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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

A woman, one of three people who recently died of flu like symptoms, in Lagos, Nigeria, has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of Avian influenza.

It is the first bird flu in Nigeria since the strain arrived in Nigeria a year ago. H5N1 was confirmed in blood samples tested in Rome and London from the three recent deaths.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated that while the threat from avian flu has decreased from last year, there still remains flare-ups around the world, urging countries to “remain vigilant and fully cooperate with international organizations”.

Bird flu is spread by wild birds for whom the virus is a stomach disease and, generally, not fatal.

Although the disease has killed 164 people, it has only been out of 269 cases, this gives the disease around a 60% fatality rate compared to the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic which had a mortality rate of around 5%.

The outer coat of the virus particle is characterised by two types of glyco-proteins, neurominidase and haemagglutinin, both of which interact with sialic acid.

Haemagglutinin has sixteen forms, H1 to H16, and binds to sialic acid on the target cell, facilitating the entry of the virus.

Neurominidase is found in nine forms, N1 to N9, this protein allows the progeny viri to escape the infected cell by cleaving sialic acid.

The two main drugs against bird flu currently on the market, Tamiflu^® and Relenza^®, both target the sialic acid binding pocket of neurominidase. Neither of these drugs will cure the disease, but will stop its spread through the body. As such they have to be administered within 48 hours of symptoms appearing. In all 9 sub types of neurominidase, the structure of the target area for the drugs is the same. There is also a flu vaccine but the current flu vaccine does not protect against H5N1.

Human to human transmission is very rare, at the moment bird flu can only be caught from prolonged exposure to infected birds, specifically their droppings from which the bird flu virus has been crystallized and parts of the structure solved.

Unlike diseases such as smallpox and measles, for which their are effectively protecting vaccines, the flu virus constantly mutates. Each year the virus is slightly different from the last, this is the genetic drift of the virus – small point mutations on the surface, causing an evasion of our immune system. Many of the problems arise when there is a major shift of the surface proteins, for instance when a different subtype appears, such as H5.

There are three strains of human influenza circulating around the globe; H1N1 first isolated in 1933, H2N2 first isolated in 1957 and H3N2 first isolated in 1968. Other than humans; pigs, seals and horses have various strains of influenza, however only wild birds have all the known subtypes of haemagglutinin and neurominidase. Of the 144 combinations of N(1-9) and H(1-16) we have had three.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

A paste containing synthetic tooth enamel can seal small cavities without drilling. Kazue Yamagishi and colleagues at the FAP Dental Institute in Tokyo say that the paste can repair small cavities in 15 minutes.

Currently, fillers don’t stick to such small cavities so dentists must drill bigger holes. Hydroxyapatite crystals, of which natural enamel is made, bond with teeth to repair tiny areas of damage.

Yamagishi and colleagues have tested their paste on a lower premolar tooth that showed early signs of decay. They found that the synthetic enamel merged with the natural enamel. The synthetic enamel also appears to make teeth stronger which will improve resistance to future decay. As with drilling, however, there is still the potential for pain: The paste is strongly acidic to encourage crystal growth and causes inflammation if it touches the gums.

The paste is reported in the journal Nature.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

On Sunday, the state of emergency begun on November 15 over a measles outbreak ended in Samoa. The island nation’s cabinet unanimously voted to lift it on Saturday afternoon, and the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) announced the decision that night. NEOC reported a 95% immunization rate on December 24, and the last measles-related death during the state of emergency on December 26.

Restrictions on public gathering and travel were to be lifted, and schools to reopen. The Health Emergency Operation Center were to take over the relief efforts centralized under the National Emergency Operation Centre. The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were tasked to produce a recovery plan within two weeks for consideration by the cabinet.

As of Sunday, the Disease Surveillance Team reported a total of 5667 cases during the outbreak. Out these, 1846 persons were hospitalized and 1720 had already been discharged, while 81 had lost their lives. The December 6 National Measles Response and Recovery Appeal identified children under 5 years of age as having the highest mortality, corresponding with the relative shortfall of vaccination in the age group.

Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital returned to normal operation on Sunday, joining Faleolo District Hospital and Leulumoega District Hospital, which returned to normal on Friday. During the peak of the outbreak, Tupua Tamasese Meaole’s Acute Primary Care Clinic and Leulumoega District hospital were made measles wards, and Leulumoega District Hospital was designated to deal with patients without measles, in an effort to quarantine infected individuals. The Australian medical mission’s fifth rotation is to remain on the islands until January 4 to help facilitate the transition. On Sunday teams had already begun to disassemble the tents erected to deal with the large number of admissions.

The state of emergency was expected to end on December 15, but on December 14 it was extended by two weeks to allow the immunization campaign to continue. At the time, the prime minister called for a 100% immunization rate, and stated 92% had been reached. As of Sunday, the rate had reached 95% according to NEOC data. Aid agencies say populations with sufficiently high vaccination rates have enough herd immunity to prevent any further infections from spreading out of control, meaning an infected person is not likely to come into contact with enough unvaccinated people to cause a chain reaction.

UNICEF reported they had delivered over 105 thousand doses of vaccine to Samoa by November 22. The national vaccination campaign started on November 20. A government order made vaccination mandatory and free of charge for children between six months and 19 years of age and for women between 20 and 35, considered childbearing age. On December 5 and 6, the government of Samoa executed a planned shutdown of public services and the private sector to leave room for a nationwide door-to-door immunization drive. The government said 128 vaccination teams participated.

To curb the spread of disease, the government prohibited inter-island travel for those under 19, schools were closed, and authorities recommended residents avoid public gatherings and medical facilities unless they were in need of medical attention. Unvaccinated pregnant women were prohibited from going to their workplaces.

The outbreak was first confirmed by the government on October 16, after the Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory in Melbourne tested 7 out of 20 suspected cases positive for measles.

In 2019 in the Pacific region, outbreaks of measles were declared in parts of the Philippines first on February 6, Tonga on October 22, Fiji on November 7, and American Samoa on December 8. The D8 strain, which caused a New Zealand outbreak, has been identified in Samoa and Fiji. New Zealand serves as a travel hub for small Pacific nations. According to data from the World Health Organisation, in 2018 there were approximately 10 million cases of measles and 140 thousand related deaths worldwide.