All posts by medical

Genetics

Student Spotlight on Mika Matera-Vatnick ’21: Researching Insect Reproduction Genetics – Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

When Mika Matera-Vatnick 21 received President Martha E. Pollacks email in March announcing the closing of campus, her first thought was, What am I gonna do with my flies?

Matera-Vatnick, like many other undergraduate student researchers on campus, had to abandon her honors thesis research project as classes transitioned online for the remainder of the semester.

Last spring, Matera-Vatnick joined the Wolfner lab, led by Prof. Mariana Wolfner, molecular biology and genetics.

Research is the main thing Im involved with on campus. When Im not in class, Im in the lab, she said.

Currently, her research is on pause, since as of March 28, faculty and students are no longer allowed to work in laboratories, barring Matera-Vatnick access to laboratory equipment that is essential to the continuation of her research.

Matera-Vatnick is exploring the genetic basis of sperm competition in fruit flies the competitive process between sperm of two or more different males to fertilize the same egg during sexual reproduction.

Her passion for genetics started during a summer research experience at the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health after her freshman year, where she learned about personalized medicine.

We are all unique with our own unique genomes and we need to treat patients based on their individual needs and their own genome. This is what led me to take the genetics and genetics lab courses at Cornell, she said.

Specifically, Matera-Vatnick is researching whether there are certain genes linked to mating plug ejection times.

Mating plugs are gelatinous secretions used in the mating in fruit flies and other species, including various primates such as kangaroos and reptiles. These secretions are deposited by a male into a female genital tract and later harden into a plug that glues the tract together. The plugs prevent females from re-mating, making it possible for females to store sperm.

In my experiments, Im comparing how long different strains of flies take to go through the process of mating plug ejection and seeing if there is a genetic basis and where in the gene this might come from, Matera-Vatnik said.

In fruit flies, the female expels the mating plug within five hours of mating in a process called mating plug ejection. The timing of ejection influences the paternity share of the fruit flys mates, playing an important role in mate competition.

Paris Ghazi / Sun Senior Editor

Matera-Vatnick experimenting in the Wolfner lab.

Matera-Vatnik randomly selected genetically diverse types of fruit flies to assess the time it takes for female fruit flies to undergo mating plug ejection. Mating plug ejection times can be compared to genetic variations across these specific fruit fly lines.

This comparison can reveal key genes associated with mating plug ejection, evolutionary histories of neural circuits and the role of these neuronal pathways in female sexual selection when a female chooses a male to mate with.

Understanding the process of sexual selection in insect reproduction may contribute to developing strategies for controlling pests and disease vectors in agriculture and public health.

Matera-Vatnick spent last summer at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City learning about computational biology, which is the analysis of biological data through computer simulated models. In contrast to the work she did at WCM, Matera-Vatnick typically conducts her research on fruit flies in a wet lab. A wet lab is a lab where experiments are conducted and chemicals are handled, whereas in a dry lab, data is analyzed with computers and other technology.

Not much is known about the genetic basis that underlies the variations in mating plug ejection timing, but Matera-Vatnik is determined to find out.

I learned so much about how computational tools can be used to answer biological questions that are impossible to answer in a wet lab. I think that combining wet lab and computational power together will bring a unique angle to the questions Im interested in answering, she said.

Though research on campus has been put on hold, Matera-Vatnick is hopeful she can finish this project as her honors thesis.

This is the project that will be my senior thesis project. With all the uncertainty of being here, and hopefully the plan is to stay here over the summer, I want to take this project as far as I can before I graduate, Matera-Vatnick said.

Matera-Vatnick is currently in her hometown Washington, D.C. While she is unable to continue her research at the Wolfner Lab, she still attends weekly lab meetings and will be drafting sections of her honors thesis for the rest of the semester. She plans on taking the MCAT at the end of summer, if permitted.

In the meantime, Matera-Vatnick hopes to make the most of her Cornell research experience, upon her return to campus.

Im trying to take as much as I can from campus, Matera-Vatnick said. Thanks to amazing mentorship from my [Principal Investigator], graduate students and other students in the lab, I can say Im very lucky with who Ive surrounded myself with on campus.

Read more:
Student Spotlight on Mika Matera-Vatnick '21: Researching Insect Reproduction Genetics - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

Immunology

Immunology | medicine | Britannica

Immunology, the scientific study of the bodys resistance to invasion by other organisms (i.e., immunity). In a medical sense, immunology deals with the bodys system of defense against disease-causing microorganisms and with disorders in that systems functioning. The artificial induction of immunity against disease has been known in the West at least since Edward Jenner used cowpox injections to protect people from smallpox in 1796. But the scientific basis for immunology was not established until a century later, when it was recognized that: (1) proliferating microorganisms in the body cause many infectious diseases and (2) the body has certain chemical and cellular components that recognize and destroy foreign substances (antigens) within the body. This new understanding led to highly successful techniques of immunization that could mobilize and stimulate the bodys natural defenses against infectious disease.

