Blue Food Dye Might Help Cure SCI

An Interesting Article in Wired Science.

Teaser:

The same blue food dye that gives your Gatorade its turquoise tint and turns your tongue a peculiar shade of purple might also protect your nerves in the case of spinal cord injury.

By lucky accident, researchers discovered that the commonly used food additive FD&C blue dye No. 1 is remarkably similar to a lab compound that blocks a key step in nerve inflammation. When rats with spinal cord injury were given an infusion of blue dye, they recovered much faster than rats that didn’t get the treatment.