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Increasing rates of antibiotic resistance poses a major challenge for medical professionals today. A recent article in Medical News Today explained everything there is to know about superbugs. First of all, what is a superbug? A superbug is a germ, such as fungi or bacteria, that has become resistant to whatever is normally used to treat it. As superbugs develop, it will take larger amounts of different and stronger drugs to treat infections caused by these organisms. In the US, these types of infections lead to over 35,000 deaths each year. To prevent the development of superbugs, it is important to use antibiotics only when necessary, and to carefully follow the instructions on the antibiotic’s prescription.

              This article also explained exactly how superbugs come to exist through natural evolution. When a person with an infection takes an antibiotic, the antibiotic kills the most susceptible organisms first, and more resistant organisms survive. These survivors produce more bacteria that are also resistant to the antibiotic, so the infection becomes more difficult to treat. This reasoning explains why it is so important to finish your course of antibiotics, so that even the more resistant bacteria are killed and cannot reproduce to make the infection return with stronger bacteria. Antibiotics are also very prevalent in the farming industry, so bacteria have more opportunities to be exposed to antibiotics and develop resistance. From my perspective, it seems like as long as you go to the doctor quickly when you assume that you have an infection, you should be fine. However, this may not be the case in the future if superbugs develop that cannot be treated with our currently known antibiotics.

              On a more hopeful note, I found another article that explained how a new antibiotic was recently discovered, and it can treat infections that are resistant to all of our current antibiotics. Researchers at MIT discovered this antibiotic using an artificial intelligence program that assessed how effective it would be against E. coli. When this compound was tested in lab after being selected, it was effective against resistant strains of C. difficile, A. baumanii, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This drug has been named halicin, which is inspired by a pop culture reference involving AI that I did not understand… While this discovery is very helpful in the medical field, it is only a matter of time until bacteria begin to develop resistance against it, especially if the use of antibiotics continues to increase.

A recent article from Daily Mail reminds people how serious measles can be and explains how the vaccine can eliminate the measles. Measles begins with relatively mild symptoms, such as a fever, cough, and rash, but these symptoms can be quickly followed by life threatening complications, such as pneumonia, seizures, and encephalomyelitis (which causes neurological damage if you are like me and did not know what this was). Despite these possibly deadly complications that can arise, more and more people are refusing to vaccinate their children against measles due to false evidence spread by anti vaxxers, especially on social media. Many people who opposed vaccinations claim that they are associated with autism among other disorders, and the MMR vaccine seems to be the main culprit. However, extensive research has proven that these concerns are not relevant and the risk of developing measles without the vaccine is far more severe than the risk associated with receiving the vaccine.

              As we learned in class, herd immunity is an important factor in protecting immunocompromised people in a population from a certain disease. Some people in an immunocompromised state are unable to be vaccinated against measles because their immune system is too weak to protect them from event the attenuated version of the virus found in the vaccine. To protect these individuals, the people around them should be vaccinated so that they do not spread the disease to an unvaccinated and immunocompromised individual. To achieve herd immunity, 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated. As fear of vaccines escalates, the percentage of children receiving the vaccine dwindles, and herd immunity is at risk. Measles was almost eradicated in the US, but more and more outbreaks are occurring as vaccination rates decline.

              Among escalating incidences of measles, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is starting a campaign to vaccinated 45 million children in 7 developing countries over the next 6 months. I found a recent article from UNICEF that explained this campaign. Children will be vaccinated against measles in Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal, Somalia, and South Sudan. Cases of the measles had been steadily declining from 2000 until 2016, but the numbers have been rising as the anti-vaccination movement takes hold. The CEO of Gavi explained how the vaccine against measles is inexpensive, effective, and safe, so everyone should be able to have access to it and measles should be eradicated. After reading about the anti-vaccination movement last week, I am glad to know that health professionals are still able to provide these life saving vaccines to children all over the world, especially where healthcare is not well equipped to treat people who fall ill to preventable diseases.

If you are like me, you are familiar with polio and know that it is a serious, life-threatening disease, but you do not know all of the details. Before jumping into this blog post, I though it would be useful refer to the CDC website to cover some of the basics of polio before jumping into the vaccine. Most people who are infected with poliovirus will not develop any symptoms, and most of the people who do will develop flu-like symptoms. However, a smaller portion of people infected with poliovirus will develop serious symptoms such as paresthesia, meningitis, and paralysis that affect the brain and spinal cord. Poliovirus is spread through person-to-person contact, most commonly through the fecal-oral route. Poliovirus is highly infectious, but luckily, it is preventable by vaccine.

