Sunday, March 31, 2013

[First Respondent] A Tough Fight in the Dark

One of the toughest battles the medicine is fighting today is that against atherosclerosis. The main problem is has been going on for so long and the reason it has been so energy consuming is that the enemy is hiding way too deep, way too well.

Chronic diseases show their symptoms way too late in their progression, leaving their cause obscure. That's why the list of possible causes of, atherosclerosis ranges from smoking to bad alleles.

It is mind blowing to see the causes getting reevaluated and researched all the time: for example, recently it has been evaluated that e4 allele is, in fact, not "broken", as it has been mostly replaced with e3 and e2 type alleles. The rest of the possible causes proposed are all intelligent guesses made after loads of research and consideration.

But wait, there is more. In the dark room that is atherosclerosis where causes are unknown, search for remedies is extra hard and requires experimentation. Omega-3 fatty acids and aspirin preventing deadly heart complications - would you guess that right of the bat?

To conclude, I am truly impressed by the uphill battle against chronic diseases the medicine had been fighting for the last few decades.

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