How little we know

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We have sheep

Our journey to self sufficiency continues we have sheep. I am so crazy excited. This may sound cruel and heartless but I cannot wait to eat our first lamb. We have 4 ewes, 1 ram and 1 lamb.

We decided on getting dorpers so we will not have to shear them. Well that is the plan as two of the four ewes are only 1st cross and are likely to need some shearing. They are all pregnant which is very exciting. They run with the ram and come into heat regularly. It is anyones guess as to when we will get our first lamb.

They are already playing reasonably friendly and will come relatively close to us to get some special feed treats.

So far the names we have are Dee and Jean for the ewes, Becca lamb and Bone the ram.

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The stuff they say about Ebola Are we all gonna die Part 3 of 3

Finally we reach an end, but not for the probable (yet pleading for statistical proof) outbreak. The world went bananas with Ebola for a while, the news made it the red hot topic alongside the Islamic State. Ebola is here to stay, not only in the affected regions, but also in the different communication vias spread through a globalised world of words, images and sounds. A lot has been done and said, overall the organisations acted late but still in time to correct a lazy initial approach. Procedures were inadequate and knowledge outside the Ebola niches was deficient, but now it seems that things are progressing much better, with one or two cases of PLAIN stupidity surging here and there. 

There arent reasons for panicking, so if you want to panic, go panic over FLU or NOROVIRUS since Winter is coming. Obviously, if the proper measures arent taken, one will have to be worried sick because sick will be a common word. 

The literature on Ebola, as a consequence of the investment on research, is now readily available if it wasnt already. People just didnt really care. The depth of knowledge is definitely increasing as researchers and lab personnel are now more aware of the correct way to process Ebola samples, for example.

I was personally badly impressed with the lack of altruism, empathy and philanthropy from ignorant people, who not only are damn ignorant but they are also very selfish. I remember reading somewhere comments from very few Illuminati Americans who dont represent the norm, Thank God, asking for policies against those who were helping Ebola patients in Africa. Comments like "... they knew what they were going for... now dont let them in because they will infect us". Wow, that is really nice and recommendable to portrait such disregard for the human kind and such disbelief in your own countrys health authorities. I am glad that representatives like President Obama had the guts to say that he did not fear meeting them face-to-face and shake their hands.

There is still a long way to go if the world wishes to reduce the exposure risk to this or other uncommon viruses. Nevertheless, the answer to the question "Are we all gonna die" is blatantly clear, YES. YES WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE. Most of all we are going to die because of the very same top 10 causes of death that have been tackling us til 2012:

[1]

And figures will be pretty much the same as predictions up to 2030 do not include EBOLA. What we can say is that, regardless of what you do, if you panic or not, if you get proper information or not, you and I are going to die, but its very unlikely that Ebola will be our grim ripper. 

Im glad I was of help to all my readers. You know you make this blog a better place whenever you visit it. But I have to move on, there will be plenty of people writing plenty of stuff about Ebola. I for one need to move on to other "big man tings now", this aint cool anymore. But I promise to be alert.

[1] WHO, The top 10 causes of death, [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/], last visited on the 29th of October 2014, last uopdated on May 2014.

1st image taken from The keep-calm-o-matic, [http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-or-not-we-are-all-going-to-die/].

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Mastitis

Mastitis is crap, it is a horrible horrible terrible infliction. It is caused by a blocked milk duct. The milk banking up behind this block is forced into the breast tissue causes inflamation. This then can very easily create infection. Horrible fevers, and complete body aches and shaking.

What you do not need whilst feeling like this is an utterly inept doctor. I was starting to feel bad so begged the medical centre for an appointment that day. Knowing I needed to feed Immali every time she wanted it to help clear the block I took her with me. Within two minutes of the doctors I am told to please next time bring a pram rather than wearing her in a sling. Why the red alert sirens did not ring in my ears screaming at me to walk back out I do not know.

I have never had such an awkward breast examination before. I cannot describe what was odd but it was odd. Then she doesnt know what to prescribe to me. Is unsure whether it is safe when breastfeeding so asks me to express and put Immali on formula. My answer was a flat out NO. I need my little girl to feed and feed like a trooper to make her mummy better.

I accepted the script, filled it at the chemist who assured me it was fine with breastfeeding. But I never took it. I just fed lots, drank lots of water, garlic pills and rested. Thankfully I think I skipped the infection. Being a friday it was great to have the antibiotics on hand over the weekend had things turned poorly.

My Dr count for this town is 4 with 4 crossed off my list. I am quick running out of GP options.

