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Scooped by
Juan Lama
June 26, 2019 7:32 PM
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Exposure to viral infections in the brain during childhood has been linked to an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis later in life. Multiple sclerosis is the most common auto-immune disease affecting the brain. Up to date, there is still neither a cure available nor a clear understanding of the factors that trigger this disease at around 30 years of age. “We asked ourselves whether brain viral infections that could be contracted in early childhood were among the possible causes,” says Doron Merkler, a professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology in UNIGE’s Faculty of Medicine and senior consultant in the Clinical Pathology Service of the HUG. Such transient brain infections can be controlled quickly by the immune system, without the affected individual even noticing any symptoms. “But these transient infections may, under certain circumstances, leave a local footprint, an inflammatory signature, in the brain,” continues the researcher.
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Juan Lama
June 25, 2019 5:11 PM
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A small number of HIV-infected individuals (<1%) can spontaneously control HIV in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. Because CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses are thought to contribute to protection, HIV-responsive T cell receptors (TCRs) from these individuals are of considerable interest. Now, researchers led by Stephanie Gras of Monash University in Victoria, Australia, report how an unusual T-cell receptor found in the CD4+ T cells of some elite controllers is able to recognize low levels of HIV and mount a response. Gras says the finding, reported today (June 8) in Science Immunology, may be good news for the prospect of developing an immunotherapy to rev up the CD4+ attack on HIV. The receptors, found in so-called elite controllers who don’t need medications to keep the virus in check, suggest a new path toward immunotherapy.
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Juan Lama
June 24, 2019 5:10 PM
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Oral steroid use in patients with the inflammatory diseases polymyalgia rheumatica and/or giant cell arteritis significantly increased the risk of infection, and the risk increased with higher doses, found a study in CMAJ. In a large study of almost 40 000 adult patients with polymyalgia rheumatica or giant cell arteritis in England, researchers found higher absolute risks of infection when patients were taking oral steroids than when they were not taking them. The mean age of patients in the study was 73 years. Steroids included prednisolone, prednisone, hydrocortisone and cortisone. The risk of infection increased with higher doses and was elevated even with low daily doses of less than 5 mg of prednisolone. More than half of patients (22 234, 56%) had infections during 138 412 person-years of follow up, with the most common infections being lower respiratory tract infections (27%), conjunctivitis (9%) and shingles (7%). More than one-quarter (27%) of patients were admitted to hospital and 7% died within a week of diagnosis of infection.
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Juan Lama
June 21, 2019 1:43 AM
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In an analysis of the real-world impact of a pioneering test called metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS), developed by scientists to diagnose patients with mysterious inflammatory neurological conditions, the technique was shown to identify infections better than any standard clinical method. "The infectious cause of half the cases of meningitis and encephalitis go undiagnosed in hospitals around the country, and these severely ill patients are in dire need of a better testing tool," said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, professor of laboratory medicine and medicine at UCSF and senior author of the new study. Unlike conventional testing, which is often driven by doctors' hunches, the mNGS test offers an unbiased approach that can detect nearly all possible pathogens -- bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites -- present in patients' spinal fluid, giving doctors clear direction for treatment. The study, published June 13, 2019 in the New England Journal of Medicine, was set up to enroll only the most challenging cases. To qualify, a patient had to be hospitalized with an acute neurological illness with no conclusive diagnosis. The study included 204 pediatric and adult patients, mostly from California, who had meningitis (inflammation of the lining surrounding the brain), encephalitis (inflammation of the brain itself) or myelitis (inflammation of the spinal cord). The test found many of the same infections identified by conventional laboratory testing methods, which generally look for pathogens one at a time, and require that doctors know what they are looking for to be successful. But it also found 13 infections that were missed by all conventional tests, such as a case of infection by St. Louis encephalitis virus, which had not been seen in California since 1986. And in more than half of those cases, the mNGS diagnosis was indispensable in guiding the treatment of these patients. In a case of hepatitis E virus infection that had been missed by conventional testing, the successful mNGS diagnosis likely spared the patient from having to undergo a liver transplant.
