Health and Medicine – Page 6

Heal the world

Humanity has behaved like a parasite on planet Earth, sucking out all of the goodness from the forests, the oceans, the land and laying its waste at the feet of Mother Nature. It fills the rivers with poison and the seas with plastic. It has spent almost two centuries creating the kind of cloying atmosphere that leads to boundless desertification, washes islands away, and promotes the release of yet more cloying gases from the frozen extremes. Humanity is the parasite that cages and curates all the others species with which it shares the planet, draining the life from them, and reducing its diversity through anthropocenic mass extinction.

In the light of such ongoing devastation perhaps, some outside agency thought, what the planet needed was a bit of pest control…

How about a fast-spreading illness that forces the parasite to curtail the parasite’s airborne activities? One that stops it spreading its pollution along arterial conduits with its countless gas guzzlers? One that shuts down its commercial and industrial activities that the planet might begin its recovery? One that reduces the resources available to the parasite and forces it to retreat into its domestic shells? One that even stops it allowing its bird-killing secondary pests into the outside world?

It seems that already atmospheric aberrations are already declining, the rivers are clarifying, the stars are coming out in numbers not seen for decades, the birds are singing, and wildlife is gently extending its range into the parasite’s silent cities.

Is the world healing?

Might the parasite evolve to adapt to its ecosystem in the wake of this anti-pestilence? To live in greater harmony with the rich diversity of all life on Earth? Might it settle into a more subtle existence, one that does not wreak havoc and devastation but one that speaks harmony and remediation?

You can’t scratch my back

Even when the only “online” we had was old-fashioned landline phones, long before, Skype and Facetime, Whatsapp and Zoom, HouseParty, and th rest, people often ended a call with a “let’s meet up soon”. We need that face-to-face, the handshakes, the hugs, the pat on the back, the ruffling of hair, the you (literally) scratch my back…

While we’re all social distancing in our splendid isolation, staying home to stay well, those online chat apps and what have you have come to the fore. Most of us have now partaken of at least one such “event”, a virtual pub crawl, a band rehearsal, a charity quiz…we can see each other’s faces, we can chat, we can message, we can share digital commodities. And, seriously, for now, while the waves of pandemic and panic endure, it really is all we have, thank goodness for the advent of what we used to called Web 2.0 when most people had only just go on to Web 1…

There’s something missing though…it’s that face-to-face, it’s the body language, the subtle look, the full-on laughter, the chance to connect in real-time in real-space without buffering, without dropouts and glitches, without sound delays and the out-of-sync video. But, there’s no way around it until the tech people come up with zero-latency electronics and even then you still have the problem of not sharing the same physical space.

So…is there something that can make it more real, something that triggers the dopamine receptors and boosts oxytocin, something to chemically or electronically substitute for the feelz? If there is, the government needs to roll out that app or send us a prescription fast…

Thirty years of the barrier method and other science stories

Thirty years ago this month I wrote my first professional article. It was a short feature about the biggest organism having the biggest orgasm and was entitled ‘The Barrier Method’. It explained some of the chemistry, biology, and geography of the sex life of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and appeared in the April 1990 issue of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s young chemists’ newsletter Gas Jar.

Incidentally, I later renamed the magazine and helped relaunch it in full colour as New Elements with Editor Dr Mandy Mackenzie, which carried my Elemental Discoveries news round-up for several years from 1995 onwards.

I also used to publish Elemental Discoveries online on what was perhaps the first chemistry news website. It was to become a model for several news site launches over the following years that I instigated or was involved with for various organisations, including Reactive Reports for ACD/Labs, PSIGate Spotlight, which became Intute, Spectral Lines (for Wiley, now SpectroscopyNOW.com), Distillates for the RSC magazine Education in Chemistry, and a couple of others. Elemental Discoveries itself was hosted by ChemDraw creators Cambridge Soft for a couple of years before I relaunched it as Sciencebase.com in July 1999.

