DARPA, the special projects arm of the Department of Defense that’s responsible for developing all kinds of crazy technology for the U.S. military, is still worried about radiation on the battlefield post-Cold War. Dirty bombs — conventional explosives mucked up with radioactive material — are a persistent threat from terrorist organization. With Iran’s new nuclear mountain and tense relations with Pakistan, the military is likely thinking about the possibility of a new Cold War. As such, research into radiation treatments is a continual DARPA priority, and a team of scientists has just made a breakthrough in treatment that can actually be administered up to a day after exposure.Millie Donlon, DARPA's program manager for this effort, said that the ability to treat radiation sickness a day after exposure is significant "because most of the existing treatments we have require they be administered within hours of exposure to potentially lethal radiation – something that might not always be possible in the confusion that would likely follow such an exposure event."The researchers found that the addition of bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), which is an immune system-related protein, to traditional antibiotic radiation treatments increases their effectiveness. In studies of mice exposed to toxic levels of radiation, the combination antibiotic/protein treatment increased survival rates to nearly 80 percent, an improvement on top of the treatment’s improved temporal effectiveness. As of now it’s unknown specifically why the hybrid treatment works better, but one byproduct was that the mice given the hybrid treatment started generating new blood cells more quickly than their counterparts. DARPA noted that, aside from the obvious health benefits, this effect is beneficial logistically, as it may reduce the need for individual hospital time, donors and transfusions following radiation exposure.
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