Posts
May 22, 2013
+
People are never as funny as they think they are; I especially ingrain that message into public health students and professionals, because when little kids are really sick, humor don’t go over too well. But Dr. Eric Wilke, with the … Continue reading →
+
Dothan, Ala Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection # 7304 Earlier today Ironorehopper on Twitter notified me of an cluster of unknown respiratory illness in and around Dothan, Alabama. He (and other newshounds) have been posting local reports on FluTrackers on this thread since mid-afternoon, while Crof has reports here and here. A search of Dothan TV stations turns up this from ABC affiliate WDHN-TV; a video of a press conference held
[…]
May 21, 2013
+
9:16 PM | EMHJ: Coronavirus Supplement
# 7303 I’m just starting to work my way though the articles (and there are a dozen of them), but the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal (EMHJ) – the Periodical of the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean – has published a supplemental issue dedicated to the emergence of the novel coronavirus. Included are articles by such well known public health players as Keiji Fukuda, Anthony Mounts (see
[…]
+
While research on the bacterial component of the human microbiome has taken off in the last several years, the fungal members of that community have not really received similar attention.
A new review in Trends in Microbiology acknowledges that the total number of fungal cells in the human microbiome is orders of magnitude less than bacteria, but that fungi represent an important part of the ‘rare biosphere’ that can play an important role in inflammatory diseases and metabolic disorders.
+
7:23 PM | We Are All Individuals
How do organisms evolve into individuals that are distinguished from others by their own personal brain structure and behavior? Scientists in Dresden, Berlin, Münster, and Saarbrücken have now taken a decisive step towards clarifying this question. Using mice as an animal model, they were able to show that individual experiences influence the development of new [...]
+
Protective Phages — The Scientist
As research surfaces supporting the role of beneficial bacteria in human health, immunity, and normal childhood development, some scientists are beginning to look at even smaller biological entities in our gut. In a study published today (May 2) inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have shown that bacteria-attacking viruses, called bacteriophages, reside in the protective mucus layer of many animal species and can help keep
[…]
+
# 7302 An open access study recently published in the Journal of Infectious Disease analyzes serum samples gathered from 1723 individuals from Southern Vietnam between 2010-2012. Researchers checked them for IgG antibodies to the HA1 region of 5 avian flu viruses and 11 human flu viruses. While not testing directly against the H7N9 virus - (they used the 2003 H7N7 virus from the Netherlands which has an HA that is a 96% match for the HA of
[…]
+
Determining distances to objects in space is no easy task, unless you're some kind of special person with an impossible faster-than-light spaceship and can just measure the miles between Earth and UDFj-39546284. This is what it's like to be in a helicopter above SS Cygni, minus the arrows and text (Credit: J. Miller-Jones [ICRAR], using software created by R. Hynes).But no astronomer I know has such a ship, and so they all are likely to say, "That galaxy is 3 billion light-years away, plus or
[…]
+
Tamiflu drug bill “shocking waste of taxpayers’ money”?
Uh, yeah, you wouldn’t be saying that if the swine flu pandemic hadn’t turned out to be as mild as it was. The post Tamiflu drug bill “shocking waste of taxpayers’… appeared first on MicrobiologyBytes.
+
2:17 PM | MERS, Mass Gatherings & Public Health
Credit Wikipedia # 7302 In Saudi Arabia, religious tourism – most notably Umrah, which runs from December to the end of Ramadan (August 7th) - and the Hajj, which falls in mid October this year – are big business, accounting for roughly 3% of their Gross National Product. According to a recent Arab News report, more than 7 million pilgrims visit Saudi Arabia each year, adding more than $16 billion dollars to the local economy. Egypt,
[…]
+
The prospects and challenges of universal vaccines for influenza
Vaccination is the most effective way to reduce the impact of epidemic as well as pandemic influenza. However, the licensed inactivated influenza vaccine induces strain-specific immunity ...The post The prospects and challenges of universal vaccines for… appeared first on MicrobiologyBytes.