Read More on This Topic

history of medicine: Immunology

Dramatic though they undoubtedly were, the advances in chemotherapy still left one important area vulnerable, that of the viruses. It was

It was only in the 20th century, however, that a comprehensive understanding was gained of the formation, mobilization, action, and interaction of antibodies and antigen-reactive lymphocytes, which are the two main active elements of the immune system. Modern immunology, besides using such basic techniques as vaccination, has become increasingly selective and sophisticated in its manipulation of the bodys immune system through drugs and other agents in efforts to achieve a desired therapeutic goal. Immunologic understanding is crucial to the treatment of allergies, which are themselves hypersensitive reactions by the bodys immune system to the presence of harmless antigens such as pollen grains. Immunosuppressive techniques use drugs to suppress the immune systems tendency to reject and attack antigenic bone grafts and organ transplants that have been medically introduced into the host tissue. Immunology also encompasses the increasingly important study of autoimmune diseases, in which the bodys immune system attacks some constituent of its own tissues as if it were a foreign body. The study of immune deficiencies has become an area of intensive research since the appearance of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), a disease that destroys the bodys immune system and for which there is currently no cure.

Read more here:
Immunology | medicine | Britannica

Immunology

Temperatures and Pollen Counts Both Predicted to Rise This Week – Centralia Chronicle

It's on, allergy sufferers. Especially if you're sensitive to tree pollen.

Pollen counts are predicted to soar for the rest of this week as temperatures hit the mid-60s through most of the Puget Sound region on Wednesday and potentially 70 degrees on Thursday and Friday.

Pollen count is predicted to be "very high" Thursday through Sunday, according to the Northwest Asthma & Allergy Center.

Seattle-area allergy experts say that once your allergies are activated -- and apparently Western Washington is one of the best places to discover whether you're allergic to tree pollen -- you take a deep breath on a beautiful spring day like Wednesday and instantly your mast cells jump into action.

"The key feature of allergies and our immune system in general is also the reason they are persistent and frustrating," said Dr. Jakob von Moltke, an assistant professor of immunology at the UW School of Medicine. "You can go a whole winter without any issues, and then your immune system is triggered in seconds."

And allergists say the masks many people are wearing lately haven't really mitigated pollen allergy symptoms: sneezing, runny noses, postnasal drip, and itchy, puffy, watery eyes. (That said, you should wear one when you're out in public, to protect yourself and others from the novel coronavirus -- especially if you're sneezing, which launches your germs into the air.)

"If there is a difference (for allergy sufferers during the pandemic), it may be because people are not walking around outside a lot and are staying indoors, which is what we recommend," said Dr. Lahari Rampur, a UW Medicine allergy and immunology professor.

It can help to keep your windows closed, said Dr. Scott Itano, medical center chief at Kaiser Permanente Northgate Medical Center.

Most plants release their pollen in the middle of the night, so leaving windows open at night -- as many people do when the weather gets warm -- is one of the "worst things you can do," he said. "Then, you will be allergic inside and outside your house."

And if you are taking medicine to combat allergies, such as allergy pills and nasal steroid sprays, Itano recommends taking it at night before bed to help suppress the allergic reaction before it happens.

Excerpt from:
Temperatures and Pollen Counts Both Predicted to Rise This Week - Centralia Chronicle

Immunology

Wuhan lab says there’s no way coronavirus originated there. Here’s the science. – Livescience.com

An unprecedented amount of research has been focused solely on understanding the novel coronavirus that has taken nearly 150,000 lives across the globe. And while scientists have gotten to know some of the most intimate details of the virus called SARS-CoV-2, one question has evaded any definitive answers Where did the virus come from?

Live Science contacted several experts, and the reality, they said, is that we may never know where this deadly coronavirus originated. Among the theories circulating: That SARS-CoV-2 arose naturally, after passing from bats to a secondary animal and then to humans; that it was deliberately engineered and then accidentally released by humans; or that researchers were studying a naturally-occurring virus that subsequently escaped from a high-security biolab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. The head of the lab at WIV, for her part, has emphatically denied any link to the institute.

Just today (April 18), the vice director of WIV Zhiming Yuan CGTN, the Chinese state broadcaster, said "there is no way this virus came from us," NBC News reported. "We have a strict regulatory regime and code of conduct of research, so we are confident."

