Funding Zika But Forgetting Tuberculosis
On February 8, the day before the White House sent its Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget request to Congress, President Obama requested $1.8 billion in emergency funding to respond to the Zika virus at home and abroad. The World Health Organization (WHO) has proclaimed Zika a “public health emergency of international concern,” and governments have been in panic mode. But while there is certainly sufficient cause for alarm, let us not forget another grave threat to public health, which kills 4,400 people every single day and receives relatively little focus: Tuberculosis (TB).
TB has now surpassed HIV/AIDS as the leading cau...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - March 24, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: True Claycombe Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Global Health Public Health 2017 budget infectious disease Obama TB tuberculosis USAID WHO Source Type: blogs
Top secret, viruses with RNA genomes!
Today it is well known that viruses may contain DNA (poxvirus, mimivirus) or RNA (influenza virus, Zika virus), but for many years it was thought that genomes were only made of DNA. The surprise at finding only RNA in a virus is plainly evident in a 1953 letter from Harriett Ephrussi-Taylor to James D. Watson (pictured, Cold Spring Harbor Archives Repository*).
While DNA was discovered in the late 1800s, its role as genetic material was not proven until the famous experiments of McLeod, Avery, and McCarty, published in 1944. They showed that DNA from a strain of Pnemococcus bacteria that formed smooth colonies, when ...
Source: virology blog - March 24, 2016 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Basic virology Information DNA genetic information genome RNA tmv tobacco mosaic virus transformation viral viruses Watson Crick Source Type: blogs
Senate HELP Committee Continues Work on 21st Century Cures Corollary
Earlier this week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on a package of legislative measures that are targeted at facilitating medical innovation. This hearing, the second in a set of three, is the Senate's response to the House-passed 21st Century Cures Act (H.R. 6). We wrote about the first hearing, and a recap can be found here.
While the second meeting featured much partisan debate and fanfare, the Committee advanced all seven medical innovation measures before them, with six passing by voice and one measure passing by roll call vote of 20-2.
In opening statements, Senat...
Source: Policy and Medicine - March 22, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
To Improve Pandemic Preparedness, Update The Priority Review Voucher Program
Legislation recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would add the Zika virus to the list of diseases in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) priority review voucher (PRV) program. The Senate HELP Committee has also recently advanced similar legislation. This is a positive step that would help incentivize needed research and development (R&D) to fight the disease. However, it also illustrates the fact that the PRV platform could be used far more proactively to help address future pandemics before they strike.
Incentive For Innovation
In 2007 the US government created the PRV as an incentive to dri...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - March 22, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: Kenneth Gustavsen Tags: Drugs and Medical Technology Featured Global Health Congress Ebola FDA outbreaks pandemic priority review Research Zika Source Type: blogs
TWiV 381: Add viruses and Zimmer
On episode #381 of the science show This Week in Virology, Carl Zimmer joins the TWiV team to talk about his career in science writing, the real meaning of copy-paste, science publishing, the value of Twitter, preprint servers, his thoughts on science outreach, and much more.
You can find TWiV #381 at microbe.tv/twiv, or listen below.
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Download TWiV 381 (86 MB .mp3, 119 min)
Subscribe (free): iTunes, RSS, email (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - March 20, 2016 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: This Week in Virology Carl Zimmer copy-paste Discover Magazine ebolavirus National Geographic new york times preprint server publishing publishing embargo science outreach science writing The Loom viral viruses zika virus Source Type: blogs
Cultural Expectation and Prenatal Risk – A Matter of Justice
Leslie Ann McNoltyI recently co-authored a peer commentary in the American Journal of Bioethics on gender and the unequal management of pre-natal risks. The argument we made in AJOB has particular relevance to two issues recently in the news.Zika and the CDCFrom public health campaigns to care at the bedside, our culture views women as primarily responsible for physical reproduction. If and when men are assigned any kind or degree of reproductive-related responsibility, it is usually secondary and indirect. Examples of the asymmetrical assignment of responsibility between women and men abound, including two recent stories ...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 18, 2016 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Practical Bioethics Tags: Health Care CDC women fetal alcohol spectrum disorders syndicated zika virus Source Type: blogs
Zika Genome Sequences Available from NCBI
And now Zika. Dengue, Ebola, West Nile, MERS coronavirus, and influenza viruses each have their own resource for virus data retrieval at NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Data scientists at NCBI are working 24/7 to make information about Zika as accessible and searchable as possible—as quickly as possible. They know that making bioinformatics… (Source: NLM In Focus)
Source: NLM In Focus - March 17, 2016 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Posted by NLM in Focus Tags: Products Source Type: blogs
The End of Civilization and the Real Donald Trump
By ART CAPLAN
The pandemic started quietly. In the spring of 2017 A few hundred dead chickens appeared in markets in Hong Kong and a few other cities in China. Public health officials in China were slow to respond. They did not want to panic the public about an avian flu outbreak. Nor were they eager to take the steps necessary to contain such an outbreak—the killing hundreds of thousands of chickens and poultry with devastating economic consequences. While the delay went on a few cases began to occur on Canadian and American poultry farms. Department of Agriculture experts traced the outbreak to waterfowl ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: 2016 Election Uncategorized CDC Donald Trump Pandemic of 2017 Source Type: blogs
A Mosquito ExAC?
