Health Care-Illness
From WikiDemocracy
Bronze Age plague wasn't spread by fleas
by Anne Gibbons 22/10/15 Science
The plague has caused death and destruction in Europe at least since Roman times, launching at least three major pandemics that changed the course of history—the Plague of Justinian from 541 to 544, which weakened the Byzantine Empire; the Black Death, which killed almost half the population of Europe between 1347 and 1351; and the Great Plague of 1665, which lasted more than 30 years. Ancient DNA researchers have shown in recent years that Y. pestis caused all three of those pandemics. But until now, they were unable to determine whether Y. pestis caused reported plagues 2224 years ago in China and almost 2500 years ago in Greece. They suspected that ancient versions of the plague were not as devastatingly rapid in spread, but they could not test that idea because they lacked samples of the earlier pathogens.
Covid Update! That new mRNA smart bomb vaccine, and spike proteins causing Parkinson's
In the US we are in a pretty nice Covid valley with infections and sewage analysis showing low SARS CoV-2 activity. It’s still nothing like the good old days of 2021 and 2022 when we had some real breaks, and I diagnosed/treated some Covid cases here and there in my practice last month. Many more went undiscovered of course. About 1 in every 210 Americans has infectious Covid right now. The graphic above comes from PMC. Most experts are seeing a predictable summer wave building, probably to hit around mid July, fueled by variants like NB.1.8.1.
Global warming may increase the burden of obstructive sleep apnea
by Bastien Lechat 16/6/25 nature communications
High ambient temperatures are associated with reduced sleep duration and quality, but effects on obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity are unknown. Here we quantify the effect of 24 h ambient temperature on nightly OSA severity in 116,620 users of a Food and Drug Administration-cleared nearable over 3.5 years. Wellbeing and productivity OSA burden for different levels of global warming were estimated. Globally, higher temperatures (99th vs. 25th; 27.3 vs. 6.4 °C) were associated with a 45% higher probability of having OSA on a given night (mean [95% confidence interval]; 1.45 [1.44, 1.47]). Warming-related increase in OSA prevalence in 2023 was estimated to be associated with a loss of 788,198 (489,226, 1,087,170) healthy life years (in 29 countries), and a workplace productivity loss of 30 (21 to 40) billion United States dollars. Scenarios with projected temperatures ≥1.8 °C above pre-industrial levels would incur a further 1.2 to 3-fold increase in OSA burden by 2100.
Tree methane exchange in a changing world
by Vincent Gauci 19/6/25 nature reviews earth & environment
Tree surfaces facilitate methane (CH4) exchange between terrestrial systems and the atmosphere. In this Perspective, I consider methane emission and uptake in trees, the underlying mechanisms and their response to environmental changes. Methane emitted from trees predominantly originates in soils, being transferred through the stem. The highest tree methane emissions occur in waterlogged soil conditions. As such, trees in wetland and riparian forests are a net source of methane, with topical wetland trees emitting up to ~44 Tg CH4 yr−1. By comparison, trees on free-draining upland soils are a net sink of methane on the order of 50 Tg CH4 yr−1, with microbially mediated methanotrophy along the soil–tree continuum dominating the vertical attenuation of soil-derived methane fluxes.
Global warming may increase the burden of obstructive sleep apnea
by Bastien Lechat 16/6/25 nature communications
High ambient temperatures are associated with reduced sleep duration and quality, but effects on obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity are unknown. Here we quantify the effect of 24 h ambient temperature on nightly OSA severity in 116,620 users of a Food and Drug Administration-cleared nearable over 3.5 years. Wellbeing and productivity OSA burden for different levels of global warming were estimated. Globally, higher temperatures (99th vs. 25th; 27.3 vs. 6.4 °C) were associated with a 45% higher probability of having OSA on a given night (mean [95% confidence interval]; 1.45 [1.44, 1.47]). Warming-related increase in OSA prevalence in 2023 was estimated to be associated with a loss of 788,198 (489,226, 1,087,170) healthy life years (in 29 countries), and a workplace productivity loss of 30 (21 to 40) billion United States dollars. Scenarios with projected temperatures ≥1.8 °C above pre-industrial levels would incur a further 1.2 to 3-fold increase in OSA burden by 2100.
