Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Methylene blue: The new wonder drug?

After having published this article on Methylene blue and its affects on Alzheimer's I have been doing a bit of reading about this blue dye.

It seems that according to this article on a research paper it also repairs defective memory.

The great thing is that it is already administered as a medicine and crucially is cheap.

The interesting thing about the memory repair is that it works in a different way to the way it cures Alzheimer's in that it deals with some problems in mitochondria. You do have to wonder what its affect would be on errant proteins in cancer mitochondria as well. I suspect no one has tried this though as there will not be any money in it.

This does lead to some serious questions about how medical research and drug research is funded and what results it produces. There is no money in finding out that the cure for some ailment is something that is cheap as chips already. More on that later.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A little Googleing will show that Methylene Blue, a coal tar dye, was first synthesized in 1875, and was used by the famous French scientist, Ehrlich, in 1861, to treat pain and neuropathy because he noticed it had an affinity for neural fibers. A typical dose is 100 mg per 100Kg of body weight as a pill, or 1 to 2 mg per 100Kg as an injection.

Bulk price for MB is $42/Kg but pharm grade is now going for $285 for 250mg!! The greed has begun.

A patent was filed in 2004 for a "new" way of making the compound because MB is too old to patent itself, and hence wouldn't be profitable enough. It appears that the prescription price will be about $5/day.

This is one "drug" that the US government should nationalize in order to HELP the elderly, most of whom are on limited incomes, and to prevent their exploitation by the pharmaceuticals for unearned profit.

Benedict White said...

Many thanks for the information which I have turned into a new article.

I would have linked to your blog but alas I can't view your profile to do so, but if you post a link I will do so in teh relevant article.

jmb said...

Actually I came to say the same thing as greygeek. Well not so scientifically, but that as soon as they find something like this the price increases dramatically and there is suddenly a "shortage".
Interesting finding.

memory disorders said...

Hello friend amazing and very interesting information about Methylene blue: The new wonder drug? I want to add this information Methylene blue is a heterocyclic aromatic chemical compound with molecular formula: C16H18N3SCl. It has many uses in a range of different fields, such as biology and chemistry. At room temperature it appears as a solid, odorless, dark green powder, that yields a blue solution when dissolved in water. The hydrated form has 3 molecules of water per molecule of MB. Methylene blue should not be confused with methyl blue, another histology stain, new methylene blue, nor with the methyl violets often used as pH indicators.