The article ‘The Barrier Method’ was chosen as runner-up in the 1990 Young Science Writer Awards hosted by The Daily Telegraph and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. A later article entitled “Not every sperm is sacred” won in 1991 and led to my writing about science for The Telegraph for several years after that. I got a merit award after the sperm and eggs with an article about xenon and anaesthesia, but sex science has remained a focus of much of my writing over the years, hah!

You can see a hopefully complete list of all my clients from the last thirty years as a freelance science writer here.

The photo accompanying the article was by Mrs Sciencebase long before she was Mrs Sciencebase. I can’t find the original magazine, hence the monochrome copy.

New ways to detect emergent viruses

In a recently published review dedicated to the diagnostics of viral infections, a Russian research team featuring MIPT (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) researchers is the first to systematically describe and summarize the cutting-edge technologies available. A number of new effective methods of virus detection have been developed over the past few years, including those targeted at unknown pathogens. The authors described the so-called high-throughput next-generation sequencing as a potent new approach. The method promises to revolutionize the detection and analysis of new pathogenic viruses, but it will be at least several years until it is introduced into mainstream clinical practice.

“There are, by various statistical estimations, over 320,000 viruses that can infect mammals,’ explains MIPT’s Kamil Khafizov. “To date, less than 1% of this vast multitude has been studied.”

Most viruses, including those that cause respiratory, digestive, and other diseases in humans, remain unresearched and thus almost undetectable. The reason behind this is the narrow spectrum of viruses that the modern testing systems are designed to target.

‘Metaphorically, we are attempting to look at a vast sea of threats through the eye of a needle,’ the authors write in the review. Among other things, they explore the shortcomings of the polymerase chain reaction method. This essential technique for microorganism molecular testing fails to identify poorly explored viruses, and this constitutes one of the key problems in modern virology. There are, however, new methods that may potentially solve the issues of detecting and identifying new microorganisms. The authors describe next-generation sequencing as the most promising. Also known as high-throughput sequencing, it enables the analysis of multiple DNA molecules in parallel, be it a set of samples, different regions of the same genome, or both.

“Efficient mathematical algorithms are a key part of the method,” explains says MIPT grad student Alina Matsvay. “They allow researchers to compare the genome of an unknown virus against all available references of viral genomes, and predict all of its possible characteristics, including its pathogenic potential.”

Khafizov noted that the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the importance of next-generation sequencing methods for identifying new pathogens in clinical samples and studying the molecular mechanisms of virus transmission from animals to humans.

https://doi.org/10.3390/v12020211

Smart phone test device for Covid-19

Scientists in the UK are developing a new smart testing device for the coronavirus and now need backers to get the device manaufactured quickly and in large quantities.

The team from Brunel University London, Lancaster University and the University of Surrey reckon the can test for Covid-19 infection in half an hour. The device has already been successfully tested in The Philippines to check chickens for viral infection and the team has now adapted it to detect Covid-19 in people. The system is quick and easy to use, requires little training and could be used by healthcare workers and even lay people.

“Now we have access to multiple genomes (blueprint) of SARS-CoV-2 virus, we can develop reliable molecular assay in a week and have them up and running on the device in three or four weeks,’ explains Brunel’s Wamadeva Balachandran. “We are confident it will respond well, and we rapidly need industrial partners to come on board. It will have a huge impact on the population at large,” he adds.

The operator takes an oral or nasal swab, puts it into the device and connects to the smart phone app. Samples do not need to go to a laboratory and the same device can be used to test six samples simultaneously. The addition of telemedicine functionality will make the device even more useful. The idea is to try and make it cheaper than other tests so it can be used worldwide at home, in doctor’s surgeries, hospitals, and workplaces. Once the infection is identified, the intelligent system will track down all people who had close contact with the newly identified patient in the previous two weeks and alert them to the threat.

Source: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/uk-scientists-develop-new-rapid-smart-testing-device-for-coronavirus

Covid-19 chain-letters and friend of a friend BS

I am receiving an inordinate number of personal messages on social media and emails asking about different aspects of Covid-19 and the coronavirus. Often the question will be about some email that has purportedly arrived from a friend of a friend in China or Italy or wherever and claiming all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense, proclaiming the end of civilisation, or pointing out how some miracle cure might be a miracle cure (it won’t be). Often recipients are told to urgently share the message with all their contacts.

