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Ultraviolet Irradiation of Blood: “The Cure That Time Forgot”? (2018)
- ceejayoz 6y agoHandy for purely/largely blood-borne diseases. Useless for stuff that lives in the tissues, like SARS-CoV-2. Tough to irradiate the lungs.
- jacobush 6y agoStill super interesting. My (completely flawed) intuition was that the blood would be fried useless by any dosage enough to kill bacteria!
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt does note that "only 5–7% of blood volume needs to be treated with UV to produce the optimum benefit", so you'd be left with enough functional blood. It's certainly interesting, but it's gonna be misused as a "see Trump was right!" bludgeon today by people who skip the conclusion ("use for drug-resistant bacterial sepsis").
- tgv 6y ago> It does note that "only 5–7% of blood volume needs to be treated with UV to produce the optimum benefit", so you'd be left with enough functional blood. The context leading up to that phrase puts the treatment in a different light (forgive the pun): "However the use of UBI (Ultraviolet blood irradiation) to treat septicemia cannot be solely due to UV-mediated killing of bacteria in the blood-stream, ...". And UBI of course needs a machine hooked up to your arteries. It's not shining light in your body.
- syntheticnature 6y agoAh, but as pointed out else-thread, it's not killing the bacteria. From the Conclusions section: "Many people therefore assume that UBI must act by killing pathogens (bacteria, viruses or other microorganisms) circulating in the bloodstream. However there is no evidence that this is actually the case." The benefits are then ascribed to homesis, much like how low-dose ionizing radiation actually seems to benefit the immune system.
- saalweachter 6y agoMy intuition as someone who has a UV light on their drinking water is also that the blood would also be too opaque for direct irradiation, anyway. (You need to filter your water before it hits the UV light, because if it is eg cloudy or has too many minerals in it, the water treatment salesman tells me, the UV light won't actually do anything.)
- SamBam 6y agoI'm not sure if anything in the article suggested it was only for blood-borne disease. It appears to boost the immune system, and the blood carries the immune system to every part of the body, including the lungs.
- mattnewton 6y agoMy guess is this is on the top page after the President of the US recently suggested shinning UV inside people’s bodies or injecting disinfectant be looked into as a coronavirus treatment. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests...
- fortran77 6y agoGiven how sensitive the lungs are to irritants, and how damaging UVC is to cells, I wouldn't want my lungs irradiated with UVC.
- jessriedel 6y agoTo expand on SamBam's response: how this works, if in fact it does, it's not by directly killing pathogens in the blood. FTFA, less than 10% of the blood by volume needs to be irradiated for effectiveness.
- koheripbal 6y ago...also, in case anyone is wondering, it doesn't ONLY kill the bacteria. It also destroys a huge amount of other things floating in our blood stream that we need to live. The blood isn't just red blood cells and water. It's filled with proteins, other types of cells, antibodies, and myriad of things - many of which we don't even understand yet.
- robocat 6y ago> Tough to irradiate the lungs. “ Is low dose radiation therapy a potential treatment for COVID-19 pneumonia?” — https://www.thegreenjournal.com/article/S0167-8140(20)30185-7/fulltext https://www.thegreenjournal.com/article/S0167-8140(20)30185-... “ It was not uncommon in the early twentieth century to treat pneumonia with x-rays. A review showed low doses from kilovoltage x-rays reduced pneumonia mortality from roughly 30 percent to 10 percent on average.”
- ashtonkem 6y agoIIRC, your eyes actually irradiate a significant chunk of your blood per minute. One of the trade-offs of wearing sunglasses is that you cut off this process. Unclear how large of an effect is has, probably less than removing blood and irradiating it, since that process doesn’t have to balance against eye damage.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoGot link?
- ashtonkem 6y agoCame from a podcast a while ago, so alas no.
- qqssccfftt 6y ago> One of the trade-offs of wearing sunglasses is that you cut off this process. I assume that's one of the tradeoffs of sleeping or closing your eyes, too.
- jcims 6y agoWhoa, never thought of that. If you look at how much blood needs to be treated in the paper it's only 3.5ml per kg. So most likely enough blood is being exposed on a daily basis. However I think the major difference is going to be the intensity of the dose. Cells get through the retina and sclera pretty quickly, less then a second, and UV from sunlight isn't actually that intense on the ground (3mW/cm^2 [0]). Dosing in the paper ranges from .1W/cm^ to 200W/cm^2 for anywhere from 10 seconds to 30 minutes. In the minimum case this is ~5 orders of magnitude more UV. On a side note, I really dislike the default layout of NIH reports. I always have to pick the classic or PDF to be able to read them. [0] - https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Energy/Sunlight.aspx https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Ene...
