[Scientific article] The dissemination of staph infections in hospitals

From the ScienceDaily summary

Date:March 19, 2015
Source:PLOS
Summary:Wireless sensors recording human interactions explain the transmission of germs, such as MRSA, in hospitals, according to new research.

…

The results indicate that the study of individuals contact may help identify increased risk of transmission situations and ultimately reduce the burden of nosocomial S. aureus transmission.

The researchers say: “Contact networks have been increasingly used in modeling the spread of infectious diseases. Yet, the contacts collected were often incomplete or used proxies that were thought to capture situation at risk. In this unique experiment, the joint analysis of contact and carriage validates the use of close-proximity interactions recorded by electronic devices, and opens a new field for prevention measures in hospitals.”

…

[News article] Injectable 3-D vaccines could fight cancer, infectious diseases

From the 8 December 2014 ScienceDaily article

Date:December 8, 2014

 Source:Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard

Summary:

A non-surgical injection of programmable biomaterial that spontaneously assembles in vivo into a 3-D structure could fight and even help prevent cancer and also infectious disease such as HIV, scientists have demonstrated. Tiny biodegradable rod-like structures made from silica, known as mesoporous silica rods (MSRs), can be loaded with biological and chemical drug components and then delivered by needle just underneath the skin, they explain.

…

Their findings are reported in Nature Biotechnology.

“We can create 3D structures using minimally-invasive delivery to enrich and activate a host’s immune cells to target and attack harmful cells in vivo,” said the study’s senior author David Mooney, Ph.D., who is a Wyss Institute Core Faculty member and the Robert P. Pinkas Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard SEAS.

Tiny biodegradable rod-like structures made from silica, known as mesoporous silica rods (MSRs), can be loaded with biological and chemical drug components and then delivered by needle just underneath the skin. The rods spontaneously assemble at the vaccination site to form a three-dimensional scaffold, like pouring a box of matchsticks into a pile on a table. The porous spaces in the stack of MSRs are large enough to recruit and fill up with dendritic cells, which are “surveillance” cells that monitor the body and trigger an immune response when a harmful presence is detected.

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Global Health: Time to Pay Attention to Chronic Diseases

From the 1 Ju;ly 2014 blog post

…While infectious diseases remain a significant problem in the developing world, cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases are now among the fastest growing causes of death and disability around the globe. In fact, nearly three-quarters of the 38 million people who died of chronic diseases in 2012 lived in low- or middle-income countries [1].

…

The good news is that many NCDs can be prevented by making lifestyle changes, such as reducing salt intake for hypertension, stopping smoking for cancer and heart disease, or venting cookstove fumes for lung disease. Other NCDs can be averted or controlled by taking medications, such as statins for high cholesterol or metformin for diabetes.

 

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[Press release] Stigmas, once evolutionarily sound, are now bad health strategies

Cannot but think of the New Testament headings, especially of lepers.

Stigmas, once evolutionarily sound, are now bad health strategies.

Stigmatization may have once served to protect early humans from infectious diseases, but that strategy may do more harm than good for modern humans, according to Penn State researchers.

“The things that made stigmas a more functional strategy thousands of years ago rarely exist,” said Rachel Smith, associate professor of communication arts and sciences and human development and family studies. “Now, it won’t promote positive health behavior and, in many cases, it could actually make the situation worse.”

Stigmatizing and ostracizing members stricken with infectious diseases may have helped groups of early humans survive, said Smith, who worked with David Hughes, assistant professor of entomology and biology. Infectious agents thrive by spreading through populations, according to Smith and Hughes, who published an essay in the current issue of Communication Studies.

For early humans, a person who was stigmatized by the group typically suffered a quick death, often from a lack of food or from falling prey to a predator. Groups did not mix on a regular basis, so another group was unlikely to adopt an ostracized person. Infectious disease stigmas may have evolved as a social defense for group-living species, and had adaptive functions when early humans had these interaction patterns.

However, modern society is much larger, more mobile and safer from predators, eliminating the effectiveness of this strategy, according to Smith.

