A biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people’s brains
(www.technologyreview.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Sep 2023 22:00
https://lemmy.world/post/4336434
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Sep 2023 22:00
https://lemmy.world/post/4336434
A biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people’s brains::The experiment to treat Parkinson’s is a critical early test of stem cells’ potential to tackle serious disease.
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This could help with more than just Parkinson’s. ADHD, schizophrenia, depression, OCD, restless leg syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome… these are all linked to abnormal dopamine levels.
I’m excited to see how this goes. The article makes it sound like their results have been just barely higher than what they might expect from a placebo, but hopefully that won’t be the end of it.
Yea. I have ADHD. Gimme dem dopamine cells. I’m tired of people talking shit because I take a prescribed stimulant.
People say negative things about that? That’s crazy, people are judgmental about stupid shit.
Dude, I’ve gotten rejected from jobs because of it. Yes it’s illegal, no it’s often not worth suing if the government decides not to take the case
Don’t tell them next time.
I’m not sure why this would ever come up in a job interview, it’s not your employer’s business.
It wouldn’t come up in an interview, unless it’s a tiny business.
Being ADHD myself, it wouldn’t surprise me if the person above made it a topic of conversation themselves. Inability to shut ones mouth is something I am more than familiar with.
It could also be a matter of them disclosing it to get accommodations.
“By the way, I have ADHD, so might need a bit of help here and there” seems entirely reasonable for someone to say in an interview, but might also get them rejected.
Oh it’s totally reasonable to bring it up but I still wouldn’t do it though.
Rarely have I had a company be upfront about any issues they have so I am more than willing to reciprocate.
You will come up positive on a pre employment drug test though correct?
Depends on the drug. Not all of them do.
I’ve literally had pharmacists “tut tut” me about being prescribed them, called an addict, questioned if I really need them, had them called legal meth. Like bitch, if my brain could get addicted to this shit, I wouldn’t forget to take them!
Ugh, yeh I hate judgemental pharmacists. I take a couple of controlled substances, but I’ve found a pharmacy nearby where they are super nice and happy to have my business. Now my whole family goes there for all our pharmacy needs, even if the shitty chain discount place might be a little cheaper.
I have adhd and you know what’s worse than taking stims every day? Not taking them! I sooo wish we had another solution
.
Caffeine and Alcohol are a bit weird, since they don’t have the stigma that other drugs do.
If you say “Oh, I need a litre of coffee to function in the mornings”, people would just laugh and agree, whereas if you said that you had to take your stimulant medication/dextroamphetamine to function/took the caffeine in pill form, people might judge you for it.
You see it a bit with social media, where people say that ADHD is merely an excuse for laziness, and that medication does more harm than it helps, but will happily excuse people needing a coffee to start up in the morning.
I personally would prefer more testing of psychedelics, like psilocybin. While that acts on the 5HT2A receptors causing more serotonin to be available (similar to SSRIs) it could potentially help with all of those conditions you listed as well. It absolutely helps my depression and anxiety and seems to have helped others.
Oh. You can’t patent a widely available mushroom. I grow and give them out for free.
i hate giving anecdotal evidence, but i wasn’t expecting it to be such a black and white change for me personally.
i can draw a clear line between the previous twenty years of my life, and a few years ago.
it’s just weirdly amazing to able to have a small thing go wrong and just be like “ah dangit.” rather than having a depressive spiral and mourning my own existence for the rest of the day.
not that i don’t sometimes have pessimistic thoughts or bad days, it’s just not overwhelmingly defining of my every moment.
at the very least, i’m eager to see a lot more research being done. if it is legitimate, and others can have the same change in life experience that i’ve had, then it’s a damn tragedy it hasn’t been studied more thoroughly ages ago.
Yeah, its been an interesting transformation for me over the last few months, for sure. Psilocybin stopped being a party drug for me a while ago, actually. The drug isn’t “showing me things” that I didn’t already know, TBH. What I it is allowing me to do is parse through the extremely complex mind-fuck that I have been building for myself over the last 40 years.
My depression is gone and my anxiety is fading. I stopped my SSRIs a few weeks ago and had the mildest withdrawal from them that I have ever had in my life. My sleeping habits need a fuck ton more work, but one problem at a time.
Similar to Stamets and his story about stuttering, I am learning that I have much more control over my body than I previously realized, mood included.
I don’t want to go so far as say it is a miracle drug, but it is absolutely rebuilding parts of my brain that I was trying to extinguish with hardcore alcoholism. There is something to this.
More controlled research please. If anyone needs a guinea pig for lab testing, sign me the fuck up! (I am trying to get in a study at UC Boulder this year so they can poke at me a bit.)
I’ve never tried shrooms but I’d love to, not sure if I expect it to help at all with my adhd but at least the depression might improve, and I’ve heard it can make a person more empathetic, which sounds awesome
Oh okay! That’s weird! I am a little hesitant of having any cells injected into my brain tbh
Right? Let’s see this pass rigorous muster first.
I’ll be a guinea pig
if i develop parkinsons in my late ages, id be down partially so that future generations can get better and more refined treatments.
As someone with severe depression, I’d willingly jam a hot poker through one of my eyes and into my brain if I actually thought it’d help
If we can get to a point where I am retired and can get a Joywire like in Rimworld, I am definitely doing it.
I’m glad I’m not the only person to immediately think of the Joywire from RimWorld.
Please , pump me brain full of tiny dopamine generators, baby! Wait ! What do you mean it’s dangerous and experimental? No, No, No, you don’t understand ! I fucking beg you ! Please, for the love of God ! “Sobbing”
Read it as if it was like a 50s era movie and a woman is begging for the main character attention. With all the overreactions and gesticulations. (that’s what my brain imagined )
…What?
Your brain is already full of those things. Them not working properly is partly how things like Parkinson’s and ADHD come about. Going by the article, while there was noticeable improvement in Parkinson’s symptoms, it also wasn’t a complete cure, and the patient didn’t have a massive seizure, so it’s not as though they’re flooding their brains with grams upon grams of the stuff.
I meant more like nanobots. Why are people taking the dumb dialogue bit my half awake brain thought too seriously . Isn’t “read it as if it was a drama show from the fifties” enough to understand it as over exaggeration.
Sounds kinda ominous until you read the subheading haha
They had me in the first half ngl
Oh no, that’s terrible, where? Where exactly?
Is this kinda a Lifetime subscription for MDMA?
If it works, it would be interesting to see if it could also work for people with other forms of brain injury/damage.
Could you use it to help restore function to someone who had a stroke?
A) We already don’t know how neurons interconnect (eg why infants loose ~ 70% of their neuron connections between 1 and 3 years). B) That’s not how dopanime works C) That’s not how Parkinson works either
For the uninitiated, can you elaborate?
Why is this not how it works?
Sure.
The problem is that the brain is not a squishy uniform cell mess that just reacts to some chemicals (dopamine/serotonine/…). All of those are neurotransmitters to specific classes of neurons that have a very specific topological position to perform their function.
So if you just throwing in random neurons here and there, they won’t do anything. They are not contributing to any pathways.
Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and dopamine generator drugs (aka opioids) make the signal send by the “correct” neurons that are there stronger, contributing to the desired effect.
The problem with Alzheimers is the death of “correct” neurons, that occurs before Alzheimer is manifested. So just injecting new ones is unlikely to do anything.
Moreover, the neurons don’t just live outside brain. They need to be immortalized to live in a Petri dish. And to acheive it, the only way we can go now is to add factors that in the context of human organism are considered as cancerous.
So it’s a combo of “unlikely to be efficient” and “potentially likely to lead to cancer”. With Parkinson the tradeoff might be acceptable, but this kind of projects is definitely that raises some red flags for me.