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Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

news.harvard.edu

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Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#31

Post by jaggederest »

xeromal wrote: post #7
hsur8192 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that Chesterton’s Fence applies to bio-science as well!

Very applicable to programming too. I'm pretty conservative as a programmer and I've had coworkers want to completely change a segment but you never know why some weird programming was done. There be dragons sometimes.

As a software engineer who has sometimes specifically specialized in handling dragons, I always try to leave (sometimes voluminous) comments about why a thing was handled that way when it's not obvious to a surface reading.

Good practice in general but particularly so when you find a heisenbug that must be exterminated.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#33

Post by contravariant »

Calavar wrote: post #23

This is a fluff piece. We've known for decades that the thymus is an important part of the immune system. It's not an organ that's been believed to be vestigial, like the appendix. > For the study, Kooshesh mined data from 1,146 adult patients who had undergone thymus removal, alongside demographically matched control patients who had undergone similar surgeries but kept their thymus Sure, you can demographically mat…

I take it a relative risk of 1 is a null result?

If so a confidence interval of 1.02 to 2.2 after arbitrarily excluding some data is not exactly ground breaking.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#35

Post by xixo »

spandrew wrote: post #22

This type article declaring a thymus revelation is published every few years. We've known the thymus is saving our lives — it's where the t in t-Cells derives from for years. There are very old studies of removing it from older humans and statistically seeing a decline in health. Most doctors will not remove it without a decent cause in older patients (intractable infection, for example). In those cases it's not that…

I wish I could say my dad's thymus is saving his life, quite the opposite. He was discharged from the ICU/hospital yesterday after he nearly died from a "myasthenic crisis"—an event that most people with Myasthenia Gravis (MG) will experience. From what I understand, his thymus produces antibodies that destroys receptors connecting the nerves and muscles. He can't keep his head up, eyelids up, can't swallow and during the crisis could not breathe.

Interestingly, a small portion of MG patients have an enlarged/tumorous thymus and end up getting it removed, though there aren't necessarily clear benefits. It's also a quite invasive procedure they wouldn't perform on older folks like my dad (he shows no signs of it anyway).

Overall I agree with you though—this article is not saying anything new. As a concerned son who's spent more than his fair share of time trying to understand what's going on here, I wish it did. I also wish there were some treatments for my dad that worked. For now, exercising, eating healthy, lowering stress, and a healthy dose of steroids are currently keeping him with us. If anyone has advice, I'm all ears.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#36

Post by nerdponx »

contravariant wrote: post #33
Calavar wrote: post #23

This is a fluff piece. We've known for decades that the thymus is an important part of the immune system. It's not an organ that's been believed to be vestigial, like the appendix. > For the study, Kooshesh mined data from 1,146 adult patients who had undergone thymus removal, alongside demographically matched control patients who had undergone similar surgeries but kept their thymus Sure, you can demographically mat…

I take it a relative risk of 1 is a null result? If so a confidence interval of 1.02 to 2.2 after arbitrarily excluding some data is not exactly ground breaking.

It's suggestive of p-hacking. "Look, the bottom of the interval is just above 1! Finally I can publish this."

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#37

Post by readthenotes1 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #25
Calavar wrote: post #23

This is a fluff piece. We've known for decades that the thymus is an important part of the immune system. It's not an organ that's been believed to be vestigial, like the appendix. > For the study, Kooshesh mined data from 1,146 adult patients who had undergone thymus removal, alongside demographically matched control patients who had undergone similar surgeries but kept their thymus Sure, you can demographically mat…

Isn't the universally known T cell named with a T because of the thymus which imparts their programming? Like known for decades?

More now, since I was a part of the other universe that didn't know this!

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#38

Post by readthenotes1 »

xeromal wrote: post #2

I've always felt us removing things like tonsils and appendix without a high barrier was always premature. I remember kids wanting to have their tonsils removed to eat ice cream for a few weeks. lol. Even if we have legacy parts in out body, I'm fine just letting it fester in my body as long as it's not trying to kill me. Feels very similar to thinking farming just needs 3 nutrients. Turns out better farming requires…

Chesterton's Fence

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#39

Post by [deleted] »

xixo wrote: post #35
spandrew wrote: post #22

This type article declaring a thymus revelation is published every few years. We've known the thymus is saving our lives — it's where the t in t-Cells derives from for years. There are very old studies of removing it from older humans and statistically seeing a decline in health. Most doctors will not remove it without a decent cause in older patients (intractable infection, for example). In those cases it's not that…

I wish I could say my dad's thymus is saving his life, quite the opposite. He was discharged from the ICU/hospital yesterday after he nearly died from a "myasthenic crisis"—an event that most people with Myasthenia Gravis (MG) will experience. From what I understand, his thymus produces antibodies that destroys receptors connecting the nerves and muscles. He can't keep his head up, eyelids up, can't swallow and durin…

[deleted]
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