Blogs / Discoblog

Gordon Moore, a 72-year-old British man, no longer needs the metal plate that was inserted into his head 50 years ago, when a car accident destroyed part of his skull. Why doesn’t he need it? Because the missing bone has grown back.

When the front of his skull was destroyed, doctors implanted a titanium plate in the hole. Three years later, Moore was involved in yet another crash. While this accident was less devastating, he still walked away with a dent in his metal plate after his head flew into the windshield.

Surgeons decided to remove the plate recently, after it broke through some skin and caused an infection. But when they cut Moore’s head open, doctors were amazed to find that his skull had re-grown with the same contour as the plate. While bone growth is normal in children, it’s extremely rare in adults. In fact, it is such an anomaly that no one has really kept count of the number of times this kind of re-growth has happened. The Telegraph reports:

“It’s certainly very rare, but it’s very rare to remove a metal plate after this period of time. I had never heard of one being taken out after more than 50 years,” [says Newcastle Hospital consultant neurologist Param Bhattahiri, who was in charge of Gordon’s treatment].

“We had no idea what we were going to find underneath, but I didn’t expect to find a new skull.”

Experts are now waiting to perform more scans of Gordon’s head to check the thickness and strength of the new bone.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Will Drilling A Hole In Your Head Cure Alzheimer’s
Discoblog: Need To Perform Brain Surgery Better Grab Your Drill

Lost amid all the talk about the swine flu vaccine is another vaccine that is under study—a vaccine against cocaine addiciton.

In a 7-week study of 55 cocaine and opiate addicts, those who received the vaccine and attained a high level of antibodies from it were 45 percent more likely to have a cocaine-free urine test afterwards, as opposed to 35 percent for those who either had lower antibodies or received a placebo instead. According to BBC News:

The proportion of participants who reduced their cocaine use by half was significantly greater among those treated with the active vaccine – 53% compared to 23% in the placebo group.

The researchers said about 40% of the participants achieved antibody levels of 20 micrograms per millilitre.

They said this was enough to combat one to two doses of cocaine which should be enough to prevent relapses in many patients.

Here are details on how the vaccine works from PopSci:

The vaccine works similar to vaccines for microorganisms, training your body to view cocaine as a bad invader. The shots, which include a cocainelike substance (succinylnorcocaine), encourage the body to pump out antibodies against cocaine. The antibodies bind to the coke, which prevents it from getting into the brain, and theoretically prevents people from getting high. Right now, only about 38 percent of the subjects who got the vaccine produced high levels of antibodies, so there’s room for improvement.

There are no FDA approved vaccines against narcotics, but the research could certainly help the 2.5 million Americans that are hooked on cocaine. The researchers told Popsci.com that they plan to confirm their results in a larger study and hope to have the vaccine available withing a few years if all goes well. The study was published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Move Over, Heroin: “Sugar Addiction” May Be a Reality
DISCOVER: Is Overeating an Addiction?
DISCOVER: The Biology of… Addiction

Image: flickr/foxtounge

Why do some people never get fat, while most of Americans do? Sure, one can blame eating too much popcorn and junk food and not getting enough exercise for the extra weight—but our eating habits may not be the only factor that determines our chubby destiny, argues University of California, Irvine’s Bruce Blumberg. There’s growing evidence that our exposure to plastic compounds —specifically obesogens—can disrupt the body’s metabolism, enough to make us gain weight.

Planet Green reports:

No one’s blaming these compounds for the country’s entire obesity epidemic—fast food and lack of exercise are not off the hook—but emerging research points to them as one cause of the unexplained tendency for some individuals to gain weight no matter what (or how little) they eat or how much they exercise. Obesogens seem to have the ability to disrupt the fundamental rule of weight management and body chemistry: weight gain occurs when calorie consumption exceeds the amount of energy burned.

It’s all about the timing and the amount of exposure to the plastic. Preventing adult weight loss might be too late, if it’s really childhood exposure to plastics that leads to a lifetime of weight problems.

Newsweek reported recently that:

In 2006 scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health reported that the prevalence of obesity in infants under 6 months had risen 73 percent since 1980. “This epidemic of obese 6-month-olds,” as endocrinologist Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, calls it, poses a problem for conventional explanations of the fattening of America. “Since they’re eating only formula or breast milk, and never exactly got a lot of exercise, the obvious explanations for obesity don’t work for babies,” he points out. “You have to look beyond the obvious.”

