Aging and the Severity of Inflammatory Infectious Disease Such as SARS-CoV-2
This article provides a pathophysiologic view of COVID-19 in older adults within the frame of inflammaging, with a focus on antiinflammatory treatments for acute and postacute disease.
How can Biology of Aging Explain the Severity of COVID-19 in Older Adults
Aging has been identified as one of the most relevant risk factors for poor outcomes in COVID-19 disease, independently from the presence of preexisting diseases. The COVID-19 mortality risk sharply increases for elderly subjects, as showed by the reports of China, Italy, and the United States. In particular, in Italy, case fatality rate for patient a...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 2, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Weekly Australian Health IT Links – 1 August, 2022.
Here are a few I have come across the last week or so. Note: Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.General Comment-----Quite a lot this week – especially regarding the NBN and Labor trying to regain control of what it is actually for – service provision – and not making a huge profit – in their view. Love the new Minister has ambitions to be maximally photogenic and not a ‘techie’!Otherwise all sorts of fun things!-----https://www.ausd...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - August 1, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
FDA Wisely Permits Pharmacists to Prescribe Paxlovid
Jeffrey A. SingerWhen the Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization to the antiviral drugs Paxlovid and monupiravir in the beginning of this year, I co ‐authored anoped in the New York Daily News, along with Josh Bloom of the American Council on Science and Health, complaining about, among other things, the FDA ’s requirement that a patient who tests positive for COVID must get a prescription from a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant to obtain the drug. For the drugs to be effective they must be started within five days of the start of COVID symptoms. Not ev...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 7, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 4th 2022
This study showed that centenarians had very specific changes in CD4+ T cell populations, which were manifested by an elevated Th17/Treg ratio in vivo, as well as a changed secretory phenotype. Although the T cells of centenarians cannot resist the aging-related expression of proinflammatory genes, their secretory phenotype was altered, explaining the relatively low level of inflammation in centenarians. These results suggested the presence of a mechanism to ameliorate inflammaging in centenarians. This may be achieved by reversing the imbalance of Th17/Treg cells and reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Longevit...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 3, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Influenza Vaccination Associated with a 40% Reduced Risk of Alzheimer's Disease
Researchers here note a sizable reduction in Alzheimer's disease risk in that part of the aged population that receives influenza vaccines. There is the usual question as to whether vaccination is a proxy for conscientiousness in health matters throughout later life, but here the focus is on biological mechanisms that might explain the effect. The most plausible to my eyes is the phenomenon of trained immunity, in which vaccination for a specific pathogen can provoke a general improvement in all functions of the innate immune system. This improvement includes reduced inflammation, and the chronic inflammation of aging is c...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 1, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Flu Is Making Comeback. Here ’s What We Can Do About It
Jeffrey A. SingerAfter being nearly absent in 2020 and 2021, influenza cases are making a comeback. In fact, cases are up ‐tickingunusually late in the year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)reported on April 15 that the majority of cases are H3N2, “antigenically different from the vaccine reference viruses.” This explains why the latest flu vaccine is only16 percent effective in reducing the chances of a moderate to severe infection. As of April 15, the CDC reported at least 4.3 million flu illnesses, 42,000 hospitalizations, and 2,500 deaths from the flu.Public health experts attribu...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 18, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
TWiV 887: Bonfire of the monocytes
TWiV explains why this season's influenza vaccine is not protecting against mild to moderate disease caused by H3N2 virus, and that antibody-dependent entry of SARS-CoV-2 into monocytes is a major contributor to severe COVID-19. (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - April 10, 2022 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: This Week in Virology antibody dependent enhancement coronavirus COVID-19 Fc receptor fucosylation glycosylation H3N2 inflammation influenza vaccine pandemic SARS-CoV-22 viral viruses Source Type: blogs
Lymphoid Follicle Chip Models Complex Immune Responses
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have created a microfluidic chip that contains lymphoid follicle-like structures, allowing them to model complex immune responses to various pathogens and vaccines. The breakthrough could let scientists to more comprehensively probe the complex workings of the immune system.
Lymphoid follicles are found in lymph nodes, and are the site of complex immune reactions which have not been easy to model in the lab to date. The new chip, called the LF chip, contains human B and T cells, and the Wyss researchers discovered that the cells would spontaneously form lymphoid follicle-like s...
