Interesting facts I picked up in medicine

Another cool thing: The discovery of using beta blockers to treat haemangiomas i.e. a complete luck finding in a kid being treated for heart failure.

An energy imbalance of +81KCal/day (=one chocolate digestive) would lead to a weight gain of over 4.5 kilograms a year on average. Yet despite most people eating a varied diet every day with an ever-changing energy content and a differing energy expenditure, most people remain in energy balance over the long term and stay a stable weight. Despite the obesity crisis, it's important to recognise that strong regulatory mechanisms for metabolism and energy balance exists and, for most people, work rather well without us ever really considering what a feat that is.

So, amidst the very bleak existence of lectures, tutorials and placements where we are required to rote learn muscles, attachments, innervations, syndromes, therapies and other details that soon lose their appeal after we're forced to memorise it for the billionth time, I thought I'd make a lighter thread to remind us that alot of medical physiology, disease or phenomena ARE fascinating.

So, I thought I'd make a thread for current med students to drop in with an interesting fact they picked up related to our course, something not necessarily related to exams, but something you just went "wow, that's amazing"

Aimed at all levels, and feel free to correct.

So, my first little tidbit is that cancer cells, who continually mutate in order to survive, imitate hypoxia, making the local cells think they're hypoxic. They do this so the body secretes VEGF, which your body needs to make new blood vessels. By doing this, cancer cells use VEGF to create its own blood supply and can then use it to grow and metastasise elsewhere.

Also (as reading through my notes now) the future antibody therapies (which use animal antibodies) will be coming from.....not rats.....not monkeys....but camels and sharks.

Nanobodies.

Sometimes trauma patients with extremely raised intracranial pressures will require a decompressive craniectomy - part of the skull is removed to reduce the pressure on the brain. Sometimes this piece of skull (commonly pretty much a full hemicalvarium) is preserved by placing it in the abdominal wall, to be replaced at a later date.

TL;DR SOMETIMES IF YOU HIT YOUR HEAD REAL BAD THEY TAKE OFF HALF YOUR SKULL AND STICK IT IN YOUR STOMACH FOR SAFEKEEPING

One of the few "surely you're joking" moments I've had in medicine

Okay, we're currently doing clinical trials on a drug in cancer research (I think it's trialling in melanoma patients) and it actually targets the very same mechanism as TGN1412.

The first human trial on TGN1412 went well.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22556736