public health
tsmith | May 15, 2008I'm taking a quick hiatus from my hiatus. I mentioned that I had quite a bit of travel upcoming, and I happen to be in the midst of my first trip. However, it just so happens that where I've landed--Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--is experiencing an outbreak of hand, foot, and mouth disease in kids, caused by Enterovirus-71. More after the jump...
You may have read about this virus in prior weeks, as China has been dealing with a major outbreak there:
The number of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) cases reported in China this year rocketed to 15,799 as of Tuesday, resulting in 26 deaths, according…
mikethemadbiologist | May 4, 2008Several of my fellow ScienceBloglings have noted that the increase in measles cases is due to idiots who refuse to get vaccinated. Beyond the obvious health threat this represents, there is a more subtle, yet equally murderous effect of all of this anti-vax woo.
It distracts us from other vaccination programs that we need to institute. Every year, roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from influenza--the 'boring' kind. Why this isn't viewed as a major health crisis, while breast cancer, which kills approximately the same number annually, is escapes me. Not because breast cancer isn't an awful…
j7uy5 | May 1, 2008In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it was noticed that
there were cuts in the budget to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The rationale was that we needed to shift more funds to the
global and perpetual war on terror.
At the time, I said that "the terrorists" won't have to bother trying
to poison us. Our own companies would do it for them.
Yup.
href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-epa-official-resigns_webmay02,0,4655733.story">TRIBUNE
EXCLUSIVE: EPA's top Midwest regulator forced out
Mary Gade, based in Chicago, says Bush…
mikethemadbiologist | April 25, 2008From a long time ago on a blog far, far away (and now chomped by Blogger) comes this post about how responding to bioterrorism requires a public health, not security infrastructure.
Salon is running a story that claims the anti-war march of Sept. 24 might have been subjected to a botched tularemia bioterrorist attack. I have no idea whether or not this is correct. Nonetheless, it highlights something very important-an appropriate and adequately funded public health response to bioterrorism is needed, since it is often impossible to distinguish between terrorist attacks and natural outbreaks…
terrasig | April 25, 2008Okay, some people are smoking some bad dope.
Whilst helping the PharmKid get down to the car for school this morning, I came upon PharmGirl, MD, in a rage while sitting in front of her laptop. The object of her vitriol was a 17 April article in BusinessWeek entitled, "Are There Too Many Women Doctors?: As an MD shortage looms, female physicians and their flexible hours are taking some of the blame." The article derives from a point/counterpoint pair of essays in the 5 April issue of BMJ (British Medical Journal) entitled, "Are there too many female medical graduates?" ("Yes" position, "No"…
tsmith | April 22, 2008Via Razib, Obama on vaccines:
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it."
--Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.
and Clinton:
I am committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines. I have long been a supporter of increased research to determine the links between environmental factors and diseases, and I believe we should increase the NIH's ability to engage in…
sciencetolife | April 17, 2008
This NPR report describes how researchers in Oregon have adapted a technique to administer citywide drug tests using sewage. The research team, led by Dr. Jennifer Field, is part of a relatively new field of science called "sewage epidemiology".
The purpose of this kind of research is to figure out which illegal drugs are being used by residents of different neighborhoods and create a map of illegal drug use across the state. Their technique can detect such illegal drugs as cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
The researchers believe that studies like this can help people at…
mikethemadbiologist | April 16, 2008The NY Times has a story about the welcome trend of doctors who refuse to accept industry pay such as consulting fees for sitting on advisory boards. In one case, at least, bloggers played a role (italics mine):
Dr. Peter Libby, chief of cardiovascular medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, said that when he first began receiving offers from drug companies, in the early 1980s, they seemed like a natural reflection of his burgeoning reputation.
"When you start emerging as an opinion leader or as a researcher who has knowledge and expertise, the pharmaceutical industry takes an…
tsmith | April 15, 2008This is the fourth of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease.
By Ousmane Diallo
Last week in class we tackled an interesting topic, the role of Mycobacterium Avium Paratuberculosis (MAP) in the genesis of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). The authors Saleh E. Naser (oops the name means in Arabic 'The virtuous helper') and colleagues detected using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) techniques in a lab based case controls study "viable MAP in peripheral blood in higher proportion of individuals with Crohn than controls". Not surprising after all since the pathology of…
tsmith | April 14, 2008 This is the second of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease.
By Rachel Kirby
In light of April being Autism Awareness Month it is only natural that certain topics be brought about in the media. Until now I was not aware of the controversy behind the "risk factors" of autism. Let's begin with the basics. Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, all starting before a child is three years old. Having autism may or may not involve all three characteristics. Some may even have symptoms that…
terrasig | April 12, 2008". . .you got marijuana in my lead."