Source: Medgadget - March 23, 2022 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Medicine Pathology Public Health Source Type: blogs
More on why we Stay Alive
A couple of days ago I referred to the doubling of human life expectancy in 100 years, and the importance of pasteurization of milk in making that happen. Our next installment is about water. There ' s nothing more basic than good old H2O, but it used to kill city dwellers about as often as milk. People actually figured this out even before Pasteur and Koch came up with the germ theory of disease.Cholera is an intestinal infection caused by a bacterium called Vibrio cholera, which is spread through contaminated water or food. The disease causes severe diarrhea that can last for several days. Depending on the strain of bact...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 21, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
TWiV 878: Shape matters sometimes
TWiV revisits chronic wasting disease of cervids and the ability of the prions to infect meadow voles and raccoons, and the suggestion that stochastic assembly of influenza virus particles may play a role in phenotypic diversity. (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - March 20, 2022 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: This Week in Virology cervid chronic wasting disease influenza virus prion transmissible spongiform encephalopathy viral viruses Source Type: blogs
Whither Covid?
I recommend this Twitter thread by John Burn-Murdoch, as most Americans and their political leaders have apparently decided that the pandemic is over. It isn ' t, although here in the U.S. we are in a better place than we were a year ago. In a nutshell, new cases and hospitalizations are rising in much of the world, including much of Europe. This isn ' t so much because of loosened mitigation measures, but because of the emergence of a new variant, Omicron B.A2 which is evidently even more contagious than the original Omicron and perhaps a bit better at getting around existing immunity. It ' s just starting to show up...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 18, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The (sort of, partial) Father mRNA Vaccines Who Now Spreads Vaccine Misinformation (Part 2)
By DAVID WARMFLASH, MD
This is part 2 of David Warmlash’s takedown of Robert W. Malone’s appearance (transcript) on the Rogan podcast. Part 1 is here
Menstruation and Fertility
Much more than the line about reproductive damage in the Wisconsin News clip that we used to open the story, Malone used the Rogan interview to dive more deeply into the topic, starting with:
…there’s a huge number of dysmenorrhea and menometrorrhagia…
By that, he meant excessive menstrual cramping and very heavy, often irregular, bleeding, which he followed up with:
…they DENY it…
Judging by other parts ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 18, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy antivaxxer COVID-19 vaccine David Warmflash Joe Rogan Robert Malone Source Type: blogs
Microfluidic Device for Quick and Accurate SARS-CoV-2 Testing
Researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, have created a microfluidic chip that can detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in less than 30 minutes, and with a similar level of accuracy as the current gold-standard test, PCR. The technology combines the speed of antigen tests with the accuracy of PCR and may be useful for point-of-care testing. The technique involves combining a few drops of saliva with fluorescent antibodies against the virus. Then, the saliva sample is passed through a microfluidic channel, where a laser illuminates bound fluorescent antibodies and an optical detector rapidly assesses if...
Source: Medgadget - March 1, 2022 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Public Health Source Type: blogs
‘Just Follow the Science’ Shows Some Improvement
Peter Van DorenDuring summer 2020 I wrote anessay about what science can and cannot do and the role it can play in public policy decisions including those pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic. I concluded that science explains relationships between cause and effect: no more and no less. No normative conclusions about individual or collective decisions follow directly from science. Instead, costs, benefits, and other values properly enter both individual and collective decisions.I have writtenthreetimessince then about gradual recognition of this argument among medical professionals as well as journalists. I a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 16, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Peter Van Doren Source Type: blogs
Photographing the Physics of Cells
Dr. Melike Lakadamyali with a microscope. Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Lakadamyali.
“It would be a dream come true if I could look at a cell within a tissue and have a Google Maps view to zoom in until I saw individual molecules,” says Melike Lakadamyali, Ph.D., an associate professor of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Her lab is helping make part of that dream a reality by developing super-resolution microscopy tools that visualize cells at a near-molecular level.
Blending Physics and Biology
Science and math fascinated Dr. Lakadamyali since childhood, ...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - February 2, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Cells Tools and Techniques Cellular Imaging Cellular Processes Cool Tools/Techniques Profiles Source Type: blogs
