THE WARFARIN, FROM POISON TO LIFE SAVER Heather McManus Year 9 Science correspondent Warfarin is a drug used as a blood thinner. It has rather contrasting uses as both a life-saving drug and a pesticide. This naturally found miracle is not widely known outside the world of doctors and patients. History In the 1920s, cattle in Canada and the northern United States were suffering from an outbreak of an unrecognisable disease. This disease would cause the cattle to hemorrhage after minor injuries or operations. These animals would often bleed to death or bleed for a long time before the wounds would clot. In 1921, it was discovered that the cattle were being fed mouldy food made with sweet clover which was acting as an anticoagulant. This anticoagulant was not identified until 1940 at the University of Wisconsin. The scientist, Paul Link, and his students managed to isolate the substance from the spoiled feed and work out its chemical properties. They continued their work to make a more concentrated version to be used as rodent poison. This resulted in 1948 with the production of Warfarin. It got its name from the acronym WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation) and –arin from coumarin.
Poison From 1948, Warfarin was used as a rodent poison. It is tasteless and odourless, making it the perfect poison to use. The rats eat the food and then bleed to death after suffering the anticoagulant effects of warfarin. The fault in this method of pest control is that the effects of warfarin bioaccumulate into the
FRANKLIN birds and other animals that consume the poisoned rats which can then transfer through the food chain, even reaching humans. Warfarin is also used to reduce the population of vampire bats in some areas. Medicine Warfarin was approved for medical use in humans in 1954. Now, approximately 1% of people in the UK and 8% of people over the age of 80 years old take warfarin daily. It is used by people who are at risk of blood clotting, for example people who have had strokes or people who have had certain operations and as a result have low motility and high risk of clotting. People take a certain dose of
warfarin once a day, usually in the evenings. Warfarin is somewhat difficult to manage as it is hard to get the correct dosage and there are many foods that affect its effectiveness in the body. People’s warfarin levels are managed by taking their INR (International Normalised Ratio) which is a measure of the time it takes for blood to clot. A normal person has an INR of around 1-1.5. People on warfarin will normally be given a range of between 2 and 3 though it can sometimes be higher. One of the main inconveniences of taking warfarin is that vitamin K does the opposite of warfarin and helps the blood clot. This means that if a patient consumes too much vitamin K, the effects of warfarin are stopped. Foods that are high in vitamin K include green leafy vegetables like kale, broccoli and cabbage. Patients taking warfarin must pay attention to what they eat as, too much vitamin K can cause their INR level to drop, putting them more at risk of a blood clot. Other foods, such as cranberry juice and alcohol have the opposite effect and thin the blood too much, thereby putting them at risk of severe
THE haemorrhaging. Although warfarin is an incredibly widely used drug that saves many people's lives, it must be carefully monitored. Many of our drugs are extracted from plants, but Warfarin must be one of the most miraculous. To be made from mouldy cattle feed and contributing to keeping 1 in 100 people in the UK alive is incredible. It raises the question of what other medicines could be made from nature. What will be the next lifesaving drug discovered by exploring and observing the natural world? It also raises some concerns due to the ever-changing climate and the many species of organisms we lose every day. Could we have lost the next big cure before we have even thought of it?
Should the prescription of medical marijuana and CBD oil be made legal in the UK? Flora Davis Year 9 Science correspondent Recently I have noticed an increase in the number of products advertised to include CBD in their formulation. There are sweets, drinks, tea bags, shampoo, face creams and numerous other items available. However, I have also heard stories in the news of children being denied access to the use of marijuana products for medical purposes. This struck me as a grave contradiction and so I wanted to explore and understand the reasoning behind this decision. Before we delve into the benefits of medicinal cannabis (the umbrella term for medical marijuana and CBD oil) it is crucial to define it. Medical marijuana and CBD oil are two different forms of medical cannabis that are both natural remedies. However, they do differ chemically. CBD stands for cannabidiol, a generally nonharmful and non-psychoactive component of the plant Cannabis Sativa. Medical marijuana is another kind of cannabinoid, also found in the cannabis plant, but it contains the psychotic compound THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) as well as the compound CBD. Therefore, it is potentially more harmful to the body and the brain.
FRANKLIN CBD oil is used to alleviate symptoms of multiple conditions. It can reduce pain, prevent seizures and reduce vomiting. It is often used by patients suffering from conditions such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and cancer. Often these conditions prove terminal. CBD oil works because our bodies have a system called the Endocannabinoid system. It receives, translates and creates cannabinoids which in turn perform actions in the nervous system, like reducing pain. If you add CBD to our natural system you simply make the body more able to combat pain. It is gentle and relatively safe. Medical marijuana works similarly but it is often used for several more extreme conditions and intense treatments such as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic pain and chemotherapy. Unlike CBD oil, medical marijuana contains the THC component which affects the brain, and its receptors, causing them to release the hormone dopamine. Dopamine causes sensations of happiness which can make people act rashly or become out of control. Medical marijuana works in the same way as CBD oil but with different side effects mentally due to the presence of THC. It is the compound THC which makes medical marijuana controversial in the media as it has psychoactive properties. Therefore, its consumption is just as illegal as the use of recreational cannabis. Having researched this topic, I have formed a better understanding of it. There have been a few stories in the news of medical marijuana helping people, especially children, manage difficult conditions such as epilepsy, with many parents taking legal action to allow their children the right to using these drugs. This personally seems wrong because it is being used in a medical context and not as a recreational drug. Most medicine comes with side effects and the use of THC has its own side effects that need to be managed. Studies have shown that medical Marijuana is 100% natural and effective. it is cheap to produce, and we shouldn’t apply social stigma to a medical scenario. As a result, I think doctors should be able to prescribe marijuana for medical reasons if the situation demands it. But, to break
THE this social stigma and start conversations, what is your perspective on this topic?
