public health
mikethemadbiologist | June 10, 2006Revere has a very good historical roundup of the 'uninevitability' of a national or universal healthcare system. One consequence of our fragmented, patchwork healthcare system is antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Just to give you an example of how bad the antibiotic resistance problem is, in most hospitals, anywhere from 20-70% of Staphylococcus aureus infections are methicillin resistant ("MRSA"). In long-term care facilities, around 90% of S. aureus infections are MRSA. MRSA infections are quite serious. Not only are they harder to treat (due to treatment failure from using the wrong…
tsmith | June 9, 2006I wrote recently how evolution and phylogenetic analysis of HIV isolates has provided evidence that the progenitor to HIV jumped into humans in Cameroon or a nearby area. Obviously it's a topic that's interesting to me, but may seem a bit esoteric to some. RPM over at Evolgen has a new post showing another application of phylogenetic analysis to HIV that may be of interest to readers here, where infectious disease epidemiology meets CSI.
mikethemadbiologist | June 9, 2006A recent article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology illustrates the effect that conventional farming, which uses a lot of antibiotics, has on the evolution of antibiotic resistance. The authors examined the difference in the frequency of resistance to antibiotics in the human pathogen Campylobacter. Resistance in bacteria from conventional raised poultry (actually, the carcasses) was much higher than in organic, non-antibiotic intensive farming:
for floroquinolones, which are commonly used in medicine (e.g., ciprofloxacin), less than two percent of isolates were resistant, compared…
tsmith | June 7, 2006 A recent story detailing an outbreak of sexually-transmitted diseases has gotten a good deal of attention from news outlets and blogs. The reason it's newsworthy is because the individuals affected aren't teenagers or single twenty-somethings; they're senior citizens. So, let me point out the obvious: even "old people" have sex.
This sometimes uncomfortable fact of life was driven home to me when I was just a teenager myself, when my grandma was discussing the difficulty she had showering (she'd just had surgery). Someone had asked whether grandpa was much help, and she mentioned that…
tsmith | June 7, 2006Antibiotic resistance gets a lot of attention, but it's not the only kind of drug resistance that's of concern. Derek of In the Pipeline has a post up discussing resistance to cancer therapies.
tsmith | June 6, 2006A friend of mine is riding this weekend in the MS 150 bike tour in Minnesota. This is an annual event that raises money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which works both to fund research into the disease and to serve people who've been diagnosed. I've never tackled the bike tour (150 miles in 2 days; this particular one runs from Duluth to the Twin Cities), but I've done the MS walks previously and will be doing another later this year. This is an important cause for me, as my mother was diagnosed with MS when I was 6, so if you have a few bucks (donations are tax-deductible)…
tsmith | June 6, 2006If you ever have a few minutes to kill and need someplace interesting to go on the web, the NIH's National Library of Medicine has a ton of interesting stuff. That's where I found the this reference from the early 1900s on raising children. I ran across another gem--a manuscript from 1721 written by minister Benjamin Colman regarding "Some Observations on the New Method of Receiving the Smallpox by Ingrafting or Inoculating (containing also The Reasons which first induced him to, and have since confirmed him in, his favourable Opinion of it).
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What a different time…
tsmith | June 3, 2006More interesting stuff I didn't get to...
First, outbreak news that I've not had a chance to write about. A huge cholera outbreak is ongoing in Angola; meanwhile, a small measles outbreak has been reported in Boston.
Invasive bullfrogs may be spreading around the deadly chytrid fungus that has been implicated in mass amphibian deaths around the world.
The FDA has approved a new shingles vaccine for adults who had chickenpox.
New studies show that the time to get kids interested in science is when they're young.
And something I keep meaning to mention...BlogHer. Not familiar? Read all…
tsmith | June 2, 2006Color me shocked: Teens who promise to wait for marriage more likely to deny sexual history
Teenagers who take pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to deny having taken the pledge if they later become sexually active. Conversely, those who were sexual active before taking the pledge frequency deny their sexual history, according to new study findings.
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The research paper is published in this month's American Journal of Public Health (which is a special issue devoted to HIV/AIDS); the article is here. The meat from the abstract:
Among wave 1 virginity pledgers…
tsmith | May 31, 2006 It can't be said often enough that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Moving from physical characteristics--color, bone shape, the form of bacterial cells--to genetic characteristics in order to classify organisms--and infer phylogenies--was a giant advance. That the molecular characteristics confirmed what was known using physical characteristics was a breakthrough, and allowed for more sophisticated analyses of organisms that don't have bones or other easily-observable physical features that allow for simple classification into groups: microbes. I've…
tsmith | May 31, 2006I'm dealing with my own little epidemic (daughter managed to catch the stomach bug that's been going around her school, meaning she has to miss her last day as a kindergartener, poor thing). I found one post in the queue that I forgot to publish earlier in the month, so today won't be completely dead. In the meantime, allow me to point you to some excellent flu posts by DemFromCT at the Daily Kos:
Flu Basics: Science And Threats (a nice introductory primer).
