrison’s DNA and create a library of his monoclonals – the cocktail of antibodies and white blood cells that herald a promising new phase in the Anti-D program.

Mr Harrison and the Blood Service urged the partners of expectant mothers to donate blood to aid the one in five pregnant women who need some type of life-saving blood service.

“It really is the gift of life. It’s so important,” he said.

(Source: SMH)

The eight cancers that could be diagnosed with a single blood test

A single blood test detects cancers with up to 98 percent accuracy in patients without any symptoms, new research suggests.

The assessment, known as CancerSEEK, picks up on DNA shed by mutating cells into the blood.

The test can diagnose at least eight different types of cancer from ovarian to breast.

Although the test's accuracy varies according to the type of cancer, it averages at around 70 percent, which is better than any available early-diagnosis method, according to the researchers.

It is also able to detect the origins in around 80 percent of cases, the study found.

If given as part of a routine-screening programme, the researchers believe the test could catch tumors early, maximizing patients' chances of surviving.

Study author Professor Bert Vogelstein from John Hopkins University, said: 'This test represents the next step in changing the focus of cancer research from late-stage disease to early disease, which I believe will be critical to reducing cancer deaths in the long term.'

In the US, around 39 percent of adults will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives.

'Critical to reducing cancer deaths'  
The researchers analyzed blood samples from 1,005 cancer patients suffering from early-stage ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic, esophageal, colorectum, lung or breast forms of the disease.

None of the participants' cancers appeared to have spread.

Results reveal CancerSEEK accurately detects more than 90 percent of ovarian and liver cancers.

It also reliably picks up on ovarian, stomach, pancreatic and esophageal cancers in at least 69 percent of cases. These forms of the disease are typically difficult to detect.

CancerSEEK only wrongly detects tumors in healthy people less than one percent of the time.

Professor Vogelstein said: 'This test represents the next step in changing the focus of cancer research from late-stage disease to early disease, which I believe will be critical to reducing cancer deaths in the long term.'

The test, known as CancerSEEK, picks up on DNA shed by mutating cells into the blood (stock)

If available, the test is estimated to cost less than $500 per batch, which is in line with other cancer detectors, such as colonoscopies, and was described by Dr Anirban Maitra from the Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, as 'a very attractive number'.

Dr Maitra, who was not involved in the study, added, however, cancer-like proteins can be shed in patients with inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis, and therefore the test may be less accurate when given to sufferers of other conditions.

Yet, lead author Dr Nickolas Papadopoulos argued: 'A test does not have to be perfect to be useful.'

'Exciting progress'  
The scientists plan to conduct a five-year study of up to 50,000 women to assess CancerSEEK's accuracy in people who have seemingly never had cancer.

It is still unclear whether the test will pick up small tumors that may never grow large enough to cause symptoms, however, Dr Papadopoulos added: 'The issue is not overdiagnosis, but overtreatment,'

Although it is uncertain when CancerSEEK may become available for real-life use, cancer researcher Nitzan Rosenfeld, from the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, said: 'If people expect to suddenly catch all cancers, they'll be disappointed.

'This is exciting progress but evaluating it in the real world will be a long process. 

The findings were published in the journal Science. 

CANCER DRUG STOPS THE DISEASE IN ITS TRACKS AND WORKS BY HIJACKING TUMOURS' 'SURVIVAL MECHANISMS'
A cancer drug is in development that could stop the disease in its tracks.

The unnamed medication targets a specific enzyme that fuels the spread of tumours, research reveals.

It does this by binding to the membrane of rapidly multiplying cells, a European study, which included Uppsala University, found yesterday.

This hijacks cancer's 'survival mechanism' and prevents tumours from attaching to the protein they need to thrive.

Around 357,000 people get diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK.

(Source: Daily Mail)

Did you know that the LGBTQ community can’t donate blood in India?

Thanks to an application filed by RTI activist Chetan Kothari, it’s been revealed that the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) in India considers the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community as a “high risk group” (for HIV), and therefore says that members of the community are banned from donating blood.

A similar issue was brought to light in the United States after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida in June 2016. After 53 people were injured, blood banks in the area put out urgent calls for blood, and when gay people responded to the call in solidarity, discovered that men who had had sex with men in the last 12 months were prohibited from donating blood.

Doctors quoted in initial reports on this issue in India say that the ban on members of the LGBT community donating blood is in place because “they have multiple sexual partners and there is a high incidence of HIV”.