Okay, there's a scheme for a crazy big genomics project has bitten me, infecting my brain. It's definitely not something I'm in a position at all to execute on, but I throw it out as an idea in case anyone finds it useful. And admittedly, it is pretty much stealing straight from the ExAC human exome aggregation project, which contains huge numbers of human exomes. Behind all those is a lot of phenotype data. Now, inspired by recently re-reading Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague and also faced with daily news items on the Zika virus epidemic, I've had this question: what if the same approach wer...
Source: Omics! Omics! - March 13, 2016 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs
TWiV 380: Viruses visible in le microscope photonique
On episode #380 of the science show This Week in Virology, the TWiVeroos deliver the weekly Zika Report, then talk about a cryoEM structure of a plant virus that reveals how the RNA genome is packaged in the capsid, and MIVIVIRE, a CRISPR-like defense system in giant eukaryotic viruses.
You can find TWiV at microbe.tv/twiv, or you can listen below.
Click arrow to play
Download TWiV 380 (80 MB .mp3, 110 min)
Subscribe (free): iTunes, RSS, email (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - March 13, 2016 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: This Week in Virology amoeba birth defects capsid central nervous system congenital zika syndrome cowpea mosaic virus CRISPR/Cas cryoEM genome packaging Guillain-Barré syndrome intrinsic defense meningoencephalitis microcephaly Source Type: blogs
“Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in a breeding cocoon at a...
"Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in a breeding cocoon at a laboratory in Recife, Brazil. As the Zika virus spreads throughout the Americas, international health officials are anxiously monitoring Brazil's efforts to combat the virus and to establish definitively whether it causes #microcephaly, an incurable condition in which infants are born with abnormally small heads. Since researchers linked Zika to a surge in birth defects in babies, Brazilians have been calling the mosquito-borne virus a plague. The freelance photographer @limauricio has been documenting the effects of Zika in Brazil. This #nytweekender, we're sharing some ...
Source: Kidney Notes - March 13, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
“Aline da Silva Ferreira, 15, with her 4-month-old son,...
"Aline da Silva Ferreira, 15, with her 4-month-old son, Luís Guilherme, in Vertentes, a rural area in northeastern Brazil. Young parents, already struggling amid Brazil's worst economic crisis in decades, are wondering how to cope with the news that their babies have microcephaly, an incurable condition in which infants are born with abnormally small heads. Brazilians are now likening Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that is connected to #microcephaly, to something else entirely: a plague. This #nytweekender, we're sharing photos by @limauricio, a freelance photographer who documented a trail of Zika-borne anguish in #Brazil....
Source: Kidney Notes - March 13, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
“Germana Soares and her 2-month-old son, Guilherme, at...
"Germana Soares and her 2-month-old son, Guilherme, at home in Ipojuca, Brazil, in January. Not long ago, Germana, 24, and her husband were young and relishing Brazil's version of the American dream: buying a car, joining a church, starting a family. "It was that magical moment when everything seemed possible," Germana said. Then, in the 6th month of her pregnancy, the couple discovered how quickly their fortunes, like those of their nation, could change. Guilherme was born with #microcephaly, and scans confirmed that he had brain damage. "I thought Hawaii would be wonderful to see," Germana said. "All those big plans are ...
Source: Kidney Notes - March 12, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
“A municipal health agent in Recife sprayed insecticide...
"A municipal health agent in Recife sprayed insecticide last month to combat Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which transmit the #Zikavirus. Zika, once an obscure virus discovered in Uganda in the 1940s, was long thought to pose relatively little harm compared with some other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, like malaria and dengue. But as Zika spreads, international health officials are anxiously monitoring Brazil's efforts to combat the virus. This #nytweekender, we're sharing photos by @limauricio, a freelance photographer who has been on #nytassignment documenting a trail of Zika-borne anguish in Brazil." By nytimes on Ins...
Source: Kidney Notes - March 12, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