“In modern times, we mix more regularly, travel more widely, and also there are so many people now,” Smith said. “These modern interaction patterns make stigmatization unproductive and often create more problems.”

Hughes studies disease in another successful society, the ants, which have strong stigma and ostracism strategies that serve group interests at the cost to individuals.

“Ants are often held up as paragons of society and efficiency but we certainly do not want to emulate how they treat their sick members, which can be brutal,” said Hughes.

Stigmatization could actually make infectious disease management worse. The threat of ostracization may make people less likely to seek out medical treatment. If people refuse to seek treatment and go about their daily routines, they may cause the disease to spread farther and faster, according to the researchers, who are both investigators in the Center of Infectious Disease Dynamics in Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.

Stigmatization may harm a person’s ability to survive a disease. Ostracization may increase stress, lessening the body’s ability to fight off diseases and infections.

“People are very sensitive to rejection and humans worry about being ostracized,” said Smith. “These worries and experiences with rejection can cause problematic levels of stress and, unfortunately, stress can compromise the immune system’s ability to fight off an infection, accelerating disease progression.”

Once applied, a stigma is difficult to remove, even when there are obvious signs that the person was never infected or is cured. Health communicators should make sure they intentionally monitor if their public communication or intervention materials create or bolster stigmas before using them, Smith said.

Related articles

• Ostracism a bad health strategy in modern world

[Press release] Guarded welcome for new type of drug

From the January 2014 news item at Edinburg University

New types of drug intended for use in place of antibiotics have been given a cautious welcome by scientists.

University researchers have been probing the long-term effectiveness of drugs currently being developed by the pharmaceutical industry.

These work by limiting the symptoms caused by a bug or virus in the body, rather than killing it outright.

These treatments are designed to avoid the problem of infections becoming resistant to treatment, which has become widespread with antibiotics.

This approach is intended to enable the patient to tolerate disease, and buy the immune system valuable time to get rid of the infection naturally.

Disease spread

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Liverpool created a mathematical model to look at how at how drugs that limit the damage caused by disease could affect how infections spread and evolve.

They found that for certain infections, where the symptoms are not linked to the spread of disease, these drugs may prevent disease from evolving too quickly.

They will be useful over longer periods of time.

However, scientists caution that people given damage limitation treatments may appear healthy, but carry high levels of infection and so may be more likely to pass on disease.

In addition, people with lesser symptoms could remain undiagnosed and add to the spread of disease.

Their study was published in PLoS Biology.

In treating infections with drugs, we change their environment, but bacteria and other infectious agents are incredibly good at adapting to their environment. Damage limitation therapies may be a useful alternative to antibiotics, but we should be cautious, and investigate their potential long-term consequences. Limiting damage may work for the individual, but could, in some cases, increase disease spread.

Dr Pedro Vale

School of Biological Sciences

 

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• Contagious or Not: A dissection of infectious disease

 

[Press release] Measles Still Threatens Health Security

English: Estimated immunization coverage with Measles-containing vaccine (WHO 2010) Deutsch: Geschätzte Immunisierungsrate mit Masernimpfstoff (WHO 2010) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 5 December 2013 CDC Press Release

 

Measles Still Threatens Health Security

On 50th Anniversary of Measles Vaccine, Spike in Imported Measles Cases

Fifty years after the approval of an extremely effective vaccine against measles, one of the world’s most contagious diseases, the virus still poses a threat to domestic and global health security.

On an average day, 430 children – 18 every hour – die of measles worldwide. In 2011, there were an estimated 158,000 measles deaths.

In an article published on December 5 by JAMA Pediatrics, CDC’s Mark J. Papania, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues report that United States measles elimination, announced in 2000, has been sustained through 2011. Elimination is defined as absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months. Dr. Papania and colleagues warn, however, that international importation continues, and that American doctors should suspect measles in children with high fever and rash, “especially when associated with international travel or international visitors,” and should report suspected cases to the local health department. Before the U.S. vaccination program started in 1963, measles was a year-round threat in this country. Nearly every child became infected; each year 450 to 500 people died each year, 48,000 were hospitalized, 7,000 had seizures, and about 1,000 suffered permanent brain damage or deafness.