'Havana syndrome ’ and the mystery of the microwaves
Then Ambassador Stoessel, himself, fell ill - with bleeding of the eyes as one of his symptoms. In a now declassified 1975 phone call to the Soviet ambassador to Washington, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger linked Stoessel's illness to microwaves, admitting "we are trying to keep the thing quiet". Stoessel died of leukaemia at the age of 66. "He decided to play the good soldier", and not make a fuss, his daughter told the BBC.
America's Vaccine Rollout Disaster
New York Mag Dec 30 2020 David Wallace-Wells
It’s happening all over again. For months, Americans who despaired about the country’s coronavirus-suppression efforts looked desperately to the arrival of a vaccine for a kind of pandemic deliverance. Now that it has arrived, miraculously fast, we are failing utterly to administer it with anything like the urgency the pace of dying requires — and, perhaps most maddeningly, failing in precisely the same way as we did earlier in the year. That is, out of apparent, near-total indifference.
Blood Clots Linked to AstraZeneca Vaccine Stem From Rare Antibody Reaction
NYT By Denise Grady April 9, 2021
Scientific teams from Germany and Norway found that people who developed the clots after vaccination had produced antibodies that activated their platelets, a blood component involved in clotting. The new reports add extensive details to what the researchers have already stated publicly about the blood disorder.
Excess mortality during the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19)
The chart here shows excess mortality during the pandemic for all ages using the P-score.6 To see the P-scores for other countries click Add country on the chart.
Persistence and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in an Immunocompromised Host
[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2031364 New England Journal of Medicine 12/03/20
Although most immunocompromised persons effectively clear SARS-CoV-2 infection, this case highlights the potential for persistent infection5 and accelerated viral evolution associated with an immunocompromised state.
Extraordinary Patient Offers Surprising Clues To Origins Of Coronavirus Variants
NPR 2/02/21 MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF
The sequences showed Li and his team that the virus was changing very quickly inside the man's body. The virus wasn't picking up just one or two mutations at a time. But rather, it acquired a whole cluster of more than 20 mutations. Scientists had never seen SARS-Cov-2 mutate so quickly during the whole pandemic.
Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Findings in Competitive Athletes Recovering From COVID-19 Infection
Of 26 competitive athletes, 4 (15%) had CMR findings suggestive of myocarditis and 8 additional athletes (30.8%) exhibited LGE without T2 elevation suggestive of prior myocardial injury. COVID-19–related myocardial injury in competitive athletes and sports participation remains unclear.
'Toxic Individualism': Pandemic Politics Driving Health Care Workers From Small Towns
Rural hospitals were in deep trouble before the pandemic. Morgan says 132 of them have closed since 2010. COVID-19 made matters worse. The surge of desperately sick and highly contagious patients stopped hospitals from doing the lucrative elective outpatient procedures that keep them in business. Their small staffs have been run ragged. And the pandemic has filled the air with vitriol against medical expertise.
More than a quarter of all the public health administrators in Kansas quit, retired or got fired this year, according to Vicki Collie-Akers, an associate professor of population health at the University of Kansas. Some of them got death threats. Some had to hire armed guards.
Hunting for 'Disease X'
Sam Kiley Tue December 22, 2020
Humanity faces an unknown number of new and potentially fatal viruses emerging from Africa's tropical rainforests, according to Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and has been on the frontline of the hunt for new pathogens ever since.
"We are now in a world where new pathogens will come out," he told CNN. "And that's what constitutes a threat for humanity."
As a young researcher, Muyembe took the first blood samples from the victims of a mysterious disease that caused hemorrhages and killed about 88% of patients and 80% of the staff who were working at the Yambuku Mission Hospital when the disease was first discovered.
A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged
A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged Elemental Thomas Smith Aug 31·2020 8 min read
A closer look at the Bradykinin hypothesis
Earlier this summer, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee set about crunching data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples in an effort to better understand Covid-19. Summit is the second-fastest computer in the world, but the process — which involved analyzing 2.5 billion genetic combinations — still took more than a week.