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The stuff they say about Ebola Are we all gonna die Part 1 of 3

A lot has been spat throughout the different media channels of communication, bottom line is that personally I believe contingency plans are failing. Why? I dont want to start a conspiracy theory here, but when having to deal with such ailment governments and health authorities can not plead ignorance; what I saw was the dragging of  decision-making procedures and poorly conducted protocols. I saw loads of action in allowing pharma companies to use untested drugs, something so unprecedented that takes me back to what was generated by the avian and swine flues propaganda some years back. I dont want to say these poor approaches were to serve the intents of Big Pharma, that is just not the case; it is better to assume that health authorities like WHO and governments of well developed countries just didnt really think this would spread so quickly. In a word, leniency. It was in Africa last month so what the hell should we worry about - they thought! I am not convinced of an outbreak per se, numbers prove it, unless you bend the definition of outbreak, but then Influenza should gather a lot more attention. Anyway, there are a lot of loop-holes in all of the things said and done in the media; some by ignorant people and some by very informed/qualified individuals. I will contribute my way with what I read and was written by scientists with proper opinions. Opinions I personally consider of value, for an example of a good conversation access here. Here it is for you, my answer to the question inside all our heads. 

Are we all gonna die? 

The answer can be found in Part 3

How Ebola disables initial immune responses?

"Researchers report that they have discovered a mechanism unique to the Ebola virus that defeats attempts by interferon to block viral reproduction in infected cells. They say their study [find here] explains for the first time how the production by the virus of a protein called Ebola Viral Protein 24 (eVP24) stops the interferon-based signals from ramping up immune defenses. With the bodys first response disabled, the virus is free to mass produce itself and trigger the too large immune response that damages organs and often becomes deadly as part of the Ebola virus disease (EVD)."

Taken from GEN News Highlights

Ebola Outbreak Underestimated

"During a recent press conference, Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, guessed it would take officials around six months to contain the outbreak, Reuters reported.

In an email to ScienceInsider, the WHO said it is considering administering the blood of people whove survived Ebola infection nto those who fall ill to the virus. Convalescent serum is high on our list of potential therapies and has been used in other outbreaks, the organisation told Science.

Still, when treating Ebola-infected patients, there is not a lot of extra time to experiment with unproven therapies, wrote Armad Sprecher, an epidemiologist and public health specialist at Doctors Without Borders, in New Republic. We cannot subject our patients to all of the possible things that might work. We have to chose wisely".

Taken from Pharmaceutical Microbiology

Ebola Researchers to test vaccine on humans, sequence virusgenomes

"The National Institute of Allergy and Infectios Diseases will test a potential Ebola Virus vaccine [find here] on humans starting next week.

"The vaccine, developed by the NIAID and GlaxoSmithKline... Today we know the best way to prevent the spread of Ebola infection is through public health measures, including good infection control practices, isolation, contact tracing, quarantine, and provision of personal protective equipment, NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci said in a press release. However, a vaccine will ultimately be an important tool in the prevention effort. "The launch of Phase 1 Ebola vaccine studies is the first step in a long process.

Researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard University have teamed up to take on the task, in hopes of putting and end to the outbreak. Collecting 99 virus genomes from Sierra Leone patients, the researchers found more than 300 genetic distinctionsthat separate this epidemic from previous outbreaks.

The team used the deep sequencing [find here] technique to inspect each genome at an average of 2,000 times."

Taken from Genome

Image obtained from News Channel 3, [http://wtkr.com/2014/08/11/report-ebola-outbreak-likely-started-by-2-year-old-in-guinea/]

To be continued

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Should we attack our dark angel H pylori The concomitant role of H pylori in Sjogrens syndrome

Writing my thesis hasnt been easy when there is so much to do. At home a 2-year old that is a hurricane, running my tiny science serious games business is also mandatory, fulfilling my role as the Midlands Ambassador for PARSUK whilst trying to find a job with the scarce seconds I have left to relax, complicates everything even further. 

This very busy agenda has made me aware of how difficult it is to update the blog, and if I do it its because of my passion for science communication. I could not leave unfinished my Sjogrens syndrome posts on unveiling the concomitant role of Helicobacter pylori in triggering this autoimmune disease. Especially when yet another friend of mine, a woman this time, came to me saying that she has been recently diagnosed with Sjogrens and she actually had a pylori infection prior to the actual diagnosis.

***

Literature says that a genetically susceptible individual can develop an autoimmune disease such as Sjogrens when the environment conspires to bend and break him. H. pylori being the fierce survivalist we all know remains untouched and no agents can actually get us rid of the bacteria that easy. Tell me about antibiotics, this bug is pretty hardcore hiding and masking its presence. You can very well undergo three courses of broad spectrum antibiotics, most of the times you are just flushing out your commensals and endangering your immune system. And by all means please do not think that because you have an autoimmune disease you have a reinforced immune system working over hours. All you have is a disturbed immune system so rage-drunk a dog it cannot recognise the master hence going bite-happy.

H. pylori is the mail man that really drives our immune systems dog crazy. Hasni et al (2012) talks about findings linking pylori with a deficiency of platelets in the blood [1]. But the most intriguing thing is how does pylori work in repressing our system and surviving such complex and adaptive defenses for longer than 58 000 years ago in human ancestors? Something somehow symbiotic has got to be at stake here, as suggested in [1].