Furthermore, the notion that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered is pure conspiracy, experts told Live Science, but it's still impossible to rule out the notion that Chinese scientists were studying a naturally-occurring coronavirus that subsequently "escaped" from the lab. To prove any of these theories takes transparent data and information, which is reportedly not happening in China, scientists say. Several experts have said to Live Science and other media outlets have reported that the likeliest scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally occurring.

Related: 13 coronavirus myths busted by science

"Based on no data, but simply [a] likely scenario is that the virus went from bats to some mammalian species, currently unknown despite speculation, [and] spilled over to humans," said Gerald Keusch, associate director of the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. This spillover event may have happened before the virus found its way into a live animal market, "which then acted as an amplifying setting with many more infections that subsequently spread and the rest is history," Keusch said. "The timeline is fuzzy and I don't think we have real data to say when these things began, in large part because the data are being held back from inspection," Keusch told Live Science.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is most closely related to coronaviruses found in certain populations of horseshoe bats that live about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Yunnan province, China. The first known outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in humans occurred in Wuhan and initially was traced to a wet seafood market (which sold live fish and other animals), though some of the earliest cases have no link to that market, according to research published Feb. 15 in the journal The Lancet.

Related: 11 (sometimes) deadly diseases that hopped across species

What's more, despite several proposed candidates, from snakes to pangolins to dogs, researchers have failed to find a clear "intermediate host" an animal that would have served as a springboard for SARS-CoV-2 to jump from bats to humans. And if horseshoe bats were the primary host, how did the bat virus hop from its natural reservoir in a subtropical region to the bustling city of Wuhan hundreds of miles away?

These questions have led some people to look elsewhere in the hunt for the virus's origin, and some have focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

In 2015, WIV became China's first lab to reach the highest level of bioresearch safety, or BSL-4, meaning the lab could host research on the world's most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola and Marburg viruses. (SARS-CoV-2 would require a BSL-3 or higher, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Labs like these must follow strict safety guidelines that include filtering air, treating water and waste before they exit, and requiring lab personnel to shower and change their clothes before and after entering the facility, Nature News reported in 2017.

These types of labs do spur concerns among some scientists who worry about the risks involved and the potential impact on public health if anything were to go wrong, Nature News reported.

Related: The 12 deadliest viruses on Earth

WIV was not immune to those concerns. In 2018, after scientist diplomats from the U.S. embassy in Beijing visited the WIV, they were so concerned by the lack of safety and management at the lab that the diplomats sent two official warnings back to the U.S. One of the official cables, obtained by The Washington Post, suggested that the lab's work on bat coronaviruses with the potential for human transmission could risk causing a new SARS-like pandemic, Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote.

"During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory," the officials said in their cable dated to Jan. 19, 2018.

When reports of the coronavirus first popped up in China, the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger reportedly suspected a potential link to China labs. In mid-January, according to a New York Times report, Pottinger asked intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., particularly individuals with expertise on Asia and weapons of mass destruction, to investigate this idea. They came up empty-handed, the Times reported.

Meanwhile, the lab at the center of these speculations had long been sounding the alarm about the risk of the SARS-like coronaviruses they studied to spawn a pandemic.

The head of the lab's bat-coronavirus research, Shi Zhengli, published research on Nov. 30, 2017 in the journal PLOS Pathogens that traced the SARS coronavirus pandemic in 2003 to a single population of horseshoe bats in a remote cave in Yunnan province. The researchers also noted that other SARS-like coronaviruses discovered in that cave used the ACE2 receptor to infect cells and could "replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells," they wrote. (Both SARS and SARS-CoV-2 use the ACE2 receptor as the entry point into cells.)

Zhengli and her colleagues stressed the importance of monitoring and studying the SARS coronaviruses to help prevent another pandemic.

"Thus, we propose that monitoring of SARS-CoV evolution at this and other sites should continue, as well as examination of human behavioral risk for infection and serological surveys of people, to determine if spillover is already occurring at these sites and to design intervention strategies to avoid future disease emergence," they wrote.

Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history

The WIV lab, along with researchers in the U.S. and Switzerland, showed in 2015 the scary-good capability of bat coronaviruses to thrive in human cells. In that paper, which was published in 2015 in the journal Nature Medicine, they described how they had created a chimeric SARS-like virus out of the surface spike protein of a coronavirus found in horseshoe bats, called SHC014, and the backbone of a SARS virus that could be grown in mice. The idea was to look at the potential of coronaviruses circulating in bat populations to infect humans. In a lab dish, the chimeric coronavirus could infect and replicate in primary human airway cells; the virus also was able to infect lung cells in mice.

