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10.10.2018 , 12.00 ( )
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A ZIKA PATIENT IN FLORIDA MAY HAVE ACQUIRED THE VIRUS LOCALLY
HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE RULED OUT SEX AND TRAVEL
A case of a woman infected with the Zika virus in Florida has had health officials baffled as to how she acquired the mosquito-borne virus. Today, the Associated Press reported via Twitter that Florida state officials have officially ruled out both sex and travel, which so far have been the two popular routes through which the disease has been transmitted in the United States.
So how did the woman acquire the virus? While nothing has been confirmed, it could be likely that the woman was infected by an Aedes Aegypti mosquito--the kind that transmits the virus--from within the United States.
This route of infection would happen through something like this: A person would become infected with the Zika virus while traveling to a Zika-stricken area, come home, then while the virus was still circulating in their bloodstream, get bitten by an Aedes Aegypti mosquito. Then that mosquito would have the virus in its system, and the next person it bites say this Floridian woman could acquire the Zika virus.
While this transmission method hasn't occurred in the U.S. yet, some healthofficials have stated that its only a matter of time before this happens. However, it would be unlikely that this would turn into a larger epidemic.
Because people in the United States spend much of their time indoors, wear mosquito repellent, and aren't exposed to standing water where mosquitos tend to breed), they don't have the same risk factors as those in areas where the Zika virus has already spread rapidly, such as South and Central America.
According to the AP, Florida health officials have begun testing mosquitoes in the area to help determine whether this woman was infected by a local mosquito carrying Zika in its bloodstream.
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NOROVIRUS SPREAD SUSPECTED AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
QUARANTINES CONTAIN VOMITING, DIARRHEA IN GOP RANKS
Known for spreading rapidly in environments like wedding parties and cruise ships, the Grand Ol' Party's party might be ripe for a Norovirus outbreak.
"Explosive Diarrhea and Vomiting at the Republican National Convention" sounds more like the Fear and Loathing campaign coverage of Hunter S. Thompson, but it's a looming issue of contagion at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, OH. At least 11 members of the California delegation's advance team were reported Tuesday to be showing signs of norovirus infection, according to Stat.
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Eerie County Health Commissioner Peter Schade told Stat that containment is key, as the virus that causes "one to three very miserable days" of violent bowel movements is "exceedingly contagious," and may have been incubated by a large indoor water park nestled inside the hotel where much of the California delegation is staying during the convention. Should quarantines fail, it could spread to the greater population of the convention.
The California GOP has advised its 550 delegates, alternates, and guests to avoid shaking hands with others while washing them frequently, according to the L.A. Times. The Kalahari Resort, where the majority of the Golden State's RNC participants are staying, has the nation's largest indoor waterpark. Such an environment could be responsible for incubating the norovirus, which is transferred via the fecal-oral route.
In what could be a worthy topic of address in a convention concerned with Medicare, a recent study tried to quantify the impact of the norovirus: With no known vaccine or treatment, it afflicts 700 million people annually, costs $4.2 billion in health system costs, and $60.3 billion in societal costs, when looking at factors like productivity lost in sick leave.
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DESPITE HIGH TECH UNISUITS, US ROWING TEAM WILL STILL BE AT RISK IN RIO
POLLUTION LEVELS ARE TOO HIGH FOR EVEN THE BEST TECHNOLOGY TO COMBAT
With the 2016 Summer Olympics right around the corner, athletes must be prepared to find themselves in some pretty disgusting places.
The US Rowing Team will lock in their oars on the brackish waters of the Rodrigo de Freitas Lake, a lake in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. During competition, the rowers will be sludging their shells through waters so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill and unable to compete, according to investigations done by to the Associated Press.
Specifically, the AP found dangerously high levels of viruses and bacteria from human sewage in the waterways. Aware of this risk of exposure, the US Rowing Team announced earlier this week that they would be wearing unisuits designed by textile engineers at Philadelphia University made out of water-repellant material with an anti-microbial finish.
Experts are skeptical that this material and its two layers of protection will help fully prevent infection, though, as the athletes will be exposed to waters with high levels of fecal bacteria, enteroviruses, rotaviruses, and adenoviruses, according to Wired.
The biocides used in the anti-microbial finish can repel and kill microbes, but they may not be able to do it quickly enough. The biocides also have to actually make contact with the water, but that doesnt always happen.
With every stroke, splashing contaminated water gets onto the rowers faces and arms. These parts of their bodies are not covered by the unisuits, which could expose them to viruses and bacteria thrown into the air as they move along the course.
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THE END OF ROOT CANALS?
STEM CELL-STIMULATING FILLINGS COULD CHANGE DENTISTRY AND SAVE YOUR TEETH
What if damaged teeth could heal themselves? That's the inspiration behind a new project from Harvard and the University of Nottingham to create stem cell stimulating fillings.
