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Thursday, November 13, 2014

Not sure how it works on ebola, but crystal meth may cure your flu. Bonus - more questionable medical advice

A group of scientists from the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan set out to study how methamphetamine interacts with influenza A virus in lung cells. Previous research has suggested that chronic meth abuse makes individuals more susceptible to pathogens such as HIV. The team wanted to investigate how the drug might reduce users' resistance to flu viruses.

Presumably this woman does not have the flu.
They took cultures of human lung epithelial cells, exposed them to different concentrations of meth and then infected them with an H1N1 strain of human influenza A. By 30 to 48 hours after infection, the meth-treated cells had a much lower concentration of the virus than the control group, the researchers reported. What's more, this reduction occurred in a dose-dependent manner, meaning the more meth, the less the virus reproduced.

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