4 ms·
If you think about it, there are specific parts of our immune systems that are likely entirely maladaptive given modern civilization, where people are ~never ex
by derefr 4y ago
If you think about it, there are specific parts of our immune systems that are likely entirely maladaptive given modern civilization, where people are ~never exposed to parasites, animal venoms, etc.
We can turn those parts off, while leaving everything else on, and be better for it (no allergies, psoriatic arthritis, MS, Chron’s, etc.; and so none of the accelerated cellular senescence those conditions provoke in affected tissue.)
A lot of recent pharma is already focused on doing specific forms of this at low levels. Every other drug ad in the US is for an immune-receptor blocker of some kind. And the side effects of these drugs come down mostly to the fact that they’re too low-level — they stop these parts of the immune system from being called into action at affected sites, but they leave it active and “patrolling”, such that it attacks harder any tissues that don’t absorb the receptor-blocker well, and such that you get withdrawal effects of potential inflammatory crisis if/when it wears off.
Just deactivating the relevant parts of the immune system entirely, on the other hand, provides the same benefits these drugs do, but with none of the “now the rowdy enforcers have nothing better to do, so they go looking for trouble” drawbacks.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoExposure is uncommon, not basically never.
- giantg2 4y agoExposure to toxoplasmosis is extremely common.
- derefr 4y agoDepends on where you live. For the average human on Earth: sure, merely uncommon. For the average person who lives in a city and rarely goes out into nature, and paranoid-ly avoids doing things like walking barefoot in dung or wearing shortsleeves in forests when they do: effectively never.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoIf you live within the malaria zone (and an awful lot of people do) being in a city isn't protection. And the main threat from short sleeves in the forest is things that want your blood, not parasite infection.
- tsol 4y agoDeactivating parts of the immune system wouldn't be simpler than giving receptor blockers. Everything in the body is connected to one another, and whatever circulating immune signaling proteins are involved could have numerous other effects on other non-immune cells. There's also no reason to think that the immune system is so easily split up between systems that respond to parasites, bacteria, and virii. While a human designer might think that way, in nature most things are messy and have tons of overlap. This is true of the immune system. For example you can measure C-Reactive Protein and use it as a thermometer for general systemic inflammation. But elevated levels could as likely be a cold as a particularly intense workout-- they'll both trigger strong immune reactions with lots of overlap in effect.
- derefr 4y ago> There's also no reason to think that the immune system is so easily split up between systems that respond to parasites, bacteria, and virii. Well, sure. We essentially have multiple "immune systems", with overlapping goals. (Sort of like having both an anti-virus and anti-spyware scanner installed, as well as a system integrity checker, secure-boot verification logic, etc.) Some immune responses are good at stopping all sorts of things (e.g. xenoreactive antibodies, which attack both parasites, bacteria, and cancer cells.) I wouldn't suggest doing anything to these. Conveniently, these processes don't tend to cause many long-term health problems, save in edge cases (e.g. xenograft implantation.) Other immune responses are more specialized. And — also conveniently — it's the reactions/systems that specialize in responding to things we see almost none of in "city living", that seem to do bad things for longevity. Parasite-specialist immune cells (mast cells), for example, cause a lot of chronic inflammatory problems. We've been preventing mast cells from doing their jobs for a long time now — that's the point of taking antihistamines — with very little negative to show for it. I don't think it would be much of a stretch from there to a treatment for allergies that's just a siRNA that "NOPs out" the entire immune-response functionality of mast cells. (Or even a "permanent" treatment for allergies, via CRISPR gene edit to rub out the definition of mast-cell antigen recognition receptors from the body's vocabulary.) And I would also say that it's not much of a stretch to hypothesize that people who had this done, would, under longitudinal studies, show increased longevity / QUALYs. "Never having an [even sub-clinical] allergic reaction" would do really good things for the body. At the cost of — for most people reading this — just having to avoid sashimi.