A Spoonful of sugar
| Published: 22nd February 2007 20:22 |
A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down
Everyone's favourite nanny Mary Poppins may have sung about it, but there is new scientific evidence that shows she could have been right when she sang about a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down.
New research from the University of Leeds found that a bacterium altered to produce a treatment for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) could be switched on and off using sugar.
The study found that when patients ate the xylan sugar, the mechanism was triggered, making the medicine work.
"Current bacteria and virus delivery systems produce their drugs non-stop, but for many treatments there is a narrow concentration range at which drugs are beneficial," said Professor Simon Carding from the research team.
"Outside of this, the treatment can be counterproductive and make the condition worse. It's vitally important to be able to control when and how much of the drug is administered and we believe our discovery will provide that control."
What do you think?
You will need to sign in to post a comment to this article. if you do not have an AboutMyArea account, you can join now for free.