Two great tastes that do not go great together (with apologies).
[Welcome Fark.com readers on 12 Oct 2008 - I comment on the recent story here and you can read our other posts on drugs of abuse here. Thanks for stopping by - APB]
A concise but fascinating medical detective story appears in the letters of this week's (10 Apr 2008) issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (free full text at the time of this posting.).
An astute group of physicians at Leipzig Hospital in Germany noted a local surge of young people presenting with classic symptoms of…
tsmith | April 11, 2008 I don't understand how some segments of the population believe that "natural" always equates to "better." I certainly get the appeal of being close to nature; the romanticism of living simply and from the earth. I grew up and live currently in a rural area where people are close to animals and the land. But I also know that some of the most deadly poisons in the world are "natural." I know that, while most microbes out there are harmless, and many are even helpful, there are many that can make you violently ill as well. After all, tetanus, anthrax, and Ebola are all "natural."…
tsmith | April 10, 2008 It's hard to believe that it's been 2 years since Iowa's 2006 mumps outbreak (more background and details on that here, here, here, and here).
By the time the outbreak ended, 8 states had been heavily affected (and 45 reported at least one case), with a total of 6584 cases of mumps and 85 hospitalizations reported by the end of 2006. All told, this was the largest outbreak of the virus in approximately 20 years, after a 1986-1990 outbreak resulted in a change in the recommended vaccine schedule (adding a booster shot of MMR).
A paper out in today's New England Journal analyzes the…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2008Several people have argued that if an influenza pandemic were to occur, it will rapidly evolve to become less virulent--that is less deadly. A recent paper explains why this might be wrong.
Basically, the flaw with the 'optimistic' argument is that it is assumes that the virus will be optimally fit given its environment (lots of fat, juicy hosts to kill). As it starts to kill off its hosts, its virulence (ability to make dead people or 'deadliness') and transmission rate (ability to infect new hosts) will decrease to another optimal point where the virus will be able to maximize its…
mikethemadbiologist | April 9, 2008While many laboratory experiments have shown that antibiotic resistance imposes a fitness cost on resistant bacteria, it's far less clear if this is the case in natural populations. In Europe, the phasing out of a vancomycin analogue, avoparicin, resulted in a dramatic decrease in vancomycin resistance in enterococci bacteria, from roughly seven percent to about three percent. However, the drop doesn't appear to have continued further (although the economic and health burdens of treating vancomycin resistant enterococci make this decrease a good thing).
One of the problems with most studies…
tsmith | April 8, 2008I spent all day yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin, at a conference on Landscape Ecology and infectious disease. I'll discuss a few of the talks and issues below, but I wanted to start out with a bit of an introduction and explain just what landscape ecology (LE) is.
The introductory talk, which covered this ground, was presented by Dr. Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University. He noted that defining LE wasn't an easy task. At its most basic, of course, it's a field looking at ecology from a landscape perspective--taking a big picture view, if you will. However, what one means by a…
mikethemadbiologist | April 8, 2008I've recently written a couple of posts about how evolution is used in medicine. Randolph Nesse and Stephen Stearns in Evolutionary Applications have written an article about evolutionary medicine. Here's one part that provides some additional examples (italics mine):
Some of the most useful applications of evolution often do not use evolutionary theory directly; instead they use technologies developed by evolutionary biologists. In particular, methods for reconstructing phylogenies are being applied to genetic data with very practical results. HIV is especially susceptible to such methods…
mikethemadbiologist | April 7, 2008A survey of Florida teens' sexual health knowledge yielded some very disturbing results:
A recent survey that found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy has prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state.
There's been a lot said in favor of real sex ed and against abstinence-only 'education' (and rightly so), but, if the consequences of unwanted pregnancy and HIV weren't so serious, this other finding would be funny:
The survey showed that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana…
j7uy5 | April 4, 2008
href="http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080403/more-than-90000-us-infants-are-victims-of-abuse-or-neglect.htm">More
than 90,000 u.s. infants are victims of abuse or neglect.
My question: what is
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/chertoff-bio.html">Michael
Chertoff gong to do about it?
Homeland security begins at home. Nothing new there.
It was true before 9/11, and it is true now.
tsmith | April 3, 2008Early this week, grant application; yesterday and today, IRB and IACUC for another project. But once again, fellow Sbers are keeping me busy reading about stories I'd like to be writing on; see yet again Mike on E. coli O157:H7--everything old is new again; Ed on a new study showing yet again how amazing bacteria are; and DrugMonkey discussing heroin addiction as a family legacy, and notes that this sad story again shows that Narcan saves lives.