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Juan Lama
June 19, 2019 9:26 PM
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Researchers identify a possible driver of acute flaccid myelitis, a polio-like disease diagnosed in more than 500 children over the last few years. A mysterious, polio-like condition that leads to paralysis in children likely involves an enterovirus, according to research published last week (June 10) as a preprint in bioRxiv. Researchers linked acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a rare disease that’s been on the rise in the US since 2014, to a virus called EV-D68 and related pathogens, although it’s not clear whether this group of viruses is the sole cause. The test identified signs of infection by EV-D68 as well as other enteroviruses in a group of more than 40 children with AFM. “Finding evidence of antibodies in spinal fluid in response to the virus is an important first step toward a diagnostic test for AFM and a path toward treatment,” the CDC says in a statement to STAT.
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Scooped by
Juan Lama
June 19, 2019 2:59 PM
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The world’s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries. - Worldwide, 79% of people agree that vaccines are safe and 84% agree that they are effective.
- Bangladesh and Rwanda have the strongest confidence in vaccines – with almost all people in both countries agreeing that vaccines are safe, effective and that it is important for children to be vaccinated.
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Scooped by
Juan Lama
June 19, 2019 2:28 PM
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A global survey of attitudes towards science has revealed the scale of the crisis of confidence in vaccines in Europe, showing that only 59% of people in western Europe and 50% in the east think vaccines are safe, compared with 79% worldwide. Around the globe, 84% of people acknowledge that vaccines are effective and 92% say their child has received a vaccine. But in spite of good healthcare and education systems, in parts of Europe there is low trust in vaccines. France has the highest levels of distrust, at 33%. The first Wellcome Global Monitor survey, which canvassed attitudes among 140,000 people worldwide, shows clear links between people’s trust in doctors, nurses and scientists and their confidence in vaccines. It also shows that mistrust in government institutions goes hand in hand with doubts about vaccines’ safety. Bangladesh and Rwanda have the highest confidence in vaccines in the world, the Global Monitor shows. Rwanda also has the highest trust in its healthcare, at 97%, against a global average of 76%. “In developing countries, where deadly diseases like diphtheria, measles or whooping cough are more common, I’ve seen mothers queue for hours to make sure their child is vaccinated,” said Seth Berkley, the chief executive of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “It is in wealthier countries, where we no longer see the terrible impact these preventable diseases can have, that people are more reticent. This reticence is a luxury we can ill afford.” Northern Europe, which includes the UK, has more confidence in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines than the western or eastern regions. In northern Europe, 73% of people think they are safe, the same figure as in northern America, and 84% think they are effective (83% in northern America). Only 65% of eastern Europeans think they are effective. In Ukraine, which had more than 53,000 measles cases last year, the figure is 50%.
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Scooped by
Juan Lama
June 18, 2019 3:43 PM
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Americans have received billions of doses of vaccines for everything from measles to the flu. In 30 years, very few injury claims have been filed with the federal government.
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Juan Lama
June 18, 2019 2:22 AM
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We’ll have to battle both the disease and the fake news. When the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching a cure and inoculating the population. The second is new, and one you might not have thought much about: fighting the deluge of rumors, misinformation and flat-out lies that will appear on the internet. Pandemics are part of our future. They might be like the 1968 Hong Kong flu, which killed a million people, or the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed over 40 million. Yes, modern medicine makes pandemics less likely and less deadly. But global travel and trade, increased population density, decreased wildlife habitats, and increased animal farming to satisfy a growing and more affluent population have made them more likely. Experts agree that it’s not a matter of if — it’s only a matter of when. When the next pandemic strikes, accurate information will be just as important as effective treatments. We saw this in 2014, when the Nigerian government managed to contain a subcontinentwide Ebola epidemic to just 20 infections and eight fatalities. Part of that success was because of the ways officials communicated health information to all Nigerians, using government-sponsored videos, social media campaigns and international experts. Without that, the death toll in Lagos, a city of 21 million people, would have probably been greater than the 11,000 the rest of the continent experienced...."