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Dentists treat hundreds of millions of cavities each year by drilling out the decay and putting in a filling.
But 10 to 15 percent of those fillings fail, says Adam Celiz, a therapeutic biomaterials researcher from University of Nottingham. And that leads to millions of root canals to remove the tooth's pulp, the soft tissue in the center of the tooth that contains the blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissue. A root canal can weaken the
tooth, which may eventually need to be pulled.
Celiz and his fellow researchers have developed a new kind of filling made from synthetic biomaterial that can stimulate the growth of stem cells in the pulp of the tooth. Just like regular fillings, the biomaterial is injected into the tooth and hardened with UV light.
In in vitro testing, the fillings stimulated the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells into dentin, the bony tissue that forms the bulk of the tooth under the white enamel. The researchers believes that if used in a damaged tooth, those stem cells can repair the kind of damage that often comes from the installation of a filling. In essence, the biomaterial filling would allow the tooth to heal itself.
In the future, Celiz says, all fillings could be made of such regenerative material so that damaged teeth could heal themselves, lowering the failure rate of fillings, and potentially even eliminating the need for most root canals.
The team took second prize in the materials category of the Royal Society of Chemistrys Emerging Technologies Competition this year.
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ALCOHOL HAND SANITIZERS WILL KEEP YOU HEALTHY AND SAFE
FDA WANTS TO MAKE THIS OFFICIAL AND RECENTLY ASKED TO KNOW MORE
Over the last week, there has been some coverage by the major media outlets on a document released by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The federal agency has asked for more data on the safety and efficacy of hand sanitizers. Although this may appear to sound an alarm, there is no reason for concern. After all, the FDA even says within the text of the document that, The proposed rule does not require any consumer hand sanitizer products to be removed from the market at this time", and that this rule does not mean these products are unsafe or ineffective.
The impetus behind the FDA announcement is a decades-long journey merging consumer products and government regulation to ensure public safety. The basis of this regulatory action is what is known as a monograph. Its an official standard regarding a specific chemical or group of chemicals and is used to certify a product containing these chemicals also known as active ingredients is safe when used appropriately.
Back in the 1960s, the FDA expanded the scope of monographs to include non-prescription medications, also known as Over The Counter (OTC) drugs. This was not an easy task, however, as the number of products ranged into the hundreds of thousands. But the agency was undeterred and in 1972, the official OTC Drug Review was initiated in the hopes of developing monographs for every drug on pharmacy - and now grocery - shelves.
As one might expect, the process was not quick and final monographs didnt appear until at least ten years later. But slowly the number grew and included categories such as anti-acne products, toothpaste, antiperspirants, dandruff products, antacids, sunscreens, and cough, cold and allergy remedies.
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Though nearly forty years have passed since the monograph endeavor was started, some are still in in the review process. One of these focuses on what officially are called topical antimicrobial drug products most of us simply call them hand sanitizers. The journey has been long but the final document is slated to be published in the government's official rules and regulations publication, the Federal Register, in 2019. This particular monograph is the reason for last weeks announcement.
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The last time the FDA conducted an official review of these products was back in 1994 when a Tentative Final Monograph was released. Back then, a list of questions regarding safety and effectiveness. Over the last 22 years, there has been a significant amount of research performed to address these issues but there hasnt been a formal rule requesting this information. Now the FDA officially wants to know what science is out there.
Much of the data gained over the last few decades has focused on alcohol-based hand sanitizers. After all, more people are using these products and some major health organizations such as the World Health Organization recommend them to reduce infection spread. As a result, the amount of information collected on the safety and effectiveness of these products has grown tremendously.
In terms of effectiveness, alcohol hand sanitizers have proven in hundreds of scientific articles to be useful in keeping people safe. All thats required is a concentration between 62 and 70% alcohol ethyl alcohol to be exact and 15 seconds on contact time and the majority of pathogenic threats will be killed. This includes bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Its why this product is considered by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be the best option to prevent infectious disease spread when running water and soap are not available.
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SMART STITCHES SEND DATA AS THEY HEAL WOUNDS
THESE THREADS COULD SEND HEALTH INFO WIRELESSLY TO YOUR DOCTOR
In the medicine world, stitches are the epitome of low-tech. You get cut, and just like a seamstress with a pair of ripped trousers, your doctor simply sews you up. But what if stitches did more than closed wounds? What if they could reveal how the healing was coming along?
That's the promise of the "smart sutures" invented by a team of researchers led by engineers from Tufts University. Starting with thread that ranged from basic cotton to sophisticated synthetic, the researchers embedded electronics, microfluidics, and nano-scale sensors to create high-tech diagnostic sutures. The threads can collect diagnostic data such as tissue temperature, pH and glucose levels, and stress and strain, and even sense if an infection is coming on.