That study was met with some pushback from researchers who considered the risk of that kind of research to outweigh the benefits. Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was one of those scientists. Wain-Hobson emphasized the fact that this chimeric virus "grows remarkably well" in human cells, adding that "If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," Nature News reported.

None of this can show the provenance of SARS-CoV-2.

But scientists can start to rule out an idea that the pandemic-causing coronavirus was engineered in that lab or further created as a bioweapon. Researchers say the overwhelming evidence indicates this is a natural-borne virus that emerged from an animal host, likely a bat, and was not engineered by humans.

Related: 28 devastating infectious diseases

"This origin story is not currently supported at all by the available data," said Adam Lauring, an associate professor of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School. Lauring pointed to a study published March 17 in the journal Nature Medicine, which provided evidence against the idea that the virus was engineered in a lab.

In that Nature medicine study one of the strongest rebukes of this idea Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues analyzed the genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 and coronaviruses in animals. They found that a key part of SARS-CoV-2, the spike protein that the virus uses to attach to ACE2 receptors on the outsides of human cells, would almost certainly have emerged in nature and not as a lab creation.

"This analysis of coronavirus genome sequences from patients and from various animals suggests that the virus likely arose in an animal host and then may have undergone further changes once it transmitted and circulated in people," Lauring told Live Science.

That may rule out deliberate genetic engineering, but what about other scenarios that point to bats as the natural hosts, but WIV as the source of the outbreak?

Although researchers will likely continue to sample and sequence coronaviruses in bats to determine the origin of SARS-CoV-2, "you can't answer this question through genomics alone," said Dr. Alex Greninger, an assistant professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and an assistant director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at the University of Washington Medical Center. That's because it's impossible to definitively tell whether SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab or from nature based on genetics alone. For this reason, it's really important to know which coronaviruses were being studied at WIV. "It really comes down to what was in the lab," Greninger told Live Science.

However, Lauring said that based on the Nature Medicine paper, "the SARS-CoV-2 virus has some key differences in specific genes relative to previously identified coronaviruses the ones a laboratory would be working with. This constellation of changes makes it unlikely that it is the result of a laboratory 'escape,'" he said.

As for what viruses were being studied at WIV, Zhengli says she did a thorough investigation. When she first was alerted to the viral outbreak in Wuhan on the night of Dec. 30, 2019, Zhengli immediately put her lab to work sequencing the genomes of SARS-CoV-2 from infected patients and comparing the results with records of coronavirus experiments in her lab. She also looked for any mishandling of viral material used in any experiments, Scientific American reported. She didn't find any match between the viruses her team was working with from bat caves and those found in infected patients. "That really took a load off my mind," she told Scientific American. "I had not slept a wink for days."

At the beginning of February, Zhengli sent a note over WeChat to reassure her friends that there was no link, saying "I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab," the South China Morning Post reported Feb. 6. Zhengli and another colleague, Peng Zhou, did not reply to a Live Science email requesting comment.

The Wuhan lab does work with the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, which is a bat coronavirus called RaTG13, evolutionary virologist Edward Holmes, of the Charles Perkins Center and the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity at the University of Sydney, said in a statement from the Australian Media Center. But, he added, "the level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change." (That means that in the wild, it would take about 50 years for these viruses to evolve to be as different as they are.)

Though no scientists have come forth with even a speck of evidence that humans knowingly manipulated a virus using some sort of genetic engineering, a researcher at Flinders University in South Australia lays out another scenario that involves human intervention. Bat coronaviruses can be cultured in lab dishes with cells that have the human ACE2 receptor; over time, the virus will gain adaptations that let it efficiently bind to those receptors. Along the way, that virus would pick up random genetic mutations that pop up but don't do anything noticeable, said Nikolai Petrovsky, in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders.

"The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus," Petrovsky said in a statement from the Australian Media Center. "Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection, there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention."

If that virus infected a staff member and that person then traveled to the nearby seafood market, the virus could have spread from there, he said. Or, he added, an "inappropriate disposal of waste from the facility" could have infected humans directly or from a susceptible intermediary, such as a stray cat.

Though we may never get a definitive answer, at least in the near-term, some say it doesn't matter.

"No matter the origin, evolution in nature and spillover to humans, accidental release from a lab, or deliberate release or genetic manipulation of a pathogen in the lab the way you develop countermeasures is the same," Keusch told Live Science. "Since one can never say 100% for anything, I think we always need to be aware of all possibilities in order to contravene. But the response to develop what is needed to respond, control and eliminate the outbreak remains the same."