People infected abroad continue to spark outbreaks among pockets of unvaccinated people, including infants and young children. It is still a serious illness: 1 in 5 children with measles is hospitalized. Usually there are about 60 cases per year, but 2013 saw a spike in American communities – some 175 cases and counting – virtually all linked to people who brought the infection home after foreign travel.

“A measles outbreak anywhere is a risk everywhere,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “The steady arrival of measles in the United States is a constant reminder that deadly diseases are testing our health security every day. Someday, it won’t be only measles at the international arrival gate; so, detecting diseases before they arrive is a wise investment in U.S. health security.

Eliminating measles worldwide has benefits beyond the lives saved each year. Actions taken to stop measles can also help us stop other diseases in their tracks. CDC and its partners are building a global health security infrastructure that can be scaled up to deal with multiple emerging health threats.

Currently, only 1 in 5 countries can rapidly detect, respond to, or prevent global health threats caused by emerging infections. Improvements overseas, such as strengthening surveillance and lab systems, training disease detectives, and building facilities to investigate disease outbreaks make the world — and the United States — more secure.

“There may be a misconception that infectious diseases are over in the industrialized world. But in fact, infectious diseases continue to be, and will always be, with us. Global health and protecting our country go hand in hand,” Dr. Frieden said.

Today’s health security threats come from at least five sources:

• The emergence and spread of new microbes
• The globalization of travel and food supply
• The rise of drug-resistant pathogens
• The acceleration of biological science capabilities and the risk that these capabilities may cause the inadvertent or intentional release of pathogens
• Continued concerns about terrorist acquisition, development, and use of biological agents.

“With patterns of global travel and trade, disease can spread nearly anywhere within 24 hours,” Dr. Frieden said. “That’s why the ability to detect, fight, and prevent these diseases must be developed and strengthened overseas, and not just here in the United States.”

The threat from measles would be far greater were it not for the vaccine and the man who played a major role in creating it, Samuel L. Katz, M.D., emeritus professor of medicine at Duke University. Today, CDC is honoring Dr. Katz 50 years after his historic achievement. During the ceremony, global leaders in public health are highlighting the domestic importance of global health security, how far we have come in reducing the burden of measles, and the prospects for eliminating the disease worldwide.

Measles, like smallpox, can be eliminated. However, measles is so contagious that the vast majority of a population must be vaccinated to prevent sustained outbreaks. Major strides already have been made. Since 2001, a global partnership that includes the CDC has vaccinated 1.1 billion children. Over the last decade, these vaccinations averted 10 million deaths – one fifth of all deaths prevented by modern medicine.

“The challenge is not whether we shall see a world without measles, but when,” Dr. Katz said.

“No vaccine is the work of a single person, but no single person had more to do with the creation of the measles vaccine than Dr. Katz,” said Alan Hinman, M.D., M.P.H., Director for Programs, Center for Vaccine Equity, Task Force for Global Health. “Although the measles virus had been isolated by others, it was Dr. Katz’s painstaking work passing the virus from one culture to another that finally resulted in a safe form of the virus that could be used as a vaccine.”

 

 

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• Measles still poses threat to U.S. despite being “eliminated” (cbsnews.com)
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[Repost] IPhone App Wipes Out Population to Show Contagion Risks

From the 11 November 2013 Bloomberg article

The plague started in Indonesia. A viral infection, it spread quietly at first, making its way from person to person with coughing and sneezing its only symptoms. Then someone infected with the virus got on a plane.

As the disease spread around the globe, fever gave way to sweating, nausea, vomiting. Hundreds infected turned to thousands. The virus developed drug resistance. Thousands became millions.

It was all part of Ian Lipkin’s plan.

The Columbia University virus hunter wasn’t using his decades of experience researching infectious disease for evil. He was playing Plague Inc., a game for iPhone, iPad and Android. With more than 15 million downloads since its release last year, Plague Inc. has captured the attention of gamers and public health officials alike. The latter see it as a tool for raising awareness of the real-world risk of pandemics at a time when public funding for medical research is under pressure.

