New research recently showed the potential of frog foam as a treatment for severe skin disease and its efficacy as an alternative for the existing prescriptions by doctors.
According to a Smithsonian Magazine report, the new study suggests that the concoction that mating amphibians created may help slowly dispense medicine over time.
On rainy summer nights, Sarah Brozio, a molecular biology graduate student, would leave the northern Trinidad field center she shared with tarantulas, lizards, and human colleagues to search for an odd substance known as a frog foam in the forest.
As they rolled slowly along the roads, her small group drove in silence until they heard a pinging sound similar to laser guns played in arcades.
The only ping would be followed soon by a whole chorus, the distinctive commotion of male Túngara frogs striving for a mate.
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Attracting Female Frog
As this report specified, one of these males impressed a female frog with his melodic audacity; the pair got playful "in a soggy ditch along the roadside," the researchers observed.
The male frog hugged the female from behind and had her eggs fertilized, which she released together with "a soup of proteins," as indicated in the study. Together, the pair whipped into a thick froth, the mixture with their back legs.
This foam preempted the eggs from drying out while offering a shield as well, from predators, extreme temperatures, and impair from UV rays and hazardous bacteria.
Given the durability and utility of the foam, Brozio, together with her colleagues, wondered if this material might have clinical uses for humans.
The scientists brought the foam they had collected back to their laboratory in Scotland to examine its properties and identify it could be employed like the available pharmaceutical foams today to deliver drugs to the skin.
Alternative Treatment
In the research published in Royal Society Open Science, the researchers demonstrated that the "amphibian lather" could certainly be an effective substitute to the foams doctors are presently prescribing for conditions like burns or cuts.
It began in 2014, one year before the first foam-collecting trip of Brozio to the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Similar to a lot of intrepid research proposals, this research started as a notion over drinks.
According to the study's co-senior author, Paul Hoskisson, this is the first time foam has been employed to deliver the drug.
Such foams, he added, need to provide a really nice, safe delivery vehicle that can be provided to patients who have no fear of making them ill, unlike many the other "synthetic delivery vehicles," explained Hoskisson.
Frog Foam as a Drug Delivery System
For their theory's testing that frog foam could function as a drug delivery system, the study authors used a series of standard pharmaceutical methods to examine its composition, structure, stability, and viscosity.
A similar PressNewsAgency report said, when closely looked at, the foam is composed of densely packed bubbles, also known as vesicles. The human skin's warm temperature and its decreased pH cause the dissolving of the vesicles, freeing the drug over time.
The researchers found that the foam could be employed to encapsulate dyes that easily dissolve in solution and those that do not, suggesting that the froth could carry various drugs with a range of properties.
The researchers loaded the foam with rifamycin, a common antibiotic, which was released over the period of one week, a promising timeframe since patients are frequently treated with antibiotics for five to 14 days.
Approximately half the antibiotic was delivered during the first 24 hours, although slow release after that, over the following six days was longer, not to mention steadier, compared to the pharmaceutical foams existing today.
Potential Skin Cancer Killer
Using foams to deliver drugs to specific parts of the skin is an interesting and more comfortable substitute to needles and pills, explained biomedical engineer Yang Shi, from RWTHA Aachen University in Germany, who was not part of the study.
Specializing in immunotherapy and cancer chemotherapy, Shi could also see a potential function for the amphibian froth in delivering treatments to kill skin cancer cells.
However, he warned, the technology remains very much in its embryonic stages, as well as much additional research is warranted before becoming commercially available.
For instance, frogs would not be able to yield adequate foam to meet manufacturing demands; therefore, the main keys in the lather should be purified and simulated in huge quantities at a reasonable cost.
Related information about frog foam is shown on Big on Wild's YouTube video below:
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