Symbiotic or Amphibiotic?

Could the answer be that whenever we try and treat pylori we switch on a bacterial defense protocol that eventually will lead to unbalanced autoimmune responses? Hasni et al (2012) states that epidemiological data suggest an increase in asthma and autoimmune diseases in populations wherein H. pylori infection is aggressively treated and being eradicated [1].

Point 1: We get to a point where trying to eradicate a bacteria that has been with us for so long and known to cause harm might trigger an immune system imbalance.

Point 2: However, eradication of pylori is not associated to an increase of indigestion in patients with Sjogrens syndrome.

Point 3: Some studies suggest that H. pylori has a protective role in our human biology.

Could it be that we are facing an axiom indicating that H. pylori is likely to be an agent that has a low profile role in our human biology through an amphibiotic relationship (symbiotic or parasitic depending on the context of gastric equilibrium) with us humans?

[2] talks about H. pylori slowly and progressively disappearing from humans gastric mucosal tissue in the industrialised populations, and with it so are gastric cancer rates falling. What is this dark angel responsible for? Can pylori actually protect us? I dont really think so!

My personal opinion is that as expected H. pylori is terrible for us. But because we are still incapable of getting rid of it that easy it is better to maintain it dormant (reducing stress, changing our diets, etc) and then when really necessary apply a strong, specific and effective pylori treatment. That is in my opinion better than to try and err time and time again with Amoxicillin and Metronidazole that flush away the good guys too. The moment the bacterium recognises it is under attack it will start a process of masking and counterattacking that might as well be responsible for the immune system self/nol-self conflict that characterises Sjogrens syndrome.

Lets explore that in the coming article to be posted as early as January 2016.

[1] Hasni, S. A. (2012. "Role of Helicobacter pylori infection in autoimmune diseases". Curr Opin Rheumatol, 24(4), pp. 429-434.

[2] Blaser, M. J. (???). "Pathogenicity and symbiosis: human gastric colonization by Helicobacter pylori as model system of amphibiosis". nDepartment of medicine and microbiology, NYU School of Mecicine, New York, NY.

Image taken from [2]

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The stuff they say about Ebola Are we all gonna die Part 2 of 3

I am almost done with this topic that has been all over the news fro quite a while, unfortunately! Some of them channels broadcast an intense graphical set of images; images some minds would consider unnecessary violent and unnecessary awareness. I just watched a woman that had perished on a piece of carton paper being taken by two members of staff from some health department in Sierra Leone, as they were preparing themselves to drag the body away. In the eyes of the deceased womans family members, I saw apathy. Not the kind of apathy that resembles disrespect, distance, detachment, but the sort of apathy stamped by the "What can I do?"-attitude.

The question to "Are we all gonna die" is still answered, but I know the answer already. Ill save it for part three, the final part of this rambling through the Ebola pastures. I hope you stick around for yet another perspective I managed to extract from a series of articles written by people who know well what they are talking about.

"The Mathematics of Ebola trigger stark warnings: Act now or regret it"

"... a piece published last week in the Journal Eurosurveillance, which is the peer-reviewed publication of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (the EUs Stockholm-based version of the US CDC). The piece is an attempt to assess mathematically how the epidemic is growing, by using case reports to determine the reproductive number. (Note for non-epidemiology geeks: The basic reproductive number - usually shorted to Ro or R-nought - expresses how many cases of disease are likely to be caused by any one infected person. An Ro of less than 1 means an outbreak will die out; an Ro of more than 1 means an outbreak can be expected to increase. If you saw the movie Contagion, this is what Kate Winslet stood up and wrote on a whiteboard early in the film)."

"In a worst-case hypothetical scenario, should the outbreak continue with recent trends, the case burden could gain an additional 77,181 to 277,124 cases by the end of 2014."

"The level of response to the Ebola outbreak is totally inadequate. At the CDC, we learned that a military-style response during a major health crisis saves lives... We need to establish large field hospitals staffed by Americans to treat the sick. We need to implement infection-control practices to save the lives of health-care providers. We need to staff burial teams to curb disease transmission at funerals. We need to implement systems to detect new flare-ups that can be quickly extinguished. A few thousand U.S. troops could provide the support that is so desperately needed."

"There are two possible future chapters to this story that should keep us up at night:

The first possibility is that the Ebola virus spreads from West Africa to megacities in other regions of the developing world. This outbreak is very different from the 19 that have occurred in Africa over the past 40 years. It is much easier to control Ebola infections in isolated villages. But there has been a 300 percent increase in Africas population over the last four decades, much of it in large city slums...

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly bur are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible trough the air... viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola viruss hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice."

Taken from Superbug by Maryn McKenna

Image taken from Wired, [http://www.wired.com/2011/09/contagion-questions-spoilers/all/].

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