Thursday, October 2, 2014

Self Medication

Making old lungs look young again: Animal research suggests ibuprofen can reduce lung inflammation in elderly
New research shows that the lungs become more inflammatory with age and that ibuprofen can lower that inflammation.
In fact, immune cells from old mouse lungs fought tuberculosis bacteria as effectively as cells from young mice after lung inflammation was reduced by ibuprofen. The ibuprofen had no effect on the immune response to TB in young mice.
This was a rare look at inflammation in the aging lung environment by Ohio State University scientists who study the immune response to TB. The researchers already knew that old mice had a harder time clearing TB from the lungs than young mice, but had not investigated the role of lung inflammation.
It's so fascinating to me that we gravitate to drugs that actually are effective...