Leprosy: Ancient disease able to regenerate organs

People once believed it was caused by demons.

I never imagined leprosy to be good for anything other than a slow, painful death. But I guess science found a way to use it after all. Despite the animals results. All these ideas remain untested, on humans.

Animal experiments have uncovered the bacteria’s remarkable ability to almost double the size of livers by stimulating healthy growth.

It is a sneakily selfish act that gives the bacteria more tissue to infect.

But working out how they do it could lead to new age-defying therapies, the scientists say.

‘Promising results’

The hope is the approach can be harnessed for repairing the livers of people waiting for a transplant – or even to reverse some of the damage caused by ageing elsewhere in the body.

“The dream is to use the same bacterial strategy, to use the ingenuity of bacteria to generate new medicines for regeneration and repair,” Prof Rambukkana said.

“If you can harness that, you should be able to turn that mechanism into a jab you have every three months or something.”

All these ideas remain untested, however.

Dr Darius Widera, of the University of Reading, said: “Overall, the results could pave the way for new therapeutic approaches to the treatment of liver diseases such as cirrhosis.

“However, as the research has been done using armadillos as model animals, it is unclear if and how these promising results can translate to the biology of the human liver.

“Moreover, as the bacteria used in this study are disease-causing, substantial refinement of the methods would be required prior to clinical translation.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63626239