内容摘要：Fluoride tablets and lozenges are sometimes recommended for children and teens at increased risk of tooth decay or cavities because of low fluoride in their local drinking water. Companies also sell drops for babies.

Fluoride tablets and lozenges are sometimes recommended for children and teens at increased risk of tooth decay or cavities because of low fluoride in their local drinking water. Companies also sell drops for babies.

More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney. Thousands die waiting and many more who need a transplant never qualify. Now, searching for an alternate supply, scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more humanlike.Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999. Later pregnancy complications caused high blood pressure that damaged her remaining kidney, which eventually failed. It’s incredibly rare for living donors to develop kidney failure although those who do are given extra priority on the transplant list.

But Looney couldn’t get a match — she had developed antibodies abnormally primed to attack another human kidney. Tests showed she’d reject every kidney donors have offered.Then Looney heard about pig kidney research at tand told Locke, at the time a UAB transplant surgeon, she’d like to try one. In April 2023, Locke filed an FDA application seeking an emergency experiment, under rules for people like Looney who are out of options.

The FDA didn’t agree right away. Instead, the world’s first gene-edited pig kidney transplants went to two sicker patients last spring, at Massachusetts General Hospital and NYU. Both also had serious heart disease. The Boston patient recovered enough to spend about a month at home before dying of sudden cardiac arrest deemed unrelated to the pig kidney. NYU’s patient had heart complications that damaged her pig kidney, forcing its removal, and she later died.Those disappointing outcomes didn’t dissuade Looney, who was starting to feel worse on dialysis but, Locke said, hadn’t developed heart disease or other complications. The FDA eventually allowed her transplant at NYU, where Locke collaborated with Montgomery.

Moments after Montgomery sewed the pig kidney into place, it turned a healthy pink and began producing urine.

Even if her new organ fails, doctors can learn from it, Looney told the AP: “You don’t know if it’s going to work or not until you try.”“I told him that we wouldn’t be sending an ambulance for something like that. And he said, ‘So you’re not going to send me any help until I get bit, is that right?’ I went, ‘That’s correct.’”

The Welsh Ambulance Service isn’t alone in publicizing the wacky calls they got last year. The South Western Ambulance Service in England this week said more than a quarter of the 1 million-plus calls it fielded last year did not merit sending help.The non-emergency calls included a person looking for assistance in finding their walking stick, a patient who had fallen off a chair — who was already in the hospital — and a woman who complained of having a “horrendous nightmare.”

Emergency calls “are for situations where minutes matter and lives are at risk,” said William Lee, assistant operations director at South Western Ambulance. “Inappropriate calls tie up our emergency lines and divert valuable resources away from those in genuine need.”Worrall was gobsmacked the gator caller thought paramedics were the panacea for his problem.