What's more, these super-stitches can then wirelessly send the collected data to a smartphone or computer, potentially giving health professionals a realtime glimpse inside an injury. The smart threads could be used in more than just wounds, say the researchers. They could also be embedded in organs, orthopedic implants, and perhaps even knitted or embroidered into smart fabrics for other applications.
So far, the smart threads have only been tested on rats and in vitro. The research was published in the journal Microsystems and Nanoengineering.
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AMERICAN BEERS ARE GETTING NUTRITION LABELS
A LITTLE INFO WITH YOUR DRINK
Today in things-you-should-probably-know-but-would-prefer-not-to: American beers are going to start getting nutrition labels.
Americans are clearly concerned about their calorie intake from beer: Bud Light and Coors Light are the two most popular beers in the country. Those beers, and plenty of other American brews, will voluntarily publish nutritional information by 2020, according to an announcement from the Beer Institute, a group in that represents the brewers responsible for around 80 percent of America's beer. That includes the big guns like Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and HeinekenUSA.
The Beer Institute directive lists three goals:
To provide calorie, carbohydrate, protein, fat, and ABV (or ABW as required by state law) information on all labels in the form of a serving facts statement consistent with federal guidelines.
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To disclose ingredients in products on either the label or secondary packaging via a list of ingredients, a reference to a website or a QR code. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) lists ingredients that are pre-approved in manufacturing beer.
To clearly display a freshness date or date of production on all labels or primary containers.
Beer hasn't needed a label to this point because the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), rather than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has authority over beer, according to Gizmodo. Some, like beers without hops, which don't fall under the TTB, or beer served in restaurants, still require calorie counts, though.
Diageo, which brews Guinness, already started adding nutrition information on its products last year, according to a report by Fox News. Did you know that Guinness has only 15 more calories than Bud Light?
Text 9
WHAT DOES A MINE IN ENGLAND HAVE IN COMMON WITH MARS?
LOOKING FOR LIFE IN WEIRD PLACES
Boulby, in the United Kingdom, is a working mine, where workers remove salt and potash (a fertilizer ingredient) from the ground. It's also the location of an underground science lab where researchers investigate everything from dark matter to astrobiology.
This week, the mine was host to researchers from the Mars Analogues for Space Exploration (MASE) project, a four-year project to analyze environments on Earth that may be similar to Mars.
Heading two-thirds of a mile deep into the Earth, researchers examined hexagonal features similar to those that rovers like Curiosity have observed on Mars. The researchers hope that by developing techniques to examine features like this for life here on Earth, they could eventually help develop tools for future Mars missions to identify extraterrestrial life on Mars itself.
"In Boulby the rocks were formed around 250 million years ago, in a giant inland sea." MASE Scientific Coordinator Charles Cockell said. "We think the polygonal shapes are connected to the expansion of salt when the sea periodically dried out, similar to the processes we see in places like Death Valley in California today. These features are similar to some environments we see on Mars. We suspect that the rims contain clay, iron and organics and we want to test the hypothesis that they contain signatures of life.
The salt polygons Cockell mentions area few feet across in places, etched on the cavern walls. Similar structures have been seen on Mars. If the researchers can identify signs of ancient life in the 250 million year old rock in England, they may someday be able to do the same on Mars.
Polygons on the surface are similar to those seen in mud or salt formations after a body of water evaporates.
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AN AMISH ENVIRONMENT PROTECTS AGAINST ASTHMA, NEW RESEARCH SHOWS
DUST RICH IN FARM ANIMAL MICROBES MAY GIVE IMMUNE SYSTEM A BOOST
Amish children spend a lot more time around farm animals than most of their peers. It turns out that this might be protecting them against asthma. Microbes from livestock on Amish farms find their way into house dust and strengthen kids immune systems, indicates research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The kind of environment people grow up in plays a role in their susceptibility to asthma and allergies. Kids who are exposed to many types of microbes are less likely to develop these conditions. Living on a traditional farm, or with pets, both seem to offer some protection. The Amish, who dwell in single-family farms and avoid modern technology, have a particularly low prevalence of allergies.
For the new study, researchers compared the Amish to another group with a similar lifestyle and ancestry, the Hutterites. Unlike the Amish, this community uses industrialized farming methods, and also has a higher prevalence of childhood asthma.
A few differences emerged between Amish and Hutterite kids and their homes. Asthma prevalence among the Hutterite kids was 21.3 percent, versus 5.2 percent in the Amish schoolchildren. In their blood, the Amish children had more white cells called neutrophils that fight infections. Their blood also had fewer cells called eosinophils involved in allergic reactions.
Dust samples from Amish houses contained 6.8 times more microbes than those from Hutterite houses. The researchers think this is because Amish houses sit closer to their barns.