Live Science senior writer Rachael Rettner contributed to this report.

Originally published on Live Science.

View original post here:
Wuhan lab says there's no way coronavirus originated there. Here's the science. - Livescience.com

Immunology

Weekly Update: Global Coronavirus Impact and Implications on Immunology Drug Market Value Projected to Expand by 2019-2026 – Jewish Life News

Assessment of the Global Immunology Drug Market

Persistence Market Research recently published a market report which offers valuable insights pertaining to the various factors that are likely to influence the prospects of the Immunology Drug market through the forecast period (2019-2029). The study takes into account the historical and current market trends to predict the course of the Immunology Drug market in the upcoming years. Further, the growth opportunities, drivers, and major challenges faced by market players and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Immunology Drug market are discussed in detail.

Request Sample Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.co/samples/15259

Regional Outlook

The team of analysts at PMR, track the major innovations and developments within the Immunology Drug market sphere in various geographies. The market share, size, and value of each region are discussed in the report along with explanatory graphs, tables, and figures.

Competitive Outlook

This chapter of the report discusses the ongoing developments of leading companies operating in the Immunology Drug market. The major changes that are likely to occur in the business models of several companies post the COVID-19 pandemic is also highlighted in detail. The product portfolio, pricing strategy, the regional and global presence of each company is thoroughly discussed in the report.

Product Adoption Analysis

The report offers valuable insights related to the adoption pattern, supply-demand ratio, and pricing structure of each product.

key players and products offered

Request Report Methodology @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.co/methodology/15259

Critical Market Information Enclosed in the Report:

Doubts Related to the Immunology Drug Market Catered to in the Report:

For any queries get in touch with Industry Expert @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.co/ask-an-expert/15259

Why Opt for Persistence Market Research?

More:
Weekly Update: Global Coronavirus Impact and Implications on Immunology Drug Market Value Projected to Expand by 2019-2026 - Jewish Life News

Neuroscience

Report on neuroscience trends to aid researchers – Taipei Times

By Jake Chung / Staff writer, with CNA

Clarivate Analytics and the Science and Technology Policy Research and Information Center on Friday published a report showcasing neuroscience research to help Taiwanese researchers keep up with trends in the field.

The report, titled Analysis of Neuroscience Research Fronts, shows that the global trend for neuroscience research is focused on clinical neuroscience and nerve-related diseases, neurogenetics and cognitive neuroscience.

The US, the UK and Germany issued the most papers that were frequently cited, it said.

The University of California, Harvard University and the University of London were the top three institutes that issued papers, the report said.

Papers published by the University of Toronto have the highest average citation and the institute is considered the most influential, it added.

Center director-general Joung Yuh-jzer () said that nations are injecting cash into neuroscience research, while private funds and venture capital are also investing heavily in new companies in the field.

Neuroscience research from Taiwan is concentrated on neuromodulation, nerve injuries and neurodevelopment disorders, Joung said.

Over the past five years, Taiwan has published nearly 650 papers per year, Joung added.

The report said that Taipei Veterans General Hospital, National Taiwan University and National Yang Ming University regularly publish quality papers.

While mostly consistent with the direction of international research in the same field, Taiwans focus centers on migraines, sleep apnea, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, depression and stroke, a direction perhaps influenced by the number of clinical studies in the nation, the center said.

Some experts said that Taiwan should find a localized subject of research, the report said, adding that while Taiwan benefits from National Health Insurance archive data, it lacks a more systematic integration of the data to give researchers better understanding of diseases.

Taiwan could consider extending its research toward medical materials, such as nerve conduits used to regenerate or repair the nervous systems, or skin dressing that would enhance nerve regeneration, the report said.

Comments will be moderated. Keep comments relevant to the article. Remarks containing abusive and obscene language, personal attacks of any kind or promotion will be removed and the user banned. Final decision will be at the discretion of the Taipei Times.

The rest is here:
Report on neuroscience trends to aid researchers - Taipei Times

Neuroscience

Grant clears way for up to 440-bed COVID-19 overflow hospital in Lincoln Park – Southgate News Herald

A vacant hospital in Lincoln Park will soon serve as an 80-bed overflow hospital amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, the Wayne County Commission approved Executive Warren Evans recommendations to provide $500,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds that responds to an immediate need.

Click here and then look to the right side for the sign up to the morning newsletter for The News Herald, and you can get the top headlines de

The approval clears the way for Insight Surgical Hospital to overhaul Vibra Hospital (formerly Outer Drive Hospital) with the capacity to grow from an 80-bed overflow hospital to 440 beds as needed to deal with the crisis.

Many hospitals are at capacity, we must continue to act quickly amid this crisis to support our health care system, Evans said. Insight Surgical Hospital can provide immediate relief in Wayne County through increased beds and help decrease the chance of COVID-19 exceeding overall capacity. Over the long-term, there is also great potential here as a state-of-the-art neuroscience center in Lincoln Park.

After its usage for COVID-19, the facility would potentially be converted into a state-of-the-art surgical specialty center with a focus on neuroscience. Insight Surgical Hospital plans to invest $1.5 million in short-term renovations and $20 million over the long-term, and expects to create more than 300 jobs at the facility.

The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 is an existential threat to our community, said Jawad Shah, a renowned board-certified neurosurgeon and the CEO OF Insight, and chairman of the Board of Directors of Insight Surgical Hospital. It has consumed the collective resources of our country, the repercussions of which will be felt for generations. Time is of the essence for all in the health care community to respond to this unprecedented challenge to save precious lives. We hope that Insight, through Gods grace, can participate in the mosaic of care needed to respond to the urgent needs of our community.

Insight Surgical Hospital is part of the Insight Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience, which has medical facilities in the cities of Warren and Flint. IINN will convert the vacant hospital in Lincoln Park and use its existing Certificate of Need to quickly open with an 80-bed capacity as soon as April 17. The facility has the potential to grow into a 440-bed facility as needed to help accommodate COVID-19 patients during this crisis.

It is critical that we bring every resource we can to bear as we fight the devastating impact of COVID-19, Wayne County Commission Chair Alisha Bell (D-Detroit) said. Through todays action, we are putting an important resource back into use at this very important time in everyones life.

Insight Surgical Hospital plans to overhaul the Vibra Hospital in Lincoln Park with the capacity to grow from 80 to 440 beds as needed to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

The 128,000 square-foot Vibra Hospital is located on a 14-acre site on West Outer Drive in Lincoln Park. The $500,000 is part of the CDBG funds allocated to Wayne County under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020.

This facility has been underutilized for years, said Lincoln Park Mayor Thomas Karnes. Located on Outer Drive, it is ideally positioned to create hospital space for patients from Downriver and Detroit as COVID-19 cases surge. Beyond serving an important role in the regional response to COVID-19, we are excited for the long-term prospects at this site. Having a functioning hospital there again would spur other investment and also provide a boost to some of the important development underway in that area of Lincoln Park.

Wayne County Commissioner Ilona Varga (D-Lincoln Park) said the grant shows county officials are unified in their desire to help patients and health care providers.

If this pandemic has shown us anything, its that we must all join together to find ways to meet the needs of those affected by COVID-19 and those who care for them, she said. The community is so deserving to have this hospital functioning again and that is why we moved so quickly on this issue. I am grateful to those who have come together to make this happen.

See the original post here:
Grant clears way for up to 440-bed COVID-19 overflow hospital in Lincoln Park - Southgate News Herald

Neuroscience

Dance Marathon 2020 moves online with a focus on themes of unity and awareness – Daily Bruin

Dance Marathon has traditionally lasted 26 hours this year, it will be four.

The annual event, usually held in Pauley Pavilion, will transition to a virtual platform in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The constraints of Zoom and YouTube Live, where the event will be held this year, pose challenges for such a large-scale gathering, such as navigating potential technical issues. Despite these difficulties, organizers from the Pediatric AIDS Coalition at UCLA have attempted to preserve as many elements from the physical event as possible, said PAC president and fourth-year neuroscience and Spanish student Sophie Ahmad.

Being held Saturday to honor the original event, Dance Marathon will aim to destigmatize HIV/AIDS by bringing awareness to the UCLA and broader Los Angeles community, Ahmad said. She added that the virtual experience will also address the intersectionality of HIV/AIDS in relation to COVID-19, emphasizing how the latest pandemic affects those with other conditions.

Were encouraging everyone to stand the entire time like we normally would we know that its not 26 hours, but we hope people still get a little taste of what it feels like, Ahmad said. This also allows people who have never been able to come to watch like my grandmas going to be able to come for the first time.

This year, encouraging participants to Unite, Dance Marathon will be divided into three sections to account for the shorter time period: Learn, Remember and Unite. The Learn section will introduce the events mission of raising awareness for HIV/AIDS, while Remember will serve as a stand-in for the annual vigil held to honor the victims of the condition, Ahmad said. During the vigil, child ambassadors from the beneficiary Camp Laurel will share their stories with the audience. She said the last portion, Unite, will be the most upbeat portion of the event, featuring performers and a reveal of how much the organization has raised for the cause.