Um. Obviously members of the LGBT community aren’t the only ones who have multiple sexual partners, and as avert.org reports, “the HIV epidemic in India is driven by heterosexual sex, which accounted for 87% of new infections in 2015.” And either way, as Sambuddha Chaudhuri points out in the Huffington Post, “blood samples need to be screened for HIV and other viruses anyway before try are transfused , so setting up a check like this does little for securing extra safe blood samples.”

Which means that this ban seems, on the face of it, quite unethical, and based on decades-old stereotypes about HIV and gay people. Ideas like this only contribute to further discrimination and stereotyping around a community that already faces too much of it in the country. Plus, it’s always shocking to notice how deeply embedded these stereotypes have become in law, medicine and even seemingly neutral and unbiased “science”.

(Source: The Ladies Finger)

The blood harvest

Each year, half a million horseshoe crabs are captured and bled alive to create an unparalleled biomedical technology.

The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It's blue, baby blue.

The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn't the color. It's a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots.

To take advantage of this biological idiosyncrasy, pharmaceutical companies burst the cells that contain the chemical, called coagulogen. Then, they can use the coagulogen to detect contamination in any solution that might come into contact with blood. If there are dangerous bacterial endotoxins in the liquid—even at a concentration of one part per trillion—the horseshoe crab blood extract will go to work, turning the solution into what scientist Fred Bang, who co-discovered the substance, called a "gel."

"This gel immobilized the bacteria but did not kill them," Bang wrote in the 1956 paper announcing the substance. "The gel or clot was stable and tough and remained so for several weeks at room temperature."

If there is no bacterial contamination, then the coagulation does not occur, and the solution can be considered free of bacteria. It's a simple, nearly instantaneous test that goes by the name of the LAL, or Limulus amebocyte lysate, test (after the species name of the crab, Limulus polyphemus).

The LAL test replaced the rather horrifying prospect of possibly contaminated substances being tested on "large colonies of rabbits." Pharma companies didn't like the rabbit process, either, because it was slow and expensive.

So, now, the horseshoe blood test is a big business. "Every drug certified by the FDA must be tested using LAL," PBS's Nature documentary noted, "as do surgical implants such as pacemakers and prosthetic devices."

I don't know about you, but the idea that every single person in America who has ever had an injection has been protected because we harvest the blood of a forgettable sea creature with a hidden chemical superpower makes me feel a little bit crazy. This scenario is not even sci-fi, it's postmodern technology.

The only problem is that the companies need a large supply of the blood of live crabs. Horseshoe crabs live on the seafloor, near the shore. When they want to mate, they swim into very shallow water, and horseshoe crab collectors wade along, snatching the crabs out of their habitat.

The biomedical collectors are not the first to make use of the crabs' bodies. As far back as colonial times, "cancerine fertilizer" was used to enrich fields. In the 20th century, though, this became an organized industry around the Delaware Bay. The crabs were steamed and then ground into meal for the fields. Others were fed to hogs. Millions of crabs were harvested.

As we slowly killed off the horseshoe crab population, by the 1970s, the fertilizer industry declined and had died off. But harvests picked back up in the 1990s, when fishermen realized they could use the crabs as bait for catching large snails called whelk (aka conchs).

That is to say, these animals have not been treated kindly by humans. They don't inspire the kind of affection we have for, say, bunny rabbits. In the eyes of people before Fred Bang, the only merit attached to the horseshoe crab was its proximity. They like the shoreline, as do we.

And that bacteria-rich habitat is why, Bang speculated, the crabs evolved their marvelous chemical defense. Their circulatory systems work more like a spider's than like ours. If we inhale something bad, that thing has to find its way through our bodies and into our bloodstreams, fighting its way through our white blood cells along the way. But if bacteria find their way under a horseshoe crab's exoskeleton, they can roam free to do damage.

"Large sinuses exist that allow blood direct contact with tissues," the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory's history of the crab explains. "There are many wide open spaces and bacteria entering a crack in the shell of a horseshoe crab have easy access to large internal areas of the crab, a potentially deadly scenario."

The coagulogen changes the wide-open terrain of the horseshoe crab's circulatory system. When the crab blood cells sense invaders, they release granules of the chemical, which becomes a gooey physical barrier to the movement of the bacteria, preventing the spread of infection. The best metaphor might be the superpower of the X-Men's Iceman, but instead of using cold to encase enemies, the horseshoe crab instead uses its remarkable chemistry.


This trick, perhaps unfortunately for the horseshoe crab, does not work on humans.

After the biomedical horseshoe crab collectors get them back to a lab, they pierce the tissue around the animals' hearts and drain up to 30 percent of the animals' blood. The LAL is extracted from the blood, and can go for $15,000 per quart. Only five companies bleed the crabs: Associates of Cape Cod, Lonza, Wako Chemicals, Charles River Endosafe, and Limuli Labs (which does not have a website).

The horseshoe crabs are returned to the ocean a great distance from where they were initially picked up to avoid rebleeding animals. The whole process takes between 24 and 72 hours.

Horseshoe crab harvest for fertilizer production, 1928 (Delaware Public Archives)

The industry says that not that many of the animals die. Between 10 and 30 percent of the bled animals, according to varying estimates, actually die. We can imagine that it's like us giving blood. The crabs get some apple juice and animal crackers and are fine soon thereafter.

But some people have noticed problems. In the regions where horseshoe crabs are harvested in large numbers for biomedical purposes—like Pleasant Bay, Massachusetts—fewer and fewer females are showing up to spawn. Perhaps the bleeding was, to use a technical term, messing them up, even if it wasn't killing them.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire and Plymouth State University decided to test this hypothesis. They attached accelerometers to female horseshoe crabs that had been bled for our benefit.

They reported their results in a new paper in The Biological Bulletin, "Sublethal Behavioral and Physiological Effects of the Biomedical Bleeding Process on the American Horseshoe Crab, Limulus polyphemus."

The bleeding process appears to make the bled animals more lethargic, slower, and less likely to follow the tides like their counterparts do.

"The changes we observed in activity levels, movement velocity, and expression of tidal rhythms may interfere with daily L. polyphemus activities, which would be particularly pronounced during the spawning season," they write. "Spawning necessitates several energetically costly trips to the intertidal zone larger females tend to make more excursions to the intertidal zone, often making multiple trips within the same week. An activity deficit, such as that caused by biomedical bleeding, may influence either the number of those trips or their timing. In the case of the latter, females may delay spawning activity while they are recuperating, and this could reduce their spawning output."

In short: Bleeding a female horseshoe crab may make it less likely to mate, even if it doesn't kill it. (Only 18 percent of the crabs the authors tracked died.)

While the bleeding process is clearly better for the crabs than the outright harvesting that used to occur, the study shows that there's no such thing as free horseshoe crab blood.

The logical question to ask is: Why hasn't a synthetic substitute for LAL been developed? After all, it's not like we still get insulin for diabetics from pigs. We use yeast to produce it using the DNA sequence that codes for the protein.

A horseshoe crab outfitted with an accelerometer

It turns out: Companies are researching this solution. They don't want the precursor of their product to be regulated by a Fishery Management Plan, if they can avoid it.

In particular, biologist Ding Jeak Ling from the National University of Singapore succeeded in producing the key bacterial detection enzyme, known as Factor C, in yeast. She licensed the process to Lonza, which has brought it to market as a product called PyroGene. A German company named Hyglos has been working on another synthetic endotoxin detector, too. Other, even more advanced technologies are on the way, too.

So, good news for the horseshoe crab! It's like when we struck crude oil and sperm whales celebrated (at least in the imagination of a Vanity Fair cartoonist).

The cosmic joke might be that horseshoe crabs, which for the past 30 years have been a high-value part of the new biotech economy, will return to their previous status as fishermen's bait for predatory snails. Being valuable alive has obviously hurt the horseshoe crab in some ways. But having no economic value at all is worse.

Horseshoe crabs are an ancient animal, more than half a billion years old. They have their own ways of doing things, a fact we've been exploiting for decades. Their blue blood? That's because copper plays the role in the crabs' blood that iron does in ours. The iron-based, oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecules in our blood give it that red color; the copper-based, oxygen-carrying hemocyanin molecules in theirs make it baby blue.

Our own species evolved a thousand times more recently, coming into our current anatomical form a couple hundred thousand years ago. Let's hope we don't wipe horseshoe crabs out after we finish cloning their ancient chemical wisdom.

(Source: The Atlantic)

Spinach leaf transformed into beating human heart tissue

Using the plant like scaffolding, scientists built a mini version of a working heart, which may one day aid in tissue regeneration.

Scientists have found a way to use spinach to build working human heart muscle, potentially solving a long-standing problem in efforts to repair damaged organs.

Their study, published this month by the journal Biomaterials, offers a new way to grow a vascular system, which has been a roadblock for tissue engineering.

Scientists have already created large-scale human tissue in a lab using methods like 3D printing, but it’s been much harder to grow the small, delicate blood vessels that are vital to tissue health.

“The main limiting factor for tissue engineering … is the lack of a vascular network,” says study co-author Joshua Gershlak, a graduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, in a video describing the study. “Without that vascular network, you get a lot of tissue death.”