Flu Basics II: Politics and Players.
H5N1: A Teachable Moment, And An Open Letter. This is a very good post overall, but the most…
tsmith | May 30, 2006Busy today, so sequels are on tap. There's an interesting story from Nature news that's a nice follow-up to this recent post on how microbes can influence weight. More after the jump.
Scientists have identified a key microbe in our guts that helps us glean more calories from food. The discovery backs the idea that the type of microbes in our gut help to determine how much weight we gain, and that seeding the intestine with particular bugs could help fight obesity.
Samuel Buck of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues focused on one microbe called…
tsmith | May 26, 2006As pointed out yesterday, flu blogging has been light this month, even though there have been interesting developments. As such, to catch up a bit, I'm posting an overview of the current Indonesian cluster and some other thoughts below the jump...
As always, I point anyone who wants to keep up-to-date on the latest news over to Effect Measure for excellent analysis of what it all means, or to H5N1 for news from around the world on the topic. Obviously, the biggest news of the moment is the Indonesian family cluster, which appears to not only be an example of human-to-human transmission, but…
tsmith | May 26, 2006Species of the bacterium Clostridium have long been a scourge of humans. They are gram-positive, spore-forming bacteria that can be found in the soil around all of us. The spores then germinate when exposed to anaerobic conditions.
Clostridium botulinum is the cause of botulism, a serious and potentially fatal paralytic illness often caused by ingestion of contaminated foods. More recently, the bacterium has been used as the source of that anti-wrinkle miracle, BoTox: botulinum toxin type A, allowing all of Hollywood to smile without a wrinkly forehead (ah, the wonders of nature!).…
tsmith | May 25, 2006I feel a bit guilty. I still get occasional comments on this post about the outbreak of chikungunya on several islands in the Indian Ocean. Since I'm obviously not involved in the actual outbreak investigation, all I have to offer is news reported elsewhere--and it's not exactly been a landslide of information. However, Nature does have some news to offer, based largely on a new paper published in PLoS Medicine (summary here).
Previously, the complete genomes of three isolates of the virus had been determined. Two were from strains isolated in 1952 during the first known Chikungunya…
tsmith | May 23, 2006Scary.
A woman is feared to have died from ebola after taking ill on a plane home from Africa yesterday.
Passengers and crew on the flight to Heathrow are understood to be panicking that they have contracted the contagious virus.
They helped the Briton when she was vomiting and bleeding. Some even shared their drinks with her.
Last night, tests were being run to confirm whether she had the haemorraghic fever.
The 38-year-old was on Virgin Atlantic flight VS602 from Johannesburg. It is understood she worked at an embassy in Lesotho.
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First, I'll note that this story…
tsmith | May 22, 2006 Razib mentioned here an article in the Boston Globe "which profiles researchers who suggest that variation in gut flora (the mix of bacteria) might be the cause of differences in body weight." The comments are somewhat skeptical, and I started to write a comment on the topic but it became a bit unweildly--so I've added it below instead.
As I've discussed previously, figuring out the relative contributions of environment versus genetics in obesity isn't an easy feat. As with so many human diseases/conditions, the "cause" is certainly multi-factorial. It's pretty clear that the genetics…
tsmith | May 21, 2006Or Saturday roundup, belated. Some interesting stories I didn't have time to cover:
The HPV vaccine, aimed at reducing the incidence of cervical cancer, has moved a step closer to approval.
The Institute of Medicine calls for more research into and oversight of vitamin supplements.
Continuing debate over "The Hobbit."
New research might eventually bring breathalyzers to your doctor's office. Not necessarily for alcohol.
An interesting study of experimental evolution: selecting for heat-tolerant bacteria over 1500 generations.
Yet another use for bacteriophage: diagnosis of…
tsmith | May 12, 2006 Tomorrow is the annual Stamp Out Hunger food collection drive. Sponsored by Campbell's Soup and the National Association of Letter Carriers, this is the largest single-day food drive in the country. You can help by 1) contacting your local post office or mail carrier and see if they're participating tomorrow, and 2) leaving a bag of non-perishable food items next to your mailbox (not IN your mailbox, as many of the mail carriers will have volunteers assisting in their collection). No glass, please--canned or boxed goods are ideal.
Hunger is still a real problem in our country, and…
tsmith | May 11, 2006I very briefly mentioned new research suggesting mercury fillings aren't harmful back here last month. In Saturday's Guardian, Ben Goldacre (who runs the Bad Science blog) had a short article on the topic. In it, he addresses the lack of coverage of the research in the UK media, despite stories in the last decade suggesting how dangerous mercury was. He notes:
Panorama did an excellently chilling documentary in 1994 called The Poison in Your Mouth. As far as I am aware there is no Panorama documentary in the pipeline covering the startling new research data suggesting that mercury fillings…