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Juan Lama
June 17, 2019 12:00 PM
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Researchers shed light on the important role that microbial genes, like those from viruses, can play in insect and animal evolution. Jennifer Brisson, an associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester, and her former postdoctoral student Benjamin Parker, now an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Tennessee, studied phenotypically plastic traits in pea aphids and uncovered, for the first time, genes that influence whether aphids produce wingless or winged offspring in response to their environment. Pea aphids are insects that reproduce rapidly and typically give birth to offspring that do not have wings. When an environment becomes too crowded with other aphids, the females begin producing offspring that have wings, rather than the typical wingless offspring. The winged offspring can then fly to and colonize new, less crowded plants. The researchers used techniques from evolutionary genetics and molecular biology to identify genes that determine the degree to which aphids respond to crowding. Surprisingly, the genes they uncovered are from a virus that then became incorporated into the aphid genome. The virus, which is from a group of insect viruses called densoviruses, causes its host to produce offspring with wings. Most laterally transferred DNA -- DNA that is inherited from other organisms, like viruses -- is not expressed by its hosts because it is quickly inactivated or eliminated. However, there are examples in most organisms -- even humans -- where genomes co-opt genes laterally; in humans, for instance, the gene that creates a membrane between the placenta and the fetus was co-opted from a retrovirus.
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Juan Lama
June 17, 2019 10:47 AM
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This graph from the Western Australian Health Department shows a massive spike in reported flu cases that dwarfs anything in the past five years, starting eight weeks earlier than usual. Thousands will die in Australia's flu epidemic that has started months earlier than usual and is rapidly spreading. More than 75,000 people had been infected as of last week, already 50 per cent more last year's entire season, and experts predict 4,000 will die Figures from health authorities make the scale of the epidemic horrifyingly clear and show just how much worse it could get before winter is over. A graph from the Western Australian Health Department shows a massive spike in reported cases that dwarfs anything in the past five years."
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Juan Lama
June 14, 2019 2:18 PM
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Updated clinical practice guidelines prepared by the European Conference on Infections in Leukemia recommend the use of letermovir for the prevention of cytomegalovirus in adults undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant, or HSCT. The guidance was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
“Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is one of the most common opportunistic infections that affects the outcome of adult patients undergoing stem cell transplant,” Rafael de la Camara, MD, from the department of hematology at the Hospital de la Princesa in Madrid, told Infectious Disease News. “It is also an important cause of morbidity and mortality in these patients. This updated guideline provides evidence-based and expert recommendations for screening, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of CMV in this population that will inform the management of CMV now and in the future. The FDA approved letermovir in 2017 for CMV prophylaxis in patients who have undergone HSCT. CMV is common, with more than 50% of U.S. adults having been infected by age 40, according to the CDC. It is a common complication in HSCT patients. From 2000 to 2015, the proportion of patients who underwent HSCT who were aged 60 years or older tripled, from less than 10% in 2000 to 2006, to around 30% in 2015, according to the researchers. This resulted in an increased number of patients who were CMV seropositive undergoing HSCT over the same period, they wrote.”
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Juan Lama
June 13, 2019 12:12 PM
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A study of hundreds of gay couples finds that HIV-positive men taking antiretroviral medication don't pass the virus to their partners, even when having unprotected sex. Researchers report that out of 782 gay male couples where one individual was HIV positive and receiving antiretroviral treatment, there was no HIV transmission to the HIV-negative partner from unprotected sex. “The risk of HIV transmission in gay couples through condomless sex when HIV viral load is suppressed is effectively zero,” the authors write in their report. “The PARTNER study has given us the confidence to say, without doubt, that people living with HIV who are on effective treatment cannot pass the virus on to their sexual partners,” Michael Brady, who is the medical director at Terrence Higgins Trust and was involved with recruitment for the studies. Experts say that wider access to testing and treatment is necessary to bring number of cases down.
