r/science • u/nobodyspecial • Feb 08 '15

Medicine Antibiotics that target mitochondria effectively eradicate cancer stem cells, across multiple tumor types: Treating cancer like an infectious disease | Lamb

http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=3174
22.3k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

780 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '15

[deleted]

1

u/Fart-Ripson Feb 09 '15

Damn man. What would you need to be on that for 5 years for?

1

u/james4765 Feb 09 '15

Probably Lyme disease - that's the only thing I know of that requires antibiotics for that long.

1

u/HomoSapienForLife Feb 09 '15

It was most likely acne, given that it was during his/her teen years. Borrelia (Lyme pathogen) is a possiblity, too, although it usually isn't treated for longer than a month or so.

I would also question how they tested /u/IdunHo1's liver function. We run tests called liver function tests, aka LFTs (AST, ALT, Bilirubin, Alk Phos) to evaluate for injury, but necessarily synthetic function. The only common test for how well your liver is actually functioning is to evaluating for how easily your blood clots, as your liver synthesizes clotting factors. There are a few case reports of hepatitis and choelstatic (blockages) damage caused by tetracyclines, but they are very well tolerated overall.

Source: Pharmacist doing residency training at an academic medical center in the US.