Today you’ll learn about how scientists are working on developing an injection to treat endometriosis, how bees solve puzzles, and how lemon juice is able to block the formation of kidney stones.
Today you’ll learn about how scientists are working on developing an injection to treat endometriosis, how bees solve puzzles, and how lemon juice is able to block the formation of kidney stones.
Endometriosis Shot
Bee Puzzles
Lemonade Kidney Stones
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Find episode transcripts here:https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/endometriosis-shot-bee-puzzles-lemonade-kidney-stones
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how scientists are working on developing an injection to treat endometriosis, how bees solve puzzles, and how lemon juice is able to block the formation of kidney stones.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Starting off today's show strong with some potentially groundbreaking medical news.
CALLI: Okay, I'm always here for that.
NATE: A team of researchers led by Tokyo based pharmacologist Ayako Nishimoto-Kakiuchi, have developed an antibody injection that may help ease the symptoms of endometriosis.
CALLI: Okay, that is actually great news. What has taken them so long?
NATE: Well, that's a great question, and it's possible that half of you out there are rejoicing and the other half are like endometriosis. What the heck is that? But the odds are you probably know someone who suffers from it. So before we talk about the breakthrough, let's rewind a bit and talk about this painful condition.
CALLI: I am actually fascinated to hear you tell me everything you know about endometriosis.
NATE: I understand your skepticism. I have not known much about it for very long because endometriosis is a disease that can affect anyone with a uterus. And in fact, by some estimates, roughly 10% of all people with a uterus suffer from it, which comes out to about 190 million people worldwide. So in other words, endometriosis is a huge problem. It can cause drastic pelvic pain, painful periods, infertility, fatigue, and the list goes on. For those who live with it, endometriosis can be life altering. And whats's worse there is no cure and current treatments only target symptoms, which makes this a lifelong chronic condition that can greatly affects the quality of life for those who suffer from it.
CALLI: So yeah, if you know ten people who have a uterus, odds are pretty good that you know somebody with endometriosis. So I let's dial it back. What's the deal with this treatment?
NATE: To explain it. We have to talk about how the disease works, which honestly, scientists are still a little unclear about. What they do know is that tissue that is very similar to the lining of the uterus will grow outside of the uterus on the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, the bladder and elsewhere. They grow as lesions and become inflamed, which is what causes the pain. Like I said, there is no cure. And even having surgery to remove these lesions won't stop them from coming back.
CALLI: And we just do. We don't know what causes them, right? Yeah.
NATE: Scientists aren't totally sure. Many think that bits of the uterine lining come off during menstruation, and instead of leaving the body, they travel upward through the fallopian tubes. And wherever they land, they take root, so to speak. But they don't know why this happens.
CALLI: I'm not going to lie to you. So far the story is kind of a downer.
NATE: I get it. But help is on the way. Maybe.
CALLI: Maybe. Come on. This is getting ridiculous.
NATE: There's this protein molecule called IL-8 that researchers found was stirring up a lot of the inflammation in the endometriosis lesions. They conducted a study which was published in Science Translational Medicine, in which endometrial lesions actually shrank when the subjects were injected with an antibody that neutralized the IL-8 molecule over the course of six months. And not only did the lesions shrivel up, but the sticky tissue that glued them to the body thinned out, too.
CALLI: Okay, so what's the problem? This sounds like an absolute win.
NATE: Well, this study was done on monkeys. Yeah. Here's the good news, though. Great news. Honestly. Nobody thought this antibody would work as well as it did. Scientists who have read the study said that the results are powerful and could signal more actual progress on the treatment of this disease, progress that has been far too long in the making. As those with endometriosis know, that it is absolutely debilitating and can cause real havoc on mental health.
CALLI: All right, so what should people who suffer with this do in the meantime?
NATE: Well, we need people without a uterus to be more open to learning about this disease. If anything, endometriosis is entirely understudied. And if more of us were aware of the kind of suffering it caused to those we love, perhaps that would change.
CALLI: I can agree to that.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Okay. Okay, researchers recently found that one group of individuals could learn how to complete a puzzle just by watching another group complete.
NATE: It doesn't sound like a very big deal. Like, I'm pretty sure I could do that in a lot of cases.
CALLI: Aha. Sure. Did I mention that these individuals were bumblebees?
NATE: Oh, you failed to mention that part. That is. That is different.
CALLI: It's true. And it's actually an even bigger deal than it might first appear.
NATE: I'm all abuzz to hear about it.
CALLI: No, no, we're not doing that. Moving on. Scientists at Queen Mary University of London trained bees to navigate a puzzle box in order to get at some sugar water. These are what they called the demonstrator bees. But they also had a group of observer bees watch while their pals navigated the puzzle and drank the delicious sugary beverage. It turns out the observer bees could then navigate the puzzle.
NATE: Okay, but couldn't it just be that they figured it out on their own?
CALLI: That is a great question, and the answer is maybe. However, there was more than one way to navigate this puzzle, but the observer bees overwhelmingly use the same method as the demonstrator bees 98.6% of the time, to be precise. Given the freedom to solve the puzzle in any way they could, they chose to solve it in the way they had already witnessed. So in other words, they learned by watching.
NATE: Okay, that is pretty cool.
CALLI: And another experiment found that bees that were given two solutions to a puzzle eventually settled on a single solution as a group. In other words, the colony itself made a decision for how it wanted to tackle the problem.
NATE: Okay, so are these bees setting up tiny zoom calls and holding demonstrations and voting on which way they want to get their Kool-Aid?
CALLI: Okay, not exactly, but you might not be all that far off. The results of these studies and others like them indicate that bees, wasps, ants and other social creatures like them display something like culture.