- tsimionescu 6y agoThe lens in your eye is also pretty opaque to UV light, which is why you can't see UV light at all. There probably is some effect, but it will be very minor.
- hirundo 6y ago"Firstly UBI is clearly an example of the well-known phenomenon called “hormesis” or “biphasic dose response’." They're saying that the benefits are not due to any germicidal effects, but in response to the oxidative stress it imposes, which is generally considered to be detrimental at higher levels. To put it perhaps over-simply, it exercises the blood.
- manmal 6y agoI recently read that COVID-19 counts decline after near infrared irradiation of body tissue. The authors thought that this is due to the resulting nitric oxide increase in the blood. Alas, I can’t find the paper right now.
- swsieber 6y agoI recall hearing that red light therapy (shining red lights on the target area) has been used to treat restless leg syndrome. I wonder how much untapped potential light therapy has because it's a lot more fringe.
- Balgair 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optogenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optogenetics
- manmal 6y agoIndeed, red light therapy is very versatile. It increases the rate of stem cell maturation, helps cell to de-stress (by pushing out nitric oxide), increases energy production (by stimulating cytochrome-c-oxidase), and on top of that has systemic effects, too - the nitric oxide kills some pathogens and vasodilates (lowering high blood pressure), and, depending on where you shine the light, e.g. hormone production is increased. Those are all subtle improvements, but they add up.
- nwatson 6y agoSo now Trump is an idiot-savant? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-coronavirus-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-coronavir...
- ceejayoz 6y agoSetting aside the issue that this can't really be used on SARS-CoV-2 at all, being accidentally correct doesn't make you a savant.
- cde-v 6y agoNo, still just an idiot considering COVID is not drug-resistant bacterial sepsis
- rurban 6y agoJust an idiot would be triggered by the daily Anti-Trump reflex. Most of the things he mentions are half-true, just in a very silly way. In the COVID-19 case the major problem is the bacterial sepsis caused by the infection.
- ceejayoz 6y ago> In the COVID-19 case the major problem is the bacterial sepsis caused by the infection. This does not appear to be at all true. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus-kill-clinicians-trace-ferocious-rampage-through-body-brain-toes https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus...
- BitwiseFool 6y agoIf you look at how Trump talks you can see a pattern where he likes to repeat ideas that he's heard about and then hype them. My hunch is that he heard about this as a potential treatment from some doctor/advisor and then put his usual spin on it. This could work, it could be great, it's very promising, why don't we try it?
- 6y ago
- isoprophlex 6y agoFrom the article, which I found relevant wrt. COVID: > These observations led to application of UBI in patients suffering from pneumonia. In a series of 75 cases in which the diagnoses of pneumonia were confirmed by X-rays, all patients responded well to UBI showing a rapid decrease in temperature, disappearance of cyanosis (often within 3–5 min), cessation of delirium if present, a marked reduction in pulse rate and a rapid resolution of pulmonary consolidation. A shortening of the time of hospitalizations and accelerated convalescence was regularly observed. Of course I have no idea how this generalizes to the pneumonia you get from coronavirus...
- ceejayoz 6y agoThat's from the pre-antibiotics era, to be clear. It's likely there's good reason antibiotics supplanted it.
- isoprophlex 6y agoYeah, clear. Reading your other comment made me realize there's of course the important distinction between viral and bacterial disease to be made, too...
- rurban 6y agoNo, the bacterial problem is true. COVID-19 causes massive bacterial infections in the lungs. Think of the green slime you cough out with the common cold, but deep in your lung. It's almost the same virus after all. The virus itself causes something else in the red bloodcells prohibiting the transport of oxygen, but this is unlikely the major letal problem.
- jimsmart 6y agoCovid-19 is a coronavirus, the common cold is usually a rhinovirus. They're not 'almost the same virus' as you assert, they're completely different virus families [1]. For starters, coronaviruses are enveloped, and rhinoviruses are naked. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_classification
- gzu 6y agoDoes UV light from sitting in the sun reach the blood vessels near the surface of the skin?
- moftz 6y agoIt may but your eyes are definitely a path for UV exposure of blood.