[Related: Student musicians support AIDS awareness in waning hours of Dance Marathon]

Because of the technical challenges of gathering a large number of speakers and performers, Dance Marathon will have a combination of live speakers from both UCLA Health and PACs primary beneficiary, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and prerecorded content largely from performers. Appurva Goel, PACs executive director of outreach and fourth-year economics and communication student, said the organizations goal is to retain the spirit of the physical event by balancing the way content is transmitted for Dance Marathon. She said the virtual event also provides an opportunity to bring in speakers from outside the LA area and will feature speakers from New York and Oregon.

We have essentially pulled together this event in three to four weeks, as opposed to usually a year of planning, Goel said. One way we worked with this was finding the perfect balance between prerecorded videos and speakers.

The events performers, which will consist primarily of UCLA students and alumni, will be a mix of a cappella, bands, solo artists and dance groups, Ahmad said. Drag queen Lorelei a staple of Dance Marathon in the past will also return to perform and provide LGBTQ+ representation. Third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student Akshay Anand will perform his original song Cherry, written specifically for the event, during the vigil. He said the song is based on the looming feeling of uncertainty that has characterized the past month.

[Related: Dance Marathon 2020 cancelled following COVID-19 concerns]

I wrote this song about being stuck at home and being afraid of losing the memories that I made, (and) not being able to share with people the stories that fade away, Anand said. Its about being alone in a time when you want to be surrounded by people and appreciating the time you have with others, which I thought fit well with this period.

Beyond uniting students over shared feelings of isolation and loss, Goel said this years Dance Marathon aims to highlight the continued existence of HIV/AIDS in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly given the potentially adverse effects of COVID-19 upon those already suffering from the immunodeficiency virus. She said she hopes the event will act as a reminder that the pandemic exacerbates existing issues like HIV/AIDS by drawing attention to the intersectionality of the viruses.

We want this event to be a break for students and participants to break beyond the four walls of their house and do something different to try to bring some normalcy into our corner, Goel said. But we also want to show that the pandemic has a very tangible impact on a lot of other things right now as well.

See the original post here:
Dance Marathon 2020 moves online with a focus on themes of unity and awareness - Daily Bruin

Neuroscience

Mother of five now nursing critically ill coronavirus patients – NOLA.com

People across St. Tammany Parish are coping with the many changes the novel coronavirus has brought to the community. Each week, we will feature a person on the front line of the fight against it.

Today, we put the spotlight on Kimberly Booth, a registered nurse who, after working as a stay-at-home mom for 16 years, began nursing school at 42 years old. For the past six-and-a-half years, she has been working at St. Tammany Health System, where she is a charge nurse in neuroscience and has been working as part of the hospitals critical-care COVID-19 team.

What made you decide to go into nursing?

I love to take care of people, whether it be physically or emotionally, so being a nurse was the perfect choice for me. Also, I have five children between the ages of 15 to 26, so working only three days a week in a hospital was a huge deciding factor.

What does your typical day look like?

I am usually running around, helping my co-workers and assisting the patients. As charge nurse, I respond to all rapids and code blues in the hospital. We have such an amazing team between CCU, ICU and neuroscience.

How has the COVID-19 outbreak affected the way you do your job day to day?

My job has changed dramatically because of COVID-19. I took the second suspected COVID-19 patient (at STHS) to help alleviate the fears of my co-workers. I am now part of the critical-care COVID-19 team that takes care of patients for a straight seven days on, then seven days off. We do this to expose less staff to the virus.

Whats the most challenging part of your workday now, in the age of the coronavirus?

Speaking to the families of the patients and knowing that they cannot be at their loved ones bedside as they pass. It is heart-wrenching to hear them telling their sister or mother goodbye through the phone or iPad. All the staff have cried with their patients families during this process. It breaks my heart.

What helps you keep going? Whats your motivation each day?

Every morning we have prayer at 7:15. All staff in ICU and CCU gather in the hallway and a prayer is led by our hospital chaplains Mike (Binnings) and Zac (Ritchie). This starts our morning off right because unfortunately, some days are truly tough. Also, the community support is incredible. The police, sheriffs deputies and firefighters cheering us as we came in or left work recently was inspiring and touched all of us. The incredible support the community has shown us I cant even express how grateful I am without tearing up. The donations of meals is truly our bright spot every single day.

Is there anything youd like people to know about you, your co-workers or St. Tammany Health System?

No question about it, I love my co-workers. We have such an incredible team and we lift each other up or offer emotional support during this trying time. I could not get through this pandemic without the support of my co-workers, managers and of course, the outstanding pulmonologists we have at St. Tammany. To quote (LSU) coach Orgeron: One team, one heartbeat.

Read the rest here:
Mother of five now nursing critically ill coronavirus patients - NOLA.com

Biochemistry

Does testosterone really make infectious diseases worse in men? – Metro Newspaper UK

Daniel Kelly, lecturer in biochemistry, Sheffield Hallam University

THE Covid-19 pandemic has had a bigger toll on men than it has on women. There has been a lot of conjecture about why this might be. One theory is that the male sex hormone, testosterone, has a dampening effect on the immune system, making men more susceptible to the novel coronavirus. But just how plausible is this theory?

An overview of the scientific evidence suggests that oestrogen (the main female hormone) can improve the immune system and increase immune inflammation whereas testosterone (the male sex hormone) reduces or dampens the response. As a result, women often have less severe infections than men and have significantly stronger immune responses to vaccinations (which are essentially less potent versions of a virus). Men with higher levels of testosterone may have weakened immunity and have been shown to produce the lowest antibody responses to annual flu vaccinations.

So is there a natural susceptibility of men to suffer more severely from viruses and bacterial infections as a result of testosterone? Such a conclusion is not so clear cut when you look a little deeper into the scientific evidence.

Many of the studies that describe the suppressing effect of testosterone on the immune system have focused on a single immune function or individual immune cell types. But the immune system is a complex arrangement of many different cells, organs and tissues that direct an elaborate response to infections. It can broadly be sorted into two categories: innate immunity and adaptive immunity.

Innate immunity is rapid (within hours) and non-specific, meaning it is a frontline defence that is more generalised, targeting any invaders and slowing infection until adaptive immunity is developed.

Adaptive, or acquired immunity, is more complex. It takes a longer time (several days) to process and recognise a foreign invader before making specific antibodies to target it. After the threat has gone, the adaptive immune system remembers it, which makes future responses to the same pathogen faster, more efficient and powerful.

Adaptive immunity may also be thought of as more energetically demanding on the body. This means that in males with high testosterone, where energy-consuming actions such as increasing muscle strength, sexual appetite and risk-taking behaviour take precedence, adaptive immunity is not necessarily prioritised. Fitting in with this, when men have infections or illness, their testosterone levels decrease, possibly to move energy away from all those high-energy tasks to allow instead for most energy to go into strengthening the immune response.

A trade-off may also happen between different immune actions. When one part is highly effective, other functions may be turned down. In a normal situation, the ability to produce a quick response to local infection or tissue injury by activating the innate immune system is more useful in high-testosterone men. This is because, from an evolutionary perspective, they are more likely to experience trauma as a result of aggressive physical competition, roles in hunting and heavy manual or dangerous activities. So its not likely that testosterone would reduce all parts of immune function equally.

Despite its overall immune system suppressing effects, looking a little more closely at testosterone over a wide range of immune functions shows it can be immune system suppressing, strengthening and even sometimes have no effect on immune function at all. With such different effects in different investigations, it becomes clear that measuring only certain immune features in relation to testosterone does not truly reflect the overall immune capabilities of a man.

A major factor in how severe an infection may become is whether a person has underlying disease. While this is easy to understand, what is not so clear is the effect that the reduced levels of testosterone that happen during illness have on the likelihood of the infection developing into something more severe in men. It has been recently shown that Covid-19 reduces testosterone levels in men by altering the functioning of the gonads. So could the increased severity of the disease in men be due to lowered testosterone?

Complicating things further is the influence of age. We know that the occurrence of additional diseases increases with age. Age is a major risk factor for Covid-19 in both genders. As men age, their testosterone levels decrease, offering the possibility that increased severity of infections in elderly men may be due to lower levels of testosterone rather than simply the presence of testosterone. For example, men with lower levels of testosterone who had chronic kidney disease were more likely to have to go to hospital because of infections than men with higher levels. What may be relevant here to Covid-19 is that most of these infections were respiratory infections.

To find out how it influences the immune system, it would be necessary to look at testosterone effects on various functions of both innate and adaptive immunity in a variety of men with different health statuses and ages. Such investigations dont exist at the moment. So for now, it would be wise to conclude that testosterone can modulate the immune system. But the way it does this and the outcome it has depend on many other factors that influence whether there may be a negative or a beneficial effect on the severity of infectious diseases, such as Covid-19, in men.

More here:
Does testosterone really make infectious diseases worse in men? - Metro Newspaper UK