public health
tsmith | November 9, 2007 Tuberculosis in humans is most commonly caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a slow-growing, waxy, rod-shaped bacterium. Transmitted primarily via the air when an infected individual coughs or sneezes, it's estimated that a third of the world is infected with this agent, which causes approximately 2 million deaths every year. Though most infections are asymptomatic, infection is becoming increasingly deadly, due both to the spread of highly antibiotic-resistant strains and due to the increasing number of individuals with both HIV and TB.
While M. tuberculosis is primarily a human…
tsmith | November 8, 2007 Both Mike and Revere have new posts up documenting swine as a new threat to human health (beyond the pork chops and bacon), via carriage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in these animals. Several papers have been published recently documenting high rates of MRSA carriage in swine in the Netherlands, and also have documented transmission of this bacterium from swine to humans. However, even more worrisome to me than the Dutch publications is a new one out in Veterinary Microbiology, showing high rates of MRSA in Canadian swine--and guess where we import about 9 million hogs…
j7uy5 | November 8, 2007Athletic regulatory bodies have a new headache.
This time, the pain is being caused by placebos (an
unexpected side effect!)
As
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626285.400-placebo-boost-is-a-conundrum-for-sports-regulators.html">reported
in New Scientist, athletes have found
that they can exert themselves to a greater extent, while under the
influence of opioid pain killers. That is not permitted in
competition, of course, but there is a wrinkle. If they train
while under the influence, then get a placebo prior to competition,
their brains react to the placebo as if…
tsmith | November 6, 2007In our paper on HIV denial, Steven and I started the introduction off with a note about South African president Thabo Mbeki:
This denial was highlighted on an international level in 2000, when South African president Thabo Mbeki convened a group of panelists to discuss the cause of AIDS, acknowledging that he remained unconvinced that HIV was the cause. His ideas were derived at least partly from material he found on the Internet. Though Mbeki agreed later that year to step back from the debate, he subsequently suggested a re-analysis of health spending with a decreased emphasis on HIV/AIDS.…
tsmith | November 6, 2007 I've written a post or two (or a dozen) discussing science journalism--the good, the bad, and, mostly (because they're the most fun), the ugly. There was this story about how blondes "evolved to win cavemen's hearts." Or this one that completely omitted the name of the pathogen they were writing about. Or this one, where a missing "of" completely changed the results being discussed.
I ran across another glaring example yesterday, dealing interestingly enough with one of my favorite topics: chocolate, and bringing in an "omics" prospective to it.
The news story covered a recent…
tsmith | November 5, 2007 I wrote about an emerging mosquito-borne virus with the strange name of chikungunya in a pair of posts last year. This is a virus that was first discovered more than 50 years ago, but as far as arthropod-borne viruses ("arboviruses") go, it's been a minor player for most of that time, as other arboviruses such as yellow fever, dengue, and West Nile caused more disease and death than chikungunya. However, the virus began to rapidly spread beginning in ~2004, causing around a quarter million infections on the island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean before moving on to cause smaller…
tsmith | November 4, 2007Welcome to this month's edition of Pediatric Grand Rounds! Sit back with a cup of mulled cider and enjoy the best of the past month:
Revere at Effect Measure tells the tale of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 19A--a serotype that's not included in the current vaccine, but has increasingly found as a cause of ear aches in children.
Of course, in addition to ear infection, 'tis the season for influenza. As such, it's timely that Highlight Health, Walter emphasizes the importance of influenza vaccination.
My own addition to this month's carnival touches on similar themes: how kids'…
tsmith | October 31, 2007 Salmonella species are frequent human pathogens. An incredibly diverse genus, different types of Salmonella infect an enormous variety of species, from mammals to fish to invertebrates. They are typically acquired via ingestion of contaminated food or water, and the bacteria then seed the intestine and replicate there. These gram-negative organisms are the cause of typhoid fever (Salmonella enterica serovar typhi) and can also cause acute gastroenteritis (multiple types, including Salmonella enterica serovars enteritidis and typhimurium).
Of these types, S. typhi is the most deadly,…
j7uy5 | October 31, 2007It was kind of depressing to see the post on Effect Measure (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/10/chemical_plants_internal_dange.php#more">Chemical
plants: internal dangers, external costs) about the
half-measures being taken to safeguard chemical plants and facilities.
The chemical security problem is as urgent
as it is obvious. Chemical plants are potentially static weapons of
mass destruction: large volumes of ammonia, chlorine, highly flammables
like propane, large repositories of chlorinated organic solvents and
chemical feedstocks like phosgene and more.
The…
j7uy5 | October 30, 2007
href="http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/crazy.htm">Nov.
