The Burden of Weight Loss Drugs: Is It Worth the Risk? with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! Global demand outstrips supply! Palki did not investigate whether overuse versus normal use causes health problems.

Fruit flies with gut tumors prefer eating Tumor-Fighting Compounds compared to healthy flies: A case of self medication

Amazing stuff! Very specific self medication in insects!

A tumor can change gustatory preferences in the brain for specific chemicals that when eaten treat the tumor, which is not observed in healthy insects!

From the highlights and abstract::

"Highlights

• Gut tumors cause flies to increase their ingestion of anti-tumorigenic compounds

• Gut tumors do not affect avoidance of aversive compounds devoid of anti-tumor effects

• Increased consumption of anti-tumorigenic compounds suppresses gut tumors

• Shift in taste valence due to tumors occurs via a mechanism postsynaptic to taste neurons

Summary

The sense of taste is essential for survival, as it allows animals to distinguish between foods that are nutritious from those that are toxic. However, innate responses to different tastants can be modulated or even reversed under pathological conditions. Here, we examined whether and how the internal status of an animal impacts taste valence by using Drosophila models of hyperproliferation in the gut. In all three models where we expressed proliferation-inducing transgenes in intestinal stem cells (ISCs), hyperproliferation of ISCs caused a tumor-like phenotype in the gut. While tumor-bearing flies had no deficiency in overall food intake, strikingly, they exhibited an increased gustatory preference for aristolochic acid (ARI), which is a bitter and normally aversive plant-derived chemical. ARI had anti-tumor effects in all three of our gut hyperproliferation models. For other aversive chemicals we tested that are bitter but do not have anti-tumor effects, gut tumors did not affect avoidance behaviors. We demonstrated that bitter-sensing gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs) in tumor-bearing flies respond normally to ARI. Therefore, the internal pathology of gut hyperproliferation affects neural circuits that determine taste valence postsynaptic to GRNs rather than altering taste identity by GRNs. Overall, our data suggest that increased consumption of ARI may represent an attempt at self-medication. Finally, although ARI’s potential use as a chemotherapeutic agent is limited by its known toxicity in the liver and kidney, our findings suggest that tumor-bearing flies might be a useful animal model to screen for novel anti-tumor drugs."

Flies’ Taste for Tumor-Fighting Compounds May Aid Drug Discovery | The Scientist Magazine® "Fruit flies with gut tumors showed an increased preference for a bitter antitumor compound compared to healthy flies, suggesting a self-medication strategy. "

Gut tumors in flies alter the taste valence of an anti-tumorigenic bitter compound (open access)

Graphical abstract

Figure 1 Fruit flies with gut tumors exhibit reduced avoidance of ARI but not other bitter tastants

Gabon: Self-Medicating Gorillas Could Hold the Key to the Future of Human medicine

Very recommendable!

Animals self-medicate with plants − behavior humans have observed and emulated for millennia

Recommendable! Caveat: I did not have the time to read all of it.

Animals self-medicate with plants − behavior people have observed and emulated for millennia

How humans learned to self-medicate with certain plants by observing animals (republished by PBS)

Chimpanzees apply insects to wounds, a potential case of medication?

Amazing stuff!

"A research team from Osnabrück University and the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project has, for the first time, observed chimpanzees applying insects to their own wounds and the wounds of conspecifics. ...
However, despite research spanning decades from other long-term field sites in west and east Africa, external application of animal matter on open wounds has, until now, never been documented. "Our observations provide the first evidence that chimpanzees regularly capture insects and apply them onto open wounds. We now aim to investigate the potential beneficial consequences of such a surprising behaviour," ...
The authors from the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project and Osnabrück suggest that the applied insects might have anti-inflammatory or antiseptic properties. The use of insects for therapeutic purposes has been dated back in humans to 1,400 BCE and is still popular across human populations covering a variety of insect species with scientifically proven antibiotic and anti-viral effects. Alternatively, another explanation may be that such a behaviour does not have any beneficial consequences but is part of the local chimpanzee culture, just as a large number of medical treatments are in human societies. ..."

From the abstract:

"Self-medication refers to the process by which a host suppresses or prevents the deleterious effects of parasitism and other causes of illness via behavioural means. It has been observed across multiple animal taxa (e.g. bears, elephants, moths, starlings), with many case studies in great apes. Although the majority of studies on self-medication in non-human primates concern the ingestion of plant parts or non-nutritional substances to combat or control intestinal parasites, more recent examples also report topical applications of leaves or other materials (including arthropods) to skin integuments. Thus far, however, the application of insects or insect parts to an individual’s own wound or the wound of a conspecific has never been reported. Here, we report the first observations of chimpanzees applying insects to their own wounds (n = 19) and to the wounds of conspecifics (n = 3)."

Chimpanzees apply insects to wounds, a potent | EurekAlert! Researchers from Osnabrück University now examine a possible pharmaceutical function

Application of insects to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees in the wild (open access)