…

 

Read entire article here

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[Repost] Study explores the role of uncertainty in infectious disease modelling

 

[From the university’s press release at

http://www.liv.ac.uk/research/news/articles/the-role-of-uncertainty-in-infectious-disease-modelling/index.htm]

 

From the 20 October 2013 EurkAlert

Research by scientists at the University of Liverpool has found that greater consideration of the limitations and uncertainties present in every infectious disease model would improve its effectiveness/usefulness and value.

Infectious disease dynamical modelling plays a central role in planning for outbreaks of human and livestock diseases, in projecting how they might progress and guiding and informing policy responses.

Modelling is commissioned by governments or may be developed independently by researchers. It has been used to inform policy decisions for human and animal diseases such as SARS, H1N1 swine influenza, foot-and-mouth disease and is being used to inform action in the campaign to control bovine TB.

In a study published in PLOS One, researchers analysed scientific papers, interviews, policies, reports and outcomes of previous infectious diseases outbreaks in the UK to ascertain the role uncertainties played in previous models and how these were understood by both the designers of the model and the users of the model.

They found that many models used to respond to epidemics provided only cursory reference to the uncertainties of the information and data or the parameters used. Whilst the models were uncertain many still informed action.

Dr Rob Christley, from the University’s Institute of Infection and Global Health, said: “It is accepted that models will never be able to predict 100% the size, shape or form of an outbreak and it is recognised that a level of uncertainty always exists in modelling. However, modellers often fear detailed discussion of this uncertainty will undermine the model in the eyes of policy makers.

“This study found that the uncertainties and limitations of a model are sometimes hidden and sometimes revealed, and that which occurs is context dependent.

“Whilst it isn’t possible to calculate the level of uncertainty, a better understanding and communication of the model’s limitations is needed and could lead to better policy.”

A model is produced by individuals who have to decide what is important and need to bring together data and information which could include population data, age of population, proximity, type of disease. Uncertainty can occur at all stages of the process from weaknesses in the quality and type of data used, assumptions made about the infectious agent itself, and about the world in which the disease is circulating, all the way through to the technical aspects of the model.

 

###

 

The research team comprised veterinary scientists and epidemiologists, sociologists, microbiologists and environmental scientists.

The research, undertaken in collaboration with the University of Lancaster and funded by the UK Research Councils’ Rural Economy and Land Use is, is published in PLOS One.

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[Reblog] How Climate Change Is Fueling A Rise In Deadly Diseases

From the 21 July 2013 post at 2 degrees Centigrade

By Sy Mukherjee on July 17, 2013

In the summer of 2012, the mosquito-borne West Nile virus made a surprising comeback in America. In Dallas, the most affected region, 400 people contracted the disease and 19 of them died. That came as a shock to public health officials, since West Nile virus was thought to be in such precipitous decline that it was practically eradicated.

Now, a little detective work has led epidemiologists to the reason for its resurgence: warmer winters and wetter springs. In other words, the consequences of global climate change are fueling West Nile. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Health officials expect the number of people contracting other infectious diseases to rise right alongside global temperatures.

The diseases that are propagated by climate change tend to come in fungal, algal, tick-borne, and mosquito-borne forms. For instance, dengue fever — which causes a high fever, painful head and body aches, and rashes — will likely continue infecting Americans in hot and humid climates, as well as regions that are close to warming oceans:

Read the entire article here

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Novel Approaches Needed to End Growing Scourge of ‘Superbugs’

A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 23 January 2013 article at Science Daily

 

With the rising awareness of the so-called “superbugs,” bacteria that are resistant to most known antibiotics, three infectious disease experts writing in the Jan. 24 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine called for novel approaches based on a “reconceptualization of the nature of resistance, disease and prevention.”

 

…

 

 

 

 

“Antibiotic-resistant microbes infect more than 2 million Americans every year and kill more than 100,000 annually,” said Brad Spellberg, M.D., a Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center lead researcher and one of the authors of the viewpoint article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “They spread rapidly, even in such seemingly harmless places as high school locker rooms, where they infect young athletes, and they can make mundane urinary or intestinal infections life-threatening. At the same time, the development of new antibiotics to treat these infections is plummeting, leading to our call for entirely new approaches to the problem.”

