This week in science: an arthritis medicine regrows lost hair in a clinical trial, offering a possible new treatment for alopecia.
Also this week:
- Concrete created using human poo
- An unusual new type of ice that could occur on Neptune
- A viper with an extraordinary hunting tactic
- A gene therapy that halves cholesterol
- The way nature rapidly sealed a methane leak
Continue below, and be sure to watch our TWIS video too!
Arthritis Drug Restores Up to 100% of Hair in Patients With Severe Alopecia
About 2 percent of people worldwide live with the severe hair loss and psychological burden associated with alopecia areata, a condition in which the immune system wrongly attacks hair follicles.
Because it shares certain characteristics with current alopecia areata medicines, upadacitinib – an anti-inflammatory arthritis drug – was assessed as a possible treatment in a new study covering two concurrent Phase 3 clinical trials.
"In these two parallel phase 3 replicate randomized clinical trials, upadacitinib demonstrated a positive benefit-risk profile in adults and adolescents with severe alopecia areata," write the researchers in their published paper.
"Upadacitinib may be a potentially effective treatment option for this patient population."
Read the full story here.
Scientists Are Making Concrete With Human Poo – And It Gets 42% Stronger
Concrete is, in the most literal sense, the bedrock of the modern world.
Nearly every building project worldwide uses this material in one way or another. Yet there is one major drawback: producing cement, one of its key components, is exceptionally harmful to the environment.
Heating and processing limestone to produce cement ranks among the world's leading sources of carbon dioxide emissions, so scientists have understandably been searching for ways to reduce the impact.
Researchers headed by civil engineer Raghuvesh Tiwari at Manipal University Jaipur in India may have found an ingenious answer that addresses two environmental problems at once.
When they added biochar produced from human poo slurry treated at faecal sludge processing plants, their concrete "yields significant improvements in concrete properties," they write in a paper accepted for publication in Scientific Reports.
Read the full story here.
Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at More Than 2,000 °C
Water is extremely strange, acting in ways that sharply contradict the behaviour of other liquids. It grows less dense as it freezes. It has unusually high surface tension, as well as an unusually high boiling point. Given its molecular weight, it ought to be a gas at room temperature.
That is all under ordinary ambient conditions on Earth.
Alter the pressure and temperature by a few degrees, however, and water's bizarre properties become even more extreme.
Scientists have now shown off one of the strangest types of ice identified so far, created under astonishing pressures of up to 2.3 million atmospheres and immense temperatures of up to 2,630 kelvins (2,357 degrees Celsius, or 4,274 degrees Fahrenheit).
Read the full story here.
Mysterious Viper With a 'Spider' For a Tail Reveals Another Bizarre Surprise
Several creatures on Earth have a sting in their tails, but science knows of just one animal that has a spider for a tail.
Native to Iran, the suitably named spider-tailed horned viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) is among the world's most unusual snakes. It evolved a peculiar tail appendage that closely resembles an arachnid, complete with unsettling spider 'legs'.
For a new study published in The Anatomical Record, researchers used high-resolution micro-CT scans to look inside the viper for the first time, broadening our understanding of this unusual snake and its even more unusual tail.
Read the full story here.
Experimental One-Dose Treatment Cuts 'Bad' Cholesterol by 52% in First Human Trial
Excessive levels of 'bad' cholesterol in the blood – the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) variety – can help plaque accumulate in the arteries, raising the likelihood of cardiovascular conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.
Scientists are now developing a targeted DNA-editing strategy that uses CRISPR technology to introduce a permanent genetic alteration, potentially lowering LDL cholesterol for the long term after a single treatment.
Known as CTX310, the treatment is intended to reproduce a naturally occurring genetic variant that decreases LDL cholesterol by reducing expression of a liver protein called ANGPTL3.
Fresh findings from a clinical trial, led by a team at the Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicate that the method may still be safe and effective a year later.
Read the full story here.
Scientists Accidentally Caused a Methane Leak Beneath The South China Sea. Ocean Life Sealed It Almost Instantly.
In 2018, Chinese government researchers inadvertently triggered a methane leak beneath the South China Sea.
One year afterwards, a plume of methane had burst from the depths, climbing more than a kilometre through the water column.
Scientists believed the error might need decades, or even a century, to be resolved naturally.
But then something remarkable occurred.
With echosounders, underwater cameras and chemical sensors, researchers watched in amazement as a mass of ocean life gathered around the opening and trapped the escaping gas with "remarkable speed".
"Within just one to two years, an effective methane-consuming ecosystem had already formed," says microbial ecologist Emil Ruff of the University of Bremen in Germany.
Read the full story here.
Watch the video above for a round-up of this week's leading stories!
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