Blue Food Dye Treats Spine Injury in Rats

By Miss Cellania in Health on Jul 28, 2009 at 11:42 am

Researchers weren’t looking for the effects of blue dye on spinal cord injuries, but there it is. What researcher were looking for was any chemical that was similar to the P2X7 receptor that blocks ATP, which causes inflammation of spinal cord injuries. FD&C blue dye No. 1 just happened to fit the description.

By lucky accident, researchers discovered that the commonly used food additive FD&C blue dye No. 1 is remarkably similar to a lab compound that blocks a key step in nerve inflammation. When rats with spinal cord injury were given an infusion of blue dye, they recovered much faster than rats that didn’t get the treatment. And researchers reported only one adverse effect: The rats turned blue.

“One of the reasons no one had done this before is that food science is very separate from neuroscience,” said neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center, who co-authored the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. “Those two fields don’t interact at all.”

The only problem with further research is the funding. The blue dye is so common that no underwriting company is likely to reap a profit from any medical breakthroughs. Link


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  1. mor
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 11:58 am

    OMG that blue rat is so cute! :)

  2. sybann
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    I agree with Mor – that’s one cute rodent.

  3. Vonskippy
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    “The blue dye is so common that no underwriting company is likely to reap a profit from any medical breakthroughs.”

    So much for the thought that medical research was actually about helping mankind.

  4. Gauldar
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    George Carlin was wrong… NOW we have blue food!

  5. Clinton
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    I agree with Vonskippy.

    It makes me sad that the only reason this breakthrough might not make it anywhere is because nobody can find a way to make money off of it.

  6. Splint Chesthair
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    shouldn’t be too hard to make money:

    1. Some big PharmaCorp produces a trade name blue dye product for medical pruposes, e.g. Bluedenol.

    2. Same Big PharmaCorp lobbies Congress to include only Bluedenol in the Universal Healthcare package.

    3. Profit.

  7. Kalel
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    Sure it worked, but the mouse dyed.

  9. Anonymouse
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    I read the article looking for how they maimed the animals. Surely enough: 15g weight dropped on their backs while anesthetized. In any case, this medication is going nowhere, as others have already pointed out.

  10. Blacknimbus
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Why would a pharmaceutical company pay for this research? They are in the business of developing new drugs for the market and eventually turning a profit.

    They aren’t in the business of giving away money for nothing…if they were, they wouldn’t exist.

  11. SenorMysterioso
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

    Rat had finally accepted his fate and felt it was a good day to dye

  12. SenorMysterioso
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    Now he only feels a little blue

  13. Craig
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    That rat is a paraplegic thanks to people who broke its back just for that experiment.

  14. LiveWithIt
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    Funding would be handled by the NIH. Most medical funding comes out of the NIH than Pharma pockets anyways. Yes, injuring animals sucks but its the only way we can find viable treatments. I can live with a few hundred paraplegic rats if it means my paraplegic brother-in-law could ever walk again… hell, just getting the ability to sweat to control his body temperature, be able to sense the pain of a necrotic insect bite on the back of his leg, or just be able control when he goes to the bathroom. Yeah, I can live with paraplegic rats.

  15. Ok
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    #13, I doubt you’d have the same sentiment if you or someone you knew could be cured thanks to such an experiment…

  16. Miss Cellania
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    You can bet that no one lives with paraplegic rats. Rats are destroyed after such experiments are completely over.

  17. PK
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    It will be so awesome if I turn blue! Not that I yearn for spine injury… :p

  19. jenjen
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 7:08 pm

    This will be a money saver, rather than a money maker. So it would stand to reason the NIH would fund further research into this. Also, there should be a tidy profit in selling cute blue mice and rats.

  20. zavatone
    Jul 28th, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    FINALLY! A cure for all those paralyzed rats! Peta should be so happy that we can now save them all!

  21. Johnny Cat
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 1:07 am

    Not all rats are disposed of after scientists have their way with them. I once rescued a rat that used to have organic stuff grown on his back. When they were done with him, they pawned him off on some independent pet shop. I nursed him back to health, and he was last seen in the care of a class of disabled kids.

  22. drumbux
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 5:45 am

    Perhaps the research will continue somewhere else in the world (note for US readers: ‘The World’ is that big place out there where nothing of interest ever happens). I’ve heard rumors that there are some countries, for instance ‘socialist paradises’ like Sweden, where medicine still *is* done to help people, not to make profits.

  24. linty
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    The spice must flow…

  25. Ronald
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Did not sound right that
    “What researcher were looking for was any chemical that was similar to the P2X7 receptor that blocks ATP”.
    Makes more sense if the chemical was similar to the MOLECULE that BINDS with the receptor.
    But yeah, discovery seems cool.

  26. Bryan C
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    It’s unfortunate that commercial chemists and the pharmaceutical industry don’t hang out more. The first synthetic antibiotics, Prontosil and the later sulfa drugs, were direct spinoffs of the German dye industry. The dyes were found to kill bacteria and quickly adapted to use in humans. And, of course, methylene blue started as a fabric dye too.

    And, in fact, the early pharmaceutical industry faced the exact same problem when it came to making a profit. The basic chemicals used were off-patent and widely available from lots of sources for industrial use. So they turned to making all sorts of chemical variants and testing them all to find ones which worked better while minimizing the side effects. And which were salable. Profit’s a good thing. Without it there have been no incentive to take the risk of turning red dye into medicine. (Check out “The Demon Under The Microscope” by Tom Hager for a good account of all this.)

  27. Staxeon
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    This story makes me think of Kevin Everett, the Buffalo Bills player who had the spinal injury on the field. His recovery was credited to a cold saline method that curbed the swelling of his spinal cord.

    Wondering now if doctors will start using cold blue dye #1.

  28. catskill
    Jul 29th, 2009 at 10:06 pm

    Hey remember that industrial dye we add to all your food? Yeah well turns out it has unknown effects on your body but dont worry the effects are helpful. That makes me feel better..not.

  29. abdulhamid
    Aug 3rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    I am pretty sure Christopher Reeves would not mind being a pleasant shade of periwinkle if it were to mean he was ambulant again.


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