Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health

Faculty engaged in microbiome research across campus have previously shown that our microbiome plays a key role in defining human health. For example, microbial dysfunction in the infant gut – characterized by the enrichment of particular microbial genes and their products – drive immune dysfunction and can be used to predict the development of allergy and asthma in childhood. Perturbed microbial ecosystems across the human body have been linked to autoimmune disease, metabolic syndromes such as obesity and diabetes, skin diseases, and even multiple sclerosis. Gut microbes can even contribute to metabolizing drugs and influence how much enters the circulation.

Leveraging this expertise and collaborations with UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco and institutions nationwide, the UCSF Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine aims to develop a holistic understanding of our earliest interactions with microbes in utero, through birth, and in early life. These efforts aim to find ways of predicting and preventing not only asthma and allergy, but other childhood diseases – including dermatological, gastrointestinal, respiratory and neurological disorders.

“At the same time that we are developing therapeutic strategies to restore microbial ecosystems once they have been damaged,” Lynch said. “We also need to find ways to intervene in at-risk populations in very early life to prevent chronic diseases before they start.”

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Scientists have developed an automated tool for mapping the movement of particles inside cells that may accelerate research in many fields, a new study in eLife reports.

The movements of tiny molecules, proteins and cellular components throughout the body play an important role in health and disease. For example, they contribute to brain development and the progression of some diseases. The new tool, built with cutting-edge machine learning technology, will make tracking these movements faster, easier and less prone to bias.

Currently, scientists may use images called kymographs, which represent the movement of in time and space, for their analyses of particle movements. These kymographs are extracted from time-lapse videos of particle movements recorded using microscopes. The analysis needs to be done manually, which is both slow and vulnerable to unconscious biases of the researcher.

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Amid unrelenting chaos and violence, scientists and doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been running a clinical trial of new drugs to try to combat a year-long Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the trial’s cosponsors at the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health announced that two of the experimental treatments appear to dramatically boost survival rates.

While an experimental vaccine previously had been shown to shield people from catching Ebola, the news marks a first for people who already have been infected. “From now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable,” said Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the Institut National de Recherche Biomedicale in the DRC, which has overseen the trial’s operations on the ground.

Starting last November, patients in four treatment centers in the country’s east, where the outbreak is at its worst, were randomly assigned to receive one of four investigational therapies—either an antiviral drug called remdesivir or one of three drugs that use monoclonal antibodies. Scientists concocted these big, Y-shaped proteins to recognize the specific shapes of invading bacteria and viruses and then recruit immune cells to attack those pathogens. One of these, a drug called ZMapp, is currently considered the standard of care during Ebola outbreaks. It had been tested and used during the devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014, and the goal was to see if those other drugs could outperform it. But preliminary data from the first 681 patients (out of a planned 725) showed such strong results that the trial has now been stopped.

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A widespread outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has killed one person and sickened possibly dozens of others who were all guests at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel. The hotel evacuated all its guests on July 15 and remains closed as of press time.

Public health officials say a dozen guests had tested positive for Legionnaires’, a bacteria that can cause a severe form of pneumonia. But according to the attorney filing a lawsuit Monday, hundreds more may have been exposed.

By the time guests were evacuated in mid-July, 49-year-old Cameo Garrett was already dead. An autopsy showed she had coronary issues and Legionnaires’ disease. Garrett went to a conference at the Sheraton a week before she died – just like Germany Greer who said he became so sick at one point he didn’t even know his own name.

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Fighting Antibiotic Resistance By Repurposing Old Drugs : Shots — Health News Scientists discovered that a medication used to treat parasites in horses can fight deadly staph infections. It’s a promising new approach to solving the problem of antibiotic resistance.

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This article appears in Weekly Health Page July 31.

Researchers found that more than four out of five Ohio women who had been physically abused by their partners had suffered a head injury. A study that found domestic violence survivors had sustained staggering rates of head trauma and violent choking incidents suggests that many are left with ongoing health problems from “invisible injuries” to the brain.

But the effects of such injuries often go unrecognized by advocates, health care providers, law enforcement — even the victims themselves, researchers said.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpK_gPTdklw

“Over the past 50 years [America has] gone from institutionalizing people with mental illnesses, often in subhuman conditions, [in state mental health hospitals] to incarcerating them at unprecedented and appalling rates—putting recovery out of reach for millions of Americans […] On any given day, between 300,000 and 400,000 people with mental illnesses are incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States, and more than 500,000 people with mental illnesses are under correctional control in the community.” [1] Mental Health America (MHA) supports effective, accessible mental health treatment for all people who need it who are confined in adult or juvenile correctional facilities or under correctional control. People with mental health and substance use conditions also need an effective classification system to protect vulnerable prisoners and preserve their human rights. [2] Notwithstanding their loss of their liberty, prisoners with mental health and substance use conditions retain all other rights, and these must be zealously defended.

Background

In the past decade, America has been locking up increasing numbers of individuals with mental health conditions. [3] MHA is both concerned by and opposed to the increasing use of criminal sanctions and incarceration, replacing the state mental hospitals with much more drastic curtailment of personal liberty and preclusion of community integration and community-based treatment. [4] Prisoners with mental health conditions are especially vulnerable to the difficult and sometimes deplorable conditions that prevail in jails, prisons, and other correctional facilities. Overcrowding often contributes to inadequacy of mental health services and to ineffective classification and separation of prisoner classes. It can both increase vulnerability and exacerbate mental illnesses. For these and other reasons, MHA supports maximum reasonable diversion. [5].

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Prior studies in mice have shown that whole body vibration (WBV) can mimic some of the positive effects on health of exercise, and even reverse some of the symptoms of type 2 diabetes. New research by a team at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) and Dental College of Georgia (DCG) at Augusta University has provided new clues as to the mechanisms involved. Their studies in a mouse model of obesity showed that WBV results in increased levels of inflammation-suppressing immune system macrophages, and high numbers of gut bacteria that makes short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which can help the body better utilize glucose.

The findings “… support the notion that WBV has the potential to alter the microbiota in a way that triggers innate and mucosal immunity to produce anti-inflammatory responses, down-regulating the hyper-inflammatory state and reversing the adverse consequences,” the investigators wrote in their published paper in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. “More studies are required to solidify this novel approach, which can be a very affordable and effective therapeutic modality in the prevention and treatment of many diseases, including diabetes and obesity.” The researchers, headed by Jack Yu, MD, chief of pediatric plastic surgery at MCG, and Babak Baban, PhD, immunologist and intern associate dean for research at DCG, reported their findings in a paper titled, “Whole Body Vibration-Induced Omental Macrophage Polarization and Fecal Microbiome Modification in a Murine Model.”

The combination of high-fat, sugar-heavy diets and “massively reduced physical activities” is largely responsible for what the researchers called “an epidemic of obesity and chronic metabolic diseases,” including type 2 diabetes. Chronic inflammation is a major contributory factor to the development of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, and the immune system’s macrophages play a key role in regulating inflammatory responses.

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