FRANKLIN bulk tissue is not very hard and has been done before, but scientists are getting closer to creating the small blood vessels that carry oxygen around the body. However, there have been bioprinters made to overcome this which can print vessels only 3mm wide.
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3D printing: The future of transplants and medical research Chloe Brennan Year 9 Science Correspondent Due to a significant development in human biology, it is now becoming extremely likely that organ donation will no longer be necessary as scientists will be able to create 3D organs instead. To pursue this, bio-inks have now been made which are substances made from living cells and can be used for 3D printing of complex tissues. They are made from many different natural polymers, for example, seaweed. This bio-ink ensures that the tissue will be able to grow the organ's structural scaffold, survive in the body symbiotically, staying rich with nutrients and without harming any of the other living cells. Other cells can then be added to the polymers to make a final organ. This process will mean that in the future, organs can be printed using the patients’ stem cells. This rules out the risk of organ rejection and therefore the success rate of transplants. It is also significantly cheaper. Furthermore, it means a lot less waiting around; around 114,000 people are currently on the waiting list in the US for organ transplants and there is an average of 20 people every day that dies because of a lack of organ transplants/donors. At the moment, one of the challenges that lie ahead for organ printing is the difficulty associated with the much smaller vessels within the body; building
Since this discovery, many trial body parts have already been made: very recently, some students used a 3D printer to create a prosthetic hand for a small girl born without fingers which meant that rather than paying the normal $50,000 (the usual prosthetic hand price) the girl only had to pay $5. Also, in Holland, a woman had a rare condition where she grew extra bones inside her skull which meant she was blind, and her brain wasn’t functioning perfectly, but they successfully used a plastic 3D skull implant and a resection surgery to cure this. Using this revolutionary technology, a company has produced hundreds of prosthetic eyes that are more available and significantly cheaper than natural implants. This same company has also produced prosthetic noses and ears from silicone using a 3D printer. Further discoveries have also been made which have allowed many scientists to work on creating a machine which can scan wounds and then fill them with various enzymes and natural polymers to treat the wound and encourage quick healing of the wounds. I think that this has been an incredibly exciting discovery as it can treat a broad range of injuries and it shows that there is still progress to be made in this field. These exciting discoveries show the vast possibility of scientific discoveries that can be made in the coming decades. Many current advancements prove that 3D printed kidneys, skins and hearts can become a reality.
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish: A Study of Dolphin Intelligence Iva Ristic Year 9 Science Correspondent Those who have read Douglas Adams’s famous series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, will know that dolphins are the second most intelligent species in the world, surpassed only by mice, of
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course, with humans come after dolphins, in third place. But how intelligent are dolphins?
Dolphins are one of the smartest animals on our planet, having problem-solving skills, social interactions and even a complex communication system that rival those of humans. In terms of mass, dolphins have larger brains than humans do (1600g vs 1300g), but in turn, have a smaller brain-to-body weight ratio. Animals with large brains usually live longer, have more complicated behaviours and are more social with others. In addition to this, dolphins have a whole part of their brain dedicated solely to echolocation. It makes more sense to use echolocation to gauge their surroundings, as sound travels better in water than light does. But dolphins use echolocation for other things as well. For example, they can use it to check on a dolphin pregnancy, determining the stage of the pregnancy as well as the foetus' health and heartbeat. Dolphin brains also contain specialised brain cells called spindle neurons, which are associated with communication, reasoning and reacting to situations. This means they have a lot of advanced abilities specific to their species. Additionally, the dolphins' section of the brain which processes emotions (called the limbic system) appears to be even more complex than our own. Dolphins are very social creatures, maybe even more so than humans. An experiment done to investigate how dolphins communicate with each other was conducted at the RIMS (Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences), in Honduras, with two bottlenose dolphins called Hector and Han. These dolphins had been trained to perform manoeuvres like corkscrews and waving at people passing by, but they also could think of and communicate ideas for tricks themselves, without being told exactly what to do. Han and Hector had also been taught to recognise hand signals, for example, ‘innovate’ (to perform a new trick that hadn’t been seen in the current session) and ‘tandem’ (to do something together). When the two hand signals are combined, this would mean to come up with something new and to perform it in unison. After the dolphins went underwater, recordings show several seconds of chirping between the two of them, before they simultaneously rolled over and flapped their tails together.
There are two explanations for this. Firstly, that one of the dolphins was copying the other extremely quickly and accurately, so that it looks like they were communicating, or that they were discussing a plan of action for what to do when they resurfaced. They continued to act in this way, blowing bubbles and pirouetting together. Other studies done on dolphin communication have had similar results, suggesting that dolphins do have a complicated system that they use to talk to each other. Another study is being done in Baltimore in the US, using new optical technology to create an underwater ‘touchscreen’ that dolphins can interact with. This system is the first of its kind and will be used to investigate the intelligence of dolphins and their ability to react to situations by giving them different scenarios. There have already been results; for example, one of the younger dolphins, named Foster, ‘showed immediate interest and expertise in playing a dolphin version of Whack-aMole,’ a game where they track fish on the touchscreen. These methods of studying dolphins could us give a new insight into just how clever dolphins are and how their brains work differently to human brains. The extraordinary communication systems of dolphins and their ability to quickly pick up information have made them a great subject of interest for neurologists and marine biologists alike. Now, of course, the intelligence of mice is a completely different matter...
Hana Moattar Year 13 Editor Ms Brown Editor in Chief