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Biotech Medicine Science

Researchers Discover A Surprising New Role for Lungs: Making Blood (ucsf.edu) 60

schwit1 quotes ScienceAlert: In experiments involving mice, the team found that lungs produce more than 10 million platelets (tiny blood cells) per hour, equating to the majority of platelets in the animals' circulation. This goes against the decades-long assumption that bone marrow produces all of our blood components. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco also discovered a previously unknown pool of blood stem cells that makes this happen inside the lung tissue -- cells that were incorrectly assumed to mainly reside in bone marrow. "This finding definitely suggests a more sophisticated view of the lungs -- that they're not just for respiration, but also a key partner in formation of crucial aspects of the blood," says one of the researchers, Mark R. Looney.
The platelet-producing cells actually migrate from the bone marrow to the lungs.
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Researchers Discover A Surprising New Role for Lungs: Making Blood

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    This is another reason not to smoke.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I wonder if this is where HIV hides when people who are HIV+ are on meds and the virus is undetectable. I don't really know anything, but it was my first thought.

    • Re:I Wonder (Score:4, Informative)

      by slew ( 2918 ) on Monday March 27, 2017 @01:02AM (#54116371)

      I wonder if this is where HIV hides when people who are HIV+ are on meds and the virus is undetectable. I don't really know anything, but it was my first thought.

      FWIW, researcher have already discovered that HIV hides in the lymph nodes... But nice try.

  • Humbling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cyphase ( 907627 ) on Monday March 27, 2017 @12:46AM (#54116343) Homepage
    And this is only now being discovered. Another reminder of how little we know.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, duh.
      Certain Platelets, and certain types of T-Cells, have long been known as originating in the Differentiating Cells in the Lungs. (The Differentiating bit pretty much explains Lung Cancer, when it goes wrong.) I learned of this some three decades back.
      Just why is this now News?
      (Excuse my English. Is "Differentiating" not the right word?)

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Yes it was known the lungs made platelets before. What's new is that the lungs make most of the platelets rather than just a bit.

  • From 2000 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27, 2017 @01:34AM (#54116437)

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1850212/

    • Still though, it shows the possibility that medicine has become fixated on 'direct proof' and has narrowed down their perception in proportion to this and as a result throws out a lot of good information.

      This seems to speak of a fundamental flaw.

  • by grep -v '.*' * ( 780312 ) on Monday March 27, 2017 @07:58AM (#54117565)
    I'm sorry, this is wrong. The science has already been settled. You are INCORRECT, go back to the drawing board and do it until you get it right.

    THAT's what irks me about that line. If we know everything, if it's all actually settled and done with (except for a few minor lose ends), then we need no more scientists or research -- DO WE? SETTLED science then just becomes dogma, no better than religion.

    If "The Ancients" knew everything -- or if the current set of scientists know everything -- then we're done, all we need are yet more marketeers to sell us things in different combinations. That being said, you move forward with what you believe you know but you don't set it in stone, never to be examined again.

    Good for these guys.
    • I take it from your post you're not a scientist? I will assume you're an engineer for designing an analogy. If I have a meter stick, that it is a meter can be 'settled' even if our degree of certainty as to how precisely it is a meter is in question. If it is to be used for framing a house, we probably don't even need to check. If we're going to use it to build a machine, then we have to see about measuring its degree of precision. This research showed that while we were correct about how platelets are
  • Such an amazing concept!!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This also gives insight into lung cancers. If the cancer-creating corruption occurs in a pluri-potent cell instead of a typical tissue, perhaps the route to metastasis is less difficult.

    -engrstudent

  • If the conclusion of this study is correct, why are bone marrow transplants successful at treating leukemia?
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because they generally irradiate the bones to kill the marrow (along with chemo that kills cells en masse) and probably end up zapping the lungs in the process too.

      Immunotherapies can't happen fast enough. Fix the broken cell mechanics (mitochondrial pathways) and let apoptosis do the job. This scorched earth / shotgun approach is barbaric.

    • by wbr1 ( 2538558 )
      leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells. The cells being made in the lungs are platlets, not white blood cells. Not saying the lungs cant make white blood cells, but for now it looks like the major contributor to most blood components is marrow, so that is likely why current marrow targeting treatments work.

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