+
Irish potato famine mystery solved after 168 years
Scientists believe they have finally identified the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine. BBC News reports a research team led by The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, England, used dried leaf cuttings — some of which are nearly 170 years old — to reconstruct the spread of the HERB-1 strain of Phytophthora infestans, a fungal disease that came to Ireland via Mexico in 1845. The disease destroyed potato crops and caused the
[…]
+
1:05 PM | Reminder: ASM Webcast Today On H7N9
# 7301 A quick reminder that later this morning (9am MDT) 11am EDT, there will be a webcast called Update on H7N9: Should We Be Concerned? as part of the he 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology which is being held in Denver this week. Live Denver 2013 Tuesday May 21 9:00 a.m. MDT - ASM Live - Update on H7N9: Should We Be Concerned? Robert Webster; St. Jude Res. Hosp., Memphis, TN Albert Osterhaus; Erasmus
[…]
+
Schmallenberg vaccine available to UK farmers this summer
Vaccine will prevent a disease that causes severe birth defects and miscarriages in livestock.
All about Schmallenberg virus: http://goo.gl/fuPyT
A new vaccine is being made available to prevent a disease which causes severe birth defects and miscarriages in livestock. Schmallenberg virus, which emerged in the Netherlands and Germany in 2011 and has been seen in cattle and sheep in the UK since early 2012, has been identified on more
[…]
+
Friendly Viruses Protect Us Against Bacteria
One of our most important lines of defense against bacterial invaders is mucus. The slimy substance coats the inside of the mouth, nose, eyelids, and digestive tract, to name just a few places, creating a barrier to the outside world. Mucus is also home to phages, viruses that infect and kill bacteria. They can be found wherever bacteria reside, but Jeremy Barr and his colleagues noticed that there were even more phages in mucus than in mucus-free
[…]
+
Friendly Viruses Protect Us Against Bacteria
One of our most important lines of defense against bacterial invaders is mucus. The slimy substance coats the inside of the mouth, nose, eyelids, and digestive tract, to name just a few places, creating a barrier to the outside world. Mucus is also home to phages, viruses that infect and kill bacteria. They can be found wherever bacteria reside, but Jeremy Barr and his colleagues noticed that there were even more phages in mucus than in mucus-free
[…]
+
Adenovirus-encoded small RNAs constitute a front-line defence against the immune system and are crucial for the survival of the virus.The post Adenovirus replication – it’s really all about the RNAs appeared first on MicrobiologyBytes.
+
So about a month ago, I wrote about how amazing it was that penicillin resistance was discovered as early as 1940, two years before it went on general sale. But whilst researching that article, I realised that Sulphonamide drugs entered the market long before penicillin, with their discoverer, Gerhard Domagk, being nominated for a Nobel prize in 1939. He had been tasked by Bayer pharmaceuticals to test out a gargantuan number of dye molecules to see whether they could kill off bacteria, and in […]
Gradmann C. (2011). Magic bullets and moving targets: antibiotic resistance and experimental chemotherapy, 1900-1940, Dynamis, 31 (2) 305-321. DOI: 10.4321/S0211-95362011000200003
Titford M. (2010). Paul Ehrlich: Histological Staining, Immunology, Chemotherapy, Laboratory Medicine, 41 (8) 497-498. DOI: 10.1309/LMHJS86N5ICBIBWM
Casanova J.M. (1992). Bacteria and their dyes: Hans Christian Joachim Gram, Historia de La Immunologia, 11 (4) Other: Link
Ehrlich P. Address in Pathology, ON CHEMIOTHERAPY: Delivered before the Seventeenth International Congress of Medicine., British medical journal, PMID: 20766753
Kaufmann S.H.E. (2008). Immunology's foundation: the 100-year anniversary of the Nobel Prize to Paul Ehrlich and Elie Metchnikoff, Nature Immunology, 9 (7) 705-712. DOI: 10.1038/ni0708-705
Citation
+
11:00 AM | H5N1: Cambodia Finds A Retrospective Case
# 7300 From the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) we’ve an update (h/t Biological on FluTrackers) indicating that an 11th H5N1 case has been retrospectively identified from Cambodia’s outbreak earlier in the year. Avian Influenza Avian Influenza Weekly Update Number 383 (17 May 2013) Latest information on human avian influenza A(H5N1) cases Since 2003 to 07 May 2013, the number of cases reported from 15 countries
[…]
+
10:17 AM | Safety: Before And After The Storm
AREAS UNDER THE GUN AGAIN TODAY # 7299 While it may seem hard to believe after seeing the video coming out of the Midwest over the past 48 hours, 2013 has been – until now – one of the quietest tornado years in decades. After a disastrous 2011 (see NOAA: Lessons From The Joplin Tornado), 2012 was a below-average year as well. But even in a below-average year, major tornadoes can occur. For the third day in a row, the Storm
[…]
+
Hospital superbug not monitored by government
Doctors are unsure how many patients have been killed by carbapenemase-producing enterobacteriaceae.
