Today is the 60th anniversary of the polio vaccine being declared safe to use. The poliovirus was a major health concern for much of the twentieth century, but in the last sixty years huge gains have been made that have almost resulted in its complete eradication. The condition polio is caused by a human enterovirus called the poliovirus.
The post An interactive timeline of the history of polio appeared first on OUPblog.
With the Ebola virus in the news recently, you may be wondering what actions you can take to reduce the risk of contracting and spreading the deadly disease. Expert Peter C. Doherty provides valuable pointers on the best ways to stay safe and healthy in this excerpt from Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know answering: Is there anything that I can do personally to limit the possibility of a dangerous pandemic?
While pandemics are by their nature unpredictable, there are some things worth considering when it comes to the issue of personal safety and responsibility. The first point is to be a safe international traveler so that you don’t bring some nasty infection home with you. Protect yourself and you protect others. Though taking the available vaccines won’t prevent infection with some novel pathogen, it will contribute toward ensuring that you enjoy a successful vacation or business trip, and it should also put you in a “think bugs” mind-set. If, for instance, you are off to Africa for a wildlife safari, make an appointment at a travel clinic (or with your primary care physician) two to three months ahead of time to check your vaccine status and, if needed, receive booster shots to ensure that your antibody levels are high. Anyone who is visiting a developing country should make sure that he or she has indeed received the standard immunizations of childhood. Adolescents and young adults are much more likely to suffer severe consequences if, for instance, they contract commonplace infections like measles or mumps that have, because of herd immunity, become so unusual in Western countries that a minority of parents reject the collective responsibility of vaccinating their kids. If you’re younger and your parents are (or were) into alternative lifestyles, it may be wise to ask them very directly about your personal immunization history.
It’s also likely that, even if you were vaccinated early on, your level of immunity will have declined greatly and you will benefit from further challenge. Both possibilities will be covered if you go to a comprehensive travel clinic, as the doctors and nurses there will insist that you receive these shots (or a booster) if you don’t have a documented recent history. Any vaccination schedule should ideally be completed at least 3 to 4 weeks ahead of boarding your flight, the time needed for the full development of immunity. But this is one situation where “better late than never” applies. Should it have slipped your mind until the last minute, you should be vaccinated nevertheless. Even if you’ve never had that particular vaccine before, some level of protection could be there within 5 to 10 days, and a boosted, existing response will cut in more quickly. A travel clinic will also sell you a Gastro (gastroenteritis, not gastronomy) kit containing antibiotics to counter traveler’s diarrhea (generally a result of low-grade E. coli infection), something to decrease intestinal/gastric motility (Imodium), and sachets of salts to restore an appropriate fluid balance.
For the elderly, be aware of the decline in immunity that happens with age. You may not respond to vaccines as well as those who are younger, and you will be at greater risk from any novel infection. Depending on your proposed itinerary, it may also be essential to take anti-malarial drugs, which generally have to be started well ahead of arrival. Malaria is not the only mosquito-borne threat in tropical countries, so carry a good supply of insect repellant. In general, think about when and where you travel. Avoiding the hot, wet season in the tropics may be a good idea, both from the aspect that too much rain can limit access to interesting sites and because more standing water means more mosquitoes. Wearing long trousers, long-sleeved shirts, and shoes and socks helps to protect against being bitten (both by insects and by snakes), while also minimizing skin damage due to higher UV levels. Then, before you make your plans and again prior to embarking, check the relevant websites at the CDC, the WHO, and your own Department of Foreign Affairs (Department of State in the United States) for travel alerts. Especially if they’re off to Asia, many of my medical infectious disease colleagues travel with one or other of the antiviral drugs (Relenza and Tamiflu) that work against all known influenza strains. These require a prescription, but they’re worth having at home anyway in case there is a flu pandemic. If that happens, the word will be out that influenza is raging and stocks in the pharmacies and drugstores will disappear very quickly. But don’t rely on self-diagnosis if you took your Tamiflu with you to some exotic place; see a doctor. What you may think is flu could be malaria.
For those who may be sexually active with a previously unknown partner, carry prophylactics (condoms) and behave as responsibly as possible. Excess alcohol intake increases the likelihood that we will do something stupid. Dirty needles must be avoided, but don’t inject drugs under any circumstances. Blood-borne infections with persistently circulating viruses (HIV and hepatitis B and C) are major risks, while insect-transmitted pathogens (dengue, Chikungunya, Japanese B encephalitis) can also be in the human circulation for 5–10 days. Apart from that, being caught with illegal drugs can land you in terrible trouble, particularly in some Southeast Asian nations. No matter what passport you carry, you are subject to the laws of the country. Be aware that rabies may be endemic and that animal bites in general can be dangerous.
Can you really trust a tattooist to use sterile needles? Even if the needles are clean, what about the inks? How can they be sterilized to ensure that they are not, as has been known to occur, contaminated with Mycobacterium chelonae, the cause of a nasty skin infection? And that was in the United States, not in some exotic location where there may be much nastier bugs around.
Peter C. Doherty is Chairman of the Department of Immunology at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and a Laureate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: Advice for Young Scientists, Their Fate is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our World, and A Light History of Hot Air.
What Everyone Needs to Know (WENTK) series offers a balanced and authoritative primer on complex current event issues and countries. Written by leading authorities in their given fields, in a concise question-and-answer format, inquiring minds soon learn essential knowledge to engage with the issues that matter today. Starting July 2014, OUPblog will publish a WENTK blog post monthly.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Ebola virus particles by Thomas W. Geisbert, Boston University School of Medicine. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Limiting the possibility of a dangerous pandemic appeared first on OUPblog.
By Lauren Pecorino
There is a tendency to complain about policies when writing blogs, but I think it is time to commend the British campaigns and innovations in treatment. They have proven to be some of the best in the world and have had a major impact in the fight against cancer.
One of the best British campaigns is against cervical cancer. Getting personally posted invitations to attend your next PAP screening, supported by pamphlets of information, is something few women ignore. Those who try to ignore these invitations are rightly and relentlessly bombarded with regular reminders.
And, with the knowledge that a sexually transmitted virus, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), is responsible for all cases of cervical cancer, the UK implemented a national school-based HPV vaccination programme that has proven to yield high uptake. By 2009, 70 percent of 12-13 year olds in the UK were fully vaccinated. These results are admirable compared to the results of alternative on-demand provisions offered by other countries including the USA. Note that the vaccine is recommended for early teens as it is a preventative vaccine and not a therapeutic vaccine, and must be administered before the initiation of sexual activity for it to be effective. The vaccine prevents about 70% of cervical cancers caused by two specific strains of HPV. PAP screening is still important to catch cases that are not prevented by the vaccine. An added bonus of this campaign is that the same vaccine also protects against some head, neck, and anal cancers caused by HPV infections.
Another great British effort is towards the prevention of lung cancer. The anti-smoking adverts have been haunting, especially the most recent one released by the UK Department of Health that shows a tumor growing on a cigarette. It is brilliant. I wish I had designed it. The advert strikingly conveys the message that if you saw the damage smoking causes, you would not smoke. The percentage of male cigarette smokers have fallen from 55% in 1970 to 21% in 2010 and a decreasing number of deaths due to lung cancer has followed this trend.
Click here to view the embedded video.
The UK is also a model of good practice in that it is the only country in the world which has a network of free ‘stop-smoking’ services, recently supported by specialized training for National Health Service Stop Smoking practitioners.
We can help the national campaign at a personal level by being more opinionated and outspoken when it comes to letting those around us know that smoking is harmful and “uncool”- especially among the young. We must ensure the message is passed down to new generations.
Finally, the UK is at the leading edge in using stem cells to help replace organs damaged by cancer. Tracheal transplants using tracheal scaffolds from cadavers seeded with the patient’s own stem cells have been used to replace damaged tissue for patients with tracheal cancer. Currently scientists at University College London are developing very similar procedures to grow a new nose for a patient who had lost their nose to cancer. These innovative approaches are the result of a continuously open, well-supported but regulated stem cell research policy, not yet seen in the USA.
