A Gel That's Revolutionizing Pain Treatment

theatlantic.com

88 points·kposehn··8 comments

Abstract of the actual paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26268315

I wonder if this would be useful for gum disease? My reading seems to suggest it's more the inflammatory response to the bacteria that causes gum problems rather tha themselves.

Yep, gum recession, is mostly caused by repeated inflammation, and not direct action of the bacteria, while dental carries are generally a result of the metabolic byproducts leaching the enamel.

Buuuuut... the production of plaque and tartar is damaging too, so just shutting down part of the immune response (inflammation), might not be a good thing in that case.

the whole paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4825054/

Clickbait: It's an injected, inflammation-activated hydrogel. So the trick isn't that there's some specific compound which, when gelled, does the trick, but the gelling mechanism itself which releases medication when needed.

As I read the article. Which, even past the null-content headline, delivers little clarity on the concept.

How is it not revolutionizing paint treatment?

Clickbait doesn't (necessarily) apply to the quality of the content. It does, however, apply to the headline tease. "A <foo>", "This guy...", "A state...", etc., are all needlessly ambiguous phrases. They should be replaced with the subject they refer to.

Apparently Atlantic Monthly are joining a trend already beaten to death by the Washington Post. And again, there are quite good stories ruined IMO by exceptionally poor heads.

Seemed like an okay title to me. They summarized the article at a non-technical level. That's the same title I would have written to summarize it. Maybe I wouldn't have used the word "revolutionary", but I already ignore that word whenever I see it.

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