Non-cocaine, Topical Anaesthetics Can Kill Pain When Repairing Skin Wounds
While some pain killers need to be injected into the damaged tissue in order to work, topical anaesthetics only need to be spread on the surface. The earliest examples of "topical" anaesthetics contained cocaine, but now a new systematic review has shown that newer agents that don't contain cocaine can effectively treat pain caused by torn skin. This makes these pain killers an attractive choice for doctors who need to sew-up a patient's skin wound. This finding was reached after a team of Cochrane researchers analysed data from 32 randomised control trials that together involved 3128 patients.
Distinct Immune Responses Promoted By Skin Sentry Cells
A new study reveals that just as different soldiers in the field have different jobs, subsets of a type of immune cell that polices the barriers of the body can promote unique and opposite immune responses against the same type of infection. The research, published online by Cell Press in the journal Immunity, enhances our understanding of the early stages of the immune response and may have important implications for vaccinations and treatment of autoimmune diseases. Dendritic cells serve as sentries of the immune system and are stationed at the body's "outposts, " like the skin, where they are likely to encounter invading pathogens.
One Tiny Electron Could Be Key To Future Drugs That Repair Sunburn
Researchers who have been working for nearly a decade to piece together the process by which an enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA have finally witnessed the entire process in full detail in the laboratory. What they saw contradicts fundamental notions of how key biological molecules break up during the repair of sunburn - and that knowledge could someday lead to drugs or even lotions that could heal sunburn in humans. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Ohio State University researchers and their colleagues confirm what was previously known about the enzyme photolyase, which is naturally produced in the cells of plants and some animals - though not in mammals, including humans.