Hair-Loss Remedies, By Science
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10almonds Gets Hairy
Hair loss is a thing that at some point affects most men and a large minority of women. It can be a source of considerable dysphoria for both, as it’s often seen as a loss of virility/femininity respectively, and is societally stigmatized in various ways.
Today we’re going to focus on the most common kind: androgenic alopecia, which is called “male pattern baldness” in men and “female pattern baldness” in women, despite being the same thing.
We won’t spend a lot of time on the science of why this happens (we’re going to focus on the remedies instead), but suffice it to say that genes and hormones both play a role, with dihydrogen testosterone (DHT) being the primary villain in this case.
We’ve talked before about the science of 5α-reductase inhibitors to block the conversion of regular testosterone* to DHT, its more potent form:
One Man’s Saw Palmetto Is Another Woman’s Serenoa Repens…
*We all make this to a greater or lesser degree, unless we have had our ovaries/testes removed.
Finasteride
Finasteride is a 5α-reductase inhibitor that performs similarly to saw palmetto, but comes in tiny pills instead of needing to take a much higher dose of supplement (5mg of finasteride is comparable in efficacy to a little over 300mg of saw palmetto).
Does it work? Yes!
Any drawbacks? A few:
- It’ll take 3–6 months to start seeing effects. This is because of the hormonal life-cycle of human hairs.
- Common side-effects include ED.
- It is popularly labelled/prescribed as “only for men”
On that latter point: the warnings about this are severe, detailing how women must not take it, must not even touch it if it has been cut up or crushed.
However… That’s because it can carry a big risk to our unborn fetuses. So, if we are confident we definitely don’t have one of those, it’s not actually applicable to us.
That said, finasteride’s results in women aren’t nearly so clear-cut as in men (though also, there has been less research, largely because of the above). Here’s an interesting breakdown in more words than we have room for here:
Finasteride for Women: Everything You Need to Know
Spironolactone
This one’s generally prescribed to women, not men, largely because it’s the drug sometimes popularly known as a “chemical castration” drug, which isn’t typically great marketing for men (although it can be applied topically, which will have less of an effect on the rest of the body). For women, this risk is simply not an issue.
We’ll be brief on this one, but we’ll just drop this, so that you know it’s an option that works:
❝Spironolactone is an effective and safe treatment of androgenic alopecia which can enhance the efficacy when combined with other conventional treatments such as minoxidil.
Topical spironolactone is safer than oral administration and is suitable for both male and female patients, and is expected to become a common drug for those who do not have a good response to minoxidil❞
Minoxidil
This one is available (to men and women) without prescription. It’s applied topically, and works by shortcutting the hair’s hormonal growth cycle, to reduce the resting phase and kick it into a growth phase.
Does it work? Yes!
Any drawbacks? A few:
- Whereas you’ll remember finasteride takes 3–6 months to see any effect, this one will have an effect very quickly
- Specifically, the immediate effect is: your rate of hair loss will appear to dramatically speed up
- This happens because when hairs are kicked into their growth phase if they were in a resting phase, the first part of that growth phase is to shed each old hair to make room for the new one
- You’ll then need the same 3–6 months as with finasteride, to see the regrowth effects
- If you stop using it, you will immediately shed whatever hair you gained by this method
Why do people choose this over finasteride? For one of three reasons, mainly:
- They are women, and not offered finasteride
- They are men, and do not want the side effects of finasteride
- They just saw an ad and tried it
As to how it works:
Some final notes:
There are some other contraindications and warnings with each of these drugs by the way, so do speak with your doctor/pharmacist. For example:
- Finasteride can tax the liver a little
- Spironolactone can reduce bone turnover
- Minoxidil is a hypotensive; this shouldn’t be an issue for most people, but for some people it could be a problem
There are other hair loss remedies and practices, but the above three are the heavy-hitters, so that’s what we spent our time/space on today. We’ll perhaps cover the less powerful (but less risky) options one of these days.
Meanwhile, take care!
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The Mind-Gut Connection – by Dr. Emeran Mayer
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We’ve reviewed books about the mind-gut connection before, so what makes this one stand out?
Firstly, it’s a lot more comprehensive than the usual “please, we’re begging you, eat some fiber”.
And yes, of course that’s part of it. Prebiotics, probiotics, reduce fried and processed foods, reduce sugar/alcohol, reduce meat, and again, eat some greenery.
But where this book really comes into its own is looking more thoroughly at the gut microbiota and their function. Dr. Mayer goes well beyond “there are good and bad bacteria” and looks at the relationship each of them have with the body’s many hormones, and especially neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.
He also looks at the two-way connection between brain and gut. Yes, our gut gives us “gut feelings”, but 10% of communication between the brain and gut is in the other direction; he explores what that means for us, too.
Finally, he does give a lot of practical advice, not just dietary but also behavioral, to make the most of our mind-gut connection and make it work for our health, rather than against it.
Bottom line: this is the best book on the brain-gut connection that this reviewer has read so far, and certainly the most useful if you already know about gut-healthy nutrition, and are looking to take your understanding to the next level.
Click here to check out The Mind-Gut Connection, and start making yours work for your benefit!
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Delay Ageing – by Dr. Colin Rose
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Note: the title is spelled that way because it is British English. We generally write in US English here at 10almonds, but we’ll first quote directly from Dr. Rose as written:
❝I have written Delay Ageing because there is some very important recent University research on ageing and age related illness that deserves to be made accessible to a general audience.❞
What is this research? Well, there’s quite a lot over its 300-odd pages (exact number depends on the edition and whether we count end matter), and most of it is tweaks and refinements on things with which you’ll probably be at least brushingly familiar if you’re a regular 10almonds reader.
Dr. Rose addresses the nine hallmarks of aging, of which there are ten, ranging from such things as “telomeres get shorter” and “DNA accumulates damage”, to “stem cells become exhausted” and “cells fail to communicate properly”, and asks the question “what if we were to target all these things simultaneously?”.
Rather than going for drugs on drugs on drugs (half of them to deal with undesired side effects of the previous ones), Dr. Cole leaves no stone unturned to find lifestyle interventions that will improve each of these, even if just a little. Because, all those “little” improvements add up and even compound, and on the flipside, mean that factors of aging aren’t adding up and compounding so much or so quickly anymore.
The rather broad umbrella of “lifestyle interventions” obviously includes food under its auspices, and with it, nutraceuticals. So to give one example, if you’re taking a fisetin supplement (a natural senolytic agent), you’ll find science vindicating that here. And much more.
The style is… Less pop-science and more “textbook written for laypersons”, and you may be thinking “isn’t that the same?” and the difference is that the textbook has a lot less polish and finesse, but often more precise information.
Bottom line: if you’d like to combat aging on 10 different fronts with easily implementable lifestyle interventions, and know exactly what is doing what and how, then this is the book for you.
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What are heart rate zones, and how can you incorporate them into your exercise routine?
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If you spend a lot of time exploring fitness content online, you might have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has become more popular in recent years partly because of the boom in wearable technology which, among other functions, allows people to easily track their heart rates.
Heart rate zones reflect different levels of intensity during aerobic exercise. They’re most often based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is the highest number of beats your heart can achieve per minute.
But what are the different heart rate zones, and how can you use these zones to optimise your workout?
The three-zone model
While there are several models used to describe heart rate zones, the most common model in the scientific literature is the three-zone model, where the zones may be categorised as follows:
- zone 1: 55%–82% of maximum heart rate
- zone 2: 82%–87% of maximum heart rate
- zone 3: 87%–97% of maximum heart rate.
If you’re not sure what your maximum heart rate is, it can be calculated using this equation: 208 – (0.7 × age in years). For example, I’m 32 years old. 208 – (0.7 x 32) = 185.6, so my predicted maximum heart rate is around 186 beats per minute.
There are also other models used to describe heart rate zones, such as the five-zone model (as its name implies, this one has five distinct zones). These models largely describe the same thing and can mostly be used interchangeably.
What do the different zones involve?
The three zones are based around a person’s lactate threshold, which describes the point at which exercise intensity moves from being predominantly aerobic, to predominantly anaerobic.
Aerobic exercise uses oxygen to help our muscles keep going, ensuring we can continue for a long time without fatiguing. Anaerobic exercise, however, uses stored energy to fuel exercise. Anaerobic exercise also accrues metabolic byproducts (such as lactate) that increase fatigue, meaning we can only produce energy anaerobically for a short time.
On average your lactate threshold tends to sit around 85% of your maximum heart rate, although this varies from person to person, and can be higher in athletes.
Wearable technology has taken off in recent years. Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels In the three-zone model, each zone loosely describes one of three types of training.
Zone 1 represents high-volume, low-intensity exercise, usually performed for long periods and at an easy pace, well below lactate threshold. Examples include jogging or cycling at a gentle pace.
Zone 2 is threshold training, also known as tempo training, a moderate intensity training method performed for moderate durations, at (or around) lactate threshold. This could be running, rowing or cycling at a speed where it’s difficult to speak full sentences.
Zone 3 mostly describes methods of high-intensity interval training, which are performed for shorter durations and at intensities above lactate threshold. For example, any circuit style workout that has you exercising hard for 30 seconds then resting for 30 seconds would be zone 3.
Striking a balance
To maximise endurance performance, you need to strike a balance between doing enough training to elicit positive changes, while avoiding over-training, injury and burnout.
While zone 3 is thought to produce the largest improvements in maximal oxygen uptake – one of the best predictors of endurance performance and overall health – it’s also the most tiring. This means you can only perform so much of it before it becomes too much.
Training in different heart rate zones improves slightly different physiological qualities, and so by spending time in each zone, you ensure a variety of benefits for performance and health.
So how much time should you spend in each zone?
Most elite endurance athletes, including runners, rowers, and even cross-country skiers, tend to spend most of their training (around 80%) in zone 1, with the rest split between zones 2 and 3.
Because elite endurance athletes train a lot, most of it needs to be in zone 1, otherwise they risk injury and burnout. For example, some runners accumulate more than 250 kilometres per week, which would be impossible to recover from if it was all performed in zone 2 or 3.
Of course, most people are not professional athletes. The World Health Organization recommends adults aim for 150–300 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week, or 75–150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week.
If you look at this in the context of heart rate zones, you could consider zone 1 training as moderate intensity, and zones 2 and 3 as vigorous. Then, you can use heart rate zones to make sure you’re exercising to meet these guidelines.
What if I don’t have a heart rate monitor?
If you don’t have access to a heart rate tracker, that doesn’t mean you can’t use heart rate zones to guide your training.
The three heart rate zones discussed in this article can also be prescribed based on feel using a simple 10-point scale, where 0 indicates no effort, and 10 indicates the maximum amount of effort you can produce.
With this system, zone 1 aligns with a 4 or less out of 10, zone 2 with 4.5 to 6.5 out of 10, and zone 3 as a 7 or higher out of 10.
Heart rate zones are not a perfect measure of exercise intensity, but can be a useful tool. And if you don’t want to worry about heart rate zones at all, that’s also fine. The most important thing is to simply get moving.
Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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10 Ways To Delay Aging
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This is Dr. Colin Rose; he is a Senior Associate of the Royal Society of Medicine. He’s also a main contributor to EduScience, a programme funded by the E.U. which is designed to enhance the teaching and learning of science in schools in Europe.
His most recent work has been about aging—and how to delay it. We also reviewed his latest book, here:
Delay Ageing – by Dr. Colin Rose
So, what does he want us to know? The key lies in his compilation of ten ways in which we age on a cellular level, and what we can to do slow each one of those:
Damage to DNA accumulates
While DNA can get damaged without any external stimulus to cause that, there are a lot of modifiable factors that we can do to reduce DNA damage. The list is easy: if it causes cancer, it causes aging.
Thus, check out: Stop Cancer 20 Years Ago
Cells become senescent
Our cells are replaced all the time; some sooner than others, but all of them at some point. The problem occurs when cells are outliving their usefulness. If a cell becomes completely immortal, that is cancer, but happily most don’t. Nevertheless, having senescent (aging) cells in the body means that those senescent cells are what get copied forwards by mitosis, and our DNA becomes like a photocopy of a tattered old photocopy of a tattered old photocopy. Which, needless to say, is not good for our health. So, the best thing to do is to kill them earlier:
Yes, really: Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin
Mitochondria become dysfunctional
Without properly functional mitochondria, no living human cell can do its job properly.
Options: 7 Ways To Boost Mitochondrial Health To Fight Disease
Beneficial genes are switched off, harmful genes are on
It’s easy to think of our genes as being immutable, but epigenetics means that our environment (amongst other factors) can mean that our gene expression changes.
Imagine it this way: your genes are a set of instructions for your body. However, your body will act or not on those instructions, depending on other factors. Hormones often play a big part in this; for example sex hormones tell the body which set of genetic instructions to read (and thus what kind of body to build/rebuild), and cortisol or oxytocin can tell the body which set of contingency plans to activate or suppress (respectively). A milder example is gray hair; genes have the program for it, but many other factors inform the body when, if, and how to do it.
Of more concern when it comes to aging is what goes on with more critical systems, such as the brain, in which the aforementioned DNA damage can cause unhelpful instructions to get interpreted, resulting in epigenetic changes that in turn facilitate age-related degeneration.
As to what can be done, see : Klotho: Unzipping The Genes Of Aging?
Stem cells become exhausted
Stem cells can become different kinds of cells, and thus they’re very useful for maintaining a healthy body. However, they get depleted with age. We can slow down the rate of loss, though; for example, intermittent fasting can help:
Per Dr. Li’s 5 Ways To Beat Cancer (And Other Diseases)
And for more detail, see:
Doctor’s Tip: Regeneration (stem cells) — one of your body’s five defense systems
(complete with lists of foods to eat or avoid for stem cell health)
Cells fail to communicate properly
Cells need to talk to each other constantly, to continue doing their jobs. We are one big organism, after all, and not a haphazard colony of the countless cells that constitute such. However, cell signalling gets worse with age, which in turn precipitates others age-related problems. Fortunately, there are nutrients that can improve cellular communication.
For example: PS, We Love You ← this is about phosphatidylserine, also called “PS”
Telomeres become shorter
These protective caps on our DNA suffer the wear-and-tear so that our DNA doesn’t have to. However, as they get shorter, the DNA can start suffering damage. For this reason, telomere length is considered one of the most “Gold Standard” markers of cellular aging.
Here’s what can be done for that: The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)
The body fails to sense nutritional intake properly
This is mostly about insulin signalling (though problems can occur in other systems too, but we only have so much room here), so it’s important to take care of that.
See: Turn Back The Clock On Insulin Resistance
Proteins accumulate errors
This is due to DNA damage, of course, but there are specific things that can reduce protein error accumulation; see for example:
A quick fix – preventing protein errors extends lifespan
See also: Rapamycin Can Slow Aging By 20% (But Watch Out)
The microbiome becomes unbalanced
We at 10almonds often mention that gut health affects pretty much every other kind of health, and it’s true for aging as well. So, take care of that microbiome!
Here’s a primer: Gut Health 101
Want to know more about delaying aging beyond the cellular level?
Check out: Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Take care!
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Tastes from our past can spark memories, trigger pain or boost wellbeing. Here’s how to embrace food nostalgia
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Have you ever tried to bring back fond memories by eating or drinking something unique to that time and place?
It could be a Pina Colada that recalls an island holiday? Or a steaming bowl of pho just like the one you had in Vietnam? Perhaps eating a favourite dish reminds you of a lost loved one – like the sticky date pudding Nanna used to make?
If you have, you have tapped into food-evoked nostalgia.
As researchers, we are exploring how eating and drinking certain things from your past may be important for your mood and mental health.
Halfpoint/Shutterstock Bittersweet longing
First named in 1688 by Swiss medical student, Johannes Hoffer, nostalgia is that bittersweet, sentimental longing for the past. It is experienced universally across different cultures and lifespans from childhood into older age.
But nostalgia does not just involve positive or happy memories – we can also experience nostalgia for sad and unhappy moments in our lives.
In the short and long term, nostalgia can positively impact our health by improving mood and wellbeing, fostering social connection and increasing quality of life. It can also trigger feelings of loneliness or meaninglessness.
We can use nostalgia to turn around a negative mood or enhance our sense of self, meaning and positivity.
Research suggests nostalgia alters activity in the brain regions associated with reward processing – the same areas involved when we seek and receive things we like. This could explain the positive feelings it can bring.
Nostalgia can also increase feelings of loneliness and sadness, particularly if the memories highlight dissatisfaction, grieving, loss, or wistful feelings for the past. This is likely due to activation of brain areas such as the amygdala, responsible for processing emotions and the prefrontal cortex that helps us integrate feelings and memories and regulate emotion.
How to get back there
There are several ways we can trigger or tap into nostalgia.
Conversations with family and friends who have shared experiences, unique objects like photos, and smells can transport us back to old times or places. So can a favourite song or old TV show, reunions with former classmates, even social media posts and anniversaries.
What we eat and drink can trigger food-evoked nostalgia. For instance, when we think of something as “comfort food”, there are likely elements of nostalgia at play.
Foods you found comforting as a child can evoke memories of being cared for and nurtured by loved ones. The form of these foods and the stories we tell about them may have been handed down through generations.
Food-evoked nostalgia can be very powerful because it engages multiple senses: taste, smell, texture, sight and sound. The sense of smell is closely linked to the limbic system in the brain responsible for emotion and memory making food-related memories particularly vivid and emotionally charged.
But, food-evoked nostalgia can also give rise to negative memories, such as of being forced to eat a certain vegetable you disliked as a child, or a food eaten during a sad moment like a loved ones funeral. Understanding why these foods evoke negative memories could help us process and overcome some of our adult food aversions. Encountering these foods in a positive light may help us reframe the memory associated with them.
Just like mum used to make. Food might remind you of the special care you received as a child. Galina Kovalenko/Shutterstock What people told us about food and nostalgia
Recently we interviewed eight Australians and asked them about their experiences with food-evoked nostalgia and the influence on their mood. We wanted to find out whether they experienced food-evoked nostalgia and if so, what foods triggered pleasant and unpleasant memories and feelings for them.
They reported they could use foods that were linked to times in their past to manipulate and influence their mood. Common foods they described as particularly nostalgia triggering were homemade meals, foods from school camp, cultural and ethnic foods, childhood favourites, comfort foods, special treats and snacks they were allowed as children, and holiday or celebration foods. One participant commented:
I guess part of this nostalgia is maybe […] The healing qualities that food has in mental wellbeing. I think food heals for us.
Another explained
I feel really happy, and I guess fortunate to have these kinds of foods that I can turn to, and they have these memories, and I love the feeling of nostalgia and reminiscing and things that remind me of good times.
Yorkshire pudding? Don’t mind if I do. Rigsbyphoto/Shutterstock Understanding food-evoked nostalgia is valuable because it provides us with an insight into how our sensory experiences and emotions intertwine with our memories and identity. While we know a lot about how food triggers nostalgic memories, there is still much to learn about the specific brain areas involved and the differences in food-evoked nostalgia in different cultures.
In the future we may be able to use the science behind food-evoked nostalgia to help people experiencing dementia to tap into lost memories or in psychological therapy to help people reframe negative experiences.
So, if you are ever feeling a little down and want to improve your mood, consider turning to one of your favourite comfort foods that remind you of home, your loved ones or a holiday long ago. Transporting yourself back to those times could help turn things around.
Megan Lee, Senior Teaching Fellow, Psychology, Bond University; Doug Angus, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Bond University, and Kate Simpson, Sessional academic, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Path to a Better Tuberculosis Vaccine Runs Through Montana
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A team of Montana researchers is playing a key role in the development of a more effective vaccine against tuberculosis, an infectious disease that has killed more people than any other.
The BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine, created in 1921, remains the sole TB vaccine. While it is 40% to 80% effective in young children, its efficacy is very low in adolescents and adults, leading to a worldwide push to create a more powerful vaccine.
One effort is underway at the University of Montana Center for Translational Medicine. The center specializes in improving and creating vaccines by adding what are called novel adjuvants. An adjuvant is a substance included in the vaccine, such as fat molecules or aluminum salts, that enhances the immune response, and novel adjuvants are those that have not yet been used in humans. Scientists are finding that adjuvants make for stronger, more precise, and more durable immunity than antigens, which create antibodies, would alone.
Eliciting specific responses from the immune system and deepening and broadening the response with adjuvants is known as precision vaccination. “It’s not one-size-fits-all,” said Ofer Levy, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard University and the head of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “A vaccine might work differently in a newborn versus an older adult and a middle-aged person.”
The ultimate precision vaccine, said Levy, would be lifelong protection from a disease with one jab. “A single-shot protection against influenza or a single-shot protection against covid, that would be the holy grail,” Levy said.
Jay Evans, the director of the University of Montana center and the chief scientific and strategy officer and a co-founder of Inimmune, a privately held biotechnology company in Missoula, said his team has been working on a TB vaccine for 15 years. The private-public partnership is developing vaccines and trying to improve existing vaccines, and he said it’s still five years off before the TB vaccine might be distributed widely.
It has not gone unnoticed at the center that this state-of-the-art vaccine research and production is located in a state that passed one of the nation’s most extreme anti-vaccination laws during the pandemic in 2021. The law prohibits businesses and governments from discriminating against people who aren’t vaccinated against covid-19 or other diseases, effectively banning both public and private employers from requiring workers to get vaccinated against covid or any other disease. A federal judge later ruled that the law cannot be enforced in health care settings, such as hospitals and doctors’ offices.
In mid-March, the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute announced it had begun the third and final phase of clinical trials for the new vaccine in seven countries. The trials should take about five years to complete. Research and production are being done in several places, including at a manufacturing facility in Hamilton owned by GSK, a giant pharmaceutical company.
Known as the forgotten pandemic, TB kills up to 1.6 million people a year, mostly in impoverished areas in Asia and Africa, despite its being both preventable and treatable. The U.S. has seen an increase in tuberculosis over the past decade, especially with the influx of migrants, and the number of cases rose by 16% from 2022 to 2023. Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV, whose risk of contracting a TB infection is 20 times as great as people without HIV.
“TB is a complex pathogen that has been with human beings for ages,” said Alemnew Dagnew, who heads the program for the new vaccine for the Gates Medical Research Institute. “Because it has been with human beings for many years, it has evolved and has a mechanism to escape the immune system. And the immunology of TB is not fully understood.”
The University of Montana Center for Translational Medicine and Inimmune together have 80 employees who specialize in researching a range of adjuvants to understand the specifics of immune responses to different substances. “You have to tailor it like tools in a toolbox towards the pathogen you are vaccinating against,” Evans said. “We have a whole library of adjuvant molecules and formulations.”
Vaccines are made more precise largely by using adjuvants. There are three basic types of natural adjuvants: aluminum salts; squalene, which is made from shark liver; and some kinds of saponins, which are fat molecules. It’s not fully understood how they stimulate the immune system. The center in Missoula has also created and patented a synthetic adjuvant, UM-1098, that drives a specific type of immune response and will be added to new vaccines.
One of the most promising molecules being used to juice up the immune system response to vaccines is a saponin molecule from the bark of the quillay tree, gathered in Chile from trees at least 10 years old. Such molecules were used by Novavax in its covid vaccine and by GSK in its widely used shingles vaccine, Shingrix. These molecules are also a key component in the new tuberculosis vaccine, known as the M72 vaccine.
But there is room for improvement.
“The vaccine shows 50% efficacy, which doesn’t sound like much, but basically there is no effective vaccine currently, so 50% is better than what’s out there,” Evans said. “We’re looking to take what we learned from that vaccine development with additional adjuvants to try and make it even better and move 50% to 80% or more.”
By contrast, measles vaccines are 95% effective.
According to Medscape, around 15 vaccine candidates are being developed to replace the BCG vaccine, and three of them are in phase 3 clinical trials.
One approach Evans’ center is researching to improve the new vaccine’s efficacy is taking a piece of the bacterium that causes TB, synthesizing it, and combining it with the adjuvant QS-21, made from the quillay tree. “It stimulates the immune system in a way that is specific to TB and it drives an immune response that is even closer to what we get from natural infections,” Evans said.
The University of Montana center is researching the treatment of several problems not commonly thought of as treatable with vaccines. They are entering the first phase of clinical trials for a vaccine for allergies, for instance, and first-phase trials for a cancer vaccine. And later this year, clinical trials will begin for vaccines to block the effects of opioids like heroin and fentanyl. The University of Montana received the largest grant in its history, $33 million, for anti-opioid vaccine research. It works by creating an antibody that binds with the drug in the bloodstream, which keeps it from entering the brain and creating the high.
For now, though, the eyes of health care experts around the world are on the trials for the new TB vaccines, which, if they are successful, could help save countless lives in the world’s poorest places.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
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