According to the team’s findings, a Covid-19 infection generally begins when the virus enters the body through ACE2 receptors in the nose, (The receptors, which the virus is known to target, are abundant there.) The virus then proceeds through the body, entering cells in other places where ACE2 is also present: the intestines, kidneys, and heart. This likely accounts for at least some of the disease’s cardiac and GI symptoms.
The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000
<embed> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage </embed> NY Times By Denise LuAug. 13, 2020
Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
Smallpox and other viruses plagued humans much earlier than suspected
<embed> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02083-0?utm_source=Nature%20Briefing&utm_campaign=a0e80cbbed-briefing-dy-20200724&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-a0e80cbbed-42787455&fbclid=IwAR2saXk615K6gst45KlLNiavgGkaQrYa_kMrNYHCHXmsyAXq0331iZp_RYo </embed>Nature Laura Spinney 23 JULY 2020
The death date of smallpox is clear. After killing more than 300 million people in the twentieth century, it claimed its last victim in 1978; two years later, on 8 May 1980, the World Health Assembly declared that the variola virus, which causes smallpox, had been eradicated. But the origins of this devastating virus are obscure. Now, genetic evidence is starting to uncover when smallpox first started attacking people.
Humans as far back as AD 600 carried variola, an international research team reported this week1 after years of fishing for viral DNA in ancient human remains. The analysis also implies that the virus was circulating in humans even earlier: at least 1,700 years back, in the turbulent period around the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when many peoples were migrating across Eurasia.
Inside the body, the coronavirus is even more sinister than scientists had realized
Researchers exploring the interaction between the coronavirus and its hosts have discovered that when the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects a human cell, it sets off a ghoulish transformation. Obeying instructions from the virus, the newly infected cell sprouts multi-pronged tentacles studded with viral particles. These disfigured zombie cells appear to be using those streaming filaments, or filopodia, to reach still-healthy neighboring cells. The protuberances appear to bore into the cells’ bodies and inject their viral venom directly into those cells’ genetic command centers — thus creating another zombie.
We Have No Idea If Covid Immune Responses Fall Off Rapidly in Cases Where There Is A Full Response!
<embed> https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/13/1960485/-We-Have-No-Idea-If-Covid-Immune-Responses-Fall-Off-Rapidly-in-Cases-Where-There-Is-A-Full-Response?utm_campaign=spotlight </embed> DailyKos July 13 2020
We barely understand how the immune system works, actually, that isn’t completely accurate, we know parts of it. We know that a full response involves numerous cell types. Making antibody isn’t the end-all and be-all of the immune response. As I wrote above, long-term immunity requires T and other types of cells. We don’t even fully understand how long term anti-body responses work, completely. What triggers are necessary to get anti-body production upon reexposure? None of these studies are looking at the immune responses of the folks they are examining, they are looking at one aspect of a very complex system and drawing huge conclusions about the importance of the work.
COVID-19 Antibody Response Drops in 3 Months According to Kings College London Report in Review
In the first longitudinal study of its kind, scientists analysed the immune response of more than 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust and found levels of antibodies that can destroy the virus peaked about three weeks after the onset of symptoms then swiftly declined.
I'm a physiotherapist. Seeing the impact of Covid on survivors will haunt me forever
<embed> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/25/physiotherapist-seeing-impact-covid-survivors-haunt-forever </embed>
I’ve never seen anything like coronavirus before. Recovering will be a Herculean task for patients, but we are here to help. But never have I seen the cracked-glass effect on lung CT scans like those of Covid-19 patients. I have stared at them wondering where the breath is coming from, worrying if they will be able to conjure up the respiratory effort to sit, stand, step, move, live. Those scans will skulk in the depths of my brain for the rest of my days.
Clinical and immunological assessment of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections
| Nature Published: 18 June 2020
These data suggest that asymptomatic individuals had a weaker immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The reduction in IgG and neutralizing antibody levels in the early convalescent phase might have implications for immunity strategy and serological surveys.
<embed> https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/24/1955596/-Widely-cited-study-has-left-some-doubting-a-COVID-19-vaccine-is-possible-but-not-so-fast </embed>