              According to a scholarly article, there are 2 vaccines that have been developed against poliovirus: inactivated poliovirus (IPV) and live oral poliovirus (OPV). The OPV vaccine is associated with a risk of causing paralysis in the recipient, and it scares me that many people around the world are taking this risk when there is a safer option available. In fact, more people develop paralysis from the vaccine than the wild poliovirus in today’s world, which is shocking to me. The inactivated poliovirus, on the other hand, does not pose these risks to the recipient. To combat the prevalence of vaccine-associated paralysis while still providing effective protection against poliovirus, the WHO suggests that and IPV is administered prior to the OPV. Since poliovirus has a human only reservoir, it is important for us to find a safer way to effectively prevent the spread of poliovirus, because we could theoretically eradicate polio.

              I found a recent article on Time that discussed a recent event involving the polio vaccine that I found to be quite interesting. In Pakistan, healthcare workers will occasionally campaign against polio and vaccinate as many people as possible to try to eliminate polio in their country. However, the Taliban believes that these campaigns and vaccination are Western conspiracies aimed at sterilizing Pakistani children. Last week, a police officer who was escorting healthcare workers to provide the vaccines was killed when the van he was travelling in was bombed. It is concerning to me that people do not realize the lifesaving effects that this vaccine has, and they are preventing their children from having important protection. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are the only countries where polio in still endemic, so it is important to educate and help the people living in these countries.

Despite mountains of evidence to support the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, many people still believe that they are dangerous and refuse to vaccinate their children. A recent NBC article explained how social media amplifies the spread of false information in the anti-vax movement. A Facebook group called “Stop Mandatory Vaccination” has nearly 180,000 members, and it is one of the largest health misinformation groups. This group spreads conspiracies to make people afraid of vaccines. For example, they tell parents that preventable disease outbreaks are orchestrated by the government. They also contact parents whose children have died, and tell them that vaccines caused their child’s death. Many parents come to the group to ask for medical advice, and receive false information.

              This article also explained how the anti-vax movement is deadly. Recently, a child was diagnosed with the flu and Tamiflu was prescribed to them by their doctor. However, the child’s mother turned to “Stop Mandatory Vaccine” to ask how to treat her child instead of filling the prescription. Members of this group suggested many natural remedies that the mother tried, but none were effective. The child soon passed away, and hi death may have been prevented if he had received the flu vaccine or if he had taken the Tamiflu prescribed by his doctor. In response, Facebook announced that they did not want their platform to be used to spread misinformation about vaccines, but there are limitations on what they can control.

              A BBC article explains another interesting event that recently happened in the world of anti-vaxxers. Van Koinis, a pediatrician in Chicago, committed suicide and revealed that he falsified vaccination records in his suicide note. Koinis had a reputation for being liked by anti-vaccination parents because he did not pressure them into vaccinating their children. His suicide note suggests that he did more than simply not pressure them; Koinis falsified vaccination records for parents who did not want to vaccinate their children so that they could still go to school. His not was ambiguous, and it is not known if he also lied about vaccinating children whose parents wanted them to be vaccinated. His former patients are being encouraged to see a physician to run tests to determine if they were vaccinated or not.

The scientific community is increasingly aware of the large impact that the human microbiome has on our overall health. Characteristics of people’s microbiomes can impact their weight and susceptibility to mental and physical diseases. A recent article in the Annual Review examined some interactions between the gut microbiome and drugs that treat mental disorders. Many of the symptoms that are associated with antipsychotic drugs, such as weight gain, are likely caused by the effect that these drugs have on our microbiome. The use of VPA, a drug that treats seizures and mood swings, in pregnant women is associated with an altered microbiome in their children and an increased risk for autism. This type of research could reveal ways that we could alter the microbiome to treat mental disorders rather than using drugs. Even if this development will not come for many years, it is important to understand how the microbiome impacts the way that drugs effect people now.

              The microbiome is also associated with obesity, and an article analyzed recent research about the association between the microbiome of obese pregnant women and the microbiome of their children when they are born. Obese mothers had higher levels of microorganisms from the phyla Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria, and their infants also had higher levels of microorganisms from these phyla. Both the mothers and infants had lower levels of Bifidobacteria. However, these associations are not entirely conclusive because different studies had results that varied too greatly. The connection between the mother’s and infant’s microbiota imply that maternal obesity could increase the risk of their child becoming obese. Maternal obesity also increases the number of facultative anaerobes in the infant’s microbiome, which could delay the child’s microbiome development.

              Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is also influenced by people’s microbiota, and an article from Science Direct examines the some of the influential factors. Previous studies failed to find a specific correlation because they only focused on individual types of bacteria, but in reality, RA is caused by the interaction of several factors, and the microbiome is just one of these. Some of the most influential microorganisms in the development of RA are P. gingivalis, A. actinomyetemcomitans, and P. copri. Many of the microorganisms found in the oral microbiota of patients with RA correlated with the microorganisms associated with periodontitis. Cigarette smoking was a pre-established risk factor for RA, and pulmonary microbiota interact with this factor, possibly serving as a mediator. RA may originate in the lungs, and distinct differences between the microbiomes of patients with RA and their relatives supports this theory.

A lot has happened with the coronavