[HN Gopher] Researchers discover new cell type in human lung wit...
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Researchers discover new cell type in human lung with regenerative
properties
Author : NickRandom
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-04-16 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pennmedicine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pennmedicine.org)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Yup. I used to have a hole in my left lung. I don't anymore.
| tomcam wrote:
| Would like to hear more about this!
| elevenoh wrote:
| Doctors: 'heart muscle can't regenerate' (w/ zero ambiguity in
| tone)
|
| 2023: 'new heart cell type discovered that contributes to
| regenerating heart muscle'
| [deleted]
| prmph wrote:
| You're a bit downvoted, but I agree with your point. Wish that
| doctors and those in the medical field had a bit a more
| humility about the complexity of the human body.
|
| From everything we know so far it seems there is no part of the
| body that is not able to heal to some extent, unless that part
| has been completely removed, (and even then the body is able to
| make amends somehow; there was a story on HN some months ago
| about how cut off fingers are able to regenerate in some
| cases). Now the rate of healing might be very slow, but the
| healing is real.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > Wish that doctors and those in the medical field had a bit
| a more humility about the complexity of the human body.
|
| This is pretty silly to me. All medical knowledge can
| potentially be proven wrong. Are doctors supposed to add an
| asterisk to every single thing they say?
| lostlogin wrote:
| We will end up with a terms of service form at the door and
| a list of disclaimers 9 pages long before the 6 minute
| consult.
| prmph wrote:
| They are supposed to not discount verifiable information
| just because it goes against dogma. In particular, they
| should be careful not to suggest to patients that certain
| damage to the body is always permanent and thus there is
| nothing they can do to promote their own healing.
|
| In any case I should have made clear that I was referring
| mostly to researchers, not your run of the mill practicing
| doctor.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Doctors used to be one of the wisest, most educated people in a
| small community where they likely knew everyone. They took
| their little black bag to your home and got to see how you
| lived, which gave them vast quantities of knowledge about what
| ailed you without having to ask a bunch of questions -- more
| info, in fact, than questions would yield.
|
| Then we invented modern tests and everyone goes to the office
| or hospital where their machinery is and we get treated like
| specimens in a petri dish, not like products of our environment
| and lifestyle.
|
| This is the crux or what's wrong with modern medicine. Also,
| some doctors don't bother to keep up with new developments in
| their industry.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| Doctors are usually not researchers. They are people who read
| books on already established knowledge and regurgitate
| information.
| kderbyma wrote:
| to me this unsurprising. we have decades of evidence showing full
| recovery from years of sinking at various stages of life.
| Obviously regeneration is present
| azinman2 wrote:
| The question isn't whether or not regeneration is a thing (cell
| themselves die and spawn a new), but how, where, why... all the
| actual details of a complete understanding.
| User23 wrote:
| And even with regeneration what's the price paid in telomere
| shortening? Granted I'd rather regenerate and live healthy at
| the cost of a few years of extra life with barely usable
| lungs.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > And even with regeneration what's the price paid in
| telomere shortening?
|
| Regeneration isn't exactly an unusual phenomenon. Your skin
| does it all the time, but even that is nothing compared to
| the inside of your mouth.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| The big deal isn't the fact that it exists. It's that we start
| to identify it, understand it, and eventually harness it.
|
| The big deal with penicillin wasn't that it exists in nature.
| It's that we were able to figure out how to harness it.
| [deleted]
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Incredible how we're still learning new things like this in 2022.
| ycombinete wrote:
| IIRC we just discovered a new muscle in the human jaw, last
| year
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It would be surprising if we weren't. We likely know far less
| than 50% of the fundamentals.
| wpasc wrote:
| I hope you are wrong about <50%, but you may be right. I'd be
| curious as to a reasonable lower bound of human knowledge
| about human biology; do we know at least 25% of the
| fundamentals?
| chaxor wrote:
| A big problem right now in biology is the _framing_ of
| these fundamentals in education. We know some things, but
| they 're typically presented fairly piecewise in higher
| education.
|
| One example of the fragmentation: You're in an oncology
| lab? - study this particular protein and DNA damage
| association - but cell cycle is downplayed. Or vice versa.
| There's a lot of segmentation that goes on when the
| processes are really part of the same system.
|
| In terms of fundamentals, I think we really need to switch
| towards starting biology education with just the pieces of
| the minimally viable cell. By using this as a tool to base
| everything upon, we can make biology a bit more scientific,
| rather than just the list of observations that it tends to
| swing towards today.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I think a silver lining to COVID is that pulmonary illnesses
| are going to get a lot more funding and priority than they did
| prior.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Apparently a lot of organs have scars from COVID, even liver.
| Aromasin wrote:
| From my very basic understanding as an interested
| electronic engineer, while symptomatically pulmonary for
| the most part, COVID is a largely cardiovascular disease.
| Medical professionals please correct me if I'm wrong, but
| I've read that the most dangerous symptom, pneumonia, stems
| from fluid leaking into the lungs due to dilation of the
| blood vessels, along with causing joint pain, loss of taste
| and smell, and swollen limbs.
| shmooper wrote:
| COVID's most dangerous symptom is a condition called
| cytokine storm[1]. Cytokines are molecules used by the
| immune system as a means for communication, such as
| calling for help, cell destruction and more. COVID
| creates a "storm" of signals, driving the immune system
| crazy. As a part of the immune system reaction to those
| signals, inflammation can occur (as a way to isolate and
| fight a specific infected zone). During this attack, the
| immune system sends out cells from the blood and into the
| organs[2], making the blood vessels more permeable. I'm
| not certain but I believe that's the cardiovascular
| symptoms you're referring to.
|
| 1. The COVID-19 Cytokine Storm; What We Know So Far https
| ://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.0144..
| . 2. Leukocyte Migration into Inflamed Tissues https://ww
| w.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107476131...
| agumonkey wrote:
| From my even more basic understanding, the "vascular"
| part comes from covid affection for epithelial cell
| receptors, epithelial cells being about everywhere in
| your body (that's why it can propagate from nose to
| brain). I assumed the liver had similar tissue lining
| it's entry points.
| toolz wrote:
| Is the scarring worse than with other common viruses? As
| far as I'm aware, every single covid symptom that made
| headlines is a common symptom among many other viruses, but
| it makes for good clickbait to pretend the symptom is novel
| and lead unsuspecting readings into making false
| conclusions that the severity of the symptom is somehow
| novel.
| hwers wrote:
| It's hard for me to see "X gets more funding" as something to
| celebrate. Funding is essentially zero sum so that just means
| something else is now less funded as a consequence.
| srgpqt wrote:
| Not necessarily. Organisations/billionaires who were
| previously not investing may have more incentive to do so
| now that covid is widespread.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| This is really exciting, but would these RASC cells only affect
| emphysema COPD subtype? There's the other branch (chronic
| bronchitis), and the millions afflicted with asthma whose main
| struggle is airway narrowing/hardening/hyperresponsiveness - it
| doesn't sound from this overview that it would likely help, but
| any advance we can make in our cellular understanding of
| pulmonary disease is hugely important.
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