 

Dr. Spellberg, author of the book, “Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them,” authored the article with Drs. John G. Bartlett and David N. Gilbert, both past presidents of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

 

The article’s authors called for continuing the traditional practices in “infection control, antibiotic stewardship, and new antibiotic development.” But they also write that the World Economic Forum’s recent conclusion that antibiotic-resistant bacteria represent “arguably the greatest risk…to human health” underscores the need for new approaches as well.

 

New interventions are needed

 

• “to prevent infections from occurring in the first place,
• to encourage new economic models that spur investment in anti-infective treatments,
• to slow the spread of resistance in order to prolong the useful lives of antibiotics,
• to discover new ways to directly attack microbes in a manner that does not drive resistance, or to alter host-microbe interactions in order to modify disease without directly attacking microbes,” the researchers wrote.

 

Among their recommendations are

 

• stricter monitoring and controls for prescribing antibiotics and
• changes in hospital practices, including greater disinfection and
• less usage of invasive materials than can transmit antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the body.

 

They recommended new regulatory approaches to encourage antibiotic development, such as the Limited Population Antibiotic Drug (LPAD) proposal from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. They said this proposal would encourage the development new antibiotics by allowing their approval based on smaller, less expensive clinical trials.

 

They also called for new approaches to treating infections caused by bacteria. Rather than attacking the microbes causing the infection, the researchers urged scientists to pursue new courses of discovery that either “moderate the inflammatory response to infection or that limit microbial growth by blocking access to host resources without attempting to kill microbes.”

 

Read the entire article here

 

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Forgetting About the Killers ( A clinicians view on why vaccinations are important)

 

A child receives oral polio vaccine during a 2002 campaign to immunize children in India. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

A longish blog from a college clinician perspective. I believe our immune system can be strengthened by nutrition and exposure to germs (as childhood playing in dirt, use of soaps which are not anti-microbial). However, vaccinations are critical for good public health.
My experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa confirmed this. If it were not for vaccinations against diseases rampant there, I know I would have contracted them. And I saw folks suffering from diseases that could have been prevented (as polio).

 

From the blog

 

It’s only been a little over fifty years since vaccinations became routine for the childhood killers like polio, measles, mumps and whooping cough.  People my age and older had no choice but to suffer through childhood infectious diseases given how effectively and quickly they spread through a community.   Most of us survived, subsequently blessed with life long natural immunity.  Some did not survive.  And I think we’ve forgotten that.

As a physician, I help enforce vaccination requirements for a medium-sized university.  A day doesn’t go by without my having a discussion with a prospective student (or more likely the student’s parent) about the necessity for our requirement for proof of  mumps, measles, rubella vaccination immunity.  I have been labeled a Nazi, a Communist, a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry and many more unprintable names because I happen to believe in the efficacy of modern vaccine to help keep a community free of infectious disease outbreaks that will kill people.

We have forgotten these are honest to goodness killers of healthy human beings.  We forget that unvaccinated children continue to die in developing countries for lack of access to vaccine.   Yet educated and well-meaning American parents make the decision daily to leave their children unvaccinated, believing they are doing the best thing for their children by protecting them from potentially rare and often unproven vaccine side effects.    I’ve had caring loving parents tell me that God will provide the needed immunity if their child gets sick so taking the risk of a vaccine is unnecessary.    I’ve had other caring loving parents tell me that foreign substances have no place in their child’s body and they would rather take their chances with a virus or bacteria. Actually they are banking that everyone else will be vaccinated.  The problem is:  guess again.  There are now too many deciding that they are the ones who can remain vaccine-free.

Whooping cough (pertussis) is dramatically on the rise for the past two years in several states, resulting in some infant deaths and countless hospitalizations.  This is a completely preventable illness….

