infectious disease
tsmith | May 17, 2007I wrote several posts last year on the mumps outbreak here in Iowa. We didn't get hit with mumps this year, but there has been an ongoing outbreak in Canada, primarily in Nova Scotia. So how do I fit into this?
Most recently, mumps has been diagnosed in Toronto:
Canada's ongoing mumps outbreak has hit the country's biggest city. And Toronto's public health officials expect the current case count of three infections to climb before the outbreak subsides.
"I think we may see more cases," Dr. Barbara Yaffe, director of communicable disease control for Toronto Public Health, said in an…
tsmith | May 17, 2007There were a few comments in the vaccine creation post asking about HIV vaccines. I've not had the time to get back to them yet, but in lieu of my response (and since I'm not 100% up-to-date on all the HIV vaccine literature anyway) I'll offer up a new review from the latest issue of the New England Journal on "HIV Vaccines--Evolving Concepts."
tsmith | May 14, 2007 Readers may have noticed that a re-vamped "Ask a Scienceblogger" has appeared, with prior questions and responses at Cognitive Daily and Thoughts from Kansas. Aetiology gets the current installment, discussing the question, "Why is it possible to create vaccines for some microbes and not others?"
First, let me start off with a quibble about how this question was phrased, which suggests that it isn't possible to create a vaccine for some organisms. This suggests a pessimistic view not shared by researchers in the field. Just because we've not been able to create them up to this point--or…
tsmith | May 10, 2007Last month I noted the story of Robert Daniels, a patient with drug-resistant tuberculosis who's been held in isolation in Arizona in order to prevent spread of the deadly pathogen. While some patient's rights advocates have been outraged, Mr. Daniels' treatment pales in comparison to what Mona at Science Notes writes about:
News has broken that the Canadian government continued to require Native Canadian children to attend residential schools where they could learn "civilized," Christian, European ways, for years after they knew that tuberculosis was rampant in those schools, and they…
tsmith | May 9, 2007I've mentioned several times here at Aetiology that, when it comes to pandemic influenza preparedness, we need more than just vaccines specific for H5N1. Though this virus looks like a looming threat right now, we can't be 100% certain that it will actually cause the next global pandemic; while we're focused on H5N1, a new strain of H2N2 (or another serotype) may pop up out of the woodwork, catching us unawares. However, while this is well known in the infectious disease community and the scientific community, it's been rare to read such information in the mainstream media. Therefore, this…
tsmith | May 8, 2007 Smallpox is, without a doubt, the biggest success story in all of vaccination. The practice of variolation, or the purposeful inoculation of naïve individuals with material from scabs of smallpox victims, was practiced for years prior to Edward Jenner's substitution of cowpox for the smallpox (Variola) virus. The vaccinia virus, thought to be a derivative of cowpox, has been used in the 20th century in smallpox vaccination campaigns. Vaccina elicits antibodies that protect from smallpox infection, yet typically causes an asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic infection. This…
revere | May 3, 2007Sometimes it can be hard to read the scientific literature without peering through the lens of one's own prejudices. That said, I must agree with this:
Malaysian doctors have declared neckties a health hazard and called on the heath ministry to stop insisting that physicians wear them.
Citing studies that show ties are unhygienic and can spread infection, the Malaysian Medical Association says they are not often washed and carry germs that can cause pneumonia and blood infections, the Star newspaper said on Tuesday.
"And when doctors are doing their clinical rounds, they dangle all over the…
tsmith | May 1, 2007 A few weeks back during the whole Egnor kerfuffle, I mentioned how important an understanding of evolutionary biology was to many areas of epidemiology, and specifically, for vaccine development and implementation. As one example, I brought up the phenomenon of serotype replacement, which can occur due to the use of what are called "multi-valent vaccines." Essentially, these vaccines include strains of pathogens which are either the most common, or the most likely to cause disease--thereby protecting individuals from infection with these specific serotypes, but not making the recipient…
tsmith | April 27, 2007I wrote a post back in February about HIV's "Kitzmiller vs. Dover" trial. The trial was appealing the sentence of one Andre Chad Parenzee, a native of South Africa who'd been convicted in Australia back in 2004 of infecting one woman with HIV (and exposing two others). Parenzee knew of his HIV+ status, telling the women he had cancer instead and not disclosing his infection nor using condoms. In the appeal, the HIV "dissidents" led the way, with Valendar Turner and Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos of the Perth group taking the stand and denying that HIV even existed. Papadopulos-Eleopulos…
tsmith | April 27, 2007Of all the vaccines in a child's repertoire, perhaps the most controversial is the vaccine against Hepatitis B virus. It's not because of concerns about the vaccine's safety necessarily; parents tend to be more worried about the MMR vaccine, since that has received so much press. But many parents feel that the HBV vaccine is unnecessary. HBV is transmitted primarily via exposure to blood or other body fluids, or by sexual transmission. Because they assume their kids will be smart, stay away from drugs, and not have sex with the "wrong" people, they assert that the vaccine is a waste and…
tsmith | April 25, 2007 "Wet nursing," or the practice of allowing a woman other than the mother of a child to provide milk to an infant, has been practiced for millenia. Two hundred years ago, wet nursing was common for a variety of reasons. Upper-class families could hire a wet nurse to enable the mother to more quickly become pregnant again, ensuring adequate nutrition for the newborn infant without the associated decrease in fertility that accompanies breast-feeding. In middle class families, employing a wet nurse allowed the mother to return to her job in the factory or in the field. This practice began…
tsmith | April 12, 2007It's difficult to believe that it's been over a year since I last wrote a post on the use of masks in the event of an influenza pandemic. Since then, there's been a virtual glut of information out there, and from what I've seen at least, people, businesses, organizations, government, etc. interested in preparation seem to be taking more of a structured approach, rather than a knee-jerk reaction that we saw last year with Tamiflu hoarding and stockpiling masks, which, as I mentioned in the post linked above, have uncertain effectiveness in the event of a pandemic.
