-Alexandra
Source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/feb/01/spread-of-measles-could-send-2550-students-home-if/
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Measles in Washington Update
The recent measles outbreak in a Washington county is still spreading and does not appear to be under control. The most recent count reports 42 infected individuals (only 5 were vaccinated). Infected individuals had travelled to as far as Hawaii on planes causing concern that the outbreak could be spreading farther than anyone would like to see. Furthermore, given the extremely low vaccination rates in Washington and Oregon, officials are suggesting that up to 2,500 children may have to stay home from school until they are either vaccinated or the situation is better controlled. Many vaccination clinics are being organized around the state and even into Portland. However, this is not to say that everyone is going to the clinic to receive the vaccination. Given the percentage of exempt students from vaccination throughout a single county in Washington, there is a lot of discussion around whether this will change current rules around the vaccination laws in Washington.
-Alexandra
Source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/feb/01/spread-of-measles-could-send-2550-students-home-if/
-Alexandra
Source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/feb/01/spread-of-measles-could-send-2550-students-home-if/
Ebola Prevention Education in the Works
Ebola is an extremely deadly, costly and easily contracted virus which has put many health workers at risk of contraction due to sheer lack of knowledge. With a world that has been connected like never before, viruses such as Ebola have been able to make their way out of rural areas and far away places, right onto the doorsteps of the US. As we saw in 2014, the US is not protected from Ebola and in fact cases of Ebola cost the US about $30-50,000 per case. This not only limits the number of hospitals that are able to treat it, but also put their workers at much higher risk for getting the disease. Seeing as contraction results in a 78% death rate, prevention is most likely the only viable solution to the problem.
One solution that the CDC and the World Health Organization are working on is a software educational package. The program is compiled of information from various sources and can be downloaded on mostly any computer system. Not only does the program have information about Ebola, but it also has a hands-on simulation that can evaluate individuals’ and teams’ ability to assess and respond to cases of the virus. After running the simulation through various cohorts of MUSC staff, the researchers found that it was able to increase overall knowledge by 19% as well as reduce the likelihood of critical incidences to 2.3%. More versions and adaptions are in the works but the MUSC is hoping that this solution will be a major step forward on the prevention front.
For more information:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190202171849.htm
-India Robinson
Capsid Geometry; are we sure all viruses aren’t complex?
Research from imaging viruses via Cryo-EM has elucidated a unique feature of viral morphologies, namely that there appears to be no such thing as a symmetrical virus. With the discovery last fall that electrons are indeed round, data involving
pictures of viruses, bacteria, and proteins now must be reanalyzed to give the true shape of these organisms and molecules. This finding in particular was useful for viruses which were then shown to be asymmetrical. Capsid Morphology is generally understood
to be separated into three groups: Icosahedral, Helical, or Complex. At this time, only Poxviridiae are considered to be complex in morphology given their biconcave structure. However, the understanding that electrons are round led researchers to reanalyze
viral Cryo-EM imaging data. This analysis, particularly as it applied to the flaviviruses analyzed in this paper, could no longer assume symmetry as the finding the electrons have shape meant that they could have different contributions to overall structure
of the structures they make up. It also means that the results of EM and Cryo-EM techniques could yield aberrations in the image associated with the shape of the illuminating electrons. After removing this requirement of the post-image analysis, researchers
found asymmetrical distortions on the outer capsid structure of the imaged flaviviruses. This asymmetric behavior has yet to be fully understood, but it
has been suggested that the irregular positioning of the nucleocapsid as it
exits the cell may be responsible. This is because the new virus must do more
work to pinch off the vesicle than to form an indentation in the host cell
surface. Additionally, it may be the case that these irregularities are
associated with many viruses budding from the surface of the host cell at once, leading to an effect where the budding of some virus particles overlap closely enough that there are irregularities in the capsid as it forms.
Of course, this means quite a lot for naked viruses. To start, the outermost protein essential to viral infectivity is orientationally dependent if the virus is asymmetrical. Given the role that the outermost protein is known to play in the infectious cycle
of these viruses, it will be important to quantify the effect, if any, that this new understanding of morphology may have on viral infectivity. Important questions continue to motivate research to determine if there is any population-wide or individual effects
of this asymmetric morphology on viruses and the damage they are able to cause in host cells, as well as to determine if this is known to influence the latency of viral infection in host cells.
~Kyle Enriquez
World Health Organization Highlights "Vaccine Hesitancy" Movement as a Top Global Threat to Public Health
This month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a new list of top global health threats that included the anti-vaccine movement alongside pandemic flu and ebola. Vaccine hesistancy, which is defined as delays or refusal of available vaccines, threatens to reverse progress against infectious disease. The anti-vaccine movement likely contributed 30% increase in cases of measles globally and a resurgence in countries where the disease had previously been close to elimination. The WHO names vaccines as "one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease", preventing 2-3 million deaths a year. The use of vaccines has been integral in the eradication of polio and HPV, two deadly diseases,
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, indicates that the inclusion of vaccine hesistancy is important to highlight the threat it poses to public health, arguing that it "threatens to undo" much of the progress made by public vaccination programs. While parents may underestimate the threat of diseases and want to spread out or avoid vaccinations, such disruptions in vaccination schedules may put children at risk of disease. Dr. Adalja emphasizes the importance of physicians determining the cause of their patient's hesistancy and attempting to address it reasonably.