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Juan Lama
June 26, 2019 7:26 PM
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A vaccine against cervical and other cancers should be recommended for both men and women up to age 26, a U.S. government advisory panel said Wednesday. A vaccine against cervical and other cancers should be recommended for both men and women up to age 26, a U.S. government advisory panel decided Wednesday. The vaccine protects against HPV, a virus that is commonly spread through sex and can cause certain cancers and genital warts. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)' vote in Atlanta raises the recommended vaccination age for men from 21 to 26, making it the same as the existing recommendation for women. ACIP also voted to recommend HPV vaccination based on shared clinical decision making for individuals 27 through 45 years of age who are not adequately vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention almost always accepts the panel's recommendations and uses them as guidance for U.S. doctors.
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Juan Lama
June 24, 2019 11:36 PM
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The devastating outbreak of the disease that has led to millions of pig deaths in East Asia has intensified efforts to develop a vaccine quickly, but the virus presents several challenges that are yet to be overcome. African swine fever, a fatal disease of pigs, has been around for decades. Believed to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s made several visits to other continents, with outbreaks surfacing in Russia, Brazil, and various parts of Europe—where it still maintains a stronghold in wild boar populations. The disease not only threatens the world’s largest pork industry, but also the global supply of the blood thinner heparin, most of which is produced by Chinese pigs. Alarmed, Chinese officials have reportedly culled more than 1.2 million pigs to date in an attempt to prevent new infections, but the disease is spreading and has jumped to Vietnam and Cambodia in recent months. Pfeiffer reckons that anywhere between 10 percent and 40 percent of Chinese pigs could have been infected with the virus so far, although official statistics have not yet been released....
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Juan Lama
June 23, 2019 1:11 AM
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Rotavirus vaccine use in national immunisation programmes has led to declines in hospital admissions for rotavirus gastroenteritis among children; however, the global impact of rotavirus vaccine introduction has not been described using primary data. We describe the impact of rotavirus vaccine introduction on admissions for acute rotavirus gastroenteritis in primarily low-income and middle-income countries, using 9 years of data from the WHO-coordinated Global Rotavirus Surveillance Network (GRSN). A significant and sustained reduction in the proportion of hospital admissions for acute gastroenteritis due to rotavirus was seen among children younger than 5 years in GRSN sites following rotavirus vaccine introduction. In countries that had not introduced rotavirus vaccine in their national immunisation programmes, rotavirus was detected in 38·0% (95% CI 4·8–73·4) of admissions for acute gastroenteritis annually whereas in those that have introduced the vaccine, rotavirus was detected in 23·0% (0·7–57·7) of admissions for acute gastroenteritis, showing a 39·6% (35·4–43·8) relative decline following introduction. These findings highlight the need to incorporate rotavirus vaccines into immunisation programmes in countries that have not yet introduced them and underline the importance of high-quality surveillance.
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Juan Lama
June 20, 2019 5:29 PM
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Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in western countries. While direct acting antivirals (DAAs) therapy for HCV efficiently eradicates the infection, sustained virological response (SVR) following anti-HCV treatment does not eliminate the risk for HCC development. These HCV-induced epigenetic changes reprogram host gene expression and persist as an "epigenetic signature" following virus eradication. Treatment of HCV-cured cells with specific inhibitors reverted the epigenetic signature. These results suggest a "hit and run" scenario that may explain why some chronic HCV infected patients do proceed to develop HCC after HCV eradication.
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Juan Lama
June 19, 2019 3:06 PM
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Chronic hepatitis B virus infection is associated with the risk for nonliver cancers, especially digestive system cancers, according to findings from a population-based cohort study published in JAMA Network Open. “In a large prospective Chinese cohort of 496,732 adults, we found that participants who were (hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)] seropositive were at an increased risk of developing [hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)] and several nonliver cancers, including stomach cancer, oral cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, and lymphoma,” Ci Song, MD, from Nanjing Medical University in China, and colleagues wrote. In the study, researchers used a dipstick assay to detect serum HBsAg among the nearly 500,000 participants to determine the association between HBV infection and risk for all cancer types, according to the study. “This study provides compelling evidence for the association between HBV infection and all types of cancer ” Song and colleagues wrote. “Strengths of the CKB study included its prospective design, the inclusion of a geographically widespread Chinese population living in urban and rural areas, and careful adjustment for potential confounders.” However, they also noted some study limitations, including the rate of HBsAg positivity among the CKB cohort, which was 3.1% lower than a rate found in a national serosurvey.
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Juan Lama
June 19, 2019 2:52 PM
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In a major step forward in the development of a norovirus vaccine, researchers discover a neutralizing antibody that can bind to a highly conserved epitope. For those who have suffered through a norovirus infection, commonly referred to as the “stomach flu,” the need for an effective vaccine does not really need explaining. But efforts to develop a vaccine against human norovirus have been unsuccessful, in part due to the virus’s rapid evolution and large number of antigenically distinct genotypes. Now, a group from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill have discovered an antibody that broadly inhibits multiple strains of pandemic norovirus, a major step forward in the development of an effective vaccine for the dreaded stomach virus. The work describes, for the first time, the structure of the binding interaction between norovirus and a human antibody that may work against many strains. Although ∼60% of human norovirus outbreaks are caused by the GII.4 genotype, there are more than 30 known genotypes. These rapidly evolving RNA viruses elicit complex serological responses associated with previous exposure. In order to further understand the immune response to the infection, the team of researchers first established the GII.4 repertoire of antibodies present before and after vaccination and selected several for epitope and structural analysis. They found that the antibodies following vaccination are polarized and shaped by previous norovirus infection stating that the “antibody response was dominated by GII.4-specific antibodies that blocked ancestral strains or by antibodies that bound to divergent genotypes and did not block viral-entry-ligand interactions.” They went on to biochemically define the epitopes recognized by the antibodies with blockade activity to historical strains. However, one antibody, A1431, showed broad blockade toward tested GII.4 strains and neutralized the pandemic strain.
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Juan Lama
June 18, 2019 3:46 PM
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Scientists are listening in on the ways viruses communicate and cooperate. Decoding what the microbes are saying could be a boon to human health.... It wasn’t until 1999 that anyone took any notice of what cooperation achieved for the viruses themselves. That year, evolutionary biologists Paul Turner, now at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Lin Chao, now at the University of California, San Diego, showed that phages play their own version of the prisoner’s dilemma strategy game, working in partnership under certain circumstances and acting in their own self-interests in others. Geneticist Rotem Sorek could see that his bacteria were sick — so far, so good. He had deliberately infected them with a virus to test whether each ailing microbe soldiered on alone or communicated with its allies to fight the attack. Virologists have long studied their subjects in isolation, targeting cells with just a single viral particle. But it’s become increasingly clear that many viruses cooperate, teaming up to co-infect hosts and break down antiviral immune defences....
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Juan Lama
June 18, 2019 2:32 AM
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The gut microbiome is a complex, interconnected ecosystem of species. And, like any ecosystem, some organisms are predators and some are prey. A new study published in Cell Host & Microbe looked at the impact of bacteriophages – viruses that hunt, infect and kill bacteria. The study found that phages have a profound impact on the dynamics of the gut microbiome, not only affecting certain species directly, but also having a cascading effect on others. Phages may also be impacting their human host by modulating metabolites, including chemical substances found in the brain. “One of the major interests in my lab is understanding the changes in the dynamics of the gut microbiome. Bacteriophage are a huge component of the microbiome but haven’t been studied much yet,” said co-corresponding senior author Georg Gerber, MD, PhD, MPH, co-director of the Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center. To address this question, the researchers colonized the guts of mice with a defined set of human bacterial species and then added phages. By tracking the growth of each microbe the team found, as expected, that the phages caused attritions of the species they preyed upon. They also discovered an unexpected rippling effect on the rest of the ecosystem, resulting in the growth of non-targeted species. In addition to looking at the effects on microbes, the team also looked for effects on the metabolome – the chemical substances produced by both the host and the bacteria present. They found that when they modulated the microbiome with phages, they could see targeted changes in the metabolome, including changes in neurotransmitter levels and bile acids.
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Juan Lama
June 17, 2019 12:39 PM
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Chinese virologists have shed light on the mechanism of action of Naproxen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug commonly used to treat pain derived from arthritis, gout and many other conditions. The antiviral activity of naproxen was originally discovered in 2013. Now scientists have shown that naproxen effectively protects mice against influenza A and B virus infection, and the drug is more potent at blocking influenza B replication than the commonly used neuraminidase inhibitor oseltamivir. Naproxen exerted its antiviral activity by binding to the viral nucleoprotein (NP) and interfering with its export from the nuclei of infected cells. These findings and recent clinical trials suggest that the commonly used pain drug could be used as an anti-influenza agent in combination with other known influenza drugs.
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Juan Lama
June 17, 2019 11:52 AM
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To help the newborn immune system learn to discriminate between friend and foe, mothers transfer antibodies to their infants via the placenta, recent findings suggest.As part of a recent study, a team of researchers has determined how a pregnant woman's vaccine-induced immunity is transferred to her child, which has implications for the development of more effective maternal vaccines. To investigate the mechanisms by which antibodies are transferred from mother to child, the team of researchers used a novel tool called system serology to compare the quantity and quality of antibodies against pertussis n blood samples from mothers and from the umbilical cords that carry blood, nutrients and immune factors from the placenta to the infant. Their investigation revealed that the placenta preferentially sifts out and delivers to the infant antibodies that activate natural killer (NK) cells, key elements of the innate immune system. While several important immune cells are too immature in newborns to provide effective protection, NK cells are among the most abundant and functional immune cells during the first days of life. The team found a similar preference for the placental transfer of NK-activating antibodies against influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, a common disease of childhood, and also identified antibody features that appear to regulate placental selection, features that could possibly be built into next-generation vaccines with improved mother-to-child antibody transfer.
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Juan Lama
June 15, 2019 2:09 AM
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Scientists destroy final UK laboratory samples of rinderpest, the disease that wiped out most of the cattle in Sub-Saharan Africa. These stocks accounted for most of the world's lab samples of rinderpest, which were held at The Pirbright Institute in Surrey. Rinderpest and the deadly smallpox virus are the only diseases to have been eradicated from the face of the Earth. The rinderpest virus is responsible for one of the worst catastrophes in history. During an outbreak in the 1890s, it killed between 80% and 90% of cattle in eastern and southern Africa. This caused mass starvation in the region. Millions of people died as a result. In Ethiopia alone, one-third of the human population was wiped out. The toll in lives was on a scale matched only by the Black Death in Europe. A vaccination campaign eventually brought the disease under control until it was declared to have been eradicated in the wild in 2011. But thousands of samples of the virus remained in 40 laboratories across 36 countries. If there happened to be an accident, the disease could potentially leak out and cause devastation once again. To prevent this, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) approved a few highly secure labs and encouraged other institutes to send their rinderpest samples to these facilities. Among them is the Pirbright Institute in Surrey, which has led efforts to record the genetic information contained in each sample and then destroy it. Researchers have been reluctant to destroy lab samples of deadly viruses in case they are needed to create a vaccine should the disease ever re-emerge. But a digital record of the virus's genetic code means that this is no longer an issue."
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Juan Lama
June 13, 2019 6:56 PM
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Only a few cases of the newly discovered Bourbon virus have been reported, and two of them ended in death, partly because no specific treatments are available for the tick-borne illness. Now, researchers at Washington University have identified an experimental antiviral drug that cures mice infected with the potentially lethal virus. The drug, favipiravir, is approved in Japan but not the U.S. for treatment of influenza, a related virus. Bourbon virus was first identified in 2014 in a previously healthy middle-aged man in Kansas. The man arrived at the hospital with flu-like symptoms and a history of tick bites. Thinking he had ehrlichiosis, a tick-borne bacterial infection that causes similar symptoms and often affects people in the Midwest, doctors started him on antibiotics. But the man continued to decline, and further testing for ehrlichiosis and every other infection the doctors could think of came up negative. Since favipiravir is not approved by the FDA, it is not clear whether doctors in the U.S. would be able to obtain it for their patients. The best protection against Bourbon virus is to avoid tick bites by wearing insect repellent and long pants and sleeves, and doing regular tick checks after outdoor activity, the researchers said.
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https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aav5519