Word: boning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...oxygen radicals. The nia is supporting limited research into the risks and benefits of boosting the levels of three hormones that decrease as people age: melatonin, which affects sleep cycles; dehydroepiandrosterone, a product of the adrenal glands that converts to estrogen and testosterone; and human-growth hormone, which affects bone and organ development, as well as metabolic rate. Limited lab tests on animals suggest to some investigators that melatonin may serve as an antioxidant, wiping out the free radicals that can harm the body's cells. But scientists are cautious because results have not been repeated in additional animal studies...
Starzl acknowledges that this insight had also occurred to other researchers. Scientists, going back as far as 1960 Nobel prizewinner Peter Medawar, had come to recognize that tolerance was possible. If bone marrow, for instance, would only accept an interloping cell, the larger system would follow suit. The trouble was, the only way to achieve that was to kill off the body's entire current bone-marrow supply and replace it with another--a technique oncologists use as a last-ditch weapon to try to cleanse patients of such systemic cancers as leukemia and breast cancer...
...bone-marrow work and solid-organ transplant work have traditionally been two separate fields of medicine. "The big misconception," says Starzl, "was not realizing that the acceptance and tolerance of solid-organ grafts are due to the same mechanisms described by Medawar. There is a seamless work of transplantation immunology. It's so damn simple, it's crushing...
...assimilation studies by James Gozzo, dean of the Bouve College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Boston's Northeastern University, as well as by other researchers, including Judith Thomas, director of the Transplant Center at the University of Alabama. They have found that by first transplanting some donor bone marrow into the recipient animal, it is possible to trick the animal's immune system into accepting a solid-organ transplant almost as if it were native to its own body--just as Starzl suggests will be the case in humans. That in turn allows them to use lower doses...
Some 2 million Americans suffer enduring pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis, a condition in which the body's immune system erodes the cartilage and bone near joints. While doctors still do not know why the body turns against itself, they are exploring some promising prospects for relief. One involves mimicking the activity that dampens the immune system in pregnant women, allowing their bodies to adjust to the presence of the foreign fetus. Some doctors believe repeated vaccinations of properly prepared foreign cells will curb the immune reaction enough to hinder the inflammation of arthritis. Other researchers are genetically engineering cells...