 

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Resist the urge to label everything a disease

Patients. PARAGUAY (Photo credit: Community Eye Health)

From the 7 July 2011 post at KevinMD.com

Every patient is the only patient.
– Arthur Berarducci

Each person in need brings to us a unique set of qualities that require unique responses.
– Don Berwick

Disease-ify: To generalize and then classify a unique person’s health complaint in order to match them with an effective remedy that ends to encounter; often done out of convenience, expedience, or for profit.

Unique is a funny word. Every time I come across it, I am reminded of my high school English teacher’s admonition that qualifying the word–very unique, kind of unique–is inappropriate. Things are either unique, one of a kind, or not.

 

Although Dr. Berwick did not have my English teacher, I think he would agree that each patient’s presentation is unique in this sense; it is one of a kind. Even the most mundane complaint is buried in a rich social and genetic context that simply cannot be reduced to a chief complaint.

As a moral enterprise, medicine seeks to serve patient interests, and few interests supersede the need to be treated as the unique identities that we are. …

New report highlights need for action on health in the aftermath of war

From the 31 December 2011 Eureka News Alert

Issue of noncommunicable diseases in post-conflict countries must be addressed

Countries recovering from war are at risk of being left to their own devices in tackling non communicable diseases, leaving an “open door” for exploitation by alcohol, tobacco and food companies, health experts warn.

Writing in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Bayard Roberts and Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Preeti Patel, of King’s College London, argue that the post-conflict environment risks increases of mental health problems and other NCDs, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer.

After exposure to violent and traumatic events, people may be prone to developing harmful health behaviours, such as excessive drinking and smoking, which exacerbate the problem of NCDs in the long-term. This is why the lack of a strong will from the authorities to restore the health system leaves an open door for commercial ventures to influence health policy to their advantage.

The authors write: “This toxic combination of stress, harmful health behaviours and aggressive marketing by multinational companies in transitional settings requires an effective policy response but often the state has limited capacity to do this.”

Afghanistan has no national policy or strategy towards NCDs and, apart from the European Commission, none of its partners has given priority to introduce and support them. High blood pressure is largely untreated in Iraq, three times as many people die prematurely from NCDs in Libya than from infectious diseases and similar patterns can be found in other countries recovering from conflict.

“This policy vacuum provides an open door for multinational companies to influence policies in ways that undermine efforts to control tobacco and alcohol use or improve unhealthy diets in transitional countries,” the experts say.

Little attention is paid in reconstruction and humanitarian efforts to helping countries emerging from conflict deal with their present or future burden of NCDs – with the topic virtually ignored during the United Nations high-level meeting on NCDs in September 2011. The authors argue that this gap must be filled, pointing out that the post-conflict period can provide an opportunity to completely rewrite strategies and undertake reforms to better address the health needs of a population and lay the foundations for a more efficient health system.

Dr Roberts, a lecturer in the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition at LSHTM, says: “While great attention is rightly paid to infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases should also be given attention –especially as the post-conflict environment can provide the perfect breeding ground for unhealthy activities like smoking, drinking and poor diet. We are making the argument that if the authorities do not step up to lead the way in developing policies which will benefit public health, then they leave the route clear for companies to step in and serve their own interests.”

Related articles

• Noncommunicable Disease Epidemic (bigthink.com)
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Drugs Used To Overcome Cancer May Also Combat Antibiotic Resistance

Image by Ethan Hein via Flickr Antibiotic Resistance

Drugs Used To Overcome Cancer May Also Combat Antibiotic Resistance

From the Fri Dec 23, 2011 Medical News Today article

Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance, finds a new study led by Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University. “Our study found that certain proteins, called kinases, that confer antibiotic resistance are structurally related to proteins important in cancer,” says Wright about the study published in Chemistry & Biology…

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• Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance: McMaster researchers (eurekalert.org)
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Missed Opportunity To Transform Global HIV/AIDS Fight Reported By Tropical Disease Experts

 

English: Estimated HIV prevalence among young adults (15-49) by country. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map-of-HIV-Prevalance-in-Africa.png

 

From the 12 December 2011 Medical News Today article 

Global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts are missing a major opportunity to significantly improve health conditions in poor countries by simply adding low-cost care for the many other chronic and disabling diseases routinely afflicting and often killing these same patients, according to a panel of disease experts who spoke at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).