While plastics appear to be linked to obesity, scientists aren’t exactly sure how yet. In the meantime, it doesn’t hurt to exercise and eat right, minimize your exposure to plastics, and yes, hope that you have the skinny gene.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Dirty Truth About Plastic

Image: flickr/ Phoney Nickle

Here you’ll find the everything you need to know about swine flu. We recently reported that up to half of Americans could catch the virus, with the illness already spreading rapidly in colleges. Plus the Internet has helped spread panic to critical mass. And we’ve seen governments try (often ineptly) to stop the flu in its tracks.

Now there’s another unexpected side effect of efforts to control swine flu worldwide: A prison in Dorset thought they’d stave off the flu by stocking their bathrooms with antibacterial gel. But the prisoners learned pretty quickly that the gel contained alcohol, and began ingesting it.

One prisoner was discovered to be drunk after he gulped down a decent amount of the gel. The Guardian reports:

The Prison Service confirmed that this case was being investigated but meanwhile antibacterial gel pumps had been removed as a “precautionary measure”.

“The suspicion that was reported to us was that some of the inmates had drunk them. Of course some of the officers expressed concerns over potentially having to deal with prisoners who have had a drink,” [says Andy Fear, a member of the Verne’s Prison Officers Association]

Hospitals have also been battling the misuse of antibacterial gel, and in one case, it might have actually been responsible for someone’s death. Back in August, patients were reportedly making cocktails by mixing gel with orange juice or soda. [ed. note: They couldn't just round up some morphine? Sure tastes better.]

So as swine season approaches, the real question is, what is worse: Having people get drunk on antibacterial gel, or having them get swine flu? If you asked Dr. Sanjay Gupta , he’d probably say the flu.

Related Content:
Discoblog: U.S. Government Brings In The Muppets To Fight Swine Flu
DISCOVER: The Five Worst Government Responses To Swine Flu

Image: flickr/ Brandon Hambright // The FireStarter Group

America’s favorite neurosurgeon/T.V. doc has caught the dreaded H1N1 (and so has his camera man). He was on a trip to war-torn Afghanistan when he started feeling sick and developed a painful cough and other symptoms, which he initially blamed on the stress of working in 100-degree heat in a bulletproof vest. However, his symptoms quickly escalated, and he was diagnosed with swine flu.

Dr. Gupta describes his experience on his blog, Paging Dr. Gupta:

I was nauseated and my entire body hurt. I tried to explain away my symptoms with lots of different excuses. You don’t sleep much while covering a war. My bulletproof jacket didn’t fit perfectly and was very heavy. There was a lot of dust and dirt, and maybe I had what the Marines referred to as the Kandahar Krud. It turned out to be none of those things.

You can read about his entire experience on his blog. Here’s wishing the good doctor a speedy recovery (though it sounds like he’s pretty much there already).

Still no word from  the swine flu twitter feed about its latest victim.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Fuzzy, Cuddly Swine Flu: The Next Big Holiday Toy?
Discoblog: Want to Up Your Chances of Dying From Swine Flu? Be Obese
Discoblog: To Halt Swine Flu, U.S. Government Brings in Big Guns: Muppets

Image: iStockphoto

You may recall the case of Dede Koswara who was dubbed the “tree man” after he developed an unsightly amount of bark-like warts on his skin due to an immune deficiency that did not allow his body to fight off the human papilloma virus. As it turns out, he’s not the only one with this bizarre condition.

Lin Tianzhuan, 38, is known in his town as  “coral boy” for good reason. From Shuimen in southern China, he suffered a similar skin problem to Koswara—he began to develop shell-like growths on his skin beginning at age 13.

The Telegraph reports:

“It started with a few hard bumps so I tried to apply antibiotics and creams but it didn’t get better,” he explained.

“Instead it just got worse. They grew and grew and soon they were all over my arms and legs, my back and even my head. Ii was as if I was turning to stone and it was terrifying,” he added.

“Gradually my shell became thicker and thicker and I could no longer bend my arms or my legs. It was very frightening,” Lin said.

“If I had to go out I wrapped myself up in blankets because people would scream when they saw me,” he added.

Fortunately, Tianzhuan has nearly recovered after receiving a year of  radiotherapy treatment at Fuzhou Dermatosis Prevention Hospital.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Tree Found Growing In Man’s Lung

Image: flickr/ cpjmazz

That’s right—now you can get a diagnosis and a prescription by turning on your Web cam. Telemedicine has created virtual house calls for patients willing to give up face time with doctors. CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen wanted to check out a “funky, little red mole” that worried her, so she went online and paid a doctor $40 for a ten minute session.