Now, I am not medically trained, I cannot give medical advice. But, what I do know is that random notes of unknown original source about scientific and medical matters from non-scientist, non-medical friends are invariably BS, they were long before Covid-19 and will remain so long after it’s over and we’ve moved on to the next crisis.

Often the BS is sprinkled with truth glitter as a kind of camouflage, but the stinking turd beneath the shiny, thin veneer of sparkles is still unpolished, fake news, scam fodder, or somehow maliciously biased ordure. It may also just be common or garden bovine waste of the kind you might use to condition allotment soil to make your rhubarb grow thicker if there were not sufficient equine output available.

If you receive such a message, just delete it. It takes a simple swipe, tap or click and you can then forget about it. Please don’t share it. Please don’t email it to people you imagine might be able to remove the glitter and reveal some hidden truth.

If you have real concerns and questions about Covid-19 and the coronavirus that causes it, visit the websites of the NHS or the WHO and take note of their advice and guidance.

Stay well friends :-)

The coronavirus crisis – Covid-19

There is a lot of disinformation about Covid-19 (FAQ here) out there and it can be very disheartening to read the nonsense and conspiracy theories especially when they come from moronic world leaders.

Indeed, when the US president tweets that there is no problem and then a week later claims he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else it becomes very depressing watching this play out. His daily “fake news” tweets about what drugs might work are completely inappropriate from a pharmacological point of view. He mentioned one drug that would have no effect on a virus and then a drug combination that can actually cause heart failure and so is never used.

Additionally, some countries (the UK) are misguidedly opting for their own version of the WHO recommendations. This seems just as ludicrous especially when we were still seeing people huddled together in pubs until last Friday and teens on the street even today acting as if nothing has changed in the world.

It makes one wonder how we are ever going to get through this. I have pointed out elsewhere, with my purportedly scientific head-on, that as far as I understand it there are many significant obstacles to overcome yet. It is not yet known whether post-infection immunity for those who recover from the disease persists. Also, we have not found a way to make vaccines for other coronaviruses, so what are the chances with this one.

There is a glimmer of hope. Scientists have known about the possibility of an emergent pandemic for decades. I reviewed a book – Virus – for New Scientist back in the day (1997) that predicted the emergence of such a disease. We have seen some hints of such an outbreak that would engulf the world with SARS and MERS and others and we managed to overcome those. We have known about coronaviruses for decades and studied them in detail. We have known that some coronaviruses that infect bats could make the leap from bat to human without chicken or pig as an intermediary. One potentially lethal coronavirus was found in the Brazilian vampire bat in 2008, for instance. As such, we have been analysing them in detail and accumulating fundamental scientific knowledge.

That knowledge was never going to stop the emergence of a pandemic virus, but we can build on what we have learned in the last 20 to 30 years and ultimately find a way to overcome this disease.

Within minutes of writing this blog post, an update arrived on how the WHO is about to push fast-track megatrials of four contenders for drug combinations to beat the disease.

In the meantime, keep your distance and be vigilant of symptons.

Most of us will get through this together…apart.

Stay well

Hobbies for your Covid-19 self isolation

I posted a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) with answers regarding the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the potentially fatal Covid-19 (Coronavirus disease 201), now pandemic, back in late January. Things have moved on apace, social distancing, self-isolation, quarantine, lockdown are buzzwords we are hearing more and more as the virus spreads. Countries are closing borders, airlines are on the verge of failing, restaurants, bars, sports venues, and theatres are all operating behind closed doors, if at all.

I gave up updating the FAQ a while ago and linked to a better one where Sciencebase readers can get important current information, it’s at the top of the FAQ.

But, there is one FAQ that needs to be asked, at once, and I did, on Facebook:

So, all those hobbies that people scoffed at for years, which ones will you be taking up in your splendid isolation?