“People want better health; they do not understand why we silo diseases,” said Judd Walson, a global health and infectious disease expert at the University of Washington. “If you die from malaria, you don’t care that your HIV was treated. Communities want us to leverage the resources we have to treat and prevent disease as effectively as possible.”

Walson and his colleagues on the panel noted that many victims of HIV/AIDS also typically suffer from one or more of about 17 neglected, but burdensome, tropical diseases often called “diseases of poverty” because they prey on the “bottom billion” – the world’s poorest people. They include ailments such as trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and onchocerciasis, all of which are either insect-borne disease, bacterial infections, or caused by parasitic worms.

Despite the illness and deaths attributable to these diseases, proposed US funding for fighting them was only about $155 million in 2011, or about 3 percent of the $5.6 billion invested in HIV/AIDS efforts. Moreover, the programs often exist in isolation from one another with, for example, many programs restricting support only to antiretroviral drugs to treat AIDS.

Yet tropical disease experts note that in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where neglected diseases affect 1.4 billion people, co-infections with HIV are common. And they see mounting evidence that dealing with multiple diseases at the same time and in the same place is more cost-effective and clinically beneficial.

Walson pointed to a program in Western Kenya that focused on a community suspected of having high levels of HIV but whose remote location made it hard to reach to conduct testing. The program promised access to free bed nets and water filters to those residents who came in for a test. In just six days, some 10,000 residents turned out for the free nets and filters. The result: 1181 people were found to be HIV positive and referred to care while thousands of people gained new tools for preventing malaria and water-borne diseases. …….

Related articles

• Tropical disease experts report missed opportunity to transform global HIV/AIDS fight (eurekalert.org)
• Tropical disease experts report missed opportunity to transform global HIV/AIDS fight (medicalxpress.com)
• World AIDS Day: American Indians Join the Fight ‘Getting to Zero’ New HIV Infections (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
• Doctors Without Borders Pays Tribute to the People Fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa and Launches “Positive Generation: Voices for an AIDS-Free Future” (prweb.com)
• Women&AIDS&World: Globally, HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age (one365.org)
• World AIDS Day 2011 Theme: ACT AWARE (VIDEOS) (blippitt.com)

Healthy People? Not Quite Yet —From “The Public’s Health” Blog

Healthy People? Not Quite Yet [ The Public’s Health]

Excerpt from Dr. Rubin’s blog

In 1979, the publication of Healthy People: The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention represented the first report emphasizing the importance of decreasing early mortality through health promotion and disease prevention programs. This led to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s development of specific, national 10-year health objectives, contained within a collaborative initiative known as Healthy People. The 2010 objectives fell within 28 public health focus areas including cancer, diabetes, immunizations and infectious diseases, injury and violence prevention, nutrition and overweight, and many others (the full list can be found here).

So as a country, how well did we meet the Healthy People 2010 objectives? I guess that depends on your definition of success. A final review of the 2010 results showed that of the 733 objectives for which data were available:

 23% met the 2010 targets
 48% made progress toward the 2010 targets
 5% showed no change from baseline
 24% moved away from the 2010 targets

 Read the entire blog item here

Related Resource

• Structured Evidence Queries (SEQs) for the Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicators

  Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) is a ten-year health promotion program for improving the health of all Americans. Led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HP2020 is organized into 42 subject areas with 600 public health objectives. These objectives, developed and selected through consultation with a broad range of organizations, groups, and individuals, provide a framework for monitoring and measuring improvements in health status of the American population over the ten-year period from 2010 to 2020.

  The Leading Health Indicators (LHI) are a set of objectives carefully selected to represent high-priority health issues and actions that can be taken to address them.

  The Healthy People 2020 Structured Evidence Queries (SEQs) are pre-formulated PubMed search strategies intended to support both public health practitioners and researchers in their efforts to achieve specific HP2020 public health objectives. The HP2020 SEQs provide citations to the most up-to-date peer-reviewed literature from the PubMed database of the National Library of Medicine.

