Alcohol is Worst Drug/How to Kill Rogue Cells

[Guest guest]

" Alcohol is the most damaging drug to the drinker and others overall, heroin and

crack are the second and third most harmful, Professor Nutt and colleagues

wrote in the medical journal The Lancet today. When all factors related to self

harm and harm to others are considered, alcohol comes out top. The authors

explain that drugs, including tobacco products and alcohol are major

contributors to damage to individuals as well as society as a whole. The harms

that are caused by drugs need to be comprehensively assessed so that policy

makers can be properly advised regarding health, social care and policing, the

authors write; not an easy undertaking because drugs can cause damage in so many

different ways. "

" Magic mushrooms on their own have a very low incidence of adverse events, but

individuals who consume mushrooms as well as alcohol have a much higher risk of

accidents that result in death. Other examples of combinations mentioned include

alcohol with cocaine, leading to cocaethylene - an extremely toxic compound, or

alcohol with cannabis which can seriously affect an individual's ability to

drive properly. "

http://tinyurl.com/3a8yeej

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" A team of Melbourne and London researchers have shown how a protein called

perforin punches holes in, and kills, rogue cells in our bodies. Their discovery

of the mechanism of this assassin was published on Friday in the science journal

Nature. " Perforin is our body's weapon of cleansing and death, " says project

leader Prof Whisstock from Monash University.

" It breaks into cells that have been hijacked by viruses or turned into cancer

cells and allows toxic enzymes in, to destroy the cell from within. Without it

our immune system can't destroy these cells. Now we know how it works, we can

start to fine tune it to fight cancer, malaria and diabetes, " he says. The first

observations that the human immune system could punch holes in target cells was

made by the Nobel laureate Jules Bordet over 110 years ago. But how?

" Researchers from Monash University and the MacCallum Cancer Centre in

Melbourne, and Birkbeck College in London collaborated on the ten-year study to

unravel the molecular structure and function of perforin - the protein

responsible. The structure was revealed with the help of the Australian

Synchrotron, and with powerful electron microscopes at Birkbeck. Combining the

detailed structure of a single perforin molecule with the electron microscopy

reconstruction of a ring of perforins forming a hole in a model membrane reveals

how this protein assembles to punch holes in cell membranes. "

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/206258.php

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FYI,

Lottie Duthu