A decellularized spinach leaf is pictured before dye is added to test its ability to filter blood through tissue.

Picture of a spinach leaf after it successfully demonstrated red dye could be pumped through its veins, simulating the blood, oxygen and nutrients human heart tissue needs to grow.

One of the defining traits of a leaf is the branching network of thin veins that delivers water and nutrients to its cells. Now, scientists have used plant veins to replicate the way blood moves through human tissue. The work involves modifying a spinach leaf in the lab to remove its plant cells, which leaves behind a frame made of cellulose.

“Cellulose is biocompatible [and] has been used in a wide variety of regenerative medicine applications, such as cartilage tissue engineering, bone tissue engineering, and wound healing,” the authors write in their paper.

The team then bathed the remaining plant frame in live human cells, so that the human tissue grew on the spinach scaffolding and surrounded the tiny veins. Once they had transformed the spinach leaf into a sort of mini heart, the team sent fluids and microbeads through its veins to show that blood cells can flow through this system.

The eventual goal is to be able to replace damaged tissue in patients who have had heart attacks or who have suffered other cardiac issues that prevent their hearts from contracting. Like blood vessels, the veins in the modified leaves would deliver oxygen to the entire swath of replacement tissue, which is crucial in generating new heart matter.

The study team says the same methods could be used with different types of plants to repair a variety of tissues in the body. For instance, swapping out the cells in wood might one day help fix human bones.

“We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising,” study co-author Glenn Gaudette, also of WPI, says in a press statement. “Adapting abundant plants that farmers have been cultivating for thousands of years for use in tissue engineering could solve a host of problems limiting the field.”

(Source: NG)

Poems of Kamala Das: Blood

Blood 

- Kamala Das


When we were children

My brother and I

And always playing on the sands

Drawing birds and animals

Our great-grandmother said one day,

You see this house of ours

Now three hundred years old,

It’s falling to little bits

Before our very eyes

The walls are cracked and torn

And moistened by the rains,

The tiles have fallen here and there

The windows whine and groan

And every night

The rats come out of the holes

And scamper past our doors.

The snake-shrine is dark with weeds

And all the snake-gods in the shrine

Have lichen on their hoods.

O it hurts me she cried,

Wiping a reddened eye

For I love this house, it hurts me much

To watch it die.

When I grow old, I said,

And very very rich

I shall rebuild the fallen walls

And make new this ancient house.

My great-grandmother

Touched my cheeks and smiled.

She was really simple.

Fed on God for years

All her feasts were monotonous

For the only dish was always God

And the rest mere condiments.

She told us how she rode her elephant

When she was ten or eleven

Every Monday without fail

To the Siva shrine

And back to home again

And, told us of the jewel box

And the brocade from the north

And the perfumes and the oils

And the sandal for her breasts

And her marriage to a prince

Who loved her deeply for a lovely short year

And died of fever, in her arms

She told us

That we had the oldest blood

My brother and she and I

The oldest blood in the world

A blood thin and clear and fine

While in the veins of the always poor

And in the veins

Of the new-rich men

Flowed a blood thick as gruel

And muddy as a ditch.

Finally she lay dying

In her eighty sixth year

A woman wearied by compromise

Her legs quilted with arthritis

And with only a hard cough

For comfort

I looked deep into her eyes

Her poor bleary eyes

And prayed that she would not grieve

So much about the house.

I had learnt by then

Most lessons of defeat,

Had found out that to grow rich

Was a difficult feat.

The house was crouching

On its elbows then,

It looked that night in the pallid moon

So grotesque and alive.

When they burnt my great grandmother

Over logs of the mango tree

I looked once at the house

And then again and again

For I thought I saw the windows close

Like the closing of the eyes

I thought I heard the pillars groan

And the dark rooms heave a sigh.

I set forth again

For other towns,

Left the house with the shrine

And the sands

And the flowering shrubs

And the wide rabid mouth of the Arabian Sea.



I know the rats are running now

Across the darkened halls

They do not fear the dead

I know the white ants have reached my home

And have raised on walls

Strange totems of burial.

At night, in stillness,

From every town I live in

I hear the rattle of its death

The noise of rafters creaking

And the windows’ whine.

I have let you down

Old house, I seek forgiveness

O mother’s mother’s mother

I have plucked your soul

Like a pip from a fruit

And have flung it into your pyre

Call me callous

Call me selfish

But do not blame my blood

So thin, so clear, so fine

The oldest blood in the world

That remembers as it flows

All the gems and all the gold

And all the perfumes and the oils

And the stately

Elephant ride….