Well, if you’ve been following this blog for the month of April, you’ll notice that I began expanding the topics to include other infectious and viral diseases that would be in recent news.

With the Gene Genie challenge of blogging on genes and gene-related diseases, now wouldn’t it be cool to talk about the genes that predispose certain individuals and groups to these viral diseases – HIV, malaria, leprosy, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), sinusitis, herpes and others.

Yup. There may be genes responsible for getting certain persons susceptible to catching a virus, bacteria or parasite.

For example, the gene for sickle-cell anemia protects against malaria. The gene is recessive, meaning one has to carry both alleles for a person to have sickle-cell. But even those who just have one allele (called carriers) are still protected against malaria.

There are also genes that protect certain individuals against a some strains of HIV. Yes, if you have these particular genes, you may not get HIV.

Leprosy is another infectious disease, a chronic condition that affects more than 300,000 people each year. Two genes are strongly associated with this disease, and a person’s risk of getting infected with leprosy increases if one carry either gene.

Now the flu. See, so that’s why it’s very important for scientists to study the H5N1 outbreaks in humans. It’s a virus, and there are places in our cell that the virus uses to enter, reproduce and wreak havoc. We need to find genes that protect us against the influenza viruses. Are there any? That’s a good question.

Interesting, huh.

Tags: flu, viruses, health, genetics, infectious diseases

image

Post from: Blisstree

Genetics of infectious diseases

He goes hunting, deep in the African jungles of Cameroon, Yaound.

The Doctor, as villagers call him, investigates sudden die-offs of primates in the jungles, collects blood from hunters and their kills, tests wild and domestic birds for avian flu and a vast range of fiel research all in the quest to discover viruses originating in the wild with the potential to mutate into pandemic forms.

Animal-to-human invaders or zoonoses – malaria, HIV, smallpox, West Nile, Ebola, SARS, avian influenza – have plagued recent centuries with devastating consequences, and yet very little has been understood about the way they enter and spread among humans or the range of potential carriers in the animals kingdom.

Wolfe, and an increasing number of biologists and epidemiologists have begun going after these killer viruses more intensely in the last few decades. With promising results.

Three years ago, Wolfe and his team discovered primate retroviruses in the blood of three African hunters. Until his findings, nobody had demonstrated that retroviruses could cross directly from jungle primates to indigenous hunters. He believes that viruses are constantly spilling over from animals to humans all the time, and his vision is to look for viruses that are emerging this way.

“Imagine how different the AIDS epidemic might have been if we’d had three to five years of advance warning. I’ve been convinced for a long time that we need to challenge the old model of the ‘fire brigade response’ to pandemics. We need a new disease forecasting model that could help us prevent them, not just respond to them.”

Read more of Nathan Wolfe and his work at both Wired and Stanford magazines.

[sources: stanfordmagazine; wired; image]

Tags: killer viruses, plagues, Nathan Wolfe, bushmeat hunters

Post from: Blisstree

Fighting plague: On the hunt for killer viruses

With the fast pace research on Alzheimer’s cause and development, it’s not a surprise that many factors are being discovered that affect this progressive disease’s susceptibility and development. But to find that a virus might one culprit… and a common one at that…

The Tangled Neuron takes an in-depth look at the research done by Dr. Ruth Itzhaki, who found latent signs of the herpes simplex virus-1 in areas of the brain most affected by Alzheimers. Dr Itzhaki postulates that the virus infects the brain in older age, as the immune system declines.

If Dr. Itzhaki’s hypothesis about HSV1’s role in Alzheimer’s proves to be true, then she believes it would have enormous consequences and anti-viral agents may easily be used to treat patients and stop further deterioration.

Anti-viral drugs against human herpes virus-6 have already been found highly effective in increasing the energy levels of CFS/ME sufferers, so there must be a immuno-genetic connection between these two brain disfunctions and viruses.

A complete text of Tangled Neuron and Dr. Itzhaki’s research is available here.

Tags: human herpes simplex virus-1, HSV-1, alzheimer’s, virus, illness, mental health, CFS

Post from: Blisstree

Link between Herpes Simplex virus-1 and Alzheimer’s

To everyone’s surprise, treating the viral infections also dramatically improved her energy levels.

“I was amazed by the results,” says Professor Jose Montoya, who runs the infectious diseases clinic at Stanford. “Donna was sent to me because high levels of another virus (Epstein Barr) had been detected in her system. “I’d hoped it might help a bit, but I didn’t expect the results to be anything like as dramatic. It was pure serendipity.”

While it’s well known that some patients with CFS have signs of various viral infections, this is the first time that treating one of the viruses has been shown to be so effective.

Valganciclovir is licensed to treat HHV-6 infections of the eye, which can affect transplant or cancer patients with severely weakened immune systems. Prof. Montoya, who has treated hundreds of immuno-compromised patients with the drug, cautioned to monitor carefully because it can results in serious side effects.

HHV-6 is not the same as the herpes virus responsible for cold sores. Most commonly, it causes roseola infantum in children, who get a fever and a rash.

Know more about chronic fatigue syndrome, here.

[source: dailymail; image]

Tags: human herpes virus, HHV-6, Donna Burden Flowers, valganciclovir, anti-viral drug, chronic fatigue syndrome, ME

Post from: Blisstree

Anti-viral drug found effective for CFS/ME sufferers

Researchers of liver disease are disclosing that Hepatitis C patients can be completely cured of the viral-borne disease (HCV). A study conducted on 997 patients who were able to achieve complte response to treatment showed that only 8 came down with the disease again.

“I tell my patients who achieve a sustained virologic response to go home and get on with their lives. I tell them that there is less than a 0.5 percent chance that the disease will ever return,” said Mark Swain, professor of medicine at the University of Calgary in Canada, who presented results of an international trial at the opening session of the 42nd European Association for the Study of the Liver in Barcelona, Spain.

This finding offers much needed hope to chronic hepatitis C sufferers and HIV patients who are at risk for the disease. An estimated 300,000 Americans are infected with both HIV and hepatitis C. Hepatitis is a liver disease caused by the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) that can result in cirrhosis, liver failure and death. Chronic infection is known to occur in 55-85% of infected persons, and chronic liver disease in 70% of chronically infected persons. HCV is spread through sharing needles or “works” when “shooting” drugs, through needlesticks or sharps exposures on the job, or from an infected mother to her baby during birth.

[Sources: Science Daily; CDC; whyfiles]

Tags: Hepatitis C, cure, treatment, HIV, viral disease, virus

Post from: Blisstree

“We can cure Hepatitis C”

Daniels has what the World Health O. dubbed as XDR-TB, or extremely drug resistant tuberculosis , which is virtually untreatable using current anti-TB drugs. Daniels was considered “uncooperative and a danger to the public” and was ordered locked up because he did not take precautions to avoid infecting others or even to wear a mask in public. Although currently rare in the US, XDR-TB broke out in Africa last year with an alarmingly high mortality rate. XDR-TB is transmitted the same as other forms of tuberculosis – by aerosol droplets expelled by an infection person with a cough, sneeze, kiss, spit, or sharing of utensils.

Now, though TB is a bacterial infection (and technically not a “concern” of this blog), INFLUENZA has the potential of becoming drug-resistant** as well.

In the face of increasing use (and misuse) of flu drugs, the potential of developing drug-resistant flu viruses, the problem of containing H5N1 across much of Asia, and likened to the days when the world dealt with smallpox and leprosy, once again we face the the issue of dealing with infected persons with untreatable symptoms.

Putting people and whole villages quarantined have been in practice and found highly effective. But as H5N1 spreads to less isolated cities and across nations, it is getting much harder to control the transmission of flu viruses.

Now, I have no answers to the issues/questions below, but I pose them because I myself am looking for more concrete solutions to the global health threat of a drug-resistant influenza/bird flu/pandemic flu/ virus.

1. Should uncooperative contagious persons (as Daniels was charged) be locked up?

2. What needs to be done about infected persons wishing to travel? Do airlines or cruise ships have the right to refuse a sick person from boarding? Should there be an international law to govern the travel of contagious persons sick with life-threatening diseases?

3. How long should a quarantine (or shelter-in-place) last? A survey last year posed that Americans will only stay home 7 days at the most in the event of a flu pandemic. The need to work is the top reason for not staying home. Will this number of days be enough?

4. What kind of regulations should there be in place to prevent the overuse of drugs that may cause resistance?

Certainly, there are more questions than the above, but if you have answers or ideas or more questions, feel free to fill the comment and begin a discussion.

**The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported last year that 92% of influenza A (H3N2) viruses isolated from patients demonstrated an amino acid change that confers resistance to adamantanes. Two of eight type A flu viruses were in fact resistant. Canadian authorities report the same mutations in isolates recently tested. These findings prompted the CDC to recommend against the use of amantadanes for flu treatment last season. In addition, a small study of Japanese children treated with oseltamivir also reported a high frequency of resistant viruses. However, no transmission of neuraminidase inhibitor-resistant viruses in humans has been documented to date.

[Source: MSNBC; image]

Tags: drug-resistance, XDR-TB, tuberculosis, influenza, bird flu, pandemic, oseltamivir, adamantanes, world health, virus, viral disease, viral illness

Post from: Blisstree

Drug-resistant TB patient quarantined for life… and what this means for bird flu

The zinc finger antiviral protein (ZAP) capable of inhibiting Moloney murine leukemia virus and Sindbis virus replication, are now being reported as effective in inhibiting Ebola and Marburg virus infections. German researchers will publish the results in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of Virology.

Ebola and Marburg viruses cause severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and nonhuman primates, and have mortality rates as high as 90%. Currenly there are no vaccines or therapy for treating infected patients, so this research should lend some important breakthroughs.

eMaxHealth has more.

Tags: Ebola, Marburg, viruses, zinc finger proteins, molecular biology, illness, health, medicine

Post from: Blisstree

Antiviral protein may protect against Ebola and Marburg virus

At least 150 inmates and seven guards in a Las Vegas county jail got sick with the norovirus, a gastrointestinal infection that causes diasshea, vomiting and cramps.

Also called the Norwalk virus, infamous for causing a cruise ship-wide quarantine two years ago, the virus is passed in the stool of infected persons, either by swallowing stool-contaminated food or water, or from eating infected raw oysters.

Many sickened inmates were kitchen workers, leading officials to think the virus might have spread by contaminated food or trays. District epidemiologist Brian Labus said the outbreak may be related to an ongoing norovirus wave in the Las Vegas area that he estimated had sickened thousands of people since December.

“There won’t be any deaths,” Labus said of the jail outbreak. “It’s going to make people feel miserable for a couple of days, but they will recover after it runs its course.”

Now that’s an “break out” that an inmate wouldn’t want to get caught with.

[Source: LasVegas Sun; image]

What’s a Norwalk virus? Here.

Tags: Norwalk virus, gastrointestinal, infection, virus, viral disease, norovirus, illness, oysters, diarrhea

Post from: Blisstree

Norwalk virus breaks into a Vegas jail

Published results have previously only focused the consequences of HPV infection on women and cervical cancer. Now, an unpublished data revealed that 60 per cent of men between the ages of 18 and 70 are infected with HPV.

Compared that with 25 per cent of women between 14 to 59 revealed to be carrying the virus that causes cervical cancer.

China View reported that new data shows that HPV infection is quite common in men of all dates, while the highest rates on infection in women spike in the early 20s and again in their 40s to 50s.

“We know they (men) transmit it to women, but what is the rate of transmission?” says Anna Giuliano, a researcher at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla., who is leading three government-funded studies on HPV infection in men. She is also a paid speaker for Merck, the maker of Gardasil.

With the recent published data on women, research is up to finding out just how infective this virus is on men as well. Worldwide, human papillomavirus infection in both men and women may be the cause of a variety of other genital cancers.

[source: ChinaView]

Tags: human papillomavirus, HPV, cervical cancer, genital cancer, infection, viral disease, illness, medicine

Post from: Blisstree

HPV infection among boys and men

A 2002 study showed that it’s effective in removing warts in children and young adults. Cheap and painless, the tape supposedly works by irritating the skin and stimulating the body’s immune system to attack the virus that causes warts.

However, a new study casts doubt on the duct tape’s “medicinal use” when research among adults did not have the same effect as the previous one on children. The big difference – the former used the gray rubberized tape, and the latter study used the transparent variety. Duct tape proponents say it’s the rubber adhesive that acts as immune stimulant.

Common warts are caused by a harmless noncancerous type of papillomavirus that camps out in the skin’s upper layers only, and is of a different type from the papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer.

For more on this controversy (tongue-in-cheek), read “Study Casts Doubt On Duct Tape Wart Cure“.

[images: wikipedia; amazon]

Tags: duct tape, human papillomavirus, common warts, virus, illness, medicine, viral disease

Post from: Blisstree

Study debunks duct tape’s use as cure for warts