The answers have been rolling in, some people seemed to have assumed this wasn’t a flippant, light-hearted, almost facetious, mood-lightening, amusing question in the light of a global tragedy unfolding daily before our eyes, but hey, the literal web will survive us all. Anyway, here are a few of the interesting remarks that came back:

Chris – Today I have tried and failed: making papier-mÃ¢chÃ© from toilet roll, distilling vodka, plane spotting, and Spanish conversation

Clive – I like plane spotting: rebate, jack, smoothing, block…

Mo – I think it’s time we played a few games of Risk

Robert – Hand washing

Mike – Hand wringing

Patrick – I’m making a map of the known universe and beyond out of pasta and toilet rolls. What else am I going to do with all of this stuff…no idea why I bought it all really

Nancy – A Seattle epidemiologist has given the thumbs-up to sex. Bonus points if it’s sex for one

Mark – Apparently, Italians have been given a free month’s subscription to a porn website

Dave – Nice to see that everyone’s pulling together in times of crisis

Stephen – I’ve been threatening for years to get the kids to cut the lawn with the kitchen scissors – I might just get around to seeing how long it would take to do…

Bill – Photographing the neighbours with my long lens. Oh, wait, did you mean NEW hobby?

Jorian – Writing up research notes on our family history for the survivors

Mark – Model trains are my thing!

Stephen (again) – Yeah the “kids” layout in the loft might get some attention too

Deborah (who is moving house) – I’m still packing

Sciencebase – I’ve just cut up some eggboxes to replace the sodden ones in the moth trap

Mandy – Not going to need a new spring wardrobe; reasons to be cheerful

What is a pandemic?

When a new disease comes to light, AIDS, SARS, and most recently COVID-19, the health experts and the media bandy about words like epidemic and pandemic. Today, COVID-19 has been described as on the verge of becoming a global pandemic.

The word pandemic with relation to disease means affecting all the people. pan meaning all, demos meaning people or district, Greek pandemos. So medically, speaking we see it as either potentially affecting everyone or more usually affecting every possible region of the world, in the sense of a global pandemic.

An epidemic has a similar meaning, the epi means among, and the demos might refer to people or a district with people, so among the people of a given district. It is usually used to refer to an outbreak in a specific region or among a group of people, hence the word epidemiology, the study of epidemics, outbreaks of disease in a given area or among a group of people. There is also usually some implication of the rapid spread of a given disease in an epidemic.

In contrast, a disease that is endemic is usually confined to a specific geographical group of people or region. The en simply meaning in.

How emerging viruses jump from species to species

David Bradley reporting from the Royal Society, January 2004

The list of emergent viruses continues to grow. In the early 1990s, there was HIV, ebola, lassa, and others, almost all having jumped from their natural host species to humans. More recently, hepatitis C, Sin Nombre, West Nile, and of course SARS emerged. The common factor, said Dr Eddie Holmes of the University of Oxford, is that they use RNA rather than DNA to carry their genetic code.

Holmes believes that the genetics of our immune systems and viral genetics should be an equally important research focus. To infect a new species, an emerging virus has to overcome the new host’s immune system and to replicate in its cells, the success of which depends on both viral and host genetics and other factors.

But, Holmes asked, why do such pathogens emerge and what controls the emergence? Ecological change, as emphasized in Tony McMichael’s talk, is the governing factor – change in human proximity and change in host-species population density. The key to understanding lies in the fact that RNA viruses mutate a million times more rapidly than organisms with DNA. This endows them with great adaptability. On the other hand, a high mutation rate constrains viral evolution by capping the viral genome’s size, which limits adaptability. Higher mutation rates, after all, mean more chance of error in the viral genes. This “error-threshold”, explained Holmes, means that if a virus has to evolve a lot to jump between species then it is more likely to fail. We eat a multitude of plant viruses every day but no one has yet fallen prey to turnip mosaic virus.

The coronaviruses such as SARS, are different. They have a much bigger genome than other RNA viruses, which means that SARS and its relatives should evolve more slowly but their larger genome gives them greater adaptability. A better understanding of the constraints to RNA virus evolution will allow us to make better predictions about the emergence of new viruses and help us find improved therapeutic procedures. Rather than thinking about what RNA viruses can do, we should concentrate on their limitations.

Read on… Influenza and emerging viruses