I also noted that one big…
tsmith | April 3, 2007I've given a few talks recently on pandemic influenza. This topic of isolation and/or quarantine hasn't come up frequently during the question-and-answer period, but almost every time I've had someone approach me after the talk to ask about it (since I mention it briefly during the presentation). It seems to be something that really concerns people, and it's a difficult topic. No one wants someone out spreading a deadly disease that could kill you or your loved ones, but at the same time, no one wants to be locked away from their loved ones if they're potentially dying from a deadly…
tsmith | March 30, 2007I don't know if you've seen any of the posts here at Scienceblogs or Panda's Thumb about the Discovery Institute's newest protégé, Dr. Michael Egnor. A professor of neurosurgery at SUNY-Stony Brook, Dr. Egnor has been pontificating on how "Darwinism" has nothing to offer to medicine; and indeed, that evolutionary biology has "hijacked" other fields of study. Mike has already aptly pointed out many of Egnor's strawmen and intellectual dishonesties, so I won't review them all. I've stayed out of the fray until now because I've had limited time and others have been handling it quite ably,…
tsmith | March 29, 2007Influenza season is wrapping up here in the United States, and it seems so far that the 2006-7 season was pretty typical. The first cases of the disease were reported in late October, and cases were sporadic throughout November and early December. After increasing a bit in mid-late December of 2006, outbreaks declined slightly in January, and then picked up again later that month, increasing again in February before falling again, and continuing to do so in March. Early reports suggest that the vaccine matched the circulating strains pretty well, and that most of the isolates which were…
tsmith | March 24, 2007Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection is as old as civilization. The bacterium infects approximately a third of the world's population--roughly 2 billion individuals. It's estimated that 8 million new cases are contracted each year--around a new infection every second. ~2 million individuals die as a result of TB every year. The bacterium also plays a prominent role in the history of microbiology: it was on March 24, 1882, that Robert Koch announced his discovery of the causative agent of the dread disease tuberculosis:
"If the importance of a disease for mankind is measured by the number…
tsmith | March 23, 2007I have a host of collected links and one-liner posts that I hoped I'd get to this week, but just didn't have the time for. So, rather than let them collect dust any longer, I'll put a number of "greatest hits" in microbiology and public health from the past week or so after the fold:
John McCain isn't sure if condoms help to prevent HIV transmission. Mike and Josh take him down.
The fight against guinea worm, an excruciatingly painful disease, is in the home stretch--but facing one of its toughest obstacles.
The proposed childrens' health study may receive funding after all.
A new…
revere | March 20, 2007This is definitely a good news public health story. So why do I have that nagging feeling that in a year or two or a five we might be reporting it as one with unintended consequences?
I hope not. Here it is:
Mosquitoes genetically engineered to resist infection with a malaria parasite outbreed their normal cousins and might be used to help control malaria, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said their study suggests that releasing such genetically altered insects could help battle malaria, which kills up to 3 million people a year around the globe, most of them small children.
Marcelo…
tsmith | March 15, 2007 When we think of the spread of antibiotic resistance between animals and humans, we tend to think of it going from Them to Us. For example, much of the research over the past 20 years on the sub-clinical use of antibiotics in animal feed has looked how this use of antibiotics as a growth promotant breeds resistant organisms in animals, which can then enter the human population via the food we eat. Along a similar line, I just mentioned Burt's post post on cephalosporin use in cattle and the evolution of antibiotic resistance, where the worry is that use of these broad-spectrum antibiotics…
tsmith | March 13, 2007I was out yesterday, and as such missed Lynn Margulis' blog tour stop at Pharyngula. For those who may not be familiar with Margulis, she's a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and was the one who pushed the (now accepted) idea that chloroplasts and mitochondria in cells came about due to symbiosis. In the post announcing her impending arrival, there were lots of questions about her stance on HIV/AIDS. This is mostly due to a review she co-authored on Amazon of Harvey Bialy's biography of HIV denier Peter Duesberg. The review ends: "As both Bialy and Duesberg…