STRANGE BUT TRUE

Q: When might a fake operation turn out to be a good thing? A: When it reveals whether popular surgeries are truly effective, says Claudia Wallis is Scientific American magazine. In a recent British study, 200 patients with a blocked artery were randomly assigned a real stent operation or a fake one, where no stent was actually inserted. “The astonishing finding: There was no difference in how the patients felt six weeks after surgery. Both groups reported less pain and both performed better on treadmill tests.”

Before a new drug is approved, it must be shown to be more effective than a sugar pill. But the same is not true for a new operation, even though surgeries have a much greater placebo effect than drugs, meaning if patients believe they’ll get better, they just might. In a 2013 meta-analysis of 79 studies of migraine prevention, headache frequency was reduced 22 percent with sugar pills, 38 percent with acupuncture, and a “remarkable” 58 percent with sham surgery. Understandably, sham surgery studies are rarely done, especially in the U.S., given the ethical issues involved. Yet these studies have helped reduce the incidence of useless operations. According to orthopedic specialist David Jevsevar of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, vertebroplasty — injecting bone cement to mend a fractured vertebra — experienced a 50 percent decline once it was shown to be no better than a placebo.

Q: If you were somehow able to choose the time of day you were going to be injured, what would be best? A. During the day; B. At night; C. It makes no difference.

A: Research points to “A.” as the answer, since “wounds seem to heal in half the time if sustained during daytime hours rather than at night,” reports New Scientist magazine. Nathaniel Hoyle and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., discovered that genes in fibroblast skin cells switch on and off during day-night cycles and that these cells help close wounds once skin has been cut. The team found that, on average, “daytime wounds healed in 17 days, while similar burns sustained at night took 21 days (Science Translational Medicine).

Q: You might call this the story of a snail that wouldn’t stay dead. And speaking of snails, did you know that some of them can fly — sort of. Explain please.

A: The story goes like this: In his travels to several Mediterranean countries in 1846, lawyer and explorer Charles Lamb collected various snails and sent them back to the British Museum, says Dan Lewis on his “Now I Know” website. Among the specimens was a desertdweller that died in transit. Nonetheless the museum decided to display it, gluing it to a piece of cardboard, “and there it stayed, like any good, dead snail would, for the next four years.” But then someone noticed that the cardboard was becoming discolored, and the curious museum curator unstuck the snail and placed it in warm water. “After a few moments, a head popped out of the shell, and the snail, quite alive, began to move around” (Mental Floss). Apparently, because it was a desert species, the snail was able to go for very long periods without food or water. Provided with nourishment and housed in a jar with another snail, it lived another two years before dying for good.

As to the “flying” snails — no, snails don’t have wings but, according to the BBC, some snails may catch a ride with birds that eat the small animals and later deposit their droppings some distance away. Researchers discovered that “15 percent of the snails eaten survived digestion and were found alive in the birds’ droppings.”

BILL SONES AND RICH SONES, FOR THE OKLAHOMAN

Send questions to brothers Bill and Rich Sones at sbtcolumn@gmail.com.