January 2011
17 posts
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I'm listed in Tumblweeds under medicine, science,...
I’m listed in Tumblweeds, a user-generated community directory that rates Tumblr bloggers by their number of followers. Find me listed in #medicine, #science, #health
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Malaria Vaccine Trials – getting under fives to...
So the malaria vaccine mentioned last time (RTS) has been a long time coming (since around 1987) and no-one’s pretending it’s ‘here’ yet. But a paper released earlier this week suggests that it could have a pretty decent role in protecting children in malaria endemic areas.
Quick recap as to why that’s far bigger news than I just made out:
Malaria is responsible for around two million deaths a...
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Delays...
Oops. I know I said the next post on the Malaria vaccine would be coming up yesterday, but turns out I’m trying to fit far too much in my day…
But it’s like 80-90% done… and I’m planning on doing more of the second snake bite post over the weekend.
Anyway, I remember back in my first post saying I should only be aiming for a post a week. Looks like any form of...
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Malaria Vaccine Showing Promise
Extremely tired, so will write about this properly tomorrow, BUT. Here’s evidence for a step further to a fully effective malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01E). Yup, that’s right, a malaria vaccine. Maybe not the holy grail of vaccines (thinking HIV here) but definitely impressive.
The efficacy doesn’t seem fantastic yet (45%ish), but then, there’d be a lot of herd immunity as...
Case Notes →
releasethetourniquets:
I’ve been brought up on a healthy diet of Radio 4 listening, and I’d recommend the programme ‘Case Notes’ to any budding medics out there.
Each week they cover a different topic in a half-hour programme - from Autism to Biomechanics
Note: Although part of the BBC World-service, it may not be available outside the UK.
As another Radio 4 geek, another good programme is...
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“If the committee does not consider that it is reckless to prescribe magic water...”
– Tracey Brown - Sense About Science
(see http://everythingversushost.tumblr.com/post/2828743422/ )
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/574/
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Pharmacists who knowingly put lives at risk get...
Yesterday it was announced that the Royal Pharmaceutical Council of Great Britain has dropped two cases, both against pharmacies that were recommending homeopathic ‘treatments’ to prevent malaria.
This wasn’t alongside recommending seeing a doctor or travel clinic before heading abroad. The advice of a few magic sugar pills was all that was given to a reporter, who had said they...
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Interesting in a terrifying kind of way. Think...
The New Scientist has an article out today that’s possibly the most unsettling thing I’ve read about an already, quite unsettling disease.
Turns out mice, exposed to aerosols containing brain tissue from scrapie infected mice, catch the disease.
Now, that may not sound creepy, or even surprising, but there’s a wider context to this.
It connects to diseases created by...
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Snake Bites (Post 1 of 2) - Global Issues and...
Why should we care about Snake Bites? Most of us are sitting at home safe, well removed from any risk.
But whilst they may not be a danger to you personally, you’re still scared of snakes right?
I know I am. That fear’s been bred into us. Those without it couldn’t pass on their ‘SnakeConfidence’ genes, due to the problems associated with becoming lunch.
...
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“We either have a major public health problem or a significant theological event:...”
– Article from Mike @ http://bit.ly/hBUZoc
(The values given in the article don’t seem to add up to 10% … I think really it’s 10% of the people who had STI’s also said they were abstinent (118 of the 964 who had STI’s).
But still; when you’ve got 60 teenagers who...
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“But as for you, unlucky Laevus, your blood, congealed by a serpent of the Nile,...”
– Lucanus MA. Bellum civile (civil war). Book IX. http://www. thelatinlibrary.com/lucan/lucan9.shtml
- Chosen by David Warrell to introduce his Seminar on Snake Bite: ’Warrell, D. a Snake bite. The Lancet 375, 77-88(2010).’
- Chosen by me to emphasise how much I’ll be relying on...
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“Antigens: are any molecule that can be bound by their specific antibody. They...”
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Antigens; or, what the immune system can see and...
Every post so far has talked of immune cells looking at whole microbes or cell fragments.
This isn’t really what happens. Your immune cells don’t see something like mycoplasma tuberculosis (which causes TB) as a whole organism; instead immune cells see separate, smaller, things called ‘antigens’.
Causative agent of TB, mycoplasma tuberculosis. Seen under electron...