NATE: So instead of demonstrations, they're having art openings and sipping rosé. Do they wear little French berets?
CALLI: No. Smart Alec.
NATE: Even the French bees.
CALLI: But just like in our culture, they are engaged in what researchers call social learning. So ideas, behaviors and norms are passed from individual to individual, from generation to generation, which is a defining trait of our culture. Everything from religion to language passes down to us from our parents and grandparents. And those concepts evolve when we collaborate as a society.
NATE: Wow. So you're saying that bees don't just collaborate to build their amazing hives, but they also teach each other new things?
CALLI: Exactly. While we understand that these insects are social by nature. Everyone has seen a line of ants working together to carve off a potato chip or something. Researchers didn't know the extent to which social learning influenced their behavior.
NATE: It is fascinating to think that when you see two bees buzzing around, they might actually be learning from each other.
CALLI: Yeah. And it has bigger implications as well, especially as climate change is altering habitats in unknown ways. The thinking was that bees could only evolve behavior over several generations, but now they think they could adapt much more quickly by teaching each other new tricks, new tricks that could help them to adjust to the changing world.
NATE: That's really not something I expected from insects. Monkeys? Sure, maybe, But bees.
CALLI: Yeah. Yeah. True. Dr. Alice Bridges, who is the lead author of the study, which was published in the journal PLoS Biology, said that the bees maintain behavioral trends in ways similar to the way birds or even primates do. It's collaboration, cooperation and teaching.
NATE: Hmm. Wow. Now, if we could just get humans to cooperate.
CALLI: Maybe we just need more sugar water.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Scientists have discovered a nanoparticle that could possibly stop kidney stones in their tracks. And the secret lies in lemons.
CALLI: Wait, I thought we already knew that lemons were a cure for kidney stones.
NATE: I would put lemon juice in the, “It's always been kind of a home remedy, but no one knows why” Category. But the new research scoots it firmly over to the. Oh, yeah, that really does work. Category. And now we also know why.
CALLI: Okay, so drink more lemonade in the future. Got it.
NATE: Well, not so fast. The research has a twist.
CALLI: Oh, I like a twist in my lemonade. So, like strawberries and raspberry maybe some cucumber and lime…
NATE: Before we go into the research, let's talk about kidney stones, which could actually be called the kidney crystals. If you looked at them through a bright light, you would see colorful striations that make them kind of look like gems.
CALLI: I mean, ow, but pretty.
NATE: Yeah, painful. Sort of pretty. In fact, in many ways, what's happening in your kidney mirrors what happens in the hot springs of, say, Yellowstone. Kidney stones are made from calcium and oxalate minerals found in nuts and other foods like rhubarb and beets. It's estimated that one in ten people will develop large, painful kidney stones that will either pass through the urinary tract or need to be removed surgically.
CALLI: I actually don't know which is going to be worse.
NATE: Yeah, the pain apparently can be pretty phenomenal.
CALLI: And not in a fun way.
NATE: Definitely not. So kidney stones appear to be solid, but because they are crystals, they can actually dissolve. In fact, that's usually what happens. They grow. They dissolve. They only become a problem if they grow too big and move around the body.
CALLI: Okay. I've never had a kidney stone before, but this sounds horrendous. I might just start eating lemons.
NATE: According to a clinical trial in 2022, you would need more than that to stave these little guys off. They gave patients about a half a cup of lemon juice a day to dissolve their kidney stones. And guess what?
CALLI: It just didn't work.
NATE: Yeah, pretty much. The acid caused stomach issues and it ate away the enamel on the patient's teeth. Researchers realized they didn't fully understand the mechanisms in lemons that made them an effective treatment against kidney stones.
CALLI: Okay, so the twist. This is the actual twist now.
NATE: Yeah. So the report is titled Lemon derived extracellular vesicles like nanoparticles block the progression of kidney stones by antagonizing endoplasmic reticulum stress in renal tubular cells.
CALLI: Did you do that in one breath?
NATE: Yes.
CALLI: Okay. Catchy title.
NATE: Yeah, it's a good one. It was published in the journal Nano Letters and revealed that lemons contain nanoparticles that block the formation of kidney stones in rats. They are basically tiny sacks full of fat, protein and DNA, and they appear to slow or stop the development of calcium oxalate crystals. And they seem to work to soften crystals that already exist.
CALLI: Okay, so where can you pick up some of these nanoparticles? Is this like a walk to the grocery store sort of gear or.
NATE: Don't get ahead of yourself? More research is needed, but this could lead the way toward effective prevention and treatment of kidney stones. But there's even more good news. This extracellular vesicle like nanoparticle, as the researchers refer to it, was isolated from lemonade.
CALLI: Okay, so I don't have to start chewing on lemons.
NATE: No, the study found positive evidence that simply drinking half a cup of lemonade can help prevent kidney stone formation. But now they know why.
CALLI: All right, I'll drink to that. I mean, I'll drink lemonade. Of course.
NATE: Maybe with a twist. Strawberry, I think?
CALLI: Think. Yeah, a little bit of strawberry in there.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. A team of researchers led by Tokyo-based pharmacologist, Ayako Nishimoto-Kakiuchi have developed an antibody injection that may help ease symptoms of endometriosis.
CALLI: Moving on. Scientists at Queen Mary University of London trained bees to navigate a puzzle box in order to get at some sugar water. Though this may seem like not a huge deal, it actually proves that bees, as well as some other animals, are capable of “social learning” which is an aspect of culture!
NATE: Great news from kidney stone sufferers: researchers have found that lemon juice can block the formation of kidney stones! More research is needed but there’s no time like the present to hit up your local lemonade stand.