- wyldfire 6y agoI can't help thinking that this may have been the subject of the rambling, inarticulate speech recently given by POTUS? When I hear these crazy headlines, I think that he didn't come up with this stuff on his own, so did he hear this from a sane advisor or some kook on his staff? After he went to the mat for hydroxychloroquine, it's pretty natural for everyone to be skeptical, though.
- rsynnott 6y agoI’d question the sanity of any advisor pushing a dodgy old Soviet antibacterial technique for a virus. Also, this fails to explain the _disinfectant_.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoI think the temptation is to assume that the president is at least of average intelligence. Unfortunately this leads to this strange apologist behaviour when he says something fricking stupid.
- rsynnott 6y agoI’m not sure why anyone would assume that at this point.
- rechristened 6y agoThe fact that he got elected and can keep getting people to give him free air time.
- dwiel 6y agoIf we were ever lacking a clear counter-example of intelligence as a singular metric, we certainly aren't lacking any more.
- dqpb 6y agoI’ve been saying for a long time that Trump isn’t stupid, he just has nefarious goals. But after seeing that rambling video of him hypothesizing about disinfectants to clean out the body, I’m convinced he’s actually an idiot.
- anonu 6y agoNot related - but tangential: this reminds me of blue light therapy for neonatal jaundice
- carbocation 6y agoAssuming that this works (which I will do for the point of this conversation, not that I believe it): 1. You'd have to create a bunch of hemo-irradiators (which don't currently exist). 2. You'd have to train perfusionists or nurses to use them. 3. You'd have to place large-bore dialysis-style catheters into patients for the purpose of using these devices. 4. You'd have to have 1:1 RN staffing to use these machines (just like we do for continuous veno-venous hemofiltration devices for renal failure patients in the ICU). Lots of downstream things to think about beyond just whether the concept is feasible.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoDon’t forget the infection risk.
- carbocation 6y agoProponents: "Don't worry, that secondary bacterial bloodstream infection due to vascular access will also be cured by this machine"
- tinus_hn 6y agoJust insert some tide pods in the machine.
- sova 6y agoGiven that one only needs to recirculate 5-7% of the blood and expose it to UV C, could we not shrink this age-old device into something portable? I don't know anything about phlebotomy or the implications of liquid pressure in the body, but it seems like if you can administer a syringe you can draw blood, UV it, and put it back in as well.
- carbocation 6y agoThe clotting cascade will not be friendly to that approach.
- blincoln 6y agoIt may be worth looking into further, but the section near the end of this very long article that recommends quack treatment websites really calls into question the quality of the rest of it and the motivations of the authors, if you ask me. E.g.: "The web-site entitled 'Infections cured' (http://infectionscured.com http://infectionscured.com) is also worth checking out."
- swader999 6y agoSimilar to this tech that uses the nasal cavity to irradiate blood at a beneficial wavelength. "The nasal cavity is saturated with blood capillaries and five major arteries connect directly to the circulatory system – making it the perfect location for non-invasive systemic photobiomodulation. Vielight systemic photobiomodulation technology is hypothesized to boost the immune system and increase blood oxygenation levels." https://vielight.com/systemic-photobiomodulation/ https://vielight.com/systemic-photobiomodulation/
- hamilyon2 6y agoHypothesised? In Krimea they give nasal photobiomodulation as actual treatment and I was subject to it more than once.
- swader999 6y agoYeah, I think this company is very cautious in their claims. There's decades of research on this if you want to dig into it.
- johnohara 6y agoCould this be used to increase blood oxygenation levels in athletes prior to competition? Would it still be legal? I'm not involved in coaching or competition. Just curious.
- poppabox 6y agoOne of those articles where the question in the title can be answered with 'no'.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- leptoniscool 6y agoWill sunbathing or going in a tanning machine incur the same benefit?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThere's an established link between Vitamin D deficiency and compromised immune system response. Unless you live in a hot sunny country or spend a lot of time outdoors in the winter, the chances are good you're somewhat deficient. But this is easy to check, and easy to fix with supplements.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- boxingdog 6y agowould be possible in the future to use a camera with AI, to identify and target with a laser beam viruses and batecteria?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tarcyanm 6y agoThere are also those proponents of nebulizing (dilute) peroxide. While I wouldn't try this myself, peroxide modulates lymphocytes and would surely result in a decrease in viral load. Peroxide is not unknown to the body, given the various endogenous peroxidases that catalyze it. Dilution would seem to be critical, though. I have wondered whether it wasn't worth some controlled studies, if they haven't happened already (shrug)
- ceejayoz 6y ago> peroxide modulates lymphocytes This is kinda like saying "sodium is important in the body so it's fine to eat a chunk of it".
