[HN Gopher] Carcinogens that don't create cancer cells but rouse...
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Carcinogens that don't create cancer cells but rouse them
Author : pseudolus
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-12-13 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| pseudolus wrote:
| The author of the article is, I believe, also the author of "The
| Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies
| neves wrote:
| It is a little outdated, but otherwise excellent book
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What in it is outdated by now?
| kulahan wrote:
| I have no specific answer, but our knowledge of cancer is
| _rapidly_ progressing, so most books will probably start to
| see errors pop up in their text as time goes on. This seems
| like the kind of thing you 'd have to update pretty
| regularly.
| fgdelcueto wrote:
| There's an excellent docuseries adaptation of the book on PBS:
|
| https://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/
| ck2 wrote:
| Heavy industrial toxic zones are allowed all over the USA in
| populated areas because it's profitable.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-created-the-most-d...
|
| There are hundreds of thousands of trucks in the USA alone with
| emissions bypass chips or devices that are rolling carcinogen
| generators on all the roads.
|
| Leaded fuels is still sprayed everywhere for decades by propeller
| aircraft, across entire neighborhoods near airports in the USA
|
| Fracking with toxic chemicals is done in or near populations.
|
| Socializing the cost of cancer while privatizing profit is all
| what the USA is about.
|
| Can't say "we didn't know" anymore. We know, we just don't care
| as long as it's not themselves.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Is there any country that does better? Nope, Europe doesn't
| count when stats say otherwise.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_...
| fwip wrote:
| By your link, nearly every European country, save Ireland and
| Hungary, have lower rates of cancer. America is the 5th worst
| out of 50, so 90% of the countries on the list are doing
| better than America.
| nacho2sweet wrote:
| I read this article yesterday, helped me a bit. My 62yo father
| was recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma when a vertebrate in
| his back basically disintegrated. Spent his whole life as a fine
| finishing carpenter. When he was in his 20s he just wore flimsy
| paper masks, and I don't know if ever wore gloves when using
| stains and lacquers.
|
| We always joked he was going to get something from the chemicals,
| not so funny now that it hit.
| malgorithms wrote:
| You're probably in the process of learning this now, but in
| case you're just getting started: effective multiple myeloma
| treatments are being approved at an astonishing rate. It was a
| death sentence 20 years ago. Now it's indefinitely treatable
| for many people.
|
| A close family member was diagnosed 5 years ago and went
| through a stem cell transplant at Dana farber and the cancer
| still hasn't returned...although statistically by now I believe
| it should have. But when it does return there is now a massive
| menu of next treatments for her that will likely hold it at
| bay.
|
| Things are changing so fast now that I'm not sure the stem cell
| treatment is the first step.
|
| Good luck to your dad.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's not just multiple myeloma. All sorts of cancers are
| getting exciting and effective treatments. Some are still
| really bad news, though.
| askonomm wrote:
| I wish the availability of those treatments would trickle
| down regular hospitals in non-US countries as well. I keep
| reading about all this amazing work being done, and yet my
| local hospitals in Estonia most likely haven't heard of
| them, or can't afford to implement it.
| tpm wrote:
| What's the best way to get up to date info for specific
| cancers? A relative has one (bladder) but web search does
| not seem to suggest anything effective for his version
| apart from bladder removal.
| willismichael wrote:
| > It was a death sentence 20 years ago. Now it's indefinitely
| treatable for many people.
|
| Wow. That's great to hear. 25 years ago I was in the midst of
| losing a close family member to multiple myeloma. I'm glad
| that the prognosis has improved so much since then.
| nacho2sweet wrote:
| Thank you! This makes me feel good. He is going for the stem
| cell viability test in January, at Vancouver General after
| some chemo so fingers crossed. He heard a story of a friend
| of a friend who has lived so far 7 years so it gave him hope,
| initial diagnoses was very scary.
| yread wrote:
| Yeah a family member received bone marrow transplant for MM 8
| years ago still here. Lenalidomide works great
| derefr wrote:
| Tangent to this, I've always wondered whether stimulant drugs
| like ADHD meds, _also_ stimulate the metabolisms (incl.
| reproduction rate) of bacteria and /or parasites living in your
| body. (Dopamine and its receptors are really, _really_ old,
| evolutionarily; at least some prokaryotes produce dopamine and
| have dopamine receptors. All eukaryotes definitely do -- which
| includes all parasites.)
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Is reproduction rate of regular cells changed from using
| stimulant drugs?
| derefr wrote:
| Presuming by "regular cells", you mean non-gamete diploid
| cells in a multicellular organism, I don't think so.
|
| Outside of the CNS (which does its own special things with
| dopamine), dopaminergic compounds generally just increase
| cellular metabolic rate -- which basically translates to any
| given cell (that has a dopamine receptor) doing "its job"
| faster: consuming resources and producing waste faster, and
| thereby doing more of whatever chemistry those resources are
| consumed to drive. (If you think of a cell as a control
| system seeking equilibrium, dopaminergic-receptor activation
| forces the cell to take in, through endocytosis, more input
| chemicals to some of its key internal reactions than it's
| "ready" for, throwing it out of equilibrium -- so it then
| tries to quickly react those chemicals away to get back to
| equilibrium.)
|
| IIRC, independent of CNS signalling, liver cells exposed to
| dopaminergic compounds produce more bile per second; muscle
| cells gain more contractile tone (which is why digestive
| peristalsis speeds up, and also why you might start stressing
| your jaw muscles); and a number of other things.
