Desert Moon (Posts about Medicine)

COVID-19 Digest

Mitch Chapman — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 13:13:34 GMT

Introduction

Here are some illuminating posts about COVID-19. Never mind the quotes, please read the originals as they are full of interesting information.

[Update 2020-03-28]

Larry Brilliant (twitter):

Too often we see “cumulative cases” which does not tell todays story. “New cases” or “incidence” is better. But best to guide action is ACTIVE CASES = sources of virus = (total cases minus recovered cases minus deaths).

See worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases

Crowd-sourcing and Modeling

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has a website that predicts hospital resource use for the United States as a whole and for individual states. It predicts peak resource use for the USA on 14 April, 2020. For my state of New Mexico it predicts a peak on 25 April, 2020, with a shortfall of 121 ICU beds, but with sufficient beds overall.

Should you really wash your food with soap?

In a word, no.

New Scientist: Revealed: the Asian source of the annual flu epidemic

Mitch Chapman — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Revealed: the Asian source of the annual flu epidemic - health - 17 April 2008 - New Scientist:

"Better surveillance in east Asia should lead to better predictions of how flu is evolving, and what is likely to be needed in next year's flu vaccine, says Smith."

Government H5N1 Sites

Mitch Chapman — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:34:00 GMT

CDC and government sites concerning H5N1:

background on the disease (CDC)

Monitoring current outbreaks (CDC)

PandemicFlu.gov: "One-stop ... U.S. Gov. avian and pandemic flu information." (Dept. of Health and Human Services)

The map at bottom left of the Pandemic Flu site provides links to

state pandemic planning info

state pandemic web site info

local state contacts

Technology Review: Liver Models Go to Market

Mitch Chapman — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:15:00 GMT

Technology Review: Liver Models Go to Market:

'Only one of every ten compounds tested by pharmaceutical companies becomes a product, says Shuler, and half of the failures are due to toxicity.'

(There's the bottleneck which cheminformatics has not been able to widen.)

'"The liver is a complex organ that has many different cell types," says Tannenbaum. These cells exchange chemical signals and even exert mechanical forces on each other that help maintain their function...'

'"In order to get any functionality [in a model], you have to have multiple cell types organized into a structure like a liver," he says. When cells are taken out of the liver and cultured using traditional means, their gene-expression profiles change very quickly, and they begin to deteriorate in a few days.'

'For four to six weeks, [Hepregen's] cells maintain gene-expression profiles comparable to those of liver cells in the human body; they continue to produce the enzymes that break down and modify drugs; and they even form functioning bile ducts, important transport systems in the liver.'

MIT's News Office has a similar article.

Drug brings hope for a universal flu vaccine - health - 27 October 2007 - New Scientist

Mitch Chapman — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:07:00 GMT

Drug brings hope for a universal flu vaccine - health - 27 October 2007 - New Scientist

Ordinary flu vaccine contains dead influenza A viruses from the H1 and H3 families. When the researchers put this, plus the RNA-like drug Ampligen, into the noses of mice, the mice made antibodies not only to the vaccine viruses but also to H5N1 bird flu - without ever having been exposed to it. Better, when groups of nasally vaccinated mice were exposed to different strains of live H5N1, [at least half] of each group survived... The team think antibodies in mucus reacting with proteins in the virus could be key.

UK bird flu outbreak confirmed as H5N1

Mitch Chapman — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:54:00 GMT

From New Scientist: UK bird flu outbreak confirmed as H5N1

To go along with this news, some useful terms from Dictionary.app:

A disease that quickly and severely affects a large number of people and then subsides is an epidemic.

A disease that is continually present in an area and affects a relatively small number of people is endemic.

A pandemic is a widespread epidemic that may affect entire continents or even the world.

Volcanic clay found to kill 99 per cent of MRSA superbugs

Mitch Chapman — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:35:00 GMT

Volcanic clay found to kill 99 per cent of MRSA superbugs:

[Researchers] said that the clay was found to wipe out bug colonies in a day during laboratory experiments. They also revealed that control samples of MRSA, which were not treated with agricur, grew 45-fold over the same period.

The World health Organisation welcomed [the work of French doctor Line Brunet de Course] when she approached it in 2002 with 50 case studies. However, it denied her funding because of a lack of scientific evidence.

"It is possible that it is not one single element that is toxic to the bacteria."

The researchers also backed the possibility that the clay worked through a physical rather than a biochemical process, meaning that bacteria could never develop resistance. "It's fascinating. Here we are bridging geology, microbiology, cell biology. A year ago, I'd look at the clay and say, 'Well, that's dirt,'" Dr Haydel, a microbiologist, said.

New Scientist: Cold weather really does spread flu

Mitch Chapman — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:52:00 GMT

Cold weather really does spread flu - New Scientist Environment

Flu virus can spread without the aid of coughing/sneezing -- you just gotta breathe. It stays in suspension longer in cold, dry air than in warm, moist air. And it doesn't help that mucus flows more poorly in cold weather.

"...Virtually no lab animals get it the way humans do... The most useful animal has been the ferret... “They’re big, they’re expensive, and they bite,” Peter Palese of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City told New Scientist.

In 1919, US Army doctors at Camp Cody in New Mexico reported (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 72 p1056) that the 1918 flu pandemic had killed their guinea pigs – kept at the time for medical tests. “We didn’t know guinea pigs got flu,” says Palese. They are no longer popular lab animals, and no-one had tried them."

Bad news for air travelers:

"“It spread just in the air they exhaled,” says Palese. “Guinea pigs with flu don’t cough or sneeze.”"

Why it's called "good" cholesterol

Mitch Chapman — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:14:00 GMT

Technology Review: Imaging Cholesterol Buildup in the Heart: " Normally, HDL passes through arteries and attaches to low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or 'bad' cholesterol, carrying it out of arteries to the liver."

'Course that's not what the article is about. Researchers have found a way to attach markers to segments of unstable arterial plaque, using altered HDL. As a result, they can better see where unstable plaque has built up in a patient and can better identify problems which increase the risk of heart attack.

Light Therapy Spares the Scalpel and the Chemo -

Mitch Chapman — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:34:00 GMT

Light Therapy Spares the Scalpel and the Chemo -

Imagine you could treat cancer by taking a pill, then directing a laser light toward the location of the tumor. The growth would dissolve with no chemotherapy, and no harm to healthy tissue.

It might sound futuristic, but a select number of cancer patients already benefit from the method, called photodynamic therapy. An upgrade for the procedure could save thousands more cancer patients from the horrors of chemotherapy.

Although chemotherapy has improved over the past decade, the treatment still damages healthy tissue and causes other unpleasant side effects like nausea and a weakened immune system. The researchers hope their work will spare patients from chemo's ravages and even the surgery usually necessary to remove a tumor.