What will encourage people to donate organs?

Generally people donate money when they believe that their donations will directly help someone. Why then is it difficult to commit them to donate organs? One reason could be that their contribution is for an unknown future recipient in the unfortunate event of the donor or a family member dying. And another could be that the thought of death brings distress. Therefore, to encourage people to donate organs, we must first know how to do that and what have we been doing wrong all this while.

A team of psychologists- Inbal Harela, Tehila Koguta, Meir Pinchasa, and Paul Slovic, did an interesting investigation to answer this question. They examined how media presentation about organ donation affects people willingness to donate their own or a loved one’s organs post demise. First, they studied how does media report cases related to organ donation- do they tell stories of recipients or of donors? From a variety of media sources including USA today, Wall Street Journal, and Maariv, among others, they reviewed 229 articles and found that 70% or more gave details of the donor, and didn’t talk of the recipient. Next, they prepared questionnaires for 130 undergraduate students that narrated a story. A young man gets killed in a car accident. He is a registered organ donor so his parents decide to donate his organs. His kidney is transplanted into the body of another young man, whose life is saved as a result. Then they provide the name and a picture of the donor or of the recipient. Interestingly, this photograph is the same person in both the cases, just labeled differently. But the students didn’t know that. They were then asked if they would like to commit to donating organs post death. Scientists found that more people were willing to commit for organ donation after reading about the receiver, than after reading the same case with the donor. They published their results in a recent issue of PNAS. 

Similar questionnaires revealed that people were more likely to commit to donating organs of their loved ones after death, support a public policy that promotes organ donation, and donate a kidney while they were alive, when they knew about who receives and benefits from organ donation. This study was done at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Decision Research, and Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, in Oregon.

The scientists are confident that creating an optimistic image of organ donation cases will have a beneficial effect on public opinion, and will increase the number of potential organ donors and supporters and help save the lives of those waiting for organ transplants.“If media includes more stories of organ receivers, we believe that with time, people will have a more positive image of organ donation, which in turn has the potential to increase support for organ donations”,says Dr. Tehila Kogut at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel. In US alone, 0.1 million people are awaiting life saving organ transplants. This study can help NGOs and hospitals in designing media campaigns to benefit this cause.

Reference: PNAS. doi-10.1073/pnas.1703020114.

By Bhavya Khullar 

Fishes could use herbal medicines like humans too

Asian herbs are popular in many parts of the world owing to ‘natural origin’, low cost, and zero side effects. A recent study has found that it benefits fishes too.

Tilapia fishes are cultured for food in many countries including China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh. Significant numbers of fishes die in summer months due to infection from a bacterium Entercoccus faecalis in aquaculture farms leading to huge financial losses.

A group of scientists from Bangladesh found that feeding fish with extracts of garlic and clove prevents death due to Entercoccus faecalis infection. This bacterium was resistant to most available antibiotics and herbal medication could help prevent disease and death in infected fishes, according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“A large number of herbs are effective against bacterial diseases in humans. Therefore, we thought that screening medicinal plants against fish pathogen may result in useful information and we, fortunately, got it”, says Tofazzal Islam, Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh, who led the study. 

Left to right: A healthy tilapia fish (1) and those infected with the bacteria Entercoccus faecalis show swollen abdomen and hemorrhages at the base of pelvic fins (2) and erosion in caudal fin (3).

They collected tilapia fishes that looked ill from several aquaculture farms in Ghazipur in Bangladesh. Fishes showed excess slime, protruding opaque eyes, and swollen abdomen. The pelvic region had blood clots and the tail fin seemed washed off. They swam erratic, were lethargic, and had a decreased appetite. Since the cause of infection was unknown, the fishes were brought to the lab where the disease-causing bacteria were isolated from the skin, tail, gut, eye and brain.

After culturing on an artificial medium under controlled conditions, the bacteria were identified to be Enterococcus faecalis. Subsequent tests revealed that they were resistant to commercial antibiotics amoxicillin, ampicillin, cefradine, cefuroxime, erythromycin and penicillin-G and mildly susceptible to nitrofurantoin, azithromycin, gentamycin, levofloxacin, and vancomycin.

When healthy tilapia fishes were infected with the bacterium, they died in less than 72 hours indicating that this bacterium was highly virulent. Before exposing them to the bacterium, some fishes were fed with herbal medicines and others were left untreated. Those that received the herbal medication showed an average survival rate of approximately 70 percent compared to null in the infected untreated group. Commercial antibiotic azithromycin exhibited a survival rate of about 75 percent, which was similar to that bestowed by herbal medicines.

They selected garlic and clove after screening 23 different herbs that included zinger, turmeric, onion, pomegranate, chilli, tamarind, guava, and Indian gooseberry. “Our results suggest that medicinal plant extracts could be used as a potential alternative to the synthetic antibiotics to control fish diseases caused by Enterococcus faecalis in aquaculture”, claim scientists in their paper. They emphasize that mechanism of action of the plant crude extracts in preventing and fish disease has to be elucidated.

“Bangladesh is ranked fourth in aquaculture in the world. We are working now for elucidating the mode of action of crude extracts and also to make a commercial formulation for the aquaculture industry. It would hugely benefit the aquaculture industry in Bangladesh and other Asian countries as natural herbs are safe and cost-effective”, exclaims Professor Islam. 

The team consisted of Muntasir Rahman, Md Mahbubur Rahman, Suzan Chandra Deb, Md Shahanoor Alam, Md Jahangir Alam, and Md Tofazzal Islam. This study was done at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, and Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet in Bangladesh.

Reference: Scientific Reports | 7: 3747 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-03673-1

By Bhavya Khullar