Coming to a doctor’s office nowhere near you and nowhere near affordable for the average joe.
Crispr gene editing shown to permanently lower hereditary high cholesterol
Submitted 11 months ago by cyu@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 11 months ago
killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“Workers will live longer while still eating the same garbage food as before, meaning we can continue to pay them a pittance”
Boom. It’s on the health plan.
HubertManne@kbin.social 11 months ago
this. folks don't realize how having a healthier workforce is something overlords want. Its even better than babies because no costly education needed.
Quereller@lemmy.one 11 months ago
Food intake has a very modest impact on cholesterol levels in people with familiar hypercholesteremia.
Like 10 % reduction when you are 500 % over safe levels.
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
Statins are already there on a once a day pill. I don’t know how they are for other people, but I have a nuke-it-from-orbit dosage due to genetic issues, and I don’t notice any side effects. A grapefruit might kill me, but I never liked them, anyway. Costco’s out of pocket rate is around $30 for 90 days.
I’d take gene editing if it were cheap enough, but just speaking for myself, I’m fine without it. Health plans probably aren’t going to make it cheap when the alternative tends to work fine.
Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Also said by a guy learning about car phones in the 1970’s
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 11 months ago
Yeah it sucks for you Americans over there.
Hopefully it will pave the road for lots of other similar treatments and also bring prices under control.
WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 11 months ago
It will bring prices under control for the manufacturers, which will raise their profit margin while they keep the prices sky high.
Also, lets not forget that our paying, or rather our insurance, paying absurd prices for drugs is what has long subsidized the rest of the world's cheap drugs. It's why drug companies fight so hard to keep America from lowering drug prices - it'd completely destroy their profit margins and they'd be relegated to being mere multimillionaires instead of multibillionaires.
FaceDeer@kbin.social 11 months ago
Maybe not right now. But that was the case for every medicine or treatment immediately after it was first discovered. When insulin was first discovered as a treatment for diabetes only a few people could get it, for example, now it's standard.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I find it quite funny that CRISPR gene editing sounds, at first glance, no more complicated than genetic modification of e-coli bacteria that I performed in an undergraduate Biochemistry course 20 years ago.
Back then, I just followed a recipe - extract DNA from the bacteria, mix it with a chemical to cut at certain places, add in your desired gene, mix it with a “glue” chemical that joined them together, then just spin your new DNA in a centrifuge with the bacteria and finally grow it all on a medium that your new gene has a resiliance against, such that only the bacteria that absorbed the desired DNA would survive. I’m sure the CRISPR process is much more finessed, but many of the core principles are the same.
I also wonder if cold and other SARS/Covid viruses somehow mix and share genetic material in swirls in the air, like a natural centrifuge.
Silverseren@kbin.social 11 months ago
I mean, I've worked with CRISPR in plant biology. It's not really that much more complicated. It's just much more effective.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I suppose I shouldn’t really be that surprised. I’m an electrical engineer these days, and one thing I’ve noticed is that most things are all just the same core principles (eg V = I x R) but applied in slightly different ways.
Kethal@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Restriction enzymes cut at specific sequences, and although there are lots of variations, this restricts where the new material can be inserted. CRISPR can match an arbitrary sequence, so there is much more control over where changes are made.
j4yt33@feddit.de 11 months ago
Yes, although it’s not completely arbitrary as you need a PAM sequence to be present right where you want to cut the DNA. It’s quite small though so chances are, you’ll find one in a convenient location
Big_Boss_77@kbin.social 11 months ago
Close, the centrifugal effect comes from children spinning around on playgrounds before passing the newly minted viruses back into the world.
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
This one is apparently a better version of CRISPR, which is more targeted. Traditional CRISPR breaks DNA and expects your body to do the fixup, which increases cancer risk. This one is more targeted and safer.
HubertManne@kbin.social 11 months ago
there is a youtube video of a guy making a virus to cure his lactose intolerance which comes from the crisper process. Process is pretty much the same.
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As somebody who’s been a vegetarian for twenty years but still has 200 LDL at age 37, this would be really great to just have fixed. Dumb genes.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You want something in my genes. Constant dangerously low blood pressure, cholesterol, and heartbeat. I’ve had doctors joke that I need an IV of lard and salt. Oh yeah, I’m also either hyper or hypo glycemic. Whichever one needs to be reset with salt being added in to restart my glycemic regulation.
I basically get to eat whatever I want just to maintain consciousness, and even at 43 my metabolism shows no signs of slowing down.
Downside is that I will pass out if I stand up too fast, and I constantly crave salt.
hark@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What if there’s a benefit to high cholesterol?
applebusch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I feel like if we know enough to fix this with gene editing on purpose, we know enough to unfix it on purpose too. If we later run into a situation as a species where having high cholesterol is somehow a major improvement for people, we can give everyone high cholesterol pretty easily.
DemBoSain@midwest.social 11 months ago
My doctor has been telling me for 15 years my good cholesterol is too low. But nothing she recommended had any affect until I started taking a statin.
OrderedChaos@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have heard intermittent fasting helps a lot with stubborn health issues. Might be worth trying out.
PlantJam@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have a similar “issue”. Good total cholesterol around 150, but too low of a ratio between good and bad cholesterol.
WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 11 months ago
If there is, the problem is that the effect of high cholesterol would outweigh it. Unless you enjoy heart attacks and strokes.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 11 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a small initial test in people, researchers have shown that a single infusion of a novel gene-editing treatment can reduce cholesterol, the fatty substance that clogs and hardens arteries over time.
This places a very heavy treatment burden on patients, providers, and the health care system,” said Andrew Bellinger, chief scientific officer of Verve Therapeutics, at a news conference over the weekend.
In a study published in the journal Circulation earlier this year, researchers from the company showed that the approach lowered bad cholesterol 49 to 69 percent in monkeys, depending on the dosage they received.
While the participants already had severe coronary artery disease, and some had previously experienced a heart attack, the company aims to eventually treat younger patients in order to prevent these outcomes.
Sanjay Rajagopalan, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, calls the results a “very exciting” proof of concept.
But Rajagopalan, who wasn’t involved in the Verve study, says the main concern about any Crispr-based approach is the potential for off-target effects, in which unwanted cells or genes would unintentionally be edited.
The original article contains 730 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 11 months ago
And the end of base line humanity begins.
parpol@programming.dev 11 months ago
teft@startrek.website 11 months ago
Have you seen the documentary Altered Carbon? It covers this scenario.
pikmeir@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Great show. It’s a shame we never ever got another season.
Grass@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Was that the one with a japanese guy in a white body that pronounces his own name like an American?
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 11 months ago
I love this. The somehow nuanced yet obvious humor that picks up on how extremists call pure facts of fiction documentaries.
I’m going to start calling everything a documentary from now on.
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 11 months ago
That’s a so boring trope IMO. Like stop inventing insulin, heart transplants and cancer treatments, only the rich will get it!!
What about being a wee bit excited for more and better treatments for the future?
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
That’s covered in other threads. Right now we are being depressed by the grim reality that quality Healthcare is quickly becoming out of reach for a lot of Americans, and the Americans who might have access, can’t really afford it anyway.
prole@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Because most of the people complaining, I imagine, live in the US.
Soulfulginger@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What do you even mean by this? Those issues are important, but familial hypercholemia also affects 34 million people. A treatment like this would be helpful for people across all classes
daftwerder@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I think what they’re getting at is that most people wouldn’t be able to afford this treatment.
Oderus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s basically the plot to Altered Carbon. Rich can afford new bodies, poor people can’t so the rich live forever and the poor die yound.