|
| Replication (i.e. cellular division) isn't the inherent "job"
| of any single cell _within a multicellular organism_. Cells
| do divide, but they don 't _inherently_ divide -- they do it
| in response to specific chemical messengers from the greater
| organism letting them know that it is in need of more of that
| kind of cell within the tissue that cell is located in.
| (Cells not waiting for these signals to divide, is in part
| what cancer is!) So I wouldn 't think that there's any
| (diploid) cell in a multicellular organism that reproduces
| more when prodded with stimulants. _Haploid_ cells (gametes),
| _maybe_ -- but even those only divide on command, IIRC.
|
| Bacteria, on the other hand, aren't just cells, they're
| single-celled _organisms_ -- where they use their metabolism
| not to passively obey orders "from on high", but to actively
| attempt to grow and distribute their genetic material. So it
| would be intuitive to me if making them metabolize faster,
| made them do organism-level things like reproduction faster.
| But I don't know for sure.
|
| I do know, though, that most parasites, e.g. tapeworms, are
| complex enough that they respond to dopamine pretty much
| exactly the same way humans do: dopamine triggers CNS
| signalling within them, which increases their level of
| behavioral arousal, which in turn _motivates_ them to use
| more of their _organism-level_ resource stores over the short
| term in seeking to eat, seeking to reproduce, and in doing
| anything else they care about doing.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Those super focused bacteria and parasites are the worst!
| jareklupinski wrote:
| "i'm not addicted to alcohol, but my gut flora are real party
| animals and start secreteing poison when they dont get their
| 'medicine'"
| derefr wrote:
| Anecdote: something exactly like this seems to have been true
| for me until recently -- but with sugar.
|
| I recently had a very strong course of antibiotics for a
| resistant infection. Completely destroyed my gut flora. Had
| two weeks of terrible, Chron's-like digestive issues
| afterward, before things settled down. Whatever grew back is
| very likely brand-new colonization, not regrowth.
|
| Before I got sick, if I didn't have at least a certain amount
| of sugar per day, I'd start to feel inflamed all over my body
| --especially in my face and my joints. I drank a lot of soda
| throughout the day; ate chocolate to "feel better" each night
| before bed; etc. Any time I was travelling away from access
| to these foods, and so eating "better", I felt worse.
|
| After getting sick + taking the antibiotics + re-seeding my
| gut, the "demand" my body had for sugar seems to have
| completely evaporated. Coke/Pepsi, which just tasted "good"
| to me before, now tastes horribly saccharine-sweet, to the
| point that I can barely stand it. Less-sweet stuff still
| tastes fine -- sugar isn't inherently gross to me now, it's
| just suddenly gross in large amounts. And so I find myself
| consuming a lot less sugar now, to seemingly absolutely no
| ill effect.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| thanks for posting that! i had a wild ride after a course
| of antibiotics as a kid too, and it definitely showed me
| the level of agency you can truly have when half of your
| cellular structures are 'foreign bodies' :)
|
| > re-seeding my gut
|
| hope to see more research around this: metabolic pathways
| are getting well understood, and we may find some more
| interesting interactions/shortcuts we can offload to
| bacteria already present in our body
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| I suspect a lot of people would benefit from "nuke it all
| and start over" treatments.
|
| Get a bunch of kimchi, leafy fibrous veggies, etc, in for
| the new seeding. Natto, soy sauce. Basically re-make
| yourself in to a Japanese or Korean person, diet wise. You
| may end up much thinner and healthier as a result.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| As much as the article frames carcinogenesis as an active
| process, couldn't there also be a whole class of immunotoxins -
| the exposed of which could disrupt the body's ability to identify
| and eliminate neoplasms?
|
| Maybe this illustrates a gap in my physiology/immunology
| knowledge, but I thought that neoplasms were routinely identified
| and eliminated by the immune system. A disruption in this immune-
| system neoplasm detection homeostasis could make certain non-
| mutagenic chemicals effectively appear as carcinogens.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Not sure if you're in the US _and_ watch network TV (by
| accident, here) but there is endless advertising for immuno-
| suppressant drugs for plaque psoriasis, during which they say
| these drugs can increase the chance for cancers.
|
| I think that's an example of what you asked.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm in the US, but I don't have a television. That's an
| interesting point.
|
| I considered, but left out Cyclosporine, Tacrolimus,
| Mycophenolate Mofetil, and glucocorticoids as examples of
| medications that potentially increase cancer risk due to
| immunological effects. I was thinking more along the lines of
| chemicals with unknown immunotoxic effects ex: environmental
| exposure, but medications are still a good category to
| identify.
| keep_reading wrote:
| It's entirely possible that our work to make gasoline vehicle
| emissions "cleaner" cause this as a side effect. The particulate
| sizes are so tiny now and we don't know what it does. This may be
| why the massive drop in cigarette smoking doesn't seem very well
| correlated with lung cancer rates.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-03714-9
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Your final sentence is false and not supported by any national
| population-level data.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Or perhaps our understanding of cancer as a genetic disease is
| fundamentally flawed. There ARE mutations that ARE associated
| with certain cancers, but that might be the wrong level of
| biology to look at for a more fundamental understanding of what
| it is and how it works: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33961843/
| spirit557 wrote:
| This is also a good read and the researcher has good talks on
| youtube: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4493566/
| "Cancer as a mitochondrial metabolic disease"
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| For others caught by the paywall:
|
| https://archive.is/U8GJt
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