For more, see: https://www.livescience.com/64523-anti-vaccine-movement-top-global-threats-who.html. For the list itself, see: https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019
-Ed
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, indicates that the inclusion of vaccine hesistancy is important to highlight the threat it poses to public health, arguing that it "threatens to undo" much of the progress made by public vaccination programs. While parents may underestimate the threat of diseases and want to spread out or avoid vaccinations, such disruptions in vaccination schedules may put children at risk of disease. Dr. Adalja emphasizes the importance of physicians determining the cause of their patient's hesistancy and attempting to address it reasonably.
For more, see: https://www.livescience.com/64523-anti-vaccine-movement-top-global-threats-who.html. For the list itself, see: https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019
-Ed
Friday, February 1, 2019
Transplant Surgeon Received New Heart with Hepatitis C, Becoming a Living Example for His Patients
Transplant surgeon and director of NYU Langone's Transplant Institute Robert Montgomery recently received a heart transplant using the heart from a heroin user who had hepatitis C. Until not long ago, such organs tended to remain unused or went to patients with hepatitis C. After the surgery, Dr. Montgomery contracted and recovered from the disease.
Having lived with familial cardiomyopathy, Dr. Montgomery now uses himself as a living example to his patients, whom he encourages to receive hearts with hepatitis C. While the U.S. opioid crisis remains an immense national tragedy, it has caused the number of available hepatitis C-positive organs to grow. Dr. Montgomery expressed, "This was an opportunity to both use an organ that we wouldn't have used and to kind of morally align myself with what I believed and had been telling people... I could have stayed in the hospital for months or even a year... So I could have waited a long time and may have died." More than any other year, in the first ten months of 2018 there were 1,631 hepatitis C-positive organ transplants; 1,058 were for patients without hepatitis C, according to the United Network of Organ Sharing.
As treatment for hepatitis C has become more than 95% effective and increasingly covered by insurance, hospitals can now use organs with hepatitis C successfully. While patients usually contract the disease within days of the surgery, taking an oral pill daily almost always cures them within a few months.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-transplant-surgeon-needed-a-new-hearteven-if-it-had-hepatitis-c-11548691100?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
-- Caroline Aung
Having lived with familial cardiomyopathy, Dr. Montgomery now uses himself as a living example to his patients, whom he encourages to receive hearts with hepatitis C. While the U.S. opioid crisis remains an immense national tragedy, it has caused the number of available hepatitis C-positive organs to grow. Dr. Montgomery expressed, "This was an opportunity to both use an organ that we wouldn't have used and to kind of morally align myself with what I believed and had been telling people... I could have stayed in the hospital for months or even a year... So I could have waited a long time and may have died." More than any other year, in the first ten months of 2018 there were 1,631 hepatitis C-positive organ transplants; 1,058 were for patients without hepatitis C, according to the United Network of Organ Sharing.
As treatment for hepatitis C has become more than 95% effective and increasingly covered by insurance, hospitals can now use organs with hepatitis C successfully. While patients usually contract the disease within days of the surgery, taking an oral pill daily almost always cures them within a few months.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-transplant-surgeon-needed-a-new-hearteven-if-it-had-hepatitis-c-11548691100?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
-- Caroline Aung
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Insecticides and the West Nile Virus
Just like we hear about superbacterias that build up antibiotic resistance, insecticide overuse is another major problem, and it’s allowing for selection of mosquitos that carry insecticide resistant genes. Researchers at L’Institut Pasteur in Paris observed Culex quinquefasciatus, a West Nile virus (WNV) mosquito vector to seek out an answer as to how insecticide resistance can change vector reaction with their pathogens.
When it comes to arthropod-borne viruses (aka arboviruses) such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and West Nile, there are no vaccines or therapy out there for them. To best avoid epidemics, controlling mosquito populations is the major intervention.
Using both insecticide resistant and insecticide susceptible Culex quinquefasciatus, and arboviruses West Nile Virus and Rift Valley Fever Virus (RVFV) researchers determined that for RVFV, vector competence remained the same whether the insect was resistant or not but for WNV, insecticide resistant mosquitoes transmitted the virus better than susceptible ones.
These results show that insecticide problems can quickly have other implications and suddenly become viral containment problems. If they do not already exist, protocols may need to be put in place in arbovirus susceptible areas.
More info here:
~Brittany Stinson
The Deadly Pig Virus Making its Way West
African swine fever is freaking out U.S. pork farmers everywhere. Last year at the Iowa Pork Congress, only a handful of farmers attended a session on threat of foreign animal diseases, this January, several dozen showed up expressing concerns about the spread of African swine fever across China and now it looks like it is beginning to spread to Russia and Eastern Europe. How and what exactly can farmers do to mitigate this threat?
The first goal is to contain the disease, that likely means euthanizing all pigs, stopping their movement and getting rid of a lot of feed and manure. It’s also possible that feed ingredients manufactured in China already contain the virus and are shipping it across the world.
What do we know about this virus? It’s a large DNA virus and can spread in several ways, as we know via pigs, but also people, latching on to and surviving on surfaces long enough to transmit to the next host. Farmers can get the virus on their shoes or it can end up in processed pork products where it can survive from weeks to months. It’s linked to hemorrhagic fever and high mortality rates in pigs, other hosts such as warthogs, bush pigs and soft ticks are infected without disease signs, making the illness even more transmissible.
This spread will no doubt mean major losses for the pork industry… although lower prices for bacon fans.
Read more at:
~Brittany Stinson
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