  For persons interested in using the SEQs or other NLM resources to create products for the LHI App Challenge, e.g., for mobile devices, please contact the PHPartners Team. More general information about PubMed linking and E-utilities is available from Entrez Programming Utilities Help

  ---

  The Structured Evidence Queries link each Leading Health Indicator objective to PubMed citations related to that objective. For two LHI objectives, in Clinical Preventive Services (vaccination rate for toddlers) and Injury and Violence (fatal injuries), a set of SEQs is provided to further assist users. Your feedback will help us refine the SEQs over time.

  To use an HP2020 SEQ to search PubMed, please expand the Leading Health Indicator topic area (“+”) and click the  button by the LHI objective.

  [Go to http://phpartners.org/hp2020_lhi.html to use the structured  evidence queries below]

  

  1. Access to Health Services 

  2. Clinical Preventive Services 

  3. Environmental Quality 

  4. Injury and Violence 

  5. Maternal, Infant and Child Health 

  6. Mental Health 

  7. Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity 

  8. Oral Health 

  9. Reproductive and Sexual Health 

  10. Social Determinants 

  11. Substance Abuse 

  12. Tobacco 

Related articles

• Healthy People? Not Quite Yet. (drrubinblog.com)
• Improving health will take a village (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Collaboration Of Public And Private Health Partners Is Essential For Health Improvement (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Syphilis Rises 36% In USA In Four Years (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Thank you Public Health! (healthygenerations.wordpress.com)
• Public Health Investments Pay Off (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Public health experts condemn plans (mirror.co.uk)

World’s most advanced system to help Aussie researchers detect and analyze rare cells

From the November 23, 2010 Eureka news alert

New flow cytometer will help in fight against cancer, asthma, cardiovascular, autoimmune and infectious diseases

A world-first research system to be launched today at the Centenary Institute will give medical researchers in Australia a new weapon in the fight against cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The new BD LSR-9 Flow Cytometer with its nine lasers will be the first user-operated flow cytometer with unprecedented ability to detect and analyse rare cells.

The BD LSR9 Flow Cytometer will be housed at the Centenary Institute as part of the Advanced Cytometry Facility (ACF), which is a joint venture run by the Centenary Institute, the University of Sydney and the Bosch Institute.

Advanced Cytometry Facility Academic Director Professor Nick King said: “Currently, a researcher may have to run a sample of cells two or three times using complex labelling systems to analyse all the unique characteristics of a cell. This makes it very difficult to detect rare cell populations. It’s like a detective at a crime scene gathering two or three sets of partial fingerprints then having to cobble them together to get a complete fingerprint….

…

About Flow Cytometry

A flow cytometer allows researchers to rapidily analyse large populations of cells. Individual cells are examined and a wide variety of properties of each cell can be recorded. Researchers tag the cell populations with fluorescent dyes and then use the flow cytometer to a pass the cells through a beam of laser light one at a time. This laser light is scattered by the cells and provides a way to measure physical properties of the cell such as size. The laser also excites the different fluorescent dyes attached to cells. These dyes produce light of different colours and allow the researchers to count and analyse the cell types that are present. By examining the cells one by one, researchers can find minute characteristics of the cells to get an accurate profile of rare disease-causing cells.

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About the Centenary Institute: The Centenary Institute is an independent medical research institute, affiliated with Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the University of Sydney. Our unique blend of highly skilled staff and state-of-the art equipment and facilities has allowed us to become world leaders in three critical areas of medical research – cancer, cardiovascular disease and infectious diseases. For further information about the Centenary Institute, visit www.centenary.org.au

The History of Vaccines

The History of Vaccines is an informational, educational website created by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the oldest professional society in the United States.

The History of Vaccines provides continually updated information to provide a compelling history of vaccine development as well as news about cutting edge technologies in vaccine development and delivery.

The site aims to improve public knowledge through categories as timelines, activities, and articles.
You can also find material through the links at the top of the page: Parents, and also Educators.
Students can find useful material through the links Parents, Educators, Timelines, Activities and also Articles.
Most material is at the high school or early college level.