Hospitals in England are not required to officially report infections of a “superbug” capable of resisting our most powerful antibiotics. Cases of “carbapenemase-producing enterobacteriaceae” (CPE) have shown a sharp rise. Public Health England said a lack of mandatory reporting made assessing the true extent of the problem
[…]
+
3:06 AM | ASM General Meeting 2013 Denver
Just finished recording episodes of TWiV and TWiM at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Denver, Colorado. Here are some behind the scenes photos. Podcast episodes will be published later this week. ASM General Meeting 2013 Denver, a set on Flickr.
+
Quick post - cool bacterial art project has made Gizmodo. See Bacteria Never Looked So Beautiful. From an Art of Science competition at Princeton. I wonder what Artologica - my favorite microbial art artist - thinks of this.
For some other posts about microbial art see:
Germophobia: wanna get people in the mood for "Contagion" movie about killer virus - grow harmless microbes in public #microbialart
My new microbial art for my office: salt evaporation ponds and
[…]
+
1:53 AM | Au revoir Fran!
Over the past 3 months, the Paulsen lab has hosted Dr Fran Pitt, a visiting scientist from the University of Warwick, UK working with Prof Dave Scanlan. Fran is a long time colleague of Martin Ostrowski and Sophie Mazard from their time in the UK. She has been working for quite a few years on all things cyanobacterial, from detailing sensing and regulatory mechanisms of phosphate stress in freshwater Synechocystis sp. to environmental transcriptomics of marine cyanobacteria.She […]
May 20, 2013
+
Photo Credit WHO #7298 Jennifer Yang – the Toronto Star’s Global Health Reporter - is in Geneva this week covering the 66th World Health Assembly, under a UN Foundation press fellowship. Today she sat down with Dr. Tony Mounts, WHO's expert on the novel coronavirus, to talk about the ongoing investigation into the MERS-CoV outbreak in Saudi Arabia. Jennifer provides her take on Dr. Margaret Chan’s opening remarks and her interview with Dr.
[…]
+
A salmonella outbreak stemming from a Fayetteville hotel has now reached 70 possible cases, 12 of which are out of state. The Cumberland County Department of Public Health says 70 people have reported signs or symptoms consistent with salmonella infections. … Continue reading →
+
The source of the E. coli outbreak in Brazos County, Texas, has been linked to ground beef from a local restaurant, according to a press release from the Brazos County Health Department. Health types won’t release the name of the … Continue reading →
+
About 66 pounds of cream puffs were removed from stores in the Russian Urals city of Chelyabinsk on Monday after a salmonella outbreak was reported there. “The police have found 12 outlets selling these products. About 30 kilograms [about 66 … Continue reading →
+
Fresh off Michael Pollan’s New York Times magazine feature on microbiomes – the totality of microbes, their genomes and particular environments, such as the human digestive tract — new research has shown mixed potential for diet in reducing the risk … Continue reading →