Well done Great Britain!
Lauren Pecorino received her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in Cell and Developmental Biology. She crossed the Atlantic to carry out a postdoctoral tenure at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London. She is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich where teaches Cancer Biology and Therapeutics. The teaching of this course motivated her to write The Molecular Biology of Cancer: Mechanisms, Targets, and Therapeutics, now in its second edition. Feedback on the textbook posted on Amazon from a cancer patient drove her to write a book on cancer for a wider audience: Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science.
Read a World Cancer Day Q&A with Lauren Pecorino.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post World Cancer Day 2013: The Best of British appeared first on OUPblog.
On World Cancer Day 2012, we speak with Dr Lauren Pecorino, author of Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science, to learn the latest in the field of cancer research. – Nicola
There are so many myths about cancer that it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly what it is. Can you briefly explain how cancer develops?
Cancer is a disease of the human genome. Many agents that cause cancer cause permanent changes to your genes. These permanent changes are called mutations. Cancer is usually caused by the accumulation of mutations over time. This is why cancer risk increases with age. The altered genes may produce faulty proteins that lead to abnormal cell growth and this appears as a tumour. Cancer is characterized by abnormal cell growth and the ability of tumour cells to spread throughout the body. It is this second characteristic, called metastasis that is the most difficult aspect to treat.
It is said that cancer now affects one in three people over a lifetime. What’s the latest progress in the field of cancer research?
There has been tremendous progress in the field of cancer management. The good news is that trends in death rates are decreasing for many cancers though that is not to say for all cancers. There are millions of cancer survivors who have had their diagnosis ten or more years ago. Many people are now living with cancer. Conventional treatments such as surgical procedures have been refined and new drugs that target tumour-specific molecules have proved efficient and promises less side effects.
In addition, we are learning to make lifestyle choices that science has shown reduces cancer risk — the most obvious being not smoking. We also have cancer screening programmes that can catch cancer early and even prevent cancer by treating pre-cancerous growths. The latest means for preventing a specific type of cancer is a cancer vaccine. Interestingly the vaccine designed to prevent cervical cancer vaccine also prevents several other cancers caused by the human papilloma virus such as some head and neck cancers.
What do you see as the priorities for future cancer research? Where will the next great advances be?
I see four main priorites for future cancer research.
1 – To develop better and less invasive diagnostics so that we can detect cancer earlier. It is well-known that catching cancer earlier gives a better outcome or prognosis.
2 – To expand our understanding of the individual molecular differences between tumors and to be able to fully practice personalized medicine which allows a better match between a patient and a drug. This understanding will need to be supported by technology that allows a patient’s tumour DNA to be sequenced (similar to the methods used for the Human Genome Project).
3 – To understand if we can turn a cancer cell back into a normal cell. This may sound strange but lessons from stem cells and cloning tell us that changing one cell type into another is possible.
4 – To better understand metastasis and how we can better treat it. The spreading of cancer cells throughout the body is the most difficult aspect of treating
Contagion,” the extraordinary film portraying the outbreak of lethal virus that spreads rapidly around the world, may seem eerily familiar: from the medieval plague to the Spanish flu of 1918-19 to more recent fears of avian influenza, SARS, and H1N1 “swine flu”, contagions have long characterized the human condition. The film captures almost perfectly what a contemporary worst-case scenario might look like, and is eerily familiar because it trades on realistic fears. Contagion, the transmission of communicable infectious disease from one person to another (either by direct contact, as in this film — sneezing or coughing or touching one’s nose or mouth, then a surface like a tabletop or doorknob that someone else then touches
By Elvin Lim
The two front-runners in the Republican nomination contest, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, narrowed the distance between them in the last debate in Florida sponsored by Fox and Google. This is a debate that showcased both their Achilles’ heels. Perry's problem is not the "ponzi scheme" comment about Social Security. Most conservatives agree with him, and the consistent conservative would actually agree with him that Social Security is a matter that should be sent back to the states to handle. Perry's problem is his
Nice design and very interesting composition. Like it a lot!