- tarcyanm 6y agoThe dose makes the poison.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThe mechanism has to make sense, too, though.
- tarcyanm 6y agoPeroxide is directly virucidal through oxidation of the lipid envelope and RNA degradation. Whether lymphocytes would be activated in lung tissue in vivo is entirely speculative.
- ceejayoz 6y agoSure. Again, this is where the mechanism matters. There are plenty of things that kill viruses; you have to be able to deliver it in a useful way that doesn't kill the patient. As XKCD points out, a handgun kills cancer cells in vitro. https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
- Vysero 6y agoSounds great, but I would prefer just injecting some Lysol myself.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't do this here.
- theplague42 6y agoWhy do you think this link got posted?
- dang 6y agoThat's a separate question.
- Vysero 6y agoPlease lighten up you'll give yourself a heart attack.
- specialist 6y agoHow is it we're talking about this and not the concrete steps towards the millions of daily tests needed safely end social isolation? I've received UVA and UVB phototherapies. To treat GVHD. Works great. Last I checked, no one really knows how or why. UV is totally worth investigating. It's totally inappropriate (dangerous) for the POTUS to speculate on TV during a pandemic. Especially while actively thwarting or malignecting actual proven useful treatments and mitigations. Shame on media (and us) for the ongoing attempts to divine a coherent narrative from the blather of a madman.
- rsynnott 6y agoIt's fairly clear that Trump is looking for a reason, any reason, that it could be okay to re-open quickly, and is indulging in a lot of wishful thinking in pursuit of this. Mass testing and contact tracing is probably the right route, but it's not a route that's likely to be implemented in the next couple of weeks, so it's probably not particularly exciting to him.
- tanto 6y ago> It's totally inappropriate (dangerous) for the POTUS to speculate on TV during a pandemic. He is not speculating. Lets face it. He is a crook and a total retard. Idiocracy happend.
- martythemaniak 6y agoIt's pretty interesting that as soon as a certain famous snake oil peddler starts yammering about his n-th insane theory, HN immediately jumps on it and starts serious consideration and deliberation. It's very much the same way he ended up with billions worth of free coverage during the campaign because the media could not help themselves but constantly entertain and discuss his ramblings. Occam's Razor: He's just a senile old coot full of quack theories about everything. There's tons of people like him, you don't have to waste your time on them.
- basementcat 6y agoThis "famous person" was selected to serve as the head of state by the citizens of the country with the second largest nuclear weapons arsenal. His pronouncements have the force of official public policy.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoThat may be, but neither the size of one's nuclear arsenal nor "official public policy" turns pseudoscience into an effective treatment.
- vmh1928 6y agoThat's not how it works. The ramblings of the president do not have any legal force.
- monocasa 6y agoAs the head of the executive branch, that's exactly how it works. Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Public statements in the official capacity as president are absolutely policy statements for the executive when they aren't affecting independent bodies like the Department of Justice. The Department of Health and Human Services isn't an independent body, and so the president's statements in a damn press briefing are policy positions. This is like saying that a CEO's press statements somehow aren't policy positions of the company.
- 6y ago
- ck2 6y agoOh come on. Not this nonsense here too. Science and researchers don't "forget" things. Things that aren't effective or practical are retired. This is just someone trying to make the president seem less stupid but of course there is no way he's ever read anything about blood radiation and all the failed experiments over the years.
- LatteLazy 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22969986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22969986
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SlowRobotAhead 6y agoSo I woke up to some “news” about said ridiculous statements and said snake oil sales. So as I do now, I went and got the actual source and not the media interprition of it. Can you find where in this clip he says to inject Lysol or sells snake oil? https://youtube.com/watch?v=zu60uj0_-Nw&feature=emb_title&time_continue=1538 https://youtube.com/watch?v=zu60uj0_-Nw&feature=emb_title&ti... Because I saw him ask questions to his medical professional and make very general statements that are objectively true but at worst impractical or irrelevant. Can anyone time stamp the snake oil for me?
- theplague42 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHkzqejFKbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHkzqejFKbM he is clearly talking about injecting disinfectants
- SlowRobotAhead 6y agoDid you not see I already posted that link, except mine has more context? I see him ask his medical professional to confirm they are indeed looking into various options. Are you perhaps looking intentionally for the worst possible take and using that in place of an objective fact?
