Through years, across distances…

Medicine is an ancient science. In the modern sense, the medical profession began to form after bloodletting as a universal way of restoring the balance of bodily juices was replaced by more scientific and less crippling methods. But in medical practice it often happens that new methods of diagnosis and treatment get along with very ancient ones, and some traditional approaches, that previously had no reliable justification, receive solid scientific support. This historic process closely resembles the flow of water in a river: fast in the rapids, slow along the shores and sedentary in quiet creeks, at the bottom of which one can find shabby garbage brought by floods. All this is in a circuit – something disappears in the abyss, and something suddenly floats to the surface. The scandal in the USA with the recall of a medicine made from desiccated and dried porcine thyroid gland reminded us that some concoctions, which have been known since the times of ancient Chinese medicine, and drugs that appeared relatively recently thanks to modern pharmacology can easily coexist in clinical practice. With one essential caveat: the quality of such concoctions should be controlled as carefully as the newest drugs. Modern technologies have allowed us to analyze the genome of the inhabitants of our internal organs, that constitute the human microbiome. This made it possible to rehabilitate the concept of dysbacteriosis (dysbiosis), which was previously considered anti-scientific. For example, intestinal bacteria are able to compete with the host organism for selenium and even capable of aggravating its deficiency, as well as modulating the bioavailability of iodothyronines. It is possible that intestinal dysbiosis may be one of the causes of thyroxine malabsorption. All these and much more in this column “De Gustibus”.