Watch a video of her visit here:

There are several states that are testing out the virtual program. Hawaii has launched America Well, in which residents can use a phone or computer to visit their choice of dermatologist, internist, or specialist anytime of the day. And for record-keeping sake, a transcript or stream of the video session is sent to the patient after the “visit.” Texas also offers a similar virtual consultation through My Healthy Access, but patients would have to visit a clinic set up at a Wal-Mart in order to use the service.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Second Life Training For Doctors
DISCOVER: Surgeries in Cyberspace

Men make up a whopping 82 percent of the 648 people that were killed by lightning in the U.S. from 1995 to 2008. Dudes, what gives?

Apparently, standing outside during a lightning storm with a metal pole in your hand seems like a good idea to a lot of men.

Via Popular Science,  John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert with the National Weather Service, had this to say:

Men are less willing to give up what they’re doing just because of a little inclement weather… and will continue to engage in pastimes that make them vulnerable, such as fishing, camping and golfing. Recreational or sports-related activities are involved in almost half of all lightning-related deaths.

To put an evolutionary spin on the data, Peter Todd, a behavioral psychologist at Indiana University, said he thinks men are hard-wired to exhibit bold (stupid?) behavior to attract a mate—though unless their ideal mate is their golfing or fishing buddy, it’s not so clear how this strategy works. Are women really impressed by tales of some dope slicing into the woods during a lightning storm?

Evolutionarily speaking, you’d think men with a tendency to hang around outside during storms would have been killed off by now—and maybe that helps explain why only 648 people were killed by lightning over the past 13 years.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Worst Science Article of The Week: Women Are Evil, and Want Your Husband
Discoblog: Study: Talking to Hot Women Makes Men Lose Brain Function
Discoblog: Modern Love: P.A. Woman to “Marry” Rollercoaster

Image: flickr / Axel Rouvin

Nine years ago, Sharron Thornton’s hair and nails fell out, while her skin developed a blistering rash.  Turns out she was suffering from a very rare condition—know as Stevens-Johnson syndrome—caused by a reaction to a medication. She eventually went blind after the cells in her eye died and left corneal scarring.

While her hair and skin grew back, her eyes remained useless. Her condition devastated her: She thought about suicide, and tried a stem cell procedure, but couldn’t be considered for a cornea transplant. Finally she went on a desperate search for any experimental treatment to cure her blindness.

For the first time in the U.S., surgeons decided to perform a rare procedure called modified osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis, to correct corneal scaring. While the procedure has been done a total of 600 times since the 1980s, it’s still pretty complicated: First the surgeons took Thornton’s tooth and part of her jawbone, and made a hole for the prosthetic lens. Then it got weirder: The surgeons implanted the modified tooth into the woman’s chest and left it there for a few months so the two parts could grow together. And finally, the tooth was implanted into her eye.

CNN reports:

Dr. Ivan Schwab with the American Academy of Ophthalmology told CNN he believes the process is too difficult and the result too disfiguring. There are alternatives that are nearly as good, he added.

“We’ve known about the procedure since the ’80s. It’s been going on for a while,” he said. “We’ve viewed it with some skepticism. It requires a sizable team and several operations. It seems to be reasonably successful on the small numbers that have been done,” though it does bring some disfigurement.

Surgeons doubt the procedure will be common in the U.S. anytime soon. But for Thornton, it gave her a reason to live.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Tooth Growing Gene
80beats: Adult Mouse Gets A New Tooth, Grown From Embryonic Cells

Image: flickr/ Simon Wilches

To honor the start of a new school year, we bring to you the following Fermi problem: How long would a physics lecture have to be to actually kill you?

Or more precisely, from Physics Buzz:

Assuming you’re not in a big lecture hall and the professor shuts the door at the start of class, how long does it take for you and your classmates to deplete the oxygen enough to feel it?

The mathletes at the Buzz make a few assumptions about the classroom, but in a 16-foot by 16-foot classroom with a 10-foot ceiling, packed with 34 bleary-eyed students and one Red Bull fueled professor the answer is…2 hours and 51 minutes!

Of course you’ll probably be brain dead long before that point.

Check their math here and then tell us why they’re right or wrong, or if you’ve ever survied such a physics marathon.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Can Golfing Make You Deaf?
Discoblog: Boys: If You Want To Get Girls, Don’t Study Science
DISCOVER: Fairway Physics

Image: flickr / Rober S. Donovan