5 event at U-M will feature top experts discussing alternatives to
“criminalization” of America’s mentally
ill
ANN ARBOR, MI – Across America, prisons serve as an
unofficial holding system for the mentally ill. Families desperate to
get treatment for their loved ones’ psychiatric issues
instead wind up retrieving them from the police station. And judges
wrestle with the prospect of sentencing the same people again and again
for minor offenses, instead of steering them to effective mental health
programs.
These…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2007
Onward Glorious Conservatives! Don't retreat from the librul modelers!!!
By now, you might have heard about the Bush Administration's massive 'editing' of the CDC testimony about the health consequences of global warming. Over at Science Progress, there is a copy of the unedited, original CDC text. At this point, no one in the Coalition of the Sane should be surprised that every single one of the specifics about what global warming would actually do was expunged--we wouldn't want the public to worry their purdy lil' heads about all of that scary stuff. What did interest me was the...…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2007I know: who could possibly think that the Bush administration would censor a report on the effects of global warming? From the Washington Post:
Testimony that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned to give yesterday to a Senate committee about the impact of climate change on health was significantly edited by the White House, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
Specific scientific references to potential health risks were removed after Julie L. Gerberding submitted a draft of her prepared remarks to the White House Office of Management and…
j7uy5 | October 26, 2007The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, and amended in 1977
and 1990.
It has been mildly controversial, but most people supported
it then and support it now.
A retrospective
economic analysis done in the early 1990's indicated that the
cost of implementation from 1970 to 1990 had been about $523 billion in
1990 dollars. What did we get for that money? The
same study indicated that the economic benefit had been somewhere
between $5.6 to $49.4 trillion,
with a mean (among various scenarios) of $22.2 trillion.
Allowing for various uncertainties, it was estimated that the
benefit/cost ratio…
mikethemadbiologist | October 25, 2007
Yes, it's LOLStaphylococcus. They don't call me the Mad Biologist for nuthin'
A colleague of mind sent along this paper, "Nose Picking and Nasal Carriage of Staphylococcus aureus":
OBJECTIVE. Nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus is an important risk factor for S. aureus infection and a reservoir for methicillin-resistant S. aureus [MRSA]. We investigated whether nose picking was among the determinants of S. aureus nasal carriage.
SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS. The study cohort comprised 238 patients who visited the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) disease outpatient clinic of a tertiary…
j7uy5 | October 23, 2007
A couple of days ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/10/lets_improve_the_quality_of_th.php">wrote
about the government reforms proposed by
href="http://www.centerforinquiry.net/advocacy/protecting_scientific_integrity_2/">The
Center for Inquiry. Specifically,
Enact legislation to specifically permit
government scientists to communicate freely with the media and the
public.
Re-establish the Office of Technology Assessment
Reform the Data Quality Act
Now, Think Progress has a post in which
they detail how the
Administration
href="http://thinkprogress.org/…
mikethemadbiologist | October 23, 2007Because this week is really hectic, I just want to follow up on this post I wrote about MRSA.
One of the hidden stories in the rise in the frequency of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains is that this has also been accompanied by an absolute increase in the number of infections. In other words, it's not the case that you used to have 90 sensitive infections and 10 resistant infections per year in your hospital, and now, you have 50 sensitive and 50 resistant infections (which would be bad enough). Instead, you have the same 90 sensitive infections and 90 resistant infections (for a…
scientificactivist | October 22, 2007A few years ago, while I simultaneously enjoyed a mild Texas evening and a few beers with a second-year medical student, my idealistic and outspoken friend argued that as a society we spend way too much money on scientific research. That money should instead, she contended, be spent wholly and directly on fighting global poverty and disease.
I agreed that it should go without saying that improving the world's lot ought to be our number one priority: an ideal rarely realized due to the pernicious distractions of war, greed, nationalism, ideology, and a variety of other factors. Esoterically…
mikethemadbiologist | October 22, 2007Atrios identifies the problem with the Republican choice-based 'vision' of healthcare:
Well, really, the Republican vision, as slobbered over by cenrtist [sic] David Broder.
In this case, he is visualizing a radically different kind of medical marketplace, in which families armed with specific information about the treatment success and prices of hospitals and doctors can shop at will for the best quality and most affordable care.
We pay doctors to make these decisions for us because most of us haven't been to medical school. I know this point is simple and obvious and everyone makes it, but…
tsmith | October 18, 2007 A few news stories hit my inbox all at once yesterday--and the combination of them doesn't bode well for childrens' health; more after the jump.
First, despite several years now of banging the drum for having kids vaccinated against influenza, they're still being overlooked when it comes to pandemic planning:
Children would likely be both prime spreaders and targets of a flu pandemic, but they're being overlooked in the nation's preparations for the next super-flu, pediatricians and public health advocates reported Wednesday.
The report urges the government to improve planned child…
mikethemadbiologist | October 17, 2007According to the Boston Globe, a new study indicates that deaths from the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus ('staph infections') have exceeded AIDS/HIV deaths in the U.S (italics mine):
Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting.
The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical…