tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72737964691744593892024-03-14T14:29:05.348+00:00The Toxicologist TodayBinocular eyes on what matters in sciencePudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.comBlogger501125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-41903897342108075182022-01-03T11:27:00.007+00:002022-01-03T11:27:58.882+00:00A genuine thank you and farewell - this is the end of The Toxicologist Today<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzvIgcyvkPuUOAnJ5RolNEoVNlM8PgKr7GpzGJ0MqiBtxcXGkTF7xIRDC2vc3GHje4iVfhhOvplBP7lNj0yB_vXXLoX63veZ2SBkHXY8wSOgaQ_OkNJJhCbpAuKh3x26QXA9eIiPptuqz6JZOQv6bk60lJy_oPUrDuPvUPL9Jm52snJbX4LdnoNFG2=s8192" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="8192" data-original-width="5464" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzvIgcyvkPuUOAnJ5RolNEoVNlM8PgKr7GpzGJ0MqiBtxcXGkTF7xIRDC2vc3GHje4iVfhhOvplBP7lNj0yB_vXXLoX63veZ2SBkHXY8wSOgaQ_OkNJJhCbpAuKh3x26QXA9eIiPptuqz6JZOQv6bk60lJy_oPUrDuPvUPL9Jm52snJbX4LdnoNFG2=w286-h430" width="286" /></a></div><br />Since I was a child I have cultivated a few great passions in life, passions that overtime grew into professional objectives or intense hobbies. Some of these passions became a reality at adulthood, and some other ones simply didn't happen. No one is to blame, life is never linear and we, ourselves, are emotional roller-coasters who respond to time and experiences in different manners throughout our path. At some point when I was about eight years old I knew I wanted to be a medical doctor, a passion I had for taking care of people and shape their health to improved levels. By the age of 16 I really felt deeply connected with endocrinology and felt that I would be a great fit in said medical area. None of this became a reality because ... I simply don't know why, but I have my suspicions. Overall, it wasn't to happen. But the passion is still there; the motivation? Not so much!<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I also, as a child, wished I was a writer published globally, not for the sake of money, I can assure you that regardless of how you might consider my ego, but for the sake of having so much to say about life, and at that time, so few people interested in what I thought. I wrote my first book, a novel about depression and misfortune at the age of 16 - "Gray Mosquitoes - Tragic fable of a suicidal" - was the name of that creation. The book did well in a national literature competition in Portugal and prompted me to keep writing. Writing for me was natural, writing for me was energetic, writing for me was deeply and utterly necessary to cleanse and integrate, accommodating all those feelings and observations into a structured analytical perspective. After that first novel several other followed, "Nayf" told the story of a fatherless adolescent with no emotional structure at all and who pushed back any external attempt of others to help him; and "As long as the world lasts" compiled numerous lyrics written for my personal music projects, like the band I had started back in 1995 named "Salem's Voice". </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Music is still one of my passions as it was in the past and as it as always been. I play bass and guitar but I am not a pro, I just like the way it makes me feel, it transports me to realities where the weight of the days simply isn't there anymore and for a few minutes I can evade from a deeply disturbed planet to a conceptualisation of whatever I want, based on what I am playing or listening to. Music does indeed heal, people know it, it is an accessible emotional 'psychotropic' with very few side effects. For me, from the moment I started playing some rubbish chords until the time I became the lead singer of my own band, music made perfect sense, but I always saw it as a positive therapeutic distraction from a convulsive meaningless world, and still today I hold the very same perspective on music-and-me.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">My deep self wanted a better world for all, especially for those who experienced in life the same trajectory that I have had. I was born in an African country deeply devastated by civil war, moved to Europe, my family took a lot of time to base themselves in a region which made me experience 9 schools/nurseries (very much geographically distant) before joining university; and making friends became a hardship. And when you don't have the skills to make friends that easy, simply because you don't have the stability and they don't have the capacity to understand it and be an active part of your journey (empathy is a rarity in growing adolescents - believe me), you become isolated, misunderstood, atypical and mildly unwanted around the hordes of teenagers who are themselves trying to make sense of the world they were given to. This is when reading, one of my passions and that I recall having emerged in my life from the moment I started primary school, became ever so important. I have always been completely mad about compulsive reading, trying to intake all knowledge possible about so many different things. And this is one of the aspects that really characterises me, the capacity to show interest and discuss so many different topics - it has helped me connect with people I have very little in common with, and it has helped me adapt to the different urban tribes a lot better. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">I always read and read and read as much as possible. As a child I consumed the books of a library near my house, furiously, but at home the books I could find never triggered any interest as the topics were pretty much related to my parents' professional occupations, and those were never a passion of mine. I have always been a kid who was never compelled to follow his parents' professional routes; never liked it, never appealed to me. In that limitation (struggling to find something good to read) I turned to the community library, it was free, the range of books was much larger, but the topics were institutionalised and that was vastly boring. I have always been a person with enormous inner discomfort in relation to social injustice and inequity. I share it not to obtain any type of societal approval but to open up space for the external understanding that said attitude really shaped my years to come and the way I still operate to date. The need for information on more obscure realities, knowing the technicalities of the different things that were taking place around us and the different visions we could lay upon these systems drove me to many interesting books, films and documentaries (yes, cinema was also a passion of mine). </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Two books and three music albums marked strongly my adolescence, some even flagged that embryonic cut from when you become a real adolescent and integrally abandon childhood. This is exactly marked by the moment two very specific events occur in your life almost simultaneously, 1) you start loving someone (or at least at that stage it hurts as if it's love) and 2) you start worrying about the state of the planet and society you have around you. <b><span style="font-size: medium;">"Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F."</span></b> represents a moment in my life as a human being, as a person, where I understood for the first time that some battles had to be fought completely alone, by oneself... and character, resilience and integrity would be pivotal for one's victory. It also alerted me to the dark powers associated to drug consumption. I think parents around the world would help their children so much if this book, or any other pedagogic book of this crude nature became an adolescence gift to raise awareness on the reality of drugs, so much broadcasted these days as cool, entertaining and natural in opposition to their true nature of devastating, criminal and self-limiting substances. The other book was <b><span style="font-size: medium;">"The Perfume - The story of a Murderer"</span></b> by Patrick Suskind, a book that actually became the topic for the song 'Scentless Apprentice' by my favourite band ever - <b><span style="font-size: medium;">Nirvana </span></b>-, who created my favourite album ever <b><span style="font-size: medium;">"In Utero"</span></b>. These three icons are deeply embedded in my becoming a Person, the person I am today. The book offered me yet again that misanthropic living that will be life for so many of us throughout our existences, even though the fictional atmosphere is dark, criminal and psychotic, but if we read between the lines there is a person who was born under terrible conditions, never felt loved and spent his life seeking the notion of Love (and self-love) almost desperately with therapeutic objectives, if one can say it. The album offered that same vision but through the eyes of Kurt Cobain, someone I could understand and empathise with so much - my favourite artist ever.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The last two albums that brought up the first adult version of my own self were very different in nature. <b><span style="font-size: medium;">"The Cult - Pure Cult: for Rockers, Ravers, Lovers, and Sinners"</span></b> showed me I was starting to feel different whilst reading the world around me, and that that was a genuine interest in girls (one specifically I should say, but that was never corresponded at any time, hence generating that emotional conflict where friendship becomes passion becomes attraction becomes sour!!!!). This album was an awaking moment in my personality for sure. And finally <b><span style="font-size: medium;">"Chaos AD"</span></b> by Sepultura who basically x-rayed a world filled with disgust, social injustice and political/societal hypocrisy.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Finally, some people can say Football is also a passion of mine and I have always been naturally good at Sports, but impatient to tolerate what Sports have become as money-making industries. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">My passions were sown inside me in a way that made me a different kid amongst people who were acting really hard to come about Different (as in Cool). But no passion was in me as strong as my love for Science, especially Life Sciences. I am completely addicted to knowledge generated by consuming Science at all times, and that drove me to study so 'hard' in life, and when you do it out of love it's not hard anymore, it's a natural process, a dignifying one, a needed one, a must. I completed my university studies, my BSc, MRes, PhD, worked in research but that passion of mine (Research) was not fulfilled to the most because as a professional route it is deeply rotten and lacking principles and morals. I would not be able to stand for most of the technicalities that define one to be a 'modern slave' of a predefined scripted vicious thinking process, one that nowadays is ever more commercial than actually scientific.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So the way to combine my passion for science with my passion for knowledge and communicating said knowledge was to create a blog. This blog. The blog that shut doors today but that was ever so integral and important in allowing me to suck the juice of having someone interested in what I had to share. The scientific knowledge I was collecting for myself and decided to share with an audience for my questions would definitely be the questions of others. And I did if for quite some time with enormous pleasure and integrity, scientifically and personally, by approaching everything with the due referencing and never assuming absolutism. Everything can be questioned but all questions need a proper thought process. I pretty much enjoyed every single article I wrote hereby and I learned so much with this blog. <b><span style="color: #ffa400;">The Toxicologist Today </span></b>was, at some point, a flagship of scientific honor for me. The knowledge and debate generated helped solidify that idea that science needs conversational positioning, to attempt to prove or disprove theories.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But times evolve and where I still believe I have so much to give to an audience in terms of scientific communication, something that unfortunately I do not see entirely fulfilled with my professional career due to the limitations associated to the <i>ins </i>and <i>outs </i>of the nature of what I do, ..., I am sure I have so much to speak about, discuss, teach, learn from and debate on. But the platforms are changing, audiovisual channels became a reality of our days and I could see myself deriving to those platforms, but I don't want to. I really could do it naturally, but one thing is missing; that x-factor that really differentiates those who like from those who love, and those who love from those to act upon - <b>The Passion</b>. I don't have it anymore. It is time to seek pleasure in other things as I see myself reading more and learning more but purely for myself. Eventually sharing but not compulsively or needing to, but as a natural occurrence, if it has to be and without any kind of pressure, internal or external.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This is the end of The Toxicologist Today and I thank you deeply for nearly 11 years of my favourite blog on the Web.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thanks to @Nate_Dumlao for making this photo available freely on @unsplash 🎁 https://unsplash.com/photos/k2GX9kNhXyQ?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink </span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-80972790939764959472021-10-26T17:58:00.028+01:002021-10-26T18:19:18.991+01:00From Sjogren's to Leaky Gut to Menière's to Labyrinthitis - a proposed theory<p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25F9YGQBiJssQFBKUDQC2glEKpDYqgn_aBbdKZor1yf1sALgiAgmoAcU6xYo2We0IMwWI4yB-tPvczzCah7cwwjSG2ZIWxVLDEo44z2NOrRrHBdG07Li6CpM2RCE8dDkXTu4lXAbK8ik/s836/1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="836" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25F9YGQBiJssQFBKUDQC2glEKpDYqgn_aBbdKZor1yf1sALgiAgmoAcU6xYo2We0IMwWI4yB-tPvczzCah7cwwjSG2ZIWxVLDEo44z2NOrRrHBdG07Li6CpM2RCE8dDkXTu4lXAbK8ik/w459-h379/1.jpg" width="459" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;">I have come across a few published articles that cover the high incidence of systemic autoimmune diseases in patient's with Menière's Disease, for example [1, 2], but I always wondered if the other way around could also be a possibility. I mean, one of the health disturbing aspects I have seen reported in Sjogren's patients has to do with events of labyrinthitis (inflammation of part of the inner ear) or pressure put in the inner ear by a very inflamed parotid gland that can trigger vestibular disturbance (i.e., related to the inner ear and sense of balance). However, since Sjogren's is so intrinsically related to metabolism and diet, I have also learned of the nefarious effects caused by certain foods and beverages in a patient's balance, vestibular 'equilibrium' and an impaired digestive tract.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It is easy to establish a chain of consequences that is potentially triggered at any point of the affected physiological system, one that in a healthy person can be counteracted and re-established to normality, but that in an autoimmune one will have to be compensated with potential biological actions that can, on their own, eventually initiate particular imbalances elsewhere in the system. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">However, autoimmunity (where Sjogren's sits as a syndrome) appears to be quite associated with Menière's disease (a pathophysiology marked by vertigo, tinnitus, high pressure felt at the inner ear, and in grave cases even resulting in hearing impairment) [1]. Menière's can play episodically through events usually marked by inflammation at an associated contiguous point, even resulting in potential bilateral vestibular hypofunction (in the worst scenarios). But just as Sjogren's syndrome, also Menière's disease is a chronic condition, hence persistent and recurrent, where the associated vertigo episodes can last from a only a few minutes to excruciating long hours. Now imagine the impact on the performing of regular activities such as driving, operating machinery, walking, etc.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Where some doctors might immediately resort to prescribing prochlorperazine maleate or any other typical phenothiazine indicated for severe nausea, from a personal perspective a patient must also learn how to identify the triggers that typically promote the onset of such vestibular disturbance. </span></b>In different examples to me presented, I had the chance to read that this can be very closely associated to dietary options alongside the typical promoters, such as stress, anxiety, opportunistic viral infections that take advantage of structurally-compromised tissues, and the consumption of desiccants (such as alcohol, spicy foods, etc.).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Add to all this the still quite abstract concept of leaky gut, a disorder that has not yet been fully clinically accepted and medically characterised, but one that it is thought to involve cracks in the intestinal tissue that will allow the passage of unexpected macromolecules to the blood stream...</span></b> molecules that due to their size, composition and complexity were not supposed to be allowed in the circulatory system, and that will, therefore, promote physiological disturbance. It is extremely difficult to find literature to support the idea of a leaky gut, but the same people who have been blaming gluten for several metabolic and physiological ailments have now turned (no personal judgement here at all!) to the idea of a leaky gut - as the portal to disarray. From within a list of supposed complications one can identify the multifactorial Menière's disease [3]. <span style="font-size: large;"><b>A</b></span><b><span style="font-size: large;">nd considering what the authors also debate, i.e., "that patients often complain of aspecific gastrointestinal symptoms associated with autonomic dysregulation, frequently outweighed by the otological manifestations", a recurrent cycle of afflictions is theoretically hereby established.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: large;"><b>In a way, and as suggested in the image that I have edited and enclosed in the post, the metabolic dietary stressors will trigger a reinforced imbalanced immune response, that is already appanage of an autoimmune disease patient. However, in association with a debilitated gastrointestinal mucosa, be it in the stomach (as it occurs typically with reflux or </b><i style="font-weight: bold;">H. pylori</i><b> infections, for example) or at the intestinal tissue, the molecules unexpectedly absorbed into the bloodstream will add to the inflammatory dynamics and this will potentially increase the implications of ongoing inflammation at the vestibular domain. Ergo, making the vestibular tissues even more vulnerable to opportunistic viral infections, and affecting the profile of the naturally-occurring crystals in the inner ear's liquids (the endolymph and perilymph), consequently affecting the audiovestibular moiety, adding to the incidence and seriousness of the reported "</b></span><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: large;"><b>dizziness, generalised, </b></span><b style="color: #ffa400; font-size: x-large;">imbalance, ataxia, motion intolerance, positional vertigo, </b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: large;"><b>oscillopsia, and episodic vertigo" [2]</b></span><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: large;"><b>.</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">In that sense, it is my personal belief that dietary changes need to account for the supposed 'leakiness' of the gut, and might be able to help reduce (not cure!!!) the episodic occurrence of inflammation that affects equilibrium in an autoimmune patient. What do you have to say about it? Does it sound feasible?</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Gazquez, I., Soto-Varela, A., Aran, I. et al (2011). "High Prevalence of Systemic Autoimmune Diseases in Patients with Menière's Disease". <i>PLoS One</i>, 6(10): e26759.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2] Girasoli, L., Cazzador, D., Padoan, R et al. (2018). "Autoimmunity and Otolaryngology Diseases - Update on Vertigo in Autoimmune Disorders, from Diagnosis to Treatment". Journal of Immunology Research, pp. 1-16.</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Berardino, F., Zanetti, D., Ciusani, E. et al (2018). "Intestinal permeability and Ménière's disease". <i>Am J Otolaryngol</i>, 39(2), pp. 153-156.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Original post photo by </span></b><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Omid Armin on Unsplash</b></span></span></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-18574126365773866142021-09-27T22:07:00.000+01:002021-09-27T22:07:37.703+01:00"Leadership is taking responsibility for the people around us" (Simon Sinek) - Part II<p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBYwyYHpkoSA6HM_-rWsnZ_Ig7qly97T4xQAUGcOZ_We5x07bQo01fKSG-99ANNUO7anqCYFXU-g3I3ejFMzzmqBE3h6KZR7aDeMU8GtRUOeJmdVMzYL2EpU4EHL1IMFPv5tDEWm6MS0/s2048/matteo-vistocco-Dph00R2SwFo-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1235" height="431" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBYwyYHpkoSA6HM_-rWsnZ_Ig7qly97T4xQAUGcOZ_We5x07bQo01fKSG-99ANNUO7anqCYFXU-g3I3ejFMzzmqBE3h6KZR7aDeMU8GtRUOeJmdVMzYL2EpU4EHL1IMFPv5tDEWm6MS0/w260-h431/matteo-vistocco-Dph00R2SwFo-unsplash.jpg" width="260" /></a></span></div><span><br />As expressed in my last post where I promised to publish one of the most, if not the most elevating motivational speech on management and leadership I ever witnessed; I hereby leave you with wise words from a very wise professional. Simon Sinek needs no introductions; his talks and seminars are profusely broadcasted on the web, and his teachings are pervasive for some, intrusive for others, but extremely relevant for all, i.e., organisations and the people they aggregate. So, in very thoughtful words, what does it mean for Simon Sinek, to be a leader?</span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">"What does it mean to be healthy, what does it mean to be a great parent. I don't have five things to be a great parent, right?! It's a lifestyle and it comes number One, with the commitment that I am responsible for the life of another human being, the growth of another human being. The closest to leadership is parenting. You have to be an infinite student of parenting. You know, if you want to be a parent you ask your friends, you ask your own parents, you join groups, you read magazines, you watch talks, whatever it is you're constantly consuming how to deal with this constantly changing challenge of being a parent. And it's ups and downs and successes and failures, you know? And that's what it is Leadership. </span>Leadership is the same. Great leaders are students of leadership, no matter how achieved they may be. They're still learning. And it's a lifestyle. It's the lifestyle of what I need to do to look after people which <span style="font-size: large;">includes things like Listening, Learning how to Give and Receive Feedback, Learning how to have effective confrontations, how to discipline when necessary (in a way that's constructive); roam the halls, get to know people. Learning what it means to ask somebody questions. </span>How do you ask questions? Some people are naturally good at being curious about other human beings and some people are uncomfortable because they're introverts or whatever, socially awkward, but we can learn. You know? How do you learn to remember people's names? 'Well, I'm bad at names' - No, you've just decided you're bad at names; we can learn to be good at names, so that when we walk down the hall and say - 'Hey Tom!' / 'Oh my God, he remembers my name?'. It's a nice feeling. It's a lifestyle. There are many many things we have to do and constantly work on to be a great leader, to create that environment.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Everything that we are talking about in the infinite game is really really really hard. it is so much easier to build a company based on short-term ambitions than it is an infinite cause. It just is, right? It's also fun until it's not. Less inspiring but sometimes hitting a goal feels good. It's much easier to just hire and fire people frequently. Hire fast Fire fast, as to hiring slowly and firing slowly because we try and take care of our people as best as we can. It's hard to build teams. All that stuff we talked about Leadership, like what am I supposed to do to build a trusting team? Well, I wish I could give you a list of five things. It's really really hard to be a parent. It's much easier to be an uncle or an ant, or not have kids. It's hard!!! So why do it? It's fun and exciting to be. To try and beat our competitors, but to have to face our own weaknesses every day, that's exhausting. Existential flexibility, I'd rather not. I'd just would rather not. So the reason this takes courage to completely change our mindset about the game that we're actually players in and how we want to approach these things, and do we want to shift our mindset and our organizations to prepare for the infinite game to be organized for the infinite game. It takes courage because we're going to be swimming upstream in a world that is very finite driven. You know the pressures on us are overwhelming from wall street, or our own egos, or from internal incentive structures bosses, whatever it is the pressures are overwhelming for us to play the finite game. <span style="font-size: large;">And so how do you stand up to massive external pressure? Courage, and courage is something that comes from relationships, it's external. </span>A world famous trapeze artist would never attempt a brand new death defying act for the first time without a net! They would never do it, so why do we think that we could do something difficult without external support too? <span style="font-size: large;">I've had the opportunity to meet real heroes, people who've risked their lives to save the lives of others with the belief that they were gonna die... and they didn't. And when asked why did you do it they all say something similar which is they would have done it for me. It's external and so we have to take the time to foster and take care of people around us, to nurture our relationships because when we're going to be doing something difficult, when we're going to be swimming upstream, when we're going to be innovating and doing something different, there are days we're going to doubt ourselves, there are days we're going to get knocked in our ass, there are days that storms are going to rise, and we have to have people who say - 'I got your back'. You need to do this, world needs this - 'Keep going, I believe in you'. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: large;">Courage comes from not only our willingness to do that for others, but then their willingness to do it for us, and if we commit ourselves to a just cause and we're willing to do those things, then you know the great thing is we take a lot of people with us, and change the world for the better and... isn't that sort of the point of an infinite life? To leave this world in better shape than we found it? To leave the companies that we work for in better shape than when we started? To leave our families stronger and better capable than what they can do without us? Isn't that what it means to live an infinite life that we can literally live on beyond our own lives.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">[...] An infinite mindset means that, it is something I can't do but I can influence and take care of the people to the left of me and to the right of me. I can take care of the people who work for me, I can even take care of the person I work for. Sometimes we have a toxic boss not because they're bad but because we don't understand the pressure they're under. Sometimes to simply exhibit empathy to our boss - 'Hey boss you were really harsh on us today, is everything all right? What's going on, I'm worried about you!'. We can succeed together, - 'I'm here to help you'. <span style="font-size: large;">No matter where we are inside our organisation, leadership is not about rank or authority, leadership is taking responsibility for the people around us. And so anybody, on any team at any rank at any level can be a leader. The first choice is that we have to want to be. </span>A dear friend of mine, lieutenant general George Flynn from the marine corps said that the first criterion to being a leader is you have to want to be one, so any of us can volunteer to be a leader and that's what you do, you commit yourself to seeing that the people with whom we work on a daily basis love coming to work, they feel that someone's got their back, they feel supported, they feel that they have top cover, they feel someone cares about them as a human being listens to them, knows their story, allows them to be themselves. We can be that leader and what you start to see is those teams become really high performing, those teams become super tight and you start to hear rumours across the company because everybody wants into that team because apparently it's a great team to work with, to work on, and before you know it, one of those people goes and moves to another team and they take everything that they learned because leadership is learned and they do it for another team, and if we take that infinite mindset then eventually the tail will wag the dog and it doesn't matter if it's this CEO or another CEO because we will outlast whoever is in charge right now and that's the goal we're doing this for, the good of the organization, we're doing this for the good of the cause, and the tail can wag the dog.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">[...] Be the leader you wish you had, become a student of leadership, study it, read about it, watch things about it, practice it every day, be a parent, join the movement means -'I'm going to take care of my team.</span> 'Sometimes I'm in a leadership position, and sometimes I'm not, and it doesn't matter. I'm going to practice leadership'. If I'm a salesperson, if I work at the check-in counter of an airline, I'm going to take care of the people I work with and take care of the customers as if as if they're my family. <span style="font-size: large;">Practice leadership, learn about it, study it, because I do these things because I recognize I'm just a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, because when we do a jigsaw puzzle the first thing you do is lean the picture of the the box against the wall and then you start putting the pieces together to build that picture. My job in this movement, I'm the guy who points at the box, I'm the one who's pointing at the picture, pointing at the picture maybe pointing out a couple of the pieces and where they go, but I need lots of people to join me, we need lots of people to join us who say I have a piece of the puzzle, I'm willing to lead this way, I'm willing to abandon Milton Friedman ideals and and do something bigger, something more, follow that. </span>Live with an infinite mindset, lead with an infinite mindset and put their piece down and say how can I help build that vision? We need the army and so, how people can engage in the movement is actually practicing all the stuff more than anything else, that's what we need'.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>Post image by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash.</b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-19448262727806068142021-09-15T12:31:00.005+01:002021-09-28T09:49:47.758+01:00Misconceptions of Management and Leadership - Part I<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgylspFvMYaQttsmPAk07n9FCcP_Y0i3yMeiVzB6EIzyfC9_7GjpSL7XOgTLXtrc124G2DadouTjiNinE71XjuuvI9OC9bDztpeTnb_qZ6BMcigWIwiJsdYuAnsnQT5s2GOJu0MWgL9XIg/s2048/markus-spiske-QozzJpFZ2lg-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgylspFvMYaQttsmPAk07n9FCcP_Y0i3yMeiVzB6EIzyfC9_7GjpSL7XOgTLXtrc124G2DadouTjiNinE71XjuuvI9OC9bDztpeTnb_qZ6BMcigWIwiJsdYuAnsnQT5s2GOJu0MWgL9XIg/w415-h276/markus-spiske-QozzJpFZ2lg-unsplash.jpg" width="415" /></a></div><br />I've held the opinion I am hereby sharing for quite a long time, due to not believing that it is indeed genuinely respected that almost universally-proclaimed freedom of speech. Everything in our lives comes at a cost, and every single action, professional and personal must be balanced very tightly and responsibly, especially in this day and age where whatever shows up in the web will forever claim its eternal footprint. However, there is a greater energy inside me that has always driven me to be as courageous and determined as my conscience demands; such does not have to come up with disruption to anyone's well-being, and I am sure that our entitlement to think and feel makes us ever more human and generates a proactive synergetic world... for the better.<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>I have been quite shocked about the displacement of realities between what several stakeholders claim about management skills, leadership skills, and the actual day-to-day reality of what is seen and felt by all of us in our professional experiences, in our professional involvement.</b> It is incredible how social networks have become a public speaking platform for so many colorful diagrams and schematic presentations on the qualities of leadership and management. Don't take me wrong, it is important to have it discussed, it is relevant to have it uniformised and it is crucial to have it debated. <b>What I suspect is not healthy is still the enormous present misconception that a manager and leader have achieved such level because of their professional qualities associated to their solid people skills.</b> That is not true, and most of us who have put any thought into the rationalisation of this simple, yet extremely important problematics, have understood that management and leadership are still positions and properties that happen as consequence of professional progression, not a natural assumption by the system, of qualities that are integral for the role.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>Some time back I experienced working with a manager in a certain project that was probably the least qualified human being, in human interaction, that I have seen in decades. </b>The attitude of this person was almost like going back in time where arrogance, lack of sympathy and presumptuousness were obligatory in manager/leader and had to irrevocably be accompanied by a face that never smiled and a stern attitude of eternal discontentment. I am completely sure that said person was undeniably solid in their performance as a pillar, not because of the quality of their results but just because of the parallel built between what was delivered by their style of management and leadership and the dying ever classic idea of bossing around. No space for debating ideas emerged from the arrogance that their position is a clear reflection of an intellectual superiority.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>Well, that old, very old-age incorporation of distance and unattainability, be it intellectual and even communicational (due to the lack of presence and availability said person assumed as part of their theatre of management and leadership), had to obviously claim their victims. </b>The project was in shambles, there was a clear gigantic gap between the actioners and the thinkers, no adequate positioning towards the future with present brainstorming for success and harmony, and eventually people found dismay. <b><span style="color: #ffa400;">Actually, here sits yet a very important concept that is still nowadays misinterpreted by many stakeholders, especially those that occupy positions of decision and leadership; i.e., that harmony somewhat resembles laziness, and that an entropic reactional work system delivers precepts of effectiveness based on anxiety.</span></b> <b>This incredible idiotic misconception can be called - Glorification of Stress -, and has claimed the professional vitality of many projects throughout the world because it is generated by people who do not understand the first thing about people and still understand the world as a system of owners and effectors, one that will operate ever more efficiently if the 'lower rank' agents are constantly under threat, limited in their access to information concerning the vitality of the projects and their own professional progressions.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This manager I am referring to had embodied the idea that scaring the others and maintaining a distance, using of proverbial arrogance and short messaging of direct orders was so effective that they needed to maintain that status quo, and swarm this approach towards other departments and other personnel. I eventually left the project due to the fact that I saw way too much disorganisation and lack of integrity, but in the back of my mind remained this bitterness that professionally we are so limited in our capacity to speak freely and engage in practical/useful conversation that can promote the betterment of our team spirit and the glory of our team achievements. <b>And here lies yet another misconception, the last one I'd like to stress for the sake of time - the measuring of success is based on numerical goals, very few projects ever assess how happy were the professionals during the process of reaching said goals, and the effects such processes had in their mental/emotional and even professional health. </b>This is ever more evident when corporations are managing employees that are not directly contracted to the organisation or are linked contractually for a temporary/short span of time. It generates detachment, it generates a human disconnection that basically uses people's greed or insecurity as a generator of intra-competitiveness rather that inter-cooperativity. This is even more a reality if management and leaders proclaim or use that typical insidious trick of announcing out loud the project is going poorly, not all will have their contracts renewed and people are under intense scrutiny. Once again the worst aspects of human nature surface and what should be gaining from team spirit will be exploiting professional survivalism. Do not be fooled. All loose! Only the corporation that makes use of such trickery will temporarily gain from it until the different people find dismay, understand they have been played and assume a posture of personal dignity by leaving at all costs, personal and professional. Big corporations then go about recycling the methodology promising other new inexperienced staff the same volatile and empty 'dreams', and the never ending circus of disrespect will keep claiming professional lives and producing stories of unfortune.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>Management, Leadership, these active agencies of any team can only produce real holistic positive results if they act as immediate generators of Team Spirit. If they row towards their objectives as one and make sure that no one is left behind at all cost. It is in this ultimate defiance of hardship that any employee will strive to be the best version of themselves.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">For Part II I will bring you what is perhaps the most iconic (and don't forget you are reading this from a known Iconoclast) speech I ever heard about reaching goals and the necessary elements of happiness and justice for all.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Thank you all for reading 'til this point. I hope I have enticed you enough to come and visit the 2nd part.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Post photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-55526489213446047092021-09-13T12:59:00.011+01:002021-09-28T09:50:30.332+01:00The buzz around vaccine adjuvants<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisWrdri0eNtukxx0ugoFrfz99WNHvQ_hrkZefySqMsVlCJC51ftg-xx3-z5QmGBGJ3uw0uNBFi4af3qGXueOzdhdSz-C_-Cet9w-4gR2AU76w2rHrH5ixq0xa6Z5j9JtDKnSlvr-Xv30w/s2048/mufid-majnun-cM1aU42FnRg-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisWrdri0eNtukxx0ugoFrfz99WNHvQ_hrkZefySqMsVlCJC51ftg-xx3-z5QmGBGJ3uw0uNBFi4af3qGXueOzdhdSz-C_-Cet9w-4gR2AU76w2rHrH5ixq0xa6Z5j9JtDKnSlvr-Xv30w/w377-h251/mufid-majnun-cM1aU42FnRg-unsplash.jpg" width="377" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">There has been a huge buzz recently in my line of work, coming from many preoccupied members of the public who have expressed their concern around adjuvants used in the Covid-19 vaccines. The concern is acceptable however most of what is suggested by the public is not immediately correct. A lot of people have assumed their panic because some of the adjuvants might be based on aluminium (a known heavy metal with relevant toxicity), and other adjuvants assumed by the public as more organic and for that matter supposed immediately safer to use. In order to clarify the public of the ins and outs of the dangers associated to any of the aforementioned aspects, it is important to also be aware of the science behind the use of adjuvants, as only a composed knowledge can be fully integral.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">What are vaccine adjuvants and why are these used?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Adjuvants are merely substances that, generally speaking, are introduced in a system to help it perform its functions better. In that sense, vaccine adjuvants are ingredients that when put in a vaccine will enhance the immune response, especially on those vaccines that use weakened viral compounds and particles, and where the immune response might not be sufficient to have a fully effective vaccine [1]. It's a 'helping hand' to make the vaccine's effect more pronounced and accurate. In completely random terms but with the sole purpose of producing a visual aid, imagine that someone (a virus) is entering your house (vaccine injection) and you want the guards (immune system) to be fully prepared to repel the robbers (immune response) and be prepared to avoid them breaking into the house again in the near future by training sentinels (memory cells) that specifically recognise them robbers and contain them before they can cause any further damage (antibodies). The adjuvant would be the alarm ring that would buzz noisily as the robbers enter the premises, to make the immune system fully aware that unwanted people have invaded private property, hence helping prepare a much faster and robust response to contain them.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Which are the most typical vaccine adjuvants?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Vaccine adjuvants have been used in clinical virology for decades with very positive results, however recently some researchers have re-evaluated the role of aluminium-based adjuvants and consider them to have had their efficacy overrated through the years, and possibly inadequately assesed for their neurotoxicity and potential adverse effects [2,3]. Some people ask why are new adjuvants being studied if the scientific community sees aluminium-adjuvants to be completely safe? My personal take is that three very specific reasons support it, the first being the fact that better/more accurate/more potent adjuvants are known to generate more pronounced immune responses in terms of vaccine efficacy, where the toughest challenge is to develop vaccines that can induce a stronger "T cell immunity with purified or recombinant vaccine antigens" [5]; the second is the need for more organic solutions that will not react or interfere concomitantly with other medication and/or metal-sensitive procedures, such as the lipid rafts in the cell membrane that can cause "cell damage and necrosis with release of uric acid, ATP, and DNA" [6]; and the third is that the jury is still out there in what concerns the absolute safety of aluminium-based adjuvants.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Some people have recently asked me for examples of adjuvants and their nature, but because this is not immediately my field I had to browse a little to know that what I am talking about is correct. And I found a few, namely:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">- <b><span style="font-size: medium;">CpG1018</span></b> - "Cytosine phosphoguanine (CpG), a synthetic form of DNA that mimics bacterial and viral genetic material", </p><p style="text-align: justify;">- <span style="font-size: medium;"><b>MF59</b></span> that is an "oil in water emulsion composed of squalene (an organic compound originally obtained from shark liver oil and that is used in flu vaccines, to the best of my knowledge. This substance is not vulnerable to lipid peroxidation and that is a relevant property for any adjuvant inserted in the human body.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">- <b>Aluminium</b>, the available research as shown that this metal that is ubiquitously found, and for that matter people are naturally exposed to it through water, soil and even food; is not harmful if kept below known toxicity levels. One of its great advantages is that it is readily absorbed by the human body. The internal aluminum concentration is identified from urine and also blood, and it has been shown that maintaining these levels below the tolerance values helps in avoiding the development of subclinical signs of aluminium toxicity (i.e., confusion, muscle weakness, speech problems, seizures, bone pain an deformity, paediatric arrested development) [4].</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are also other adjuvants available but not so frequently used in immunisation protocols (due to low commercial demand), such as Monophosphoryl Lipid A (isolated from the surface of bacteria).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">As to the organic adjuvants, the same principle of concentration and cause-effects is applied, for organic does not immediately read safe. All biological substances can be toxicants if applied with a nefarious concentration or when triggering detrimental biochemical processes. Think about snake's venom, the right concentration has been used to improve spasticity, cancer-related issues, you name it. The wrong concentration can kill!!</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Before any populist sporadic decision by the consumer, it is very important to understand that the safety of all vaccines is closely monitored by many professional health regulators. Even though it is important to keep researching to identify more optimised and effective adjuvants, presently their safety is genuinely established to the toxicity levels of all ingredients known to have a cause-effect in the human body, particularly with vulnerable patients. The vaccination process has safeguarded entire populations from pathobiological devastation and its science must be respected and reported for its proven grounds and robustness. However, bringing the topic to the discussion table is also relevant for the democratisation of science, so people don't fundament their decision based on unsupported non-scientific principles shared via social networks, rather than the consubstantiated science that is available for all at reach of an article... just like this one. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I hope I have helped with my share. The ultimate education is responsibility of the person who questions the principle behind any solution.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[1] Squalene, National Library of Medicine, [https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Squalene], last update unknown, last access on the 13th of September 2021.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2] </b></span><b style="font-size: small;">Tomljenovic, L., Shaw, C. A. (2011). "</b><b style="font-size: small;">Aluminum vaccine adjuvants: are they safe?". </b><b style="font-size: small;"><i>Curr Med Chem</i>, </b><b style="font-size: small;">18(17), pp. 2630-7.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[3] Klotz, K., </b><b style="font-size: small;">Weistenhöfer, W., Neff, F. et al (2017). "</b><b style="font-size: small;">The Health Effects of Aluminum Exposure". </b><b style="font-size: small;"><i>Dtsch Arztebl Int</i>. 114(39), pp. 653–659.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[4] </b><b style="font-size: small;">Igbokwe, I. O., </b><b style="font-size: small;">Igwenagu, E., </b><b style="font-size: small;">Igbokwe, N. A. (2019). "</b><b style="font-size: small;">Aluminium toxicosis: a review of toxic actions and effects".</b><b style="font-size: small;"> </b><b style="font-size: small;">I<i>nterdiscip Toxicol</i>. 12(2), pp. 45–70.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[5] </b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Coffman, R. L., Sher, A., Seder, R. A. (2010). "Vaccine Adjuvants: Putting Innate Immunity to Work". <i>Immunity</i>. 33(4), pp. 492–503.</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[6] HogenEsch, H. (2012). "</b></span><b style="font-size: small;">Mechanism of Immunopotentiation and Safety of Aluminum Adjuvants". </b><b style="font-size: small;"><i>Front Immunol</i>., 3(406), pp. 1-13.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">Post </b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash</b></span></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-62631616769225213922021-08-03T12:51:00.016+01:002021-08-03T16:28:11.930+01:00Some say Lion's Mane mushroom is the Jungle's King in fighting neurodegenerative diseases<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR74481GrHQMadvhSwRME3XBSQAD3qfPlqJAq89Y9zaO9IWZurdD_ABn2IRn0CvBMDKjsCWn74x-DW5F5vqiDzSmXoZBTBUtlKjKSlZYv4xu8qfqNFIyj27iNsE8-m-__bsA5onal3NP0/s1155/lions-mane-mushroom-1296x728-feature.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="1155" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR74481GrHQMadvhSwRME3XBSQAD3qfPlqJAq89Y9zaO9IWZurdD_ABn2IRn0CvBMDKjsCWn74x-DW5F5vqiDzSmXoZBTBUtlKjKSlZYv4xu8qfqNFIyj27iNsE8-m-__bsA5onal3NP0/w414-h233/lions-mane-mushroom-1296x728-feature.jpg" width="414" /></a></div><br />Very recently, an incredible docuseries debuted on Netflix. It covers the highly interesting world of Fungi, their emergence as kings of the ecosystems, debunking the public generalised idea of an apparent vulnerability. We couldn't be 'more wrong'!!!! If there is a resilient species, clever for their societal dynamics, incredibly adapted to making their presence noticed with the sporulation of millions of very light microspores that get carried away by the weakest breeze, FUNGI are the deal. I wouldn't be able to reduce their tenacity and biological cleverness in a small book, let alone a paragraph in a blog post. <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Please watch the series <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81183477" target="_blank">'Fantastic Fungi'</a> (hopefully the link will be available for the years to come for everyone to savor the educational quality of its content).</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Fungi are very adaptable and in the game of survival that all species play for their own sake, they went from absurdly evolved underground networks to making other species do exactly what they want; a process as bizarre as the morbid zombie-like approach I have written about in a previous post entitled '<a href="http://thetoxicologisttoday.blogspot.com/2013/05/survival-of-poisonous-ophyocordiceps-vs.html">Survival of the Poisonous: "Ophiocordyceps vs. Ant</a>'.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Nevertheless, a particular species of mushrooms that immediately caught my attention was the one known as <b><span style="font-size: medium;">Lion's Mane (<i>Hericium erinaceus</i>). This mushroom has been identified as having very interesting properties that can help solve, once and for all, the most challenging aspects of the neurological decadence in humans, especially those related to Alzheimer's. </span></b>In a time where researchers try their very best in gathering the most clinically relevant information concerning this disease, and where predictors of incidence in humans are now starting to emerge from these research projects (like the one from the Lund University [1] that might help tackle the price and diagnosis' limitations that see around 20 to 30% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease ending up wrongly diagnosed even within specialised healthcare [1]. <b><span style="font-size: medium;">The project lead by Professor Oskar Hansson generated a prototype online algorithm that makes use of the combination of a simplified blood test ('<i>measuring a variant of the tau protein [phosphylated tau] and a risk gene for Alzheimer’s</i>') associated to a short (~10 minutes) triplet of cognitive tests. </span><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">Alongside the simplicity of the process, especially when considering how challenging these patients can be when facing complex tasks, is the fact that the diagnosis predicts correctly with over 90% certainty exactly which patients would be in risk of developing dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease within a period of four years. </span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This tool will not only increase the quality of care of patients in a predictive and planning fashion, but also concentrate and focus the targeting of the different developed drugs in more accurate indicators and variables, treatment-wise.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It is here, when it comes to treatment, that some researchers have been interested in the incredible potential that Lion's Mane Mushroom is reporting from the different investigational projects around the globe. For example, <b><span style="font-size: medium;">some investigators have observed this mushroom to have therapeutic properties that promote recovery of nerve and brain health [2] due to its erinacine production in the mycelia of its organism. </span></b>The same authors even propose an optimised process for an advantageous fermentation process, so the content in <b><span style="color: #ffa400;">erinacine A (the only erinacine substance that has been confirmed as having pharmacological activity in the central nervous system</span></b> in rats) is increased [2]. Their rat models have helped identify <b>protective properties in Ischemic Stroke</b> (showing capacity to reduce neuronal apoptosis and stroke cavity size in the studied rat brains), <b>Parkinson's Disease</b> (a disease with a profile of gradual loss of dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra pars compacta region of the brain, and that ultimately ends up resulting in motor problems such as '<i>resting tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and postural instability</i>') - however, with Lion's Mane erinacine A, the dopaminergic injuries and accumulated oxidative stress in the stratum and substantia nigra were significantly improved. <b>And even with transgenic rat-models of Alzheimer's disease</b> where the occurrence of amyloid-β plaques that participate also in the increasing of secondary brain comorbidities such as '<i>inflammation, excitotoxicity, and apoptosis</i>', and add on to the negative effects associated to the deposition of hyperphosphorylated tau proteins - in this study the observed transgenic mice treated with <i>H. erinaceus</i> mycelia were able to '<i>recover behavioral deficits after 81 days of administration</i>'.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The range of protective/recovering activities observed in the brain of different transgenic mice mimicking the different aforementioned neurodegenerative complications, reveal a promising way forward, as some studies have recently established:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Li, I-C. <i>et al </i>2020 with the 'Prevention of Early Alzheimer’s Disease by Erinacine A-Enriched <i>Hericium erinaceus </i>Mycelia Pilot Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study' studied the effects of capsules containing two contrasting concentrations (350 mg/g and 5 mg/g) of erinacine A per day in treating mild Alzheimer's patients and observed that the highest concentration is well-tolerated and beneficial to their neurocognition.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Their cytotoxicity has already been established a long time back as low by other studies, I hereby mention solely two as an example to avoid a longer text [3] [4]; but this study by Li <i>et al</i> (2020) [5] where a 70-fold higher concentration has been used without observed clinical cytotoxicity is ever so promising for the future paths this realm of investigation may take.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Post picture kindly taken from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/lions-mane-mushroom.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Simple Diagnostic Tool Predicts Individual Risk of Alzheimer’s, Neuroscience News, [https://neurosciencenews.com/individulaized-alzhiemers-risk-tool-18484/], last visited on the 3rd of August 2021, last update on the 24th of May 2021</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] </span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Li, I-C., Lee, L-Y., Tzeng, T-T., Chen, W-P., Chen, Y-P., Shiao, Y-J., Chen, C-C. (2018). "Neurohealth Properties of Hericium erinaceus Mycelia Enriched with Erinacines". <i>Behav Neurol</i>. 2018.</b></span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Mori, K., Inatomi, S., Ouchi, K. et al. (2009). "Improving effects of the mushroom Yamabushitake (Hericium erinaceus) on mild cognitive impairment: a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial". <i>Phytother Res</i>.; 23: pp. 367–72.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Nagano, M., Shimizu, K., Kondo, R. et al. (2010). "Reduction of depression and anxiety by 4 weeks Hericium erinaceus intake". Biomed Res.; 31, pp. 231–7.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Li, I-C., Chang, H-H., Lin, C-H et al (2020). "<span style="text-align: justify;">Prevention of Early Alzheimer’s Disease by Erinacine A-Enriched </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Hericium erinaceus </i><span style="text-align: justify;">Mycelia Pilot Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study". </span>Front. Aging Neurosci.; 12 (155), pp. 1-13.</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-89239538148699947242021-07-14T13:45:00.004+01:002021-08-03T09:42:58.320+01:00On Japanese Encephalitis<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9wnE8dwSzUqMN6_JbvPlbjHr5PDyHPbM4HVsQzZjoB7lax2di1Czoo6JTOsV2XHjU9YtaJysqQAVXlkm-tc_yOBKGdqgjFFWLmQub0_iy4sg2rQ6eALh0QNE2-IGyqJ8pCd-zz2dkkU/s2048/olga-kononenko-98__MsKaUsI-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9wnE8dwSzUqMN6_JbvPlbjHr5PDyHPbM4HVsQzZjoB7lax2di1Czoo6JTOsV2XHjU9YtaJysqQAVXlkm-tc_yOBKGdqgjFFWLmQub0_iy4sg2rQ6eALh0QNE2-IGyqJ8pCd-zz2dkkU/w400-h266/olga-kononenko-98__MsKaUsI-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />As part of my ongoing professional training I have recently come across a range of pharmaceutical products indicated for ailments that were partly unknown to me, but that due to their profile I consider obligatory to write about as these have potential to impact on the health of unaware tourists (typically immunologically naïve) travelling to areas where the incidence of such issues is very relevant. Especially now that gradually and slowly the world is opening doors and borders, once again, to tourists. <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Japanese Encephalitis</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></b>- this is a very relevant public issue in Asia, a seasonal endemic disease in 24 countries across the continent and that is <b>transmitted by a mosquito bite with grave consequences </b>(high morbidity and mortality numbers) and presently lacking an effective treatment [1], hence <b>prophylactic vaccination is the best way to go</b>, especially when considering that there are no laboratory virology tests designed for its recognition [2]. This disease is the <b><span style="color: #ffa400;">number one reason for viral encephalitis and neurological disability in the Asian continen</span></b>t [1, 2].</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Scientists and clinical staff consider that most of the cases remain unknown because they are never reported to health authorities and health support bodies. <b><span style="color: #ffa400;">With 68000 symptomatic cases, almost 3 thirds of infected are children</span></b> [1,2]. The reasoning behind under-reported cases might be associated to the symptoms resembling different common health issues, non-specific symptomatology and the lack of knowledge the infected and healthcare workers hold on this problem. The idea that diagnosis requires liquid to be collected from the cerebrospinal fluid, in order to analyse the content on antibodies, might as well put most of the infected and a financially-limited healthcare system off.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Since the word <b><span style="font-size: large;">epidemic </span></b>is now known to the main public due to the covid-19 pandemic-after-epidemic, <b>Japanese Encephalitis has already caused deadly ones</b>, for example in Indonesia Papua New Guinea, and even in an area of Northern Queensland (Australia). Transmission occurs initially within a restricted animal population (usually pigs and birds drinking from infected water sources). However, due to low viremia (presence of virus in the blood) in humans we represent a stoppage (i.e., dead-end host) in the infectivity process, but <b><span style="font-size: medium;">every 1/1000 infected person will develop the disease whereas a third of the symptomatic patients eventually perish</span></b> [3]. When patients are fortunate enough to recover from the disease, so much neurological damage is left behind that a sort of 'Long-Japanese Encephalitis' might take weeks, if not months to be corrected (some patients might need help for the rest of their lives). [1]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>The virus has an initial incubation phase that could go from 4 to 14 days. The very first symptoms emerging would be the 'typical' acute headache, vomiting, pyrexia. These will later on progress to behavioral and mental changes and acute weakness that emerge of the initial stages of following, more severe, symptom, i.e., acute encephalitis.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Only a sustained consistent vaccination program developed in the endemic areas was capable of controlling the spread of the disease, but not able to eradicate it. [4]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Mackenzie, J. S., Gubler , D. J., Petersen, L. R. (2004). "Emerging flaviviruses: the spread and resurgence of Japanese encephalitis, West Nile and dengue viruses". <i>Review Nat Med</i>, 10(12 Suppl):S98-109.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] Campbell, G. L., Hills, S. L., Fischer, M. (2011). "</span></b><b style="font-size: small;">Estimated global incidence of Japanese encephalitis: a systematic review". </b><b style="font-size: small;"><i>Bull World Health Organ</i>. 89(10): 766–774E.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[3] Diagana, M., Preux, P-M., Dumas, M. (2007). "</b><b style="font-size: small;">Japanese encephalitis revisited". </b><b style="font-size: small;"><i>Review J Neurol Sci</i>, </b><b style="font-size: small;">15;262(1-2):165-70. </b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[4] Burchard, G. D., Caumes, E., Connor, B. A., et al (2009). "</b><b style="font-size: small;">Expert opinion on vaccination of travelers against Japanese encephalitis</b><b style="font-size: small;">". </b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>Review J Travel Med</i>, </b></span><b style="font-size: small;">16(3):204-16. </b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Olga Kononenko on Unsplash</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-51318346092454329552021-07-13T12:06:00.009+01:002021-08-03T09:44:55.433+01:00What are 'The effects of plant-based diets on pancreatic beta-cell function'? - Part 2 of 2<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy6mg6T6Z3QzOt7bVv7a3vyGSPbjlfaBxHViayvjvvFRyKKCaSQfIPgjvncK9FX8-cUj7cfShFK4pfpBVRe31QTP-iLUu6xDSMyH3uhi7_1N-j4GQoDmLL03DHVyPmEsBaIanJ-kr8GYM/s2048/lefteris-kallergis-_TLKIVSW6Do-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="2048" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy6mg6T6Z3QzOt7bVv7a3vyGSPbjlfaBxHViayvjvvFRyKKCaSQfIPgjvncK9FX8-cUj7cfShFK4pfpBVRe31QTP-iLUu6xDSMyH3uhi7_1N-j4GQoDmLL03DHVyPmEsBaIanJ-kr8GYM/w400-h235/lefteris-kallergis-_TLKIVSW6Do-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />On the second part of this analysis I would like to focus entirely and immediately on the study findings rather than dwelling too much on the strengths, limitations and possible confounders of the same. Anyone can read the paper and become aware of where further necessary investigations should go to account for reducing the limitations of this study, enhancing their strengths and rid of possible unnecessary confounders.<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The results obtained in the study by Janko <i>et al</i>., 2021 objectivates certain information that, even though could and is also directly and indirectly related to additional variables, since the body is a holistic system, do attribute value to the plant-based diet in managing glycaemia:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">1) The review used three randomised controlled trials which immediately offers an unbiased perspective on the study populations as it intends to account for significant heterogeneity between the different applied trials. However, the author is clear on a decision to not performing a meta-analysis that could have made the identified observations far more robust, but being allegedly the first systematic review covering this topic, a meta-analysis would be almost impossible, ergo the decision to not opt for such, I suspect. I assume I was not entirely sure that this was the reason behind the researcher's decision so I contacted my friend who confirmed that a meta-analysis was not a valid option 'because the individual studies weren't comparable, and didn't use the same intervention or biomarker". Makes perfect sense and it's a sensible decision.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">2) The authors also observed that 'glycaemic control and beta-cell function, as measured by insulin secretion, can be improved by a plant-based diet' and that insulin synthesis pertaining to the period after dinner or lunch 'was significantly higher after a vegetarian burger compared with a meat burger' something that derives directly from a referred study by Kahleova et al, 2019 [1]. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">3) The reference normal levels of C-peptide (the endogenous pancreatic substance that informs one of the insulin secreted concentrations) in people without diabetes sits between 0.5-2.7 ng/mL. The observed reductions (see Kahleova <i>et al</i>, 2018) [2] of 0.5 ng/mL in fasting levels is obviously a medically significant one, especially when compared with an increment of around ~19-20% (0.5 ng/mL) (a possible indication of hyperinsulinaemia, as the authors infer from results obtained with the control group).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">4) The reduction in glycated haemoglobin [HbA1c - see part 1 for more information on this indicator) 'at 24 weeks' as observed by Kahleova <i>et al</i>, 2011 [3] was also understood by the authors as clinically significant when compared to the control group. 'HbA1c levels and a reduction in diabetes medications may not be a direct measure of beta-cell function, but they are certainly a measure of glycaemia and diabetes management, and the plant-based diet groups experienced improvements in both measures in this trial'.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you are interested in reading the first part of this post, please access <a href="http://thetoxicologisttoday.blogspot.com/2021/03/what-are-effects-of-plant-based-diets.html">HERE</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Kahleova, H., Tura, A., Klementova, M. et al (2019). "A plant-based meal stimulates incretin and insulin secretion more than an energy - and macronutrient-matched standard meal in type 2 diabetes: a randomized crossover study". <i>Nutrients</i>, 11: 486.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] Kahleova, H., Tura, A., Hill, M. et al (2018). "A plant-based dietary intervention improves beta-cell function and insulin resistance in overweight adults: a 16-week randomized clinical trial". <i>Nutrients</i>, 10: 189.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] </span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Kahleova, H., Matoulek, M., Malinska, H. et al (2011). "Vegetarian diet improves insulin resistance and oxidative stress markers more than conventional diet in subjects with type 2 diabetes". <i>Diabet Med</i>, 28: 549–59.</b></span></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-74139549616481853122021-06-02T13:16:00.003+01:002021-06-02T13:16:44.733+01:00Why do pandemic viral infections come in waves?<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFx2_QXnfBqAA_rJTJL1J2thX-HOAnQZQjxrlk1dt9CW95c9KYMk6BOIQo36_wiHFdd2tUlPc13xbzllDavajuD6bOhMSNwn_0yIVpDsWAFsCXiNQRghukDk_6vLlhSiaI4nTv9X6sM14/s2048/erik-mclean-sIg5RzqmV3o-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFx2_QXnfBqAA_rJTJL1J2thX-HOAnQZQjxrlk1dt9CW95c9KYMk6BOIQo36_wiHFdd2tUlPc13xbzllDavajuD6bOhMSNwn_0yIVpDsWAFsCXiNQRghukDk_6vLlhSiaI4nTv9X6sM14/w400-h266/erik-mclean-sIg5RzqmV3o-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Hello readers and welcome to yet another very short post. I have been very busy over the past months, can barely make it to write anything, especially when considering the fact that I am still in the early stages of my book on Nosocomial Infections. A book that was planned to be written in one year (2019) and published for free as an online project on the following year (2020); but this pandemic we all know just forced me to postpone due to a range of life restrictions/lockdowns.<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Even though I struggle like never before to even read the bear minimum for keeping myself afloat in this immense pool of information that is Life Sciences, I don't wish to abandon this project altogether. It is important for my personal and professional education, and as long as there are others reaching out to me and reading my posts, I believe the knowledge I acquire and share can be, and is indeed, relevant for other intrepid scientific minds.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Hence, I accepted that the ritual of posting in this blog might be affected in periodicity, but cannot be disregarded at all. I will eventually complete the last post (immediately before this one) where I am still trying to find the time to adequately read through my friend's article (don't want to be lenient with that); but I also want to start posting a bit more on The Toxicologist Today. I then came up with the conclusion that short answers to immediate questions that suddenly populate my brain, due to professional requests or just personal doubts I eventually come across with, are the best way to keep in constant contact with you guys. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">So, whenever a topic comes to my mind or emerges from a natural doubt I might have, I will share it with all of you for awareness, simply because it might be an interesting subject also playing in your mind! But don't worry, I'll make it short (way shorter than this post :D), clear and concise, and I'll make the referencing also short, straightforward, but robust (with significant reliable studies/institutions behind them).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Hope you like it. Shall we start? This one has been assaulting me for quite some time...</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Why do pandemic viral infections come in waves?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Apparently pandemic viral infections comprise 6 phases of alertness</span></b>, as per the World Health Organisation (WHO). And throughout the post-peak period, the strength of the pandemic disease will have been reduced in developed countries with appropriate health surveillance. It will do so until its infectivity proneness has dropped below the former peak registered levels [1]. This means that after the peak period one witnesses a decrease of pandemic activity but only until the virus regains a new viral infectivity/potency due to natural mutations that will bring infection to yet another peak level, until herd immunity starts appearing and a certain dormancy of infectivity is observed. The different peaks/waves can be distanced by many months and relaxation of control measures can be irresponsible, depending obviously on the strength and adequacy of the available scientific responses.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In a nutshell, <b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">the first wave results in deaths and disability linked to the viral infection itself</span></b>; <b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">the second wave impacts on subjects who are volatile in the medium-term as a result of failures in the approach during the first wave</span></b>; <b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">and the third wave reveals the consequences of the "virus on the social determinants of health and its effects on the next generation"</span></b>, as per Fisayo and Tsukagoshi (2020), [2].</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] About Pandemic Phases, World Health Organisation, [https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseases/influenza/data-and-statistics/pandemic-influenza/about-pandemic-phases], last access on the 02Jun2021, last update unknown </span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] Fisayo, T, Tsukagoshi, S. (2020). "Three waves of the COVID19 Pandemic". </span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Postgrad Med J, 97, pp. </b></span><b style="font-size: small;">332.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">Photo kindly provided by Erik Mclean on Unsplash</b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-43705109125704662272021-03-29T23:52:00.007+01:002021-08-03T09:44:40.490+01:00What are 'The effects of plant-based diets on pancreatic beta-cell function'? - Part 1 of 2<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5YYKOVRIQYmhtf-_Wy4KVsg37yKWGKZ9YGXzZ4DNC-48q9d5OHcqWsJkNJfMZAIM5EnBZLWZ2HIvE8yOr66WM1DOl2fUUb-TJpqVp1ansuWsK9kVNxIYDICYMybJheP040UZGFzu_rEw/s2048/markus-spiske-Gej8FOFLlHg-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="467" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5YYKOVRIQYmhtf-_Wy4KVsg37yKWGKZ9YGXzZ4DNC-48q9d5OHcqWsJkNJfMZAIM5EnBZLWZ2HIvE8yOr66WM1DOl2fUUb-TJpqVp1ansuWsK9kVNxIYDICYMybJheP040UZGFzu_rEw/w311-h467/markus-spiske-Gej8FOFLlHg-unsplash.jpg" width="311" /></a></div><br />My good friend Robert Janko has published a systematic review on a very relevant topic for all of us in this day and age, especially because diabetes is still a recurrent topic for any age section, but also because vegetarianism has been the preferred punchbag for so many deniers out there; as if vegetarianism or veganism (perhaps fomented by the extremism of hipsters and their counterparts) was the monster who came to take over and impose, rather than just offer an optional view for a better life.<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Robert researched intensively and published his findings in the Journal of Diabetes Nursing this year. The topic is ever so crucial and definitely adds on to the formula looking to partially contribute to the understanding of obesity, dietary habits, lifestyle behaviours and the row of physiological impairments caused by 'acquired' diabetes type-2. Plant-based diets have been linked to the betterment of blood glucose levels, glycated haemoglobin (complex of glucose + haemoglobin = HbA1c) levels, as well as improvements in <b><span style="font-size: medium;">insulin resistance</span></b>. Through a systematic review of results obtained by three different clinical trials, Robert was able to show that, with intra-identified limitations, <b><span style="font-size: medium;">non-plant diets do not contribute as effectively as plant-based diets to a better controlled insulin secretion (healthy pancreatic beta-cell functioning) and weight loss.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">But prior to jumping to the most relevant findings identified in Robert's review, it is important to define a few basic concepts beforehand. This will help us to better recognise, in a simple manner, the different implications of both diets in the human physiological system. The first question we should ask ourselves is...</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Why is insulin secretion levels so important to one's health?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The higher the levels of HbA1c the greater the risk of developing diabetes-associated comorbidities [2]. If diet is directly or indirectly promoting higher levels of Hb1Ac then going back to the source and tweaking the physiological iterations, is a smart approach. For a healthy individual the levels of Hb1Ac should be below 42 mml/mol [2] and a slight change in obtained levels of glycated haemoglobin can have a huge impact even for people already diagnosed with Type-1 or Type-2 diabetes. Good management of glycated haemoglobin can contribute to reducing the occurrence of microvascular issues in about 25% [2]. Imagine being able to actually control the body to a point where one avoids retinopathy (that can cause permanent blindness) and neuropathy (that can cause permanent nerve damage) [3]. In a nutshell, holding in one's dietary habits the power to not only control obesity and the extraneous emotional and physical burden to it associated, but also avoiding cataracts, heart failure, diabetic nephropathy, and even worse, the need for amputation as a result of peripheral vascular disease [2]. <b><span style="font-size: medium;">Another huge factor that needs to also be taken into account is the insulin resistance syndrome marked by the irresponsiveness of different cellular tissues (such as the muscular, hepatic and adipose) to effectively using insulin</span></b> [4]. Glucose is left 'hanging' in the blood stream, more insulin is needed by the body for the necessary uptake of glucose by cells, and consequently the pancreas will have to work more to produce even more insulin to get the blood glucose levels within a healthy range.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Why measuring glycated haemoglobin?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The response is simple and direct. Whilst blood glucose levels offer an idea of the glucose levels in our blood at a precise point in time, Hb1Ac levels offer a more robust idea of the issue since it delivers an average over a period of time.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The second part of this post will dive deep into Robert's article in order to share observed conclusions. I hope you visit the blog to stay informed, and who knows, make an informed decision regarding your dietary habits.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Janko, RK, Wilson, P., Nworie, C. (2021). "</span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>The effects of plant-based diets on pancreatic beta-cell function: A systematic review". Journal of Diabtetes Nursing, 25(2), pp. 1-7.</b></span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] Guide to HbA1c, Managing Blood Glucose, [https://www.diabetes.co.uk/what-is-hba1c.html#:~:text=HbA1c%20is%20a%20measure%20of,take%2C%20usually%20from%20your%20arm], last access on the 29th of March 2021, last update on the 15th of January 2019</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Mackay, JD and Page, MM (1980). "Diabetic autonomic neuropathy". Diabetologia, 18, pp. 471-478.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Insulin resistance and Prediabetes, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and kidney Diseases, [</span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/what-is-diabetes/prediabetes-insulin-resistance], last access on the 29th of March 2021, last update on May 2018</b></span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-33010053149010953062021-03-29T21:59:00.004+01:002021-08-03T09:44:17.129+01:00A necessary change of direction for the PACK<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEGVWcufrBxNhB31ku7REbe2wjCJwGjPTB8zjPnHAADThI_7s24yHjf-oOhzeaPaqXmmPRrXll8wIW_rqWuG4ZillBiKzec9PeIjbMyzxh6QECOgHE8G1ffwvwASkIkfbuOL_N-fAvqzM/s2048/marc-olivier-jodoin-tauPAnOIGvE-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1875" height="367" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEGVWcufrBxNhB31ku7REbe2wjCJwGjPTB8zjPnHAADThI_7s24yHjf-oOhzeaPaqXmmPRrXll8wIW_rqWuG4ZillBiKzec9PeIjbMyzxh6QECOgHE8G1ffwvwASkIkfbuOL_N-fAvqzM/w336-h367/marc-olivier-jodoin-tauPAnOIGvE-unsplash.jpg" width="336" /></a></div>It has been incredibly hard for me to write with the frequency that I so much wish. Not only the several lockdown and quarantine restrictions impacted on my availability to research the different topics, but my professional life changed as well. The day before Christmas I was informed that I had been accepted into IQVIA and I would be saying goodbye to ProPharma Group where I had spent four and a half years. I said goodbye to my professional friends in late January to start a very interesting, enticing, exciting and challenging role with IQVIA's medical information and pharmacovigilance department. From ProPharma I take only incredible learning experiences and positive stories. It is incredible when all one has to say about one's previous company is so positive, and we take so much kindness and love in the words and gestures of those with whom one has cooperated and collaborated. ProPharma is indeed a great company and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to learn so much from highly professional and experienced people. <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">But I am a man of challenges and one that always look forward to the top of the pyramid. I love building new relationships, collaborate with new minds and help others strive as much as I do in this realm. IQVIA offered me just that and more. I couldn't say no. From the very first minute I felt wanted, praised, accepted, looked up to and relevant. I think the most glorifying word in these first months of my experience with IQVIA is that I felt <b>EXTREMELY RELEVANT</b>... and that is so important for me because it carburates the necessary mental and emotional fuel that triggers the will to go forward and accomplish, whilst creating a collaborative team, a professional herd, a symbiotic pack. My first two months have been a steep learning curve and I am so proud of myself for having had the courage, amidst a pandemic, to once again put myself out there for the Universe to operate in me, whilst I give my very best to the world. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I needed this change and I'll grab this opportunity with both hands whilst maintaining the only attitude I can ever carry deep inside, i.e., my team is my family, my project is my society, my vision is to grow together; no man or woman left behind. I see myself professionally ever more like part of a PACK where I use my wits and my personality, my curiosity and my knowledge to develop and progress with the PACK:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">- with <b>PRIDE </b>in our work, always striving for the best quality possible</p><p style="text-align: justify;">- with <b>ACCOUNTABILITY</b>, always taking responsibility for individual and collective decisions</p><p style="text-align: justify;">- with <b>CONFIDENCE</b>, making sure that each decision is the most researched on </p><p style="text-align: justify;">- with <b>KNOWLEDGE</b>, built on perseverant study and constant seeking.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I know I have disregarded this blog for almost 3 months since my last post. But writing my book on nosocomial infections, my new job, my role as a husband, and as a father of two, alongside the sequential COVID restrictions... all have really had a tremendous impact on my availability to research confidently and more often. But I promise I am back. Not embedded with the illusion that I will be enjoying an enormous literary availability, but with the guts to say that this blog is also very important for me :)</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Next article coming right after! Thanks for waiting so patiently over the past three months.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-77804733714390869042020-12-28T14:05:00.008+00:002021-08-03T09:43:30.261+01:00Opportunities, Challenges, and Considerations related to laboratory reporting of infectious diseases to Public Health England<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFu7ygopkvkOaS9vivz5iror7JjKftTCRw4WqQ2oPr9kXdr_NUBoNJ2YKmyQaJbUVX73Qk9g5Kh-F2gaHHio55xXSehuABglqfjzQQW-XW32m1xudtd4cu_HmUUEDF8J2lXo5xfIckXX4/s1377/1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="1377" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFu7ygopkvkOaS9vivz5iror7JjKftTCRw4WqQ2oPr9kXdr_NUBoNJ2YKmyQaJbUVX73Qk9g5Kh-F2gaHHio55xXSehuABglqfjzQQW-XW32m1xudtd4cu_HmUUEDF8J2lXo5xfIckXX4/w583-h328/1.png" width="583" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">Considering that Infectious Diseases, especially those deriving from zoonotic sources, currently contribute approximately 20% of the global annual death causes and 10% of the total disease burden in the European continent [1]; and that the likely losses of a pandemic influenza outbreak could reach 3 trillion American dollars (~5% of the global Gross Domestic Product) [2], the different states within the European Union decided to prioritise health areas that include proactive monitoring and reactive responding, with special focus on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), vaccine preventable diseases, tuberculosis, influenza, and sexually transmitted infections. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">In this respect, it is crucial to understand the pathway that takes data to realistically travel from clinical laboratories onto integrated-monitoring pieces of highly advanced software, as it is, the case with national governmental agencies (e.g., Public Health England). <span style="text-align: left;">The disease surveillance program commissioned by Public Health England (PHE) covers 37 infectious diseases, including influenza. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_OoLWbfa9Wl647fX-uNG1xngYJX-D8kO_-yPkAF_Qj_hlAAMwXORgccWtXZere0SG8-WzHxvQmEcqEbFID8jLXdfVyIZ583g-nYHL3Cbwupivb9pbFS58kWntXIUzNbgS8OoeBcoEkGY/s1375/2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1375" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_OoLWbfa9Wl647fX-uNG1xngYJX-D8kO_-yPkAF_Qj_hlAAMwXORgccWtXZere0SG8-WzHxvQmEcqEbFID8jLXdfVyIZ583g-nYHL3Cbwupivb9pbFS58kWntXIUzNbgS8OoeBcoEkGY/w582-h329/2.png" width="582" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="text-align: left;">Clinical microbiology laboratories (CMLs) demonstrate their ability to:</b></p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>inform and improve individual patient care, </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>contribute to outbreak management and hospital infection control, and </p><p style="text-align: justify;">o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>provide accurate surveillance data on infectious diseases and AMR. This information can be subsequently used in the reviewing of local treatment guidelines and the designing and evaluating of national health policies. [1]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In that sense, <b><i>In vitro</i> diagnostics </b>play an important role in the scrutinising process <b>-</b> There are at least three major areas where <i>in vitro</i> diagnostics can provide essential contributions to diagnostic reasoning and managed care of patients with suspected or confirmed infection:</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>aetiological diagnosis, </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>patient monitoring, </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and epidemiologic surveillance. [3]</p><p>With special interest in the R<b>eporting of bacterial and viral infections</b> - In general, we can segregate the detection of viruses into three main categories: </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>direct detection of the virus, </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>viral RNA/DNA detection, and </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>antibody detection. [4]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Data reporting feeds two very important surveillance systems, <b>the UK Biobank (UKB) </b>(an international health resource with 500K subjects allowing research into the genetic and lifestyle determinants of common diseases), as well as the <b>Public Health England’s Second Generation Surveillance System (SGSS) </b>(a centralised microbiology database covering English clinical diagnostics laboratories) participate in the national surveillance of highly relevant notifiable infections, bacterial isolations, and antimicrobial resistance. [5]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Analysis of shared data fed into these systems allows an improved management of relevant epidemiological scenarios based on:</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rapid early detection validated by a large number of samples with high accuracy diagnosis supporting an enhanced surveillance.</p><p>And this process will synergistically assist the:</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Review of local treatment guidelines, and the</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Evaluation of National Health Policies</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXk_fiOi1GyW1ElkhAlPZkKXGNVMRr3E3h0N_2PqVyO0Aidf2yGY2RypLV9W3Y-k1ISHfM4cPU6C43IbebIiyf3kRdDzUo0qdgIBv3sI2IzcZC8XDiAv_CZ7UNCZSQyrbxFWRvAryXt_E/s1376/3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="775" data-original-width="1376" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXk_fiOi1GyW1ElkhAlPZkKXGNVMRr3E3h0N_2PqVyO0Aidf2yGY2RypLV9W3Y-k1ISHfM4cPU6C43IbebIiyf3kRdDzUo0qdgIBv3sI2IzcZC8XDiAv_CZ7UNCZSQyrbxFWRvAryXt_E/w583-h327/3.png" width="583" /></a></div><br /><p><b style="text-align: justify;">There are many challenges associated to laboratory reporting within the public health surveillance system: </b></p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Data artifacts</b> - missing, inconsistent and implausible data; gaps in data transmission;</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Constant change of guidelines and instructions</b> – rapidly changing indicators; </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Heterogenous procedures </b>- systematic differences between labs and in the utilisation of services; patient linkages over time, different data sources, numerous registries, and indicators, </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Time burden for busy providers</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Idiosyncratic +/- reporting - </b>even though false positive/negative reporting is associated to (A) a low concentration of antibodies usually present in fluidic samples; (B) presence of homologous proteins; and (C) lack of sensitivity from the detection instrument, the fact that not all negatives are reported and that not all are reported via the same reporting systems and to the same surveillance agencies, enhances the monitoring difficulties associated to the process. [3] [4]</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Shortage of resources for high volume/frequency testing</b></p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Incongruent shipment to reference labs </b> </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Numerator-Denominator Incompatibility - </b>a systematic distortion due to a denominator that does not match the numerator, or vice versa.</p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Difficulties in exposure assessment</b> </p><p>o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Inadequate/Insufficient Environment/Equipment</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Culture of lax charting (e.g., ISO15189, ISO17025) - </b>Regulatory standards demand clinical laboratories to establish and document their own performance guidelines for laboratory-developed tests in order to make sure the obtained results are done accurately and with precision results, even prior to implementation of the test. The relevant aspects that are to be considered are: accuracy, precision, reportable range, reference interval, analytical sensitivity, and analytical specificity.</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25WSzQTsvg9umgLiS32LkbnLeudTISXfjZUPu-6PmHsUQlqRPqmVtfXKlZqLWC-WevQ3tJpHSQPntIRE3lGKAvJaJt4DtM-No9IQuduD2K-2elP3rmO3on6Cy7x2i-7wo1ZGTt2S0GNk/s1373/4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="1373" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25WSzQTsvg9umgLiS32LkbnLeudTISXfjZUPu-6PmHsUQlqRPqmVtfXKlZqLWC-WevQ3tJpHSQPntIRE3lGKAvJaJt4DtM-No9IQuduD2K-2elP3rmO3on6Cy7x2i-7wo1ZGTt2S0GNk/w629-h353/4.png" width="629" /></a></div><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;">But not all illations are challenges, as the present times offer enormous levels of learning that can be brought to practice. Probably, the most important lesson that businesses learned from COVID-19 is the need for adequate remote working opportunities and capabilities (arguably the greatest practical legacy left behind for business owners to read).</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The first and possibly the most important lesson that policymakers and hospital administrators MUST learn from COVID-19 is that <b>the continuing cut down on human and economic resources generates a huge impact in the healthy functioning of structures</b> that can easily lead to collapse of the public/private health system, including the clinical laboratories with their enhanced testing demand. [3]</p><p>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Established labs are an important resource </b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>The linkage of COVID-19 test results to the UKB provides an invaluable resource to the international research community</b> that has the potential to uncover new risk factors for severe infection. UKB is one of the largest and closest-studied cohorts in the world. [5]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Biomolecular data exchange between databases</b> - As is so well stated in Lenert and Sundwall (2012) "<i>Clinical providers must exchange specified types of data with the public health system, such as immunisation and syndromic surveillance data and notifiable disease reporting. However, a crisis looms because public health’s information technology systems largely lack the capabilities to accept the types of data proposed for exchange. Cloud computing may be a solution for public health information systems. Through shared computing resources, public health departments could reap the benefits of electronic reporting</i>". [6]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>IT infrastructural autonomy</b> - It is understandable that each organisation wishes to maintain its autonomy, however and for the sake of a prompt positive intervention, such is completely impracticable in a diasporic multifaceted system. The idea is even considered to be OBSOLETE [6] and goes against the prominent technological inflection dictated by 'democratic' and very functional cloud services.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKjFGi5o6KCF64YTwDHkkh2pbhPdTcQ8jfiopkSjphUJaYDE2bplONsPoOQU3DTr4CRWTtJtap4nLJDjWJ7UOd61csgk1v5nxNxn9LPrU980RgC5ppqkMlxMo8gP_YU2J-XSfZrw9mI9U/s1375/5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1375" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKjFGi5o6KCF64YTwDHkkh2pbhPdTcQ8jfiopkSjphUJaYDE2bplONsPoOQU3DTr4CRWTtJtap4nLJDjWJ7UOd61csgk1v5nxNxn9LPrU980RgC5ppqkMlxMo8gP_YU2J-XSfZrw9mI9U/w638-h361/5.png" width="638" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ten final considerations are therefore learned and directly cited from the available literature (for sake of authenticity in origin), and hereby listed adding to the brainstorming of a surveillance system able to work effectively if so by all input sources:</div><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"<i><b>Establishment of an efficient network of regional clinical laboratories</b>, involving those which are not directly challenged by the outbreak and where samples can be conveyed, is a feasible solution, provided that a straightforward regulation for specimen transportation and biosafety is set and monitored. This, in turn, highlights an unavoidable need to place major efforts for allowing better and wider harmonization of laboratory results and information, encompassing both analytical and extra-analytical issues." </i>[3]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i><b>Efficient communication to appropriate stakeholders </b>- "It is essential that the laboratory personnel be instructed to communicate test results to the appropriate stakeholders (i.e. to the people who are officially in charge of dealing with the outbreak), thus avoiding to spread information that could generate unjustified panic, or inappropriate reassurance, among the general population." </i>[3]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i><b>Accurate diagnosis VS Patient stigmatisation</b> - "Achieving, maintaining, and improving accuracy, timeliness and reliability of test results are key deliverables of diagnostic laboratories. Late or false-negative SARS-CoV-2 test results will lead to delays in or even preclude correct diagnosis, jeopardizing timely isolation and prevention of transmission. In turn, false-positive tests will waste public health resources, will lead to incorrect epidemiologic data, and might even lead to patient stigmatisation. Quality control is a cornerstone of safe, consistent, reliable diagnostics, and many studies and frameworks outline the structure of quality-management systems suitable for diagnostic laboratories."</i>[7]</p><p style="text-align: justify;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i><b>Integration into biorepositories</b> - "The significant role of the CML networks should not be underestimated in the sharing of routine clinical metadata or data collected. Their potential integration into a common data set (biorepositories—as proposed by the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium) would maximize the opportunities for patient contributions to be translated into therapeutic and diagnostic solutions. The consolidation process for example provides a tangible opportunity to extend the scope of pooled analyses of individual patient biomarker data from heterogeneous laboratory platforms and cohorts into population-level studies using merging algorithms." </i>[1]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"<b>The availability of commercial diagnostic kits in peripheral centres</b> shall be part of the strategy for early and accurate identification of the largest possible number of infected patients." </i>[3]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Locally</b> - "Near-patient testing would include so-called 1- to 2-h “plug-and-play” nucleic acid amplification tests for which a rapid result can directly impact patient care. Centrally - More-complex/high-volume tests would be dispatched to a core facility. In addition, the ability of networked CMLs to access multiple different partners, geographies, and clinical specialties can enhance their capabilities to provide advanced disease surveillance and early outbreak recognition." </i>[1]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Harmonised SOPs </b>- "Laboratory professionals may also be made available on-site, where they could help define standard operating procedures (SOPs) for specimen collection and transportation. The choice between these possible solutions will obviously depend on many economic, legislative, juridical, logistical, environmental, and technical issues."</i> [3]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Same-day direct assays</b> - "A major advantage of the consolidated CMLs is the expansion of the range of activities, able to accommodate high technology and sophisticated tests with increased sensitivity and specificity (30), while the usual day coverage is extended through a second (and third) shift. Same-day, direct assays, including molecular assays for selected organisms, are performed as a matter of routine thus reducing time to obtain results." </i>[1]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Inherent system flexibility </b>- "The availability of increased amounts of high-resolution data at a lower cost creates an anticipation, requirement, and downstream cost(s) for the accommodation, analyses, and interpretation of these data. The inherent systemic flexibility that is necessary to receive different types of data at different speeds and from different locations—and link all that to routinely collected clinical data and report back—is not an insignificant task by itself." </i>[1] </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Ethical implications of big data analysis</b> - "A number of questions are raised regarding the new pathways that might be necessary, the different regulatory approaches within Europe to handling this data under the EU personal data protection directives, and data quality issues. If not correctly addressed by the inclusion of ethical design in the creation of big data, such ethical issues might become limiting factors preventing reaching of full potential." </i>[1]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Vanderberg, O., Kozlakidis, Z., Schrenzel, J. <i>et al</i> (2018). "Control of Infectious Diseases in the Era of European Clinical Microbiology Laboratory Consolidation: New Challenges and Opportunities for the Patient and for Public Health Surveillance". Frontiers in Medicine, 5(15), pp. 1-7.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] </span></b><b style="font-size: small;">Gebreyes, W. A., Dupouy-Camet, J., Newport, M. J., <i>et al</i> (2014). "The Global One Health Paradigm: Challenges and Opportunities for Tackling Infectious Diseases at the Human, Animal, and Environment Interface in Low-Resource Settings". PLOS Negletected Tropical Diseases, 8(11), e3257, pp. 1-7.</b></p><p><b style="font-size: small;">[3] Lippi, G and Plebani, M. (2020). "</b><b style="font-size: small;">The critical role of laboratory medicine during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other viral outbreaks". </b><b style="font-size: small;">Clin Chem Lab Med, </b><b style="font-size: small;">58(7), pp. 1063-1069.</b></p><p><b style="font-size: small;">[4] Bhalla, N., Pan, Y., Farokh, A. (2020). "</b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Opportunities and Challenges for Biosensors </b></span><b style="font-size: small;">and Nanoscale Analytical Tools for Pandemics: </b><b style="font-size: small;">COVID-19". ACS Nano, 14, pp. 7783-7807.</b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Armstrong, J., Rudkin, J. K., Allen, N et al (2020). "Dynamic linkage of COVID-19 test results between Public Health England’s Second Generation Surveillance System and UK Biobank". Microbial Genomics, 6, pp. 1-9.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] </span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Lenert, L., Sundwall, D. N., (2012). "Public Health Surveillance and Meaningful Use Regulations: A Crisis of Opportunity". American Journal of Public Health, 102(3), pp. e1-e7</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[7] Homolka, S., Pawlowski, L., Andres, S. (2020). "Two Pandemics, One Challenge— Leveraging Molecular Test Capacity of Tuberculosis Laboratories for Rapid COVID-19 Case-Finding". Emerging Infectious Diseases, 26(11), pp. 2549-2554. </b></span></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-86917380010936591842020-11-20T11:28:00.017+00:002020-11-20T12:08:14.946+00:00On the validity of a second lockdown in the UK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQMWZc-Mhjew8NzRSYPC73OxDGMqtduej6pjb7SN4btDtHrY-BCVsD4TLlC-8e_B517Tu1aafUWcyVWs7t63GIydRTd1AtkmgqOEyU0PSj39bmZdCcdbWvZvzXDzHgGuwOiBvhDRuJK9w/s1128/unherd.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="1128" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQMWZc-Mhjew8NzRSYPC73OxDGMqtduej6pjb7SN4btDtHrY-BCVsD4TLlC-8e_B517Tu1aafUWcyVWs7t63GIydRTd1AtkmgqOEyU0PSj39bmZdCcdbWvZvzXDzHgGuwOiBvhDRuJK9w/w530-h298/unherd.jpg" width="530" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">I believe I have stated many times before that I don't like fashion science TV, in the sense that it keeps talking exhaustively about a topic mumbling and chewing up on things that have been explored/exploited many times before, and actually outputting very little of novel valid information for the public. UnHerd TV is the opposite of this, at least, most of the times! And this is why I like to regularly look up on what they're debating because their broadcasts scrutinise real science, from real scientific backgrounds, supported by real scientific tools and opinions of really experienced science people. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Recently, I came across an interview with Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist involved in the project development of an application called ZOE app. This is allegedly an app funded by the British government and that became quite popular over the past weeks for having already demonstrated that, prior to the decision of a second-imposed lockdown, the number of reported infected cases was already on a downfall.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In that sense, I committed myself to listening to the whole interview and collected the most relevant opinions that I personally believe can be demonstrative of what Professor Tim Spector, and also the UnHerd YouTube Channel have disclosed, meaning, THIS SECOND LOCKDOWN WAS UTTERLY UNNECESSARY!!! But why not read now the most revealing and relevant statements:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Who pays for the Zoe app?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The first 6 months were funded by Zoe in addition to the "citizen scientists" who were using the app and funded it. Then a fundraiser campaign came into place where about 70 thousand contributors helped maintain the app. Then in the Summer, the Department of Health started funding the project.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Does the funding by the government limit free speech?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Yes, in terms of what is said by researchers on social media, but not in terms of the data disclosed and shared in the app itself. Moreover, the researchers/scientists involved in the development of this project are not restricted in their freedom to criticise the government.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheiljoX9K2uve6IbfIwMuClUbeWJSFTII2ogIMBxASUOPmTbrItYviIvaPDwVvw9SliZh3-m-FPMk3JHSWV7-466WpVeD1S3R_80kJIOBd7VvFndHuJMhxVOZ6VhUMiH1lLZqhrPHySaw/s2048/matt-seymour-69zVsGRejY4-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1538" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheiljoX9K2uve6IbfIwMuClUbeWJSFTII2ogIMBxASUOPmTbrItYviIvaPDwVvw9SliZh3-m-FPMk3JHSWV7-466WpVeD1S3R_80kJIOBd7VvFndHuJMhxVOZ6VhUMiH1lLZqhrPHySaw/s320/matt-seymour-69zVsGRejY4-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Was a second lockdown a needed approach in the UK?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">If their Zoe app data had been taken into consideration, the governmental authorities would have made different conclusions and decisions considering that the data showed that, for some parts of the United Kingdom, a fall on daily reported covid cases was already a reality. That was already a reality when the UK was coming out of the tiered approach!</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Even in tier 1 areas and immediately when the lockdown was decided and announced there was already a fall of in cases reported, ergo that downfall was not a result of the lockdown but already a trend that was taking place.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Different studies where the government based their decision on (e.g., Face value, REACT and ONS [the government official survey] operated almost as a decoy driving the government to such decision).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">How did we go from one scenario to the other when grave impact on businesses and people lives were a risk?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because no alternate views were shown and it was decided by the government to operate on a worst-case scenario prospect.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The fact that most likely during meetings with SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) the government wasn't presented with an optional plan, resulted in unavailability of options for the former. But since there is inadequate information coming from those meetings to the public, this is just speculation.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">What additional risks came in with the second lockdown decision?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Loss of quality of life in terms of physical and mental health (number of suicides, extreme anxiety and depression cases), less medical appointments for the common population or special population (cancer, stroke, heart attack patients, and the like), loss of longevity, loss of economic growth or just maintenance of financial stability was not even considered, and that is an undeniable fact. And the general media supported this idea by being blunt as to just focusing on the number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths covid-wise. It's like for them the only important factor was a body count. As referred by Prof Tim Spector, "<i>in most Novembers and Decembers in the UK, 50 thousand people die; these numbers are actually trivial compared to the expected rates. As an epidemiologist, and there are a number of people who think like myself, we should be taking a much broader view of this</i>" and "politicians and scientists only seem to be punished when we underestimate [...] in society we are very risk adverse". There was no balancing of the different impact on different sections of society.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Were the curves coming down because of a greater degree of immunity in the population?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">From what has been observed in other epidemics this is a natural occurrence as infection rates don't simply go up constantly, they respond in waves; these infections tend to lose strength when they've infected enough people or when infected new people; the infection meets an enhanced immunity against the viruses. It is possible that in certain places people who did not self-isolate or did not respect social distancing and did not get infected were indeed already immune, an immunity that is recognised to be on average present for 6 months. Different views can support different ideas in different regions showing different curves, what Prof. Tim Spector said of "micro-arguments".</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Why has the conversation between sections of society and authorities become so poisonous?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Clearly not all information has been shared which created discredit in many sections of society. Decisions were made as to not discuss more than compliance, a restricted number of symptoms, "<i>there was only two symptoms until the Zoe app uncovered the loss of taste and smell, other countries have much broader ideas and do share more</i>".</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Will lives go back to normal in Spring 2021 now that a vaccine has been announced?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">"<i>It's great to have some optimism. We have a vaccine that looks like it may work which means that if that one doesn't others will probably do. I think it's dangerous to think this will be actually working for us in the Spring; we don't know how long it lasts [...] whether it works on old people [...] We do need a plan to go back to normal to accept that continued infections and continued deaths are here for the rest of the year</i>".</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Should this new vaccine be administered on a voluntary- or mandatory-basis?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;">"[...] <i>the number one group to sort out are the vulnerable. Cover them and their carers, we could effectively shield them pretty well and everyone could just put up with the virus apart from some cases of long covid; we could cope as a country and get economically back to normal [...] I think we try a voluntary approach... once we know more about it as all these vaccines are very novel... once we know more about the risks people are taking, people wouldn't necessarily accept that and one thing we are doing in the app is adding a vaccine function to it where people could take the vaccine and report the long term effects to it to feel safer about it themselves</i>".</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">For downloading or just reading more on the Zoe app, please access <a href="https://covid.joinzoe.com/">HERE</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">For viewing the full interview yourself please access <a href="https://youtu.be/avpAzsbmSvI">HERE</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">1st image kindly taken from UnHerd TV.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">2nd image by by Matt Seymour on Unsplash</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-74718880127584067902020-11-19T11:37:00.007+00:002020-11-19T12:41:26.143+00:00Did you know that ...<p> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5m8TsU0oQd2rEF7I1SqbMTXRGBswShPTabaEIP-PWxo9ZpiB5p5GQ45Z4qYA-NNHQRwn0sYYIKjbtsKiNAEDp1Jy3kaeiIcx2IRpxAp2seoc4eO5JKt-idc4vnDH3JGeXpdMyY5H4Gjs/s320/smart-ass.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5m8TsU0oQd2rEF7I1SqbMTXRGBswShPTabaEIP-PWxo9ZpiB5p5GQ45Z4qYA-NNHQRwn0sYYIKjbtsKiNAEDp1Jy3kaeiIcx2IRpxAp2seoc4eO5JKt-idc4vnDH3JGeXpdMyY5H4Gjs/s0/smart-ass.jpg" /></a></div><p></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Altmetric </span></b>is a tool that allows you to collect and collate research information spread out in the web using a really helpful interface that provides you information on how your own research is seen by others. This is a very useful tool for those scholars who publish, for investigators and even institutions, those who provide grants and those are involved in R&D. Finally a tool that makes all engage in the same platform whilst compiling relevant and useful data on their investigational projects. More information <a href="https://www.altmetric.com/">HERE</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Chronic fatigue in Sjogren's syndrome patients</span></b> - it is known that chronic fatigue in patients dealing with Sjogren's syndrome is probably one of the most invisible debilitating traits of this set of 'diseases'. But a recent article has shed some new light on an agent that interferes with the immunological response and consequently on fatigue, the vagus nerve, that can be used to modulate the immune responses, and with the help of an electronic device, the noninvasive gammaCore. Initial results on a small number of female patients observed positive changes to the profile of fatigue and on the Epworth sleepiness scale (used to diagnose obstructive sleep apnoea) [1]. Reduction in these profiles were also accompanied by significant reduction in the presence of inflammation factors such as IL-6, IL-1β, IP-10, MIP-1α, and TNFα. More information <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30328647/">HERE</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Free Resources for Science Pictures</span></b> - Do you have a blog? Do you participate in a videocast? Are you writing a monograph, essay or any science piece of work that could use some visual attractiveness? Do you need science images but don't really have the money to pay for it. Well, this is the place where you have to go to. This platform suggests 7 places containing high-quality scientific research images that one can access and use at will. From figures, to micrographs, plots and diagrams the images available at the recommended sites will save one hours of unnecessary drawing up. More information <a href="https://www.stressmarq.com/7-resources-for-free-science-pictures/?v=3e8d115eb4b3">HERE</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">First Universal Flu Vaccine </span></b>- Now that the eyes of the world are layed upon the recent announcement of a vaccine to counteract the sars-cov-2 disease (covid-19), we nearly forgot that there are still numerous 'bugs', prions and viruses out there, roaming at will, looking for an opportunity to prevail. Influenza is just as such one of these and the research for a universal vaccine to prevent flu has been a long standing project. But in 2018 it was announced that the seasonal flu would meet a new defense guard, one that could even protect us against a emerging influenza mutation and avoid a pandemic. Approximately 20 years took these researchers to get to the phase III clinical trial stage where a new complex substance that induces immunity to the less varying parts of the virus (the core of the virus we would say), is to be tested on hundreds, or possibly thousands of human subjects. Knowing that the Influenza virus is made of two surface glycoproteins: hemagglutinin (aiding cellular access to host's moiety), and neuramidase (aiding the spread through), the new pipeline vaccine - BiondVax’s M-001 - will not focus on generating antibodies against the highly variable head of the virus, but instead focusing on producing an immune response against the stalk (a more conserved fragment in the viral structure). In fact, this project is so well advanced and scientifically robust that the researchers are also looking into adjuvants (substances that can aid the primary product work better in an improved fashion). On tof the adjuvants is called TRAC-478 and stimulates several toll-like receptors (TLRs) on antigen-presenting cells; the other one is known as TRAC-478 and can help the body recognise both bacterial and viral infections in a synergistic operation [2]. More information <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-universal-flu-vaccine-to-enter-phase-3-trial-65073#.W-mwcCzy4Vw.twitter">HERE</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Language of Biosimilars </span></b>- Have you ever heard of biosimilars? Have you ever been prescribed one? Well, to ignite your responses let us look briefly into what a biosimilar medical product is. A Biosimilar Medical product is a biological medicine considered highly similar to yet another already approved biological medicine (that for that matter is known as the 'reference medicine') and that are approved/licensed with exact the same standards of pharmaceutical quality, safety and efficacy that is applied to all biological medicines. In fact the same agency, meaning the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is the one body, in Europe, responsible for evaluating most of the applications to market biosimilars in the European Union (EU).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The active substances found in biosimilars, meaning the molecules that are indeed expected to do the trick and help cure the problem, are often purified proteins obtained from other living cells or organisms, such as animals, plants, or even smaller ones (microorganisms). The process of protein purification enhances the quality content of the product so the product can be used safely in responding to clinical needs usually related to chronic conditions. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Confused? Biologic drugs are large, complex proteins, they are 'manufactured' from living cells in extremely complex manufacturing ways; but they are not what we know these days as generics. Roughly said, Generics are 'copy-paste' copies of chemical drugs where as Biosimilars are copies of a biologic medicine that is similar, but not identical, to the original medicine.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Considering that biologics are usually quite large 'protein' molecules with complex structures, biosimilars cannot be considered generic equivalents to these. Instead they are products developed and assessed for their efficacy and safety based on very rigorous processes that study their specific function in different steps of a clinical trial set to confirm similar efficacy and safety. These studies are not performed, or should not naturally be, to show clinical prevalence of these products. [2]</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1] Epworth sleepiness scale - Obstricive Sleep Apnoea (OSA), British Lung Foundation, [https://www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/obstructive-sleep-apnoea-osa/diagnosis/epworth-sleepiness-scale], last access on the 19th of November 2020, last update on May 2016.</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: small;">[2] Declerck, P., Danesi, R., Jacobs, I. (2017). "The language of biosimilars: Calrifications, Definitions, And Regulatory Aspects. Drugs, 77, pp. 671-677.</b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-5891598967949863602020-10-19T19:18:00.017+01:002021-08-03T09:44:03.219+01:00Herd Immunity - the unheard of approach for managing this Pandemic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8eE2dQv-tiO6bXv79SWRd4MOlCCmiLx7XR1ukABkxqtLyMpLcd97w-WNl_PWLZ0GEybgszgqv2R-1iRnwF2Q7TNedwcZa0FPy5kmNhuC3Qu8Cc5ua_p7FOxNYA8ntxqG87Zu-gy0Ps0/s2048/ryoji-iwata-IBaVuZsJJTo-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1367" data-original-width="2048" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8eE2dQv-tiO6bXv79SWRd4MOlCCmiLx7XR1ukABkxqtLyMpLcd97w-WNl_PWLZ0GEybgszgqv2R-1iRnwF2Q7TNedwcZa0FPy5kmNhuC3Qu8Cc5ua_p7FOxNYA8ntxqG87Zu-gy0Ps0/w400-h268/ryoji-iwata-IBaVuZsJJTo-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">By the start of this corona virus pandemic, my wife and I sat down and immediately agreed that in order to save the global economies, one would have to make concessions, and the most difficult one is who to save. Amid a pandemic it's impossible to fix the Titanic, save every one on board, take them to a comforting safe place and allow the band to play amusingly throughout the whole process. Life is just not like that, and only politicians like to portrait reality as a do-or-die strategy. That only works in two basic assumptions, 1) when they have no idea how to fix the issue and need to show voters they are still in command, 2) when they want to publicise the Armageddon as near and somehow their incredible wits are here to save the day and rescue us from the abyss. Both assumptions only work with dumb people who don't offer a second to deep thinking and are fairly hypocritical in fallaciously attempting to show control of the supposed unknown. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">As I was initially saying we had immediately understood, not because we are incredibly clever but because we are not easily decoyed by small talk, that <b><span style="font-size: large;">herd immunity </span></b>would be the only capable approach to reduce the overall damage whilst allowing the limited available strengths to focus on risk groups and those most in need of support. But Hell no, a primitive approach with no previous example of success was immediately put in place as the only feasible concrete strategy to contain the supposedly unfamiliar invisible enemy. Some of our friends criticised us for lack of democratic heart, for a heartless artificial selection of those who should be living, and liberally shouted the need to protect lives before economies, as if things weren't immediately and directly linked synergistically.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Before such aggressive response from others we refrained to disclose more vividly our opinion on herd immunity, especially because <b><span style="font-size: medium;">the concept itself was so falsely dilapidated of sense that somehow turned into an irresponsibility of the ignorant rather than having its logic presented to the public in an adequately scientific fashion. </span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">But luckily, more and more scientists started gaining the correct timing and plateau to display the positives of such understanding of what life is and must be, an intricate complex web of valences that intertwine and interact naturally by means of forces that are prompted by stimuli inputs, by all of us, viruses included. And this feeding of stimuli learns from its inter-relations as it unfolds, it is not a closed environment and it is not an immutable one. <b><span style="font-size: medium;">One must go on actively learning the inferences to predict fast and apply strategies for more positive results. </span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">Many have ridiculed the idea of a herd immunity basically because the idea itself never had time and a stage to properly disclose the ins and outs of the approach.</span></b> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">But that changed since the meeting of three expert scholars, expert epidemiologists (read their names and their respective <i>alma matter</i> at the end of the post) who met in agreement for redacting a declaration pro-herd immunity approach.<span style="color: #ffa400;"> They fairly and thoroughly explained the reasons for their meeting and the final objective in the shape of a declaration that I hope you can sign and pass on, if you agree with the principles of it; but the most important part of it is the scientific backing of all they say, contrarily to the verbiage that some State Representatives constantly make use of and that is supported only by their political agenda.</span></span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Please find below the most relevant aspects of the video I analysed for you and I hope that the words of these three experts do indeed alert people to the most relevant fact that is presented to us by this pandemic - <b><span style="font-size: medium;">our lives must go on whilst protecting the most vulnerable ones, but not at the expenses of All, but with the participation of ALL. Especially in this day and age where people who have the disease are being stigmatised, and us forced to believe that it is perfectly acceptable to be imposed by governments in accepting a fully Orwellian control/track application that deeply offends your privacy and freedom, backed by the ridiculous fact that supposedly we already offer so much of our privacy away by using social networks that this would not be a massive sting to our already deeply wounded dignity/identity: </span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>A) <i>The approach taken on tackling covid-19 has produced enormous collateral damage, e.g., less cancer screening, less vaccination rates, less medical appointments.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>B) <i>There is need for a continuous herd immunity so the most vulnerable can be taken care of whilst young people and those who are not high-risk can continue with their lives.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>C) <i>Herd immunity is not a strategy, herd immunity is a fact across numerous diseases that spread in the human population.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>D) <i>Even when we have a vaccine we would be relying on herd immunity for this epidemic.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>E) <i>Herd immunity is a recognition of a biological fact, not a strategy... There is a misconception when people hear the words 'herd immunity'.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>F) <i>The proposal offers concrete ways to address the needs of the vulnerable... The premise is not to do something reckless, the premise is to take account of all the public health.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>G) <i>The key thing is that whatever strategy we use, we will reach herd immunity so we should be taking care of the most vulnerable... and there is various ways to do this, e.g., in nursing homes (with frequent testing and less turnover among the staff); teachers above the age of 60 should be working from home but there is no reason for a teacher in his 30s to avoid going to work.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>H) <i>We can never protect people 100%. We should move towards this regime </i><i>[herd immunity] immediately, remembering this would not be a permanent state of affairs, but a period of approximately three months that would take for the virus to sweep through the population.</i> <i>It's a fundamental feature of the pathogen as the kind of infection period that sars-cov-2 has that it should rise-peak-drop off in that sort of period, and this has been observed in many countries... Then we would reach a time when the most vulnerable wouldn't see the younger ones as a danger. </i><i>The policy that we currently have extends the period where the grandmother and granddaughter need to be distanced from one another. The herd immunity strategy is more humane. </i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>I) <i>A focused protection expands freedom in the sense that it allows one to re-engage. Freedom is important but we need an informed freedom.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>J) </b><i><b>With the current focussed approach [taken almost globally] we are protecting low-risk college students and low-risk adults in privileged classes while placing on the poor classes the job of generating immunity that will eventually protect all of us, especially on the backs of the urban working class.</b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>K) <i>[With the herd immunity approach] an over 60s bus driver would not work, he would take a sabbatical with social security support, and other welfare support, for three to six months until immunity would [surface].</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>L) <i>The present strategy [used by the different governments] exposes poor people to risk whilst protecting the rich. Herd immunity promotes equality while the present strategy promotes inequality. Science and morality must point in the same direction in what concerns public health... Lockdown was pure damage to society.... 130 million people would starve to death if a new lockdown is imposed. </i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>M) <i>The present difference risk between youngsters and elders is a 1000-fold in terms of mortality, and this is the weakness of this pandemic that \needs to be used in our advantage.</i></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">If you'd like to listen to the video conversation of the three experts who participated in the preparation of this declaration, please access the UnHerd TV video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz_Z7Gf1aRE&t=2s" target="_blank">here</a>. <span style="font-size: x-large;">TO SIGN THE DECLARATION, please <a href="https://gbdeclaration.org/" target="_blank">ACCESS HERE</a>.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dr Sunetra Gupta is a professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modelling of infectious diseases. [1]</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dr Bhattacharya is a professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations. [1]</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dr Kulldorff is a Professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations. [1]</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Covid experts: There is another way, Unherd TV, [</span></b><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>https://unherd.com/2020/10/covid-experts-there-is-another-way/], last update on the 5th of October 2020, last visited on the 18th of October 2020.</b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash</b></span></span></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-15811804797618472772020-09-25T18:34:00.002+01:002020-09-25T18:34:18.702+01:00Differences between pneumonitis occurring with immunotherapy and COVID-19<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9GnE79KRFRRQkz7S9F_3WOhuw9Tyz5c8pHfZ_jBw3RD8yVZhYHzSVofWWyHx_ocyIL0sWV291jjdg62mpWalWQhJvaDDegOXqRTanYAppNHmGR6JjE_9GpEOdsjbDxPUmoKOQ0PNf_k/s2048/cdc-SrHKQxGuuqQ-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1724" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp9GnE79KRFRRQkz7S9F_3WOhuw9Tyz5c8pHfZ_jBw3RD8yVZhYHzSVofWWyHx_ocyIL0sWV291jjdg62mpWalWQhJvaDDegOXqRTanYAppNHmGR6JjE_9GpEOdsjbDxPUmoKOQ0PNf_k/s320/cdc-SrHKQxGuuqQ-unsplash.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: justify;">I've recently took some new training courses as part of my professional role as a medical information specialist, and in one of these I was lucky to be clarified on a current and important aspect related to COVID-19:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: large;">On the differences between pneumonitis occurring with immunotherapy and that of COVID-19</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The information we were provided relates to what was known by then and might not be the most up-to-date at the time you might be reading this post, so please keep that in mind before assuming the details hereby shared with you are still actual.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Why is it important to understand such differences?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because as for any chronic patient and due to the impact on the immune system of cancer patients (especially lung cancer ones), their risk of developing lung complications is much higher than for regular patients. In addition, COVID-19 also has the potential to trigger pneumonitis, and therefore a clear diagnosis must be conducted to differentiate.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">What are the symptoms of pneumonitis in these groups?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Typical symptoms reported by cohorts from China and Europe refer dyspnoea (difficult breathing), pain, and other symptoms like cutaneous, gastrointestinal or endocrine ones (related to hormonal release); but it is cough, the pain profile and pyrexia (increased body temperature above what is believed to be the expected normal) that sees increased incidence in COVID-19 patients (in comparison to the other group). </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Timing and onset of symptoms is a very important aspect to retain!</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Even though, times are not to be taken as absolute indicators for any of the groups, cancer patients reveal peak points with the highest toxicity grade (namely, colitis and pneumonitis) at about 6 and 12 weeks, respectively), whereas for COVID-19 patients the incubation times sits at an average of 4 days.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>What other differences have clinicians observed?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><u>In immune-related pneumonitis</u></span></b>, the radiological aspect is of peripheral ground glass shadowing that tends to affect the lower lobe specifically; and is almost universally bilateral. This scenario evolves as disease progresses to a more severe condition. Because there is no specific test to scrutinise for a immune-related pneumonitis it might be relevant to associate to all the reported differences a few other relevant tests, such as, a lymphocyte count expected to be normal or higher than normal values in immune-related pneumonitis; also the presence of more than normally expected values of C-reactive protein (CRP) (a protein produced by the liver in response to inflammation), and even more than normal values of sedimentation rates for erythrocytes (usually these red blood cells sediment quite slowly in a normal subject, but for a body fighting with inflammation the sedimentation rate would be faster than expected). Finally, cancer patients undergoing pneumonitis would present with a bronchiolar lavage displaying prominence of eosinophils and lymphocytes.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><u>As to pneumonitis in COVID-19 patients </u></span></b>the first line of testing would immediately be the genetic/antibody recognition of the presence of the virus, by means of PCR, after <b>a nasopharyngeal test</b>. <b>But at best this recognises the virus up to a sensitivity of 70-80%</b>. In case of a negative test, a false-negative cannot be ruled out, so subsequent tests are then applied in order to positively affirm of the presence of the virus in patients suffering of pneumonitis, namely, a battery of tests known as liver function tests:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>- the LDH test</b> that is typically used to determine in a more accurate fashion where a certain damage is organ-located and the severity of the disease progression, </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>- the creatinine kinase test</b> to assed whether the pathology is of a cardiac or skeletal muscle nature (that in association with the <b>troponin test </b>provides a better understanding as to whether damage of the cardiac tissue has taken place); </p><p style="text-align: justify;">- by also checking <b>the aforementioned inflammatory markers</b> described in the paragraph below (especially when considering that clinicians recognise typical values around 100-150 mg/L, </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>- a D-dimer test </b>to check on the occurrence of blood clots (where they have noticed that in severely sick patients this indicator is quite elevated - even though such is not specific of thromboembolic disease, but can indicate severe inflammation);</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But be sure that the variety of tests available for diagnosis is large and I cannot immediately discuss them all in detail hereby. However, I'd like to add to the pool of exams yet another one the clinicians mentioned, <b>the Beta-D-glucan test</b> that helps them rule out (or not!) pneumocystis infection with fluid buildup in the patients lung.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">In summary</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Differences and similarities exist between pneumonitis in these two populations of patients, but clinicians have plenty of biochemical options to scrutinise the profile of a immune-related pneumonitis from that of a pneumonitis caused by the new corona-virus.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@cdc?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="background-color: whitesmoke; box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">CDC</a><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: nowrap;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/pneumonia?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="background-color: whitesmoke; box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-82378349996817941162020-09-22T23:01:00.002+01:002021-08-03T09:43:53.251+01:00A variant of SARS-CoV-2 can still be out there, and we may be the lucky ones to get it<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRC9gH_rqscUpWMJPk2y6P0mJ5_mJJvjJV5u5dWyRIgA_obpKRgfzVlBb-s3Gip6SiFyo2W2MC92l-O3U1eo7SFlboQbXQNRvT5AfI_Up0BWsrW6Qp0UA8cmscL1KhX7kan1NkK16omyA/s2048/united-nations-covid-19-response-DXPhqh6q26c-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRC9gH_rqscUpWMJPk2y6P0mJ5_mJJvjJV5u5dWyRIgA_obpKRgfzVlBb-s3Gip6SiFyo2W2MC92l-O3U1eo7SFlboQbXQNRvT5AfI_Up0BWsrW6Qp0UA8cmscL1KhX7kan1NkK16omyA/s320/united-nations-covid-19-response-DXPhqh6q26c-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />A friend of mine has brought to my attention an article recently published on the effects of a major deletion in the SARS-CoV-2-genome [1] (the coronavirus genetic pool, let's say) on the severity of infection and its associated inflammatory response. We discussed it with a lot of interest, considering all the positive predictions such implications would have in the outcome of this very disturbing and concerning pandemic. And even though the article focus on a cohort study based in Singapore, meaning just a limited sample in a specific constricted time and space was analysed, certain 'extrapolations' could help foresee or predict positive outcomes. <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The <b><span style="font-size: medium;">researchers studied variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) at seven public hospitals by retrospectively identifying patients that had been screened for the Δ382 variant. </span></b>And then they compared these with the ones infected with the wild-type. <b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">But what is the difference between this Δ382 variant and the wild-type? </span></b>For those who are not familiar with genetics, imagine that the wild-type is the very first virus that presented itself to us humans, as wild as one can find it, straight from the jungle, no changes to its genome as this would be the very first of all. Then we have the Δ382 variant which is the wild-type but with something different, be it added or removed, like a car with three or five wheels. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-size: large;">It happens that this Δ382 variant has something less than the wild-type, i.e., a deletion that truncates (slices a bit of a bigger important structure), and the researchers realised that this deletion possibly impacts on the virus transmissability and also on its virulence.</b> In addition, they even realised that the structure affected by such deletion is the ORF 7b (an open reading frame - part of a reading frame in the genome that has the capacity to be translated) and consequently removes the ORF8 transcription-regulatory sequence of the genome. The result is a Δ382 variant of SARS-CoV-2 that is likely to be associated to a much milder infection because this variant might be less effective at infecting a new host since the ORF8 structure is linked to lessened inflammatory potency. Why? Because <span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the removed bit is a 82 nucleotides and 415 nucleotides in a very important genomic section</b></span>, even though the biological function of the ORF8 protein in SARS-CoV-2 is still to be clearly known and described. <b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">But further i<i>n-vitro </i>analysis have also shown that said deletion does not affect the replicative fitness, meaning the capacity for the virus to go out there and multiply like little crazy hot hormonal rabbits.</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">But again, what are the implications in terms of symptoms revealed by sick people infected with variant Δ382? </span></b>When researchers compared people infected with this variant alongside those infected with the wild-type only, five aspects were quite clear and promising in the way that they add in to understanding how a pharmaceutical could be developed in the future; not to vaccinate but to inhibit/repress the viral protein proneness of this pandemic agent:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">1) In terms of fever, those infected solely with the wild-type are about 4.2-fold more prone to pyretic effects... that is quite a difference!!!;</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">2) In terms of cough, an aspect that not only portraits a likely lung affliction but also impacts on the immediate transmissibility of the virus - those infected with the Δ382 variant solely are 3.1-fold less prone to reporting cough;</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">3) One of the most interesting aspects of this research is that they also studied the C-reactive protein concentration levels, a direct indicator of immediate inflammatory response. The more C-reactive protein the more inflammatory response. People infected with the wild-type only will have 2.07-fold higher levels of this inflammatory protein.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">4) All together the observed data have also shown that the two most important traits in symptomatic patients, meaning <b><u>hypoxia </u></b>(lack of oxygen) and <b><u>pneumonia </u></b>(infection of the lung(s)) is tremendously reduced in those infected with the Δ382 in comparison to the wild-type, thus suggesting that this deleterious event that resulted in this mutant produces a much milder outcome.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">5) This study finally concludes that the ORF8 can very likely become a successful target for a pharmaceutical or therapeutic strategy that studies this viral infection in humans. <b>Event though the ORF8 deletion does not suppress the replicative capacity it does reduce the strength of consequences in the human body. And this is ever more important when we consider that this variant shows difficulties in attaching to a new host as the secretion of its infection proteins might be impaired.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">And don't forget, this was the variant that was successfully transmitted in the early days of this pandemic even though the confinement and control measurements have wiped it prior to March this year. But lessons were learned so we can start applying the acquired knowledge for a future medical/pharmaceutical approach.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1] Young, B. E., Fong, S-W., Chan, Y-H. et al (2020). "Effects of a major deletion in the SARS-CoV-2 genome on the severity of infection and the inflammatory response: an observational cohort study". The Lancet, 396, pp. 603-611</b></span></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-53655852781756140332020-09-19T23:10:00.010+01:002020-09-19T23:14:53.158+01:00The science of our days - a post a day!<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWPzQCLfLbDIPu7V9lAKbwCWAKa5413T7SVkh5131e-s-nhgcACSfggZwBaPC4EOixjiQHYkg-EvoIrByMPvFPKwMKqCtoUIEiUIqv9w4kG6UwgYhShKDiisQu-khJlgE6RSYYUDSNQRo/s2048/clay-banks-pNEmlb1CMZM-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWPzQCLfLbDIPu7V9lAKbwCWAKa5413T7SVkh5131e-s-nhgcACSfggZwBaPC4EOixjiQHYkg-EvoIrByMPvFPKwMKqCtoUIEiUIqv9w4kG6UwgYhShKDiisQu-khJlgE6RSYYUDSNQRo/s320/clay-banks-pNEmlb1CMZM-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a>I've been reading a lot of stuff during this crazy year of 2020, but haven't had the chance to compile and make sense of all the relevant information. I thought of using the blog to aid me in the task of updating myself on the many levels of scientific information that I've been gathering throughout 2020 (yes, not all is covid-19 in the world, I promise you). </div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">In that sense and in the coming weeks until the very end of December 2020, I'll be posting a summary a day of quite short (500 words) and straight to the point chronicles addressing a magnitude of different savory scientific topics. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">I leave you with a small list of what is to be discussed and that will definitely entice you all to visit the blog... every single day (starting this Monday the 21st of September so pin it on your calendar):</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="text-align: justify;"><b>Who’s talking about your research?</b></span></li><li><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Effects of Noninvasive Vagus Nerve Stimulation on Fatigue and Immune Responses in Patients With Primary Sjögren's Syndrome</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>This medication for high blood pressure "increases the risk of lung cancer"</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Life Sciences Industry Employee Engagement Report 2018</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Are ketogenic diets really useful in treating cancer?</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>7 Resources for Free Science Pictures</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>First Universal Flu Vaccine to Enter Phase 3 Trial</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The promise and peril of gene drives</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The toxin from a ParDE toxin‐antitoxin system found in Pseudomonas aeruginosa offers protection to cells challenged with anti‐gyrase antibiotics</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Everything is awesome: Don't forget the Lego</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>One million mosquitoes and 500,000 tests later, new buzz about a malaria prevention drug</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Major breakthrough in quest for cancer vaccine</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>New research: screen time is changing childrens brains</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>PANINI: Pangenome Neighbour Identification for Bacterial Populations</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Ranking the 10 Best Survival Kits of 2020</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>10 Most Dangerous Antibiotic-Resistance Bacteria</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Recommended composition of influenza virus vaccines for use in the 2019-2020 northern hemisphere influenza season</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The woman who took on Rockefeller</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>OPAT: Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>What is CAR-T therapy?</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Rise of the Scientist Bureaucrat</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Science Says Drinking Coffee Helps People Slow Aging, Lose Weight, and Cheat Death. These Fascinating Studies Explain Why It's a Miracle Drink</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Micafungin treatment and eradication of candiduria among hospitalized patients</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>How stress contributes to autoimmunity-lessons from Sjögren's syndrome</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>COVID-19: some unanswered questions</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>How Do Food Manufacturers Calculate the Calorie Count of Packaged Foods?</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Stress Hormone Causes Epigenetic Changes</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><br /></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Decoy antibiotics could get around bacteria’s defences</b></li><li></li><li style="text-align: justify;">Sugar and cancer – what you need to know</li></ul><div><br /></div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash</span></b><br />Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-77220601237714659752020-09-19T21:27:00.014+01:002020-09-19T22:03:28.274+01:00111 + covid-19 = a system of 2 that when resolved ends up with lim XY-> +-00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqP3AJ1VpyiD_jU5aP9gpNmU9mUFLnO9tZC4nIRDU6RRvQiDrLq1yhRZ0pL6iJWhYYSIRCrgrnhIJcK2VbQsMK30uboSph0MfCMurREm4-A8L5K8yjs1QQ5TF9D-9TdJZWG85SBtDI4C8/s2048/testalize-me-_apILrBeWPM-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqP3AJ1VpyiD_jU5aP9gpNmU9mUFLnO9tZC4nIRDU6RRvQiDrLq1yhRZ0pL6iJWhYYSIRCrgrnhIJcK2VbQsMK30uboSph0MfCMurREm4-A8L5K8yjs1QQ5TF9D-9TdJZWG85SBtDI4C8/s320/testalize-me-_apILrBeWPM-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="text-align: justify;">Due to this damn pandemic, family and also professional obligations, it has been increasingly more difficult for me to update the blog. I love the science and the art of writing about science, but I am afraid |to just post for the sake of making numbers as I'd compromise on the quality, and that I despise. Or, I could very simply resort to talking about the same topics everyone else is discerning about, but that would simply go against the purpose of my writing and researching. Finally, I could just jeopardise my professional career and start analysing the absurd verbiage some of the so-said speakers of truth on covid-19 have been confidently chewing all over the news these days; but I do not have the money to support myself nor the 'friends' to back me against the silliness that has been sown so diligently by people who never even studied basic science. One thing I can tell you assertively; I was never a great mathematical genius but good enough to almost finish a biotechnological engineering course. I might not be good but I'm not completely bad. Having said that, I can perform basic calculations and numerical interpretations like the one I propose hereby and that is based on events I personally lived very recently.</span></div><p style="text-align: justify;">A young person is coughing, no high temperature, no persistent cough, a productive one rather than dry, no loss of sense of smell or taste. Keeps munching them baked beans on toast like before and can still identify a strawberry flavored lollipop amidst all green vegetables existing in a not-so-confined-space. So you call the number advised, 111 and add to that a proposed website in order to book a covid-19 test. Covid-19 plus 15 minutes filling up a virtual form results in a system of two equations, the first derives into a drive-through test site (the same one that sent a guy from Kent to Edinburgh for a 7ish hour ride enjoying the tar landscapes of A1) and the other one entails a home test. A simple logical (not so much mathematical at all) observation would expect the common denominator to be... common... in both these system equations, i.e., covid-19 testing. Nothing more and nothing less than the only thing deemed possible for to trace the 'likely' presence/absence of the viral agent. However, there aren't any available tests or availability in the postcode-designated test-sites. If one tries 111 once again one realises that 111 is a number that ends up in formula circularisation, like the ones we mistakenly produce when we get slightly confused when operating calculation spreadsheets, ergo not providing any possible solution but stressing and acting like a headless chicken. One could consider calling 111 once again, thus restarting the formula and wildly attempting application of randomness, envisioning an unexpected successful randomness. But hell no!; the line will advise you to not attempt booking a test via phone and directs one to the very same website that will reinforce you to not call the line as all tests should be booked online. But... but there are no tests, so cone opts in for dying of anxiety or of the disease or utter madness trying to crack this impossible function where:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;">111 + covid-19 = X + Y with <i>lim </i>X-> +-00 and </span></b><b><span style="color: #ffa400; font-size: medium;"><i>lim Y</i>-> +-00</span></b></p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-75335630492719600962020-08-28T15:24:00.007+01:002020-08-28T15:33:13.934+01:00What Topic Would You Like To See Discussed Next<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoIdAzMozWbk-evYb-CZVowKPmDe4tjklvNvAAzGOwt5xguSCsYG-X8krn8Z05qwW1tQ9mMYMohU8wCN_b2akHNhxP5VOOHsY1E_vZlPz17Pf-sFrMB0gzg3iUrMJl_aG1X7Ra6S-dvk/s2048/vincent-ghilione-cVaTkeN_xqI-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoIdAzMozWbk-evYb-CZVowKPmDe4tjklvNvAAzGOwt5xguSCsYG-X8krn8Z05qwW1tQ9mMYMohU8wCN_b2akHNhxP5VOOHsY1E_vZlPz17Pf-sFrMB0gzg3iUrMJl_aG1X7Ra6S-dvk/w219-h328/vincent-ghilione-cVaTkeN_xqI-unsplash.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">Hi everyone, I am finally back from my well-deserved holidays and eager to start posting as much as possible once again. Only this time I'd like to use mine and your time in a much better way, so rather than proposing topics as they come to my knowledge during my work interactions, I would like to see what topics I can help you with.</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Bring them to me and I will make my very best to clarify any doubts within my range of knowledge and supported with the best available scientific information out there.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Don't be shy, let me know what would you like to see next on THE TOXICOLOGIST TODAY!</p>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-21343773924080279452020-07-30T19:27:00.021+01:002020-07-31T01:43:16.170+01:00A short opinion on the toxicity of social networks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjaCzdhW5BDu0r8sTRylAHnv8XvT0bH3WEX4gCfHlRsHu7q1tdxjrlgNzr6EcYme1ClhX7m3rXr_HDv3PN6nIbXiG-yl1O1Ygz4X0m9QYKsFNMynniOszBzZiN1_qM4Gf1InG_qVfpmcQ/s2048/rahul-chakraborty-xsGxhtAsfSA-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjaCzdhW5BDu0r8sTRylAHnv8XvT0bH3WEX4gCfHlRsHu7q1tdxjrlgNzr6EcYme1ClhX7m3rXr_HDv3PN6nIbXiG-yl1O1Ygz4X0m9QYKsFNMynniOszBzZiN1_qM4Gf1InG_qVfpmcQ/s320/rahul-chakraborty-xsGxhtAsfSA-unsplash.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As I was having a conversation with a few friends on the topic of extremism and populism, fake news and poor scientific data evidence, I produced a text that they asked me to publish, as they consider it could help others make sense of the recent wave of lack of empathy and lack of integrity one witnesses all over the globe. I hope this text helps you think about your own opinion rather than taking mine for granted. Disclaimer: These are my own words and opinions, and not of my colleagues.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-size: xx-large;">On the Toxicity of Social Networks</span></b></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>... In my view, this is all so simple that sometimes we even end up labeling these ideas as conspiracy theories, but in reality they are only proposals for explanation. But where conspiracy theories take facts beyond a rigorous interpretation, those of us who ponder life with more impartiality perceive things differently, and when they are obvious they leave no gaps. I will now explain what in my perspective has been going on with the world for about 25 years or so. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>The Internet emerged for most of us in the early 1980s I suppose; it was a military thing and it was easily understood that in terms of business it would be much more profitable to make it publicly accessible. It was such a turnaround in society that by the end of the early 90s, end of the millennium, its creators lost control over a new reality of communication that did not have time to adapt to the current legislation, and vice-versa. There was plenty of space for users to learn more about the web than the web to learn about its users. What is happening since then? Social networks gain strength not only as a tool for meeting up and communicating, for pleasure, mutual knowledge, education and entertainment, but also as a very useful tool to take pulse to ideas of the public. Commercially, there was a genuine interest from corporations in getting to know the target audience, in order to make their campaigns more acceptable, their targeting more effective. But they soon realised that an even more radical change was taking place in this new communication system, <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>the emergence of Influencers. </b></span>People with a banal presence, until then unknown to the media, suddenly gained strength because they operated in the same communicative and intellectual pitching as the people who listened to them. Influencers started to have more audience than the most popular television channels, companies started to understand that Influencers and their novel channels (creating and sharing content) were the most prolific weapons in creating trends. Money was then put in the hands of such people, and such people came to power, learned gradually how to control this new system, almost without knowing their own worth, originally with the sole intention of communicating their own thoughts, but </i><span style="text-align: left;"><i>surreptitiously and naively generating</i></span><i> public opinion. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>And in order to create more and more public and necessary polemics, plots and scripts are needed for touching directly to people's souls. And people started to join this populist recording because they are the ones who give one, followers. [Certain politicians and companies] just debit what the commoners want, that is, promises of blood, sweat and tears. <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">But above all what people most want to hear is that it's not their fault, they want total lack of responsibility, they want responsibility to be attributed to a third-party. </span></b>[In certain countries] they blame the Blacks, the Immigrants, or the Russians, the Communists and so on and so forth. [In other parts of the globe], it is the fault of the West, Americans, of Capitalism, and the like. And this is broken down into all sectarian and sub-sectarian contexts of our worldly reality. Until you reach the most classic and most contemporary example of our times (forgive me the contradictory innuendo) - the so-called Millennials, turned Generation Z. Who knows exactly the nomenclature of this nouvelle vague of masked netizens. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> I do not hold them responsible for nothing, but I hold us Netizens responsible for everything. Because, i</span>t was in this way that a new wave of victimization surged. The brand new Netizens of this Millennium are the true creators of social irresponsibility. Those who live in their technology bubbles, in virtual worlds where people are brave when typing on keyboards, but never truly brave in their souls; those who release incendiary opinions behind an avatar, criticise and burn certain agents but without ever showing up their real identities. Nevertheless, if someone points a finger at them, they will soon be feeling victimized. [Fill-in-the-blank-shamming], shamming shamming shamming. All the people who criticise this new wave of Netizens are now immediately classified as bullies. When exempting themselves of responsibility for everything and anything, these Netizens started defending themselves in the easiest way possible, protecting themselves from everything that brings them a taste of inconvenience to their mouths. <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Two parallel worlds were thus created, that of exaggerated victimisation and that of exacerbated populism.</b></span>And the only solution is for people to realise that social networks are a neoplasm, metastatic and dangerous. They grew far too quickly, obeying to a growth rate that did not allow the regulation of legislation and the adaptation of society to these new viral societal values. And the only solution is a brief but nonetheless extremely necessary pause to reflect, to think and hold these virtual social platforms accountable, as they are not virtual anymore. They have metastasised into real uncontrollable lobbies... </i><i>Since holding the individual accountable is almost impossible in practical terms. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>But from the moment these platforms are made responsible for promoting extremist ideas, uncontrolled messages, poor scientific evidence and the like, this dark-web of nuanced social networks becomes a sensitive organism and temperance can be generated. <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>But then they say, 'ohhhhh, but freedom of speech!'. Very well, everyone has and should have freedom of expression at all times. But I want the person who shouts Death to Blacks, Death to Whites, Death to Immigrants, Promote Animal Abusing, Disrespects Disabled People, etc etc etc, to have a name and a physical identity visible to everyone, and not being Pintas997 or SexyMummy12. </b></span>Freedom of expression must always be associated with an ulterior and anterior value that is eternal and untouchable, which is to be associated to a physical existence who professes responsibility of the Being. Because many opinions are being created by bots, the so-called virtual operators that exponentially debit an individual's opinions making it appear more numerous than actually is, making it one that has a large audience when in fact it is not so. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> This is the greatest danger ever present in people's lives from now on. Ergo, if it is not resolved, it will open up space for an Orwellian world, an 1984, but one that is not Utopia. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Photo by Rahul Chakraborty on Unsplash</b></div>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-24634099271152537082020-06-30T00:43:00.004+01:002020-06-30T12:00:12.645+01:00How easy is it for viruses to mutate?<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxM97-Cwr135bJdnCjbcRx58AoUq2NorrDRpCa9_OXqTdayyPYO6kU8CdgWNtca_40qFDp-d6JcuFNJnmkSwsOV-JCDDgHaL0OfIi-9nLYmmmZ_5X2l2EzjJUb2hzEOdHvPw2zcVHEQN4/s3200/cdc-bkc-m0iZ4Sk-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2500" data-original-width="3200" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxM97-Cwr135bJdnCjbcRx58AoUq2NorrDRpCa9_OXqTdayyPYO6kU8CdgWNtca_40qFDp-d6JcuFNJnmkSwsOV-JCDDgHaL0OfIi-9nLYmmmZ_5X2l2EzjJUb2hzEOdHvPw2zcVHEQN4/w400-h313/cdc-bkc-m0iZ4Sk-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;">It is a pleasure to be back, and believe me it hasn't been easy being away for so long. However, in all honesty, my absence wasn't result of my immediate choice. I have been flooded with work and the current world crisis didn't really help anyone. From having my children under my responsibility 24/7, plus all the extra work that results immediately from living, or better put, adapting to survive in a quarantined existence/lockdown-style, meets new thresholds that none of us had been exposed to before.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have struggled to write a single line but I have struggled a lot more with reading the enormous idiotic and, sometimes, overtly ignorant information spread out in different platforms, covid-wise! I realised that for some questions the official sources out there are quite good, even though, and I remain with my personal view on it, numbers do no immediately add-up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Information and counter-information got to such ludicrous levels of ignorant presumptuousness that I decided to educate myself directly form few selected sources and experts. But during my self informing I wasn't able to find an adequate simplified explanation that would respond to different aspects of all this covid-19 pandemics. One of such aspects emerged exactly whilst trying to understand how Italy, UK, Portugal and Spain met such different levels of infectiousness and lethality when presented to basically similar approaches and external/internal pressures/strategies. I just couldn't make sense of certain aspects but the one that caught me empty handed was hearing from a specialist in virology that the virus had just mutated from country to country. I can't easily recall who this person was or what organisation was he speaking from, but to be fair it is not my role to criticise these people, let alone try to play a role of key opinion leader on a matter I am not specialised at all. But because I am a curious person with a thirst for knowledge I researched further in order to try and understand how can that be feasible. How mutable is a viral strain? In even more simplified words....</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><font color="#f57c00" size="5"><br /></font></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><font color="#f57c00" size="6">How easy is it for viruses to mutate?</font></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To be able to address this complex question with a simplified answer it is imperative to accurately estimate virus mutation rates, so then one can infer on the individual and particular evolution of the different object viruses. Only then applicable strategies can be designed to control spread, infectivity and foresee a plausible safe future ahead of any epidemic. That was the work of Sanjuan <i>et al</i> (2010) where different methods of estimation (that in their own nature are quite varied and usually fairly complex) were applied [1]. <b><font size="5">But how can one define mutation rate? </font></b>Well, the authors defined it as <b>substitutions per nucleotide per cell infection (s/n/c) </b>(so to account for viability rather than just mutations with no biological meaning at all) and corrected for selection bias where applicable and deemed necessary. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Their observations were quite impressive as the obtained rates stretched from from 10<font size="1">−8</font> to10<font size="1">−6</font> (in DNA viruses) and from 10<font size="1">−6</font> to 10<font size="1">−4</font> (in RNA viruses) supporting the classic idea of a <b>negative correlation (meaning one decreases when the other increases, and vice-versa) between mutation rate and genome size among RNA viruses and also DNA viruses</b>. In addition, [1] shows that <b>nucleotide substitutions are on average 4 times more frequent than insertions of nucleotides and deletions of nucletotides in the 'viral genome', the usually called 'indels'.</b> But another very useful public tool they came up with is the regularly updated (so they say) virus mutation rate data that one can find at the url: www.uv.es/rsanjuan/virmut [2] with the main objective of providing an easily available, organised and professional data set on viral mutation rates. Just for the sake of curiosity and example, I can tell you that corona virus, as expected, is not part of the studied viruses, and that HIV-1 has a mutation rate of 4.9E<font size="2">-5</font> (s/n/c) whereas Influenza A virus sits at 4.5E<font size="2">-5</font> (s/n/c) - both these values are mutation rates per cell infection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is easy to understand that not all mutations are biologically effective and significant and that lethality power can actually undermine the relevance of the virus because a virus with a deadly mutation to humans, basically kills rapidly the host on which the virus itself depends on (for viruses are not living beings, they are merely simple algorithms of genetic code that operate not knowing very well in what overall program do they actually integrate - that is how funny and scary viruses are!!!). If they kill the host quickly, let's say even faster than Ebola kills, the virus would require an immediate host to progress with spreading infection... and in that sense its associated lethality can undermine it's biological success. To avoid disappearing, a virus should be very infectious and lesser lethal! That is my understanding.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>But what about their mutation 'strategy'? </b>Apparently there are several types of consequential mutation 'strategies' if we can exaggerate and affirm these things even have a subliminal plan. Basically pure evolutionary and external pressures and forces shape their 'swarming' but apparently, at least in what relates to HIV and Influenza, their mutation is linked to <u><b>antigenic drift and antigenic shift</b></u>. The former occurs with a change in aspect of the outer surface protein where the host won't be able to identify the virus, hence an insufficient defensive response takes place; and the latter is defined by 'fusion' of different types of the same virus merging and becoming a new very different type from its root strains - that will catch the host by surprise and their limited antibodies will not be able to cope with the new profile of viral infection [3] - the 2003 zoonotic H5N1 influenza A virus epidemic that infected humans is a good example, but luckily one with limited infectivity/lethality correlation!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The mutational capability and profiling of viruses is a world of knowledge. And not only time is limited but also your patience. So allow me to save these last two short paragraphs to discur on two straight points:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="5">What other factors participate on the mutational rate of viruses? </font></b>Population density where the highest density (overcrowding) will find successful jumps of viruses from one host to another, more rapidly and more effectively. Also, a virus with longer incubation times associated to what I had explained in the previous paragraphs, lesser pronounced lethality. This will even allow a zoonotic virus to live freely in migratory animals and spread happily to distant geographical points. Biologically clever, isn't it?! But in a nutshell, the best answer to how easy it is for viruses to mutate, can be found in the work of Sanjuan and Domingo-Calap (2016) [4] where the authors state that impressive capacity of some viral strains to adapt to new hosts and environments is strongly determined by their capacity to produce newer viral proteins in a short period of time. As the authors state, the present knowledge of viral mutation rates shows that "<i>viral genetic diversity is determined by multiple virus- and host-dependent processes, and that viral mutation rates can evolve in response to specific selective pressures</i>", as discussed above. Viral mutation rates are programmed and performed by means of polymerase fidelity inclusion, at sequence context, at template secondary structure, at cellular microenvironment, through replication mechanisms, during proofreading and/or during access to post-replicative repairing, by means of virus-encoded diversity-generating elements or even by host-encoded cytidine/adenine deaminases [4]. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="5">What is the mutational rate of SARS-CoV-2?</font> </b>The jury is unfortunately still out there and so will be for a long time, but I suspect that a recent article by Tang <i>et al</i> (2020) [5] offers the best most up-to-date original information we have accomplished so far (though naturally limited, as you may well understand). They propose that SARS-CoV-2 can be classified in two major lineages (L and S) defined by just two tightly linked SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) at positions 8,782 (orf1ab: T8517C, synonymous) and 28,144 (ORF8: C251T, S84L). Their mutational load analysis reports that "<i>the L lineage had accumulated a significantly higher number of derived mutations than S lineage</i>". Moreover, they also found merely 4% variability in genomic nucleotides between SARS-CoV-2 and a used-for-reference "<i>bat SARS-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV; RaTG13)</i>", and the identified "<i><b>difference at neutral sites was 17%</b></i>", pointing towards the idea that, as the result of different selective pressures, "the divergence between the two viruses is way larger than initially thought. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="2">[1] Sanjuan, R., Nebot. M. R., Chirico, N., Mansky, L. M., Belshaw, R. (2010). "Viral Mutation Rates". <i>Journal of Virology</i>, 84(19), pp. 9733-9748.</font></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="2"><br /></font></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="2">[2] Viral Mutation Rates, Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), [<a href="https://www.uv.es/rsanjuan/virmut" style="text-align: left;">https://www.uv.es/rsanjuan/virmut</a>], last access on 29th of June 2020, last updated on 2010.</font></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="2"><br /></font></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><font size="2">[3] Viruses and Evolution, The History of Vaccines - An Educational Resource by the Colleage of Physicians of Philadelphia, [</font></b><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b>https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/viruses-and-evolution], last accessed on 29th of June 2020, last updated on the 10th of January 2018.</b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b><br /></b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b>[4] Sanjuan, R., Domingo-Calap, P. (2016). "Mechanisms of viral mutation". <i>Cell Mol Life Sci</i>, 73(23), , pp. 4433-4448.</b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b><br /></b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b>[5] Tang, X., Wu, C., Li, X. et al (2020). "</b></font></span><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b>On the origin and continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2". <i>Natural Science Review</i>, 7(6), pp. 1012-1023.</b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b><br /></b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b>Post photo by </b></font></span><span style="text-align: left;"><font size="2"><b>CDC on Unsplash.</b></font></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-33907420011721024302020-04-08T15:14:00.001+01:002020-04-08T16:22:34.545+01:00We are in this situation because our governments and us (citizens) were irresponsible and selfish, respectively. A valid reflection on SARS-CoV-2 (as any other)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLJBIf4c8_3uJImDEVjIFqMrth9l21ER5k0LYyeESHR5r-hudVIkopbswC-QqGM5Twhm99v2e1c2n1oRCRq7kKkZ3mkQvnXSc9cEHRDJoU5qp47ouEhLsE9vCepf7TPpUy2vIa7DSrkMw/s1600/natalie-ng-xkxdxmof_c4-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLJBIf4c8_3uJImDEVjIFqMrth9l21ER5k0LYyeESHR5r-hudVIkopbswC-QqGM5Twhm99v2e1c2n1oRCRq7kKkZ3mkQvnXSc9cEHRDJoU5qp47ouEhLsE9vCepf7TPpUy2vIa7DSrkMw/s320/natalie-ng-xkxdxmof_c4-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a>There's a massive, almost unprecedented for our times, health and economic crisis concerning the<br />
upsurge of a viral pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) and everyone can read about it anywhere in the globe. Media are sucking dry this opportunity to report even on the minimal aspects to it related, some completely irrelevant, and some very well substantiated by reliable sources. Even though the numbers don't really add up when we cross-reference data obtained from different 'official' sources of information, it is almost impossible not to be adequately informed on the basics of its epidemiology, the impact on our financial systems and the different health aspects that relate immediately to covid-19 and us, patients.</div>
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Memes, images, funny videos, some outraged ones, a horde of multimedia interactions showing how the many different world populations are willing to respect the necessary quarantine/lock-down times, and also the typical uncivilised odd person breaking down with common sense and respect for others and going about their business with utter disrespect for the importance of (other) lives. Social networks and news web-platforms are populated with chronicles, speeches, conferences, discussions, forums, seminars, news; covid-19 has been distilled into so many formats that one can just find exactly what suits him/her best by picking from an immense pool of files left hanging around. </div>
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Some of the distributed information speculate on how the virus spread, from where it spread from, debate on whether the Chinese government could have done more to avoid the repercussions of a viral spread turned into global pandemic, if there was a laboratory manipulation, if we are facing a biological weapon or merely the result of ubiquitous 5G technology in our lives. I could add in with my contribution to the technicalities of any theory where arguments fade to black the moment they arrive to the geographical and IT borders of China. After that horizon line, it is all but speculation because we simply aren't allowed to know more for censorship is active in said confinement. In addition, I dislike conspiracy theories if their purpose is to cause mayhem and chaos rather than debating a supported plausible scientific possibility. When the idea starts with, <i>so and so said</i>, <i>I heard from</i>, <i>I believe</i> and there is nothing to substantiate one's idea, the best thing is to just not participate in the stupidification of the masses.<br />
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I have my own theory that goes well beyond a simple zoonotic vectorisation of a virus. It accounts for an intention, it accounts for a purpose, it accounts for sloppiness, it accounts for irresponsibility, it accounts for a tripartite strategy, it accounts for immediate results, mid- and long-term objectives, it accounts for a myriad of participating valences that determined the global diaspora of contagious proportions we are presently dealing with.<br />
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Having said that I am of the opinion that most news media and governments, health and civil stakeholders are integrally now focused in finding a solution for the problem either based on a) understanding the dynamics of this virus and associated disease, b) reducing the impact on global finances, and 3) understanding how we went from patient zero to the mess we have presently in hands and that is to remain for the months to come.<br />
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Maybe because we are still living through such turmoil where the immediate concerns are, keeping people safe, alive and financially afloat, no one has yet looked in-depth to the evident trigger of this whole issue and the unpreparedness of our governments to deal with a boisterous elephant in the room (since 2002/2003). This epidemic turned pandemic did not come without a warning, we had numerous situations where the scientific community had warned of the likelihood of such health threat to reoccur. The number of available articles published since 2012 (if not before that) provided such a long list of whistling alerts. I hereby paste just a few for the sake of the example. A few!, culminating in two that everyone is talking about these days and that surprisingly, or not at all, indicated Wuhan as the most probable source of this pandemic... whilst the final one denies (based on the limited information presently available) any laboratory manipulation of this virus as the origin of its infectivity:<br />
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<b>2002/2003</b> - SARS-CoV-1 epidemic.<br />
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<b>2012 -</b> Butler, D. (2012). "Clusters of coronavirus cases put scientists on alert - Surveillance ramped up after novel virus is identified in three Middle Eastern countries". Nature, 492, pp. 166-167.<br />
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<b>2013 - </b>Pebody, R., Zambon, M., Watson, J. M. (2013). "Novel coronavirus: how much of a threat?". <i>BMS</i>, <b>346</b>(1), pp. 1756-1833.<br />
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<b>2013 - </b>Nuttall, I., Dye, C. (2013). "The SARS Wake-Up Call". <i>Science</i>, <b>339</b>(6125), pp. 1287-1288.<br />
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<b>2013 -</b> Breban, R., Riou, J., Fontanet, A. (2013). "Interhuman transmissibility of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus: estimation of pandemic risk". <i>The Lancet</i>, <b>382</b>(9893), pp. 694-699.<br />
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<b>2015 - </b>Yang, X-L., Hu, B., Wang, B., Wang, M-N., Zhang, Q., Wu, L-J., Ge, X-Y, Zhang, Y-Z., Daszak, P., Wang, L-F., Shi, Z-L, Perlman, S. (2015). "Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus". <i>Journal of Virology</i>, <b>90</b>(6), pp. 3253-3256.<br />
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<b>2016 - </b>Bhatia, P. K., Sethi, P., Gupta, N., Biyani, G. (2016). "Middle East respiratory syndrome: A new global threat". <i>Indian J Anaesth</i>, <b>60</b>(2), pp. 85–88.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>2019 -</b> Fan, Y., Zhao, K., Shi, Z., Zhou, P. (2019). "Bat Coronaviruses in China". <i>Viruses</i>, <b>11</b>(3), 210.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>2020 </b>- Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, I, Holmes, E. C., Garry, R. F. (2020). "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2". <b>Nature Medicine</b>, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9.</span><br />
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Amid a million questions that are still to find a scientific explanation, e.g., the death toll in Italy and Spain, etc., I have seen some surprising attitudes from both public and state representatives, like for example the current trendy embarrassing glorification of the national health services like they have been doing a great job with limited resources only since the start of this covid-19 problem. Most likely triggered by the fact that people are now a lot more tuned in with their own mortality. And I have seen a lot of other decoy interventionists talk about a wide array of subjects, but no one is talking about two incredibly relevant and clear aspects that need addressing, immediately or as soon as we clear up the dust around the stability of the different worldwide economies:<br />
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<b>1) As it stands and considering the present available knowledge, this virus surfaced from a wet market populating with endangered exotic species. Due to the consumption of a mammal (bat) it spread disease to the many corners of the world in a fashion not so unprecedented, for we had dealt with a similar situation before (the cycle is repeating every 10 years or so). This virus has <span style="background-color: orange;">presently killed 81,478 humans all over the globe [1]</span> and is the result of a combination of factors (policing and regulatory sloppiness, lack of hygiene, disrespect for endangered species, disrespect for animal lives, etc.), thus constituting a clear case of a <span style="background-color: red; font-size: x-large;">CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY</span>, and must be pondered based on that undeniable reality.</b><br />
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<b>2) Governments had approximately two decades to have prepared for the likelihood that a SARS corona virus epidemic would reoccur, and what have we found out? No state was really prepared in logistic or any terms to successfully battle this problem, hence governments were forced to appeal to the most primary approach of quarantining and locking-down entire countries. <span style="font-size: large;">The health services had to appeal to people's common sense to avoid an epic tragedy with global proportions, remote schooling was deficient in many aspects, companies where remote working is a natural possibility but that was never really looked into (in days of 'peace') were caught unprepared; and the unpreparedness is observed through so many different channels of our social existence. One is forced to ask, what was done with the information scientists had disclosed through the many years since 2002/2003? Disregarded? Ignored?</span> Like the 2008 credit crunch, who is to pay the bill with rising unemployment, loss of property, loss of dignity, loss of stability, loss of freedom?, as we now understand how it is to be one of those caged animals in the wet market of Wuhan... devoid of liberty to choose, devoid of the most basic principle attributed to humans (<i>thinking </i>animals) since the moment they are born - <span style="background-color: orange;">the right to life</span>.</b><br />
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Now that we have some time in our hands to consider what it is to live enslaved and restricted of movements, with no choice but to wait for someone to decide for us on the worth of our most basic <i>item </i>- our lives -, it is time to think that animals do not have any choice when people are out and about their business, treating animal lives as their own property.<br />
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Some contemporary social networking philosophers state this is a time of spiritual and emotional change and that people will learn new visions on the world that surrounds us. Utter Bullshit! The moment our doors open to going back to our 'normal' lives it will be business again for the savage caging and exploitation of animals, brutal killing of animals, the irrational use of animals to fulfill every single void in our egoistic lives...<br />
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And the only illation that one can obtain from this is that <b><span style="background-color: orange; font-size: x-large;">We are in this situation because our governments and us (citizens) were irresponsible and selfish</span></b>, respectively.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Coronavirus - Total confirmed covid-19 deaths, World, Our world in data, University of Oxford, [https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus], last accessed on the 8th of April 2020, last update on the 8th of April 2020.</span></b></div>
Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-70447181753784630632020-03-30T13:47:00.001+01:002020-06-15T13:47:56.847+01:00Intelligence is an evolutionary aberration<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5gf98MXzQZOUZ1svLF_8tFNl8_jlDUTHIZF-nnMPWAPlqeBDvJUh-7Mc3DBifxIGath5Oyr15p_tHdL0gX4Ymh0SqhE19nlJ4Z70kKeWEJWPGUeALj0jXiQZ2HOSKMQN6kn8UBslUsSo/s1600/yash-raut-SehiGuvv_zQ-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1143" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5gf98MXzQZOUZ1svLF_8tFNl8_jlDUTHIZF-nnMPWAPlqeBDvJUh-7Mc3DBifxIGath5Oyr15p_tHdL0gX4Ymh0SqhE19nlJ4Z70kKeWEJWPGUeALj0jXiQZ2HOSKMQN6kn8UBslUsSo/s320/yash-raut-SehiGuvv_zQ-unsplash.jpg" width="228" /></a>The first thing people should have on their minds is that thinking is a form of meditation, of organising perceptions that are in need of alignment. And these perceptions need aligning in order to gain coherence, order, be adequately located, because in the universe everything goes from chaos to order if one wishes to thus so interpret the universe. In reality there is no chaos or order, only the 'is'. And this being hasn't got a reference entropy, we are the observers within our smallness or in our magnification, and we end up convincing ourselves that the reality at our eyes' reach needs order.<br />
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What in reality needs order is our interpretation of objects that we perceive so that when we are stricken by this enormous quantity of stimuli an idea can be formed, contextualised of comprehensible concepts, of truths, even though these are limited beforehand by our own emotional education, intellect and physics. It is the gift of seeing things, regardless of the eyes used in observing, that generates meditation. To meditate then becomes a fitting process more than a search for truth in the beyond. To mediate is a sincere form of admitting our difficulty to absorb the numerous elements that surround and affect us.<br />
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And everything affects us, even the small things we do not consider to be relevant. Within its littleness they reveal themselves, and touch us, they leave an intellectual and emotional trace with a practical meaning. The practical meaning of all is the 'being'. To be. By being, one fulfills the role of all that exists. By being, one fulfills the organic and inorganic form, the physical and ethereal form of all things. And all tends to exist and permute between two states, the supposedly invisible one and the apparently visible one; but even to be one of these states or to permute, there is need for a primary predisposition that does not come from egos or ideas. One exists just because. To exist is the unique state of all things, physical or non-physical, mental or tactile, old, modern, contemporary. The only structure of things that one sees, thinks, feels or do not feel, but idealises (even if it is in the ridicule of one's denial), and exists. The Universe exists, within and beyond itself and among itself, sit all explanations that are not explanations by nature. They emerge as explanations because we, thinking forms questioning the existence and wandering around the idiosyncratic values of existing, create questions for things that are not interrogations ... until someone sees in them the need for an explanation. To meditate is thus the organisation of order within the thinking and questioning 'organism' that wants to answer questions that do not exist, but that one decided to ask. The questions are then a tool of the thinking being, so to give an instrumental direction to this conflict, so to understand why it exists ... on the purpose of existing, on the logic of all that surrounds us and on the reason why have we, questioners, consciousness of our own existence and in a consequent manner, the need of expressing to ourselves of the many theories fabricated to explain our incomprehension. Above all what is to be extracted is that one exists. That is the acquired detail, the answer, the question, the statement, the exclamation, the starting point of all; no Big Bang or anything prior to it or prior to the creative/creation act. One exists. The way one exists is the real question. The imposing question is not and shall not be why one exists. Existing is the only shape of things, even of those we do not know yet and that for that matter we cannot shape (not even in thoughts). The question is uniquely and exclusively - <u>Why do I exist in this shape</u>?<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Why do I exist in this shape?</span></b><br />
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Before any physical-chemical, astrophysical, biological, biochemical and all other current scholastic derivations it is necessary to distinguish two determinant factors in the comprehension of the ALL and EVERYTHING:<br />
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1) Harmony in chaos is an existential language, and 2) Ego is natural, it is but a quality inherent to all, the identity card of all organic and inorganic forms, and it only gains anti-equilibrium idealisation when the mutation of the 'being just because' happens, for the 'aberration' called <b>intelligence</b>. It is in the intelligence that the object that exists uses ego and sees it as unique or needed for the comprehension of the cosmos (the cosmos being the infinite ALL and EVERYTHING). Considering that the ego is natural, a structure of attraction between forms, an energy so valid like the different electromagnetic forces exerted between electrons and atoms, and all the individualised and aggregated particles that conjecture through many wanderings; <b>ego </b>is the connection of being with its own state, the acceptance of its own role in the cosmos. Ego is purely and simply the accepting of all individualised things, that the natural state of things is to exist. But for ego an enormous 'problem' is reserved, the mutation of its natural state that within the normal transformations of matter generates different forms of being ... goes through different structural paradigms and acquires rhythm, until it eventually and never obligatorily, becomes intelligent. Intelligence is a mutation of the ego, it is the revelation to the being that among ALL and EVERYTHING there is the perception that ego IS and needs to subsist, remain, survive. But what need of surviving does a form that already exists, has always existed and will always exist, have? Even though eventually the ego has existed in different forms and different perspectives. Intelligence is the mutation. Intelligence is the derivation that makes ego - the identity card of all individual things -, review itself as an identity that undoubtedly needs to continue being that form.<br />
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MEN before becoming MEN was allegedly a simian. And before that was a microorganism floating around in a primitive soup. And even before that MEN was cosmic particles gravitating in pitch dark. Meaning that, MEN have always been; always existed as an object-form (regardless of the different concentration, aspect and identity taken). It is when such form aggregates and clusters into a human being that walks vertically, thinks, use tools, learns and judges him/herself, that the perceiving of Ego and the pressure exerted on ego admits that its own existence is in danger thus needing to account for its eminent destruction, incessantly looking for its own survival, when in reality what wants to survive is the <b>state of alertness called Intelligence</b>. Intelligence does not want to extinguish because it considers itself under constant threat coming from other things that simply ARE. Simply wants to operate as the controller of everything, as the key to existence of all things. Places itself as the core of the Universe, of all Universes, creates God(s) to explain what cannot be recalled because until it wakes up to its own perception it just was, ..., but under different formats; ..., creates a perception and substantiates it using selfishness as a justification shield of the need to always remain this self-conscious form. Intelligence is not the X-Factor, but the mutation inside the simple process; linear, multifaceted, of the existential chaos. That is the natural state of things. This has always existed, things will always exist, things will always have their own individualised identities (ego) and occasionally, some (yet rare) objects will 'meet' the mutation that will take them to becoming intelligent. Intelligent will acute the need for survival, chaos will increase, the energy will revolt for then to extinguish the intelligence-object and all go back to normal. Meaning that, in the process of becoming a survivalist, the intelligent being will not approach its own consciousness with humility but in a more negative, egoistic and greedy fashion. The only 'good' thing that is with the state of being human is the joy that is self-attributed in the orgasm. All the rest is a constant fight to acquire the power that guarantees exactly that joy. The more we try to be humans the more we act as animals for the 'selfish gene' is active (read 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins). The Male being spends anecdotally 90% of thinking time considering <b>sex for pleasure</b>, not due to pure hedonism but to compensate the addiction to dopamine, the vice. From the moment we are born we live addicted to pleasure as a means to produce dopamine that gradually levels down the need for more pleasure. Reproduction is thus a genetic expression of egoism that once again intends the ego to survive yet more individualised as competitors are closer.<br />
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I honestly believe that intelligent life is unnecessary because the need for intelligence forces an over-expression of an ego, '<i>a priori</i>'. Of an imbalanced existence within the known cosmos. Non-intelligent forms of life, regardless of the negation in the paradox itself, operate in homeostasis. Operate egoistically. Intelligence is therefore something toxic, not as positive as one might consider it. The meaning of it all resides in one thing, in my humble opinion; the thing we call LOVE. <b>PURE LOVE</b>. Only through love an egoistic being can correct the imbalance generated by over-expression of ego. Hence, people that do in fact love genuinely, putting their lives at risk for the <b>Greater Good</b>. Near death studies show that the answer for all resides in Love. Only Love can correct the imbalance.<br />
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In conclusion, my idea is that the perfect definition of existence is when there is no real intelligent life, but solely multidimensional consciousness and/or physical-chemical forms that are only willing to be part of the Whole, of the Everything. Intelligence is a disarray, a diversion in the cosmic picture. We, humans, are but the product of such imbalance that eventually is to be corrected, just like dinosaurs and the like were. Some scientists state that Mars had once intelligent life in a long long long past. And that such Life was eliminated by a huge war, a huge conflict. If that is true, once again the generated imbalance by the surfacing of intelligence was corrected. And so it will be through times. We humans will not be the first and we won't be the last examples.<br />
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Post image by Yash Raut on Unsplash</div>
Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7273796469174459389.post-17614400574588132452020-03-13T17:26:00.001+00:002020-03-15T00:15:28.970+00:00On the actual scientifically proven health benefits of Kombucha<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4YYXJSaJ-xHckgpEvzyRV-KMDehWrk8l06syOL6rfb2hETwMkTVYV2gbUoOLm_7xdh3GraGpBURDTy4yQ90rNw3Vhn58npU7siDRa71_q4GuISh3v-qZDDZevFNJ1aG34rySyk3kI45Q/s1600/tim-oliver-metz-cZIiXRX9PqE-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4YYXJSaJ-xHckgpEvzyRV-KMDehWrk8l06syOL6rfb2hETwMkTVYV2gbUoOLm_7xdh3GraGpBURDTy4yQ90rNw3Vhn58npU7siDRa71_q4GuISh3v-qZDDZevFNJ1aG34rySyk3kI45Q/s400/tim-oliver-metz-cZIiXRX9PqE-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a>I have been given Kombucha by a recent acquaintance and this mate of mine spared no time in positive adjectives about this <b>Thing</b>! This is the most accurate name I can attribute it since my wife tells me that it resembles her the Alien, by H. R. Giger. I had no idea what Kombucha was but at the same time I was no ignorant as to the potentials of many different probiotic elements out there in the food markets of our cities. Nevertheless, I must assume my ignorance, from Kefyr to a few other names I can't really recall having heard of Kombucha before in my life. </div>
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I had to ask him for a few pointers and then browse the web to get to know what exactly was all this Kombucha thing about. As it is usually my approach, when the information available for free on the web is of good quality (with proper scientific backing in terms of research papers and identifiable sources), I waste no time in producing posts about it. I realised that most of the information out there concerning Kombucha, especially that relating or scrutinising the health benefits for humans, is abundant in quantity but not so much in identifiable scientific references.</div>
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My idea was immediately to produce a series of easy responded-to questions with adequate sources that could complement the necessary information to one of the most ambiguous present ideas concerning Kombucha. It seems that there is immense unclear information based on broad assumptions as to the actual health benefits of Kombucha for us.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjabkj9VoxLRUWHK9tH1HNhllrrmMDmIJEcI63l2Dz9FchKTxyJig1oBef6szIeLerHXWzOJmvbVwrZJ0MuYtdh3ZhALexIVUk0tKqM7iIrNGBIxtOFZCmj1g_-BqlNo2mOuMv7q13fjQ/s1600/klara-avsenik-5cFqO92t7pM-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjabkj9VoxLRUWHK9tH1HNhllrrmMDmIJEcI63l2Dz9FchKTxyJig1oBef6szIeLerHXWzOJmvbVwrZJ0MuYtdh3ZhALexIVUk0tKqM7iIrNGBIxtOFZCmj1g_-BqlNo2mOuMv7q13fjQ/s400/klara-avsenik-5cFqO92t7pM-unsplash.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What is Kombucha?</span></b><br />
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Kombucha* is a traditional fermented tea drink (of pH ~2.5) supposedly originating from ancient East Asia (northeast China - Manchuria), and more recently Germany and Russia [1], that is obtained from the fermentation process of a <b>SCOBY </b>(<b>S</b>ymbiotic <b>C</b>ulture <b>O</b>f <b>B</b>acteria and <b>Y</b>east) in sweetened tea, and that after undergoing a flavoring process for a user-determined period of time (that typically goes by adding sliced fruits to the liquid and permitting a certain marination period), is served cold as a nutritious beverage believed to hold important health benefits for its consumers. Due to its content in different organic acids and the fermentation process that uses sucrose, the drink gains a bittersweet taste that ranges in acidity and fizziness according to the time the acetic acid bacteria and yeasts are allowed to metabolise and grow. </div>
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If you are willing to access comprehensive information on the microbiology, composition, fermentation process, toxicity and beneficial effects of this symbiotic partnership, please read the article by Jayabalan <i>et al</i>., 2014 [2].</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What are the actual scientifically proven health benefits of Kombucha?</span></b><br />
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The information available on the web is enormous in size, but also in anecdotal data. In this regard I tried as much as possible to distant myself from any speculative assumptions and focused entirely in direct, yet proven and referenced, scientifically-supported data. Most of these conclusions were obtained from research studies conducted in rodents and cell lines rather than immediately in human subjects. And to be fair, most of these results are only observed after a certain trial period without follow-up.<br />
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It is important to look into the original studies to understand the exact <i>ins </i>and <i>outs </i>of the mentioned observations, and also to accept that much needed human studies are not readily available (to the best of my knowledge). <u>The lack of studies in humans must be taken into account.</u> Regarding the listed benefits, please check [2, 4] for references:</div>
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- Mycotoxigenic,</div>
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- Hypoglycemic activity,</div>
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- Antioxidative stress against chromate,</div>
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- Longevity,</div>
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- Antistress activity against cold and hypoxia,</div>
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- Antioxidative stress against lead,</div>
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- Prevention of weight loss in diabetics,</div>
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- Prevention of postoperative intra-abdominal adhesion formation,</div>
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- Protection on chromosomal aberrations induced by γ -radiation,</div>
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- Protection on nephrotoxicity induced by trichloroethylene,</div>
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- Hypocholesterolemic effect,</div>
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- Healing property on indomethancin-induced gastric ulceration,</div>
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- Protection on phenol-induced cytotoxicity,</div>
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- Protection on mitomycin C-induced genotoxic effect,</div>
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- Hypoglycemic and antilipidemic properties against alloxan,</div>
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- Protective effects against oxidative stress-mediated damages in alloxan-induced diabetic rat,</div>
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- Amelioration of changes in trace element levels in electromagnetic field-exposed rats (950 MHz), </div>
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- Antihyperglycemic effect in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats,</div>
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- Attenuation of oxidative damage in electromagnetic field-exposed rats (950 MHz)</div>
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- Cytogenic activity.</div>
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A different article by Sreeramuu <i>et al </i>(2001) [3] analysed the antimicrobial activity of metabolites after a 14-day Kombucha fermentation period to attest of its inhibiting activity against pathogenic bacteria such as <i>Shigella sonnei</i>, <i>Escherichia coli</i>, <i>Salmonellaenteritidis</i> and <i>Salmonella typhimurium</i>, all bacteria that can cause diarrohea, stomach cramps, fever states and some other clinical manifestations due to associated infection progression.</div>
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In terms of harmful health effects the reports relate immediately to high consumption and consumption by susceptible individuals with underlying conditions [4]. The observations relate to internal lesions, perforation of the gastrointestinal tract due to acidosis and gastroenteritis (however this is easily avoided when the fermented drink is prepared under sterile conditions - <b>VERY IMPORTANT - and left to ferment from 7 to 10 days, in that sense the majority of spoilage pathogenic organisms will not develop as they cannot grow below a pH of 4.0 [5].</b><br />
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With all these in mind and considering that all my fermented brews based in Kombucha tea are performed in highly sanitary conditions, I will keep enjoying this very refreshing drink without worrying too much if its probiotic and nutritious effect is an immediate advantage. Nevertheless, animal data and studies on cell lines point towards benefits, although its also noted that <b>it is important to limit consumption so to avoid side effects; as it is important to also limit the fermentation times so to avoid a putative production of alcohol alongside.</b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Greenwalt, C. J., Steinkraus, K. H., Ledford, R. A. (2000). "Kombucha, the Fermented Tea: Microbiology, Composition, and Claimed Health Effects". J Food Prot, 63(7), pp. 976–981.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] </span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Jayabalan, R., Malbasa, R. V., E. S., Loncar, E. S., Vitas, J. S., and Sathishkumar, M. (2014). "A Review on Kombucha Tea—Microbiology, Composition, Fermentation, Beneficial Effects, Toxicity, and Tea Fungus". Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 13, pp. 538-550.</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Sreeramuu, G., Zhu, Y., Knol, W. (2001). "Characterization of Antimicrobial Activity in Kombucha Fermentation". Acta Biotechnol., 21(10, pp. 49-56.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Greenwalt, C. J., Steinkraus, K. H., Lefford, R. A. (2000). "</span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Kombucha, the Fermented Tea: Microbiology, Composition, and Claimed Health Effects". Journal of Food Protection, 63(7), pp. 976-981.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[5] Jay, J. M (ed.). 1992. Modern food microbiology, 4th ed. AVI, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">* In terms of denomination, Kombucha is simply the Germanised form of its original Japanese name Mo-Gu.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Images kindly obtained from Unsplash and credited via Twitter account of the Toxicologist Today.</span></b></div>
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Pudgethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18273516775788069194noreply@blogger.com0