[HN Gopher] Researchers discover new cell type in human lung wit... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-16 23:00 UTC)