- theplague42 6y agoYou asked for a timestamp; I posted the specific segment. "Various options" includes injecting disinfectants.
- SlowRobotAhead 6y agoDo you HONESTLY think the president was asking Dr. Birx to inject bleach or isopropyl alcohol into coronavirus patients? Like really honestly? Or are you just hopeful to imply that to hurt Trump? Because that just wasn’t my take watching the full stream. You are obviously free to believe whatever makes you feel good. This wouldn’t even be the first time that he’s mentioned convalescent plasma therapy which it would not be unfair to describe as “injecting blood into someone to clean the virus from them”
- pacman83 6y agoI've actually received a version of whole blood UV treatment about 10 years ago. For whatever reason I ended up feeling euphoric, memorably so, one of the best days of my life. It may have something to do with the fact that I was given oxygen after I started to faint after I saw the blood being withdrawn. I collected a lot of papers about this modality and related ones. I can share them if anyone would like. I will not be able to comment on them and I am not a medical professional. Perhaps this was simply the placebo that appealed to me. But the reason I sought out this treatment is that it is practiced by a doctor who was recommended to me by an MD PhD neurologist at Mayo Clinic. That doctor now does more with ozone gas than he does with ultraviolet blood irradiation. he considers it to be part of a class of "oxidative therapies" including very high doses of vitamin C.
- Mencious 6y agoFancinating. Would like the papers you collected. Thanks in advance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- HAPMCEZ 6y agoFrom Section 25 point 1, Historical Introduction > In 1801 Johann Wilhelm Ritter, a Polish physicist working at the University of Jena in Germany discovered a form of light beyond the violet end of the spectrum that he called “Chemical Rays” and which later became “Ultraviolet” light Chemical Rays
- mizay7 6y agoThe political discussion in this thread is fascinating. There are people advancing intelligent arguments about how the presidents podium remarks were flippant but basically on topic and that he wasn't telling people to actually drink bleach. While true, in my eyes it is obvious that he conflated sterilizing a surface with killing infection in a human and then started riffing on it. It is incredibly strange and scary to me that not everyone is on the same page here. If you want to be generous you could say that the president was fatigued and had a 'brain fart' conflating the two. But this wasn't an issue with being articulate or not, or off the cuff or not, or how prescriptive he was. The man clearly thought that disinfecting surfaces relates to treating people. I find it terrifying that our leader could make such a mistake, especially at this stage of the pandemic.
- czzr 6y agoThe fascinating thing for me, reading this thread, is how smart people are tripping over themselves to justify obvious nonsense. It’s really amazing to watch this in real time.
- fellowniusmonk 6y agoAfter all the effort they put in, making themselves look like shills trying conjure up post-hoc justifications for his idiocy and he just comes out and throws them all under the bus by claiming he was being "Sarcastic". Unreal. https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-claims-his-comments-on-injecting-disinfectant-were-sarcastic https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-claims-his-comments-on-i...
- hyko 6y agoEasily the worst U.S. president in history. I mean, say what you like about James Buchanan but I’m pretty certain he never suggested anyone INJECT THEMSELVES WITH DISINFECTANT!
- mizay7 6y agoI dont think he suggested people inject themselves with disinfectant. That summary is what allows people to say that headlines are blown out of proportion and allows glossing over the real and only slightly more nuanced issue. The man showcased profound misunderstanding, but he didn't prescribe lysol injections.
- CodeSheikh 6y ago‘However with the development of antibiotics, UBI use declined and it has now been called “the cure that time forgot”.‘ It says antibiotics. Is it me or UBI was used to treat bacterial infections or the OP is desperately correlating this study with the “effectiveness” of testing viruses with UBI? I feel like a lot of partisan users are getting the boot from Reddit and they are channeling out their frustrations here. Guys let’s keep HN pure with tech only posts.
- zer0n1ght 6y agoAlmost the entire briefing was about UV light killing viruses. Ultraviolet light is classified as a non-chemical disinfectant, and Trump was asking if we can bring it into the body. In his comment he said "The whole concept of the light that kills under one minute, thats pretty powerful". Nowhere anywhere did he suggest injecting chemicals. In fact, it was one of the dumb reporters that asked him a question about injecting bleach, not Trump. It's like people are not even watching the same press briefing. This media manipulation is getting blatant and outright mad, and I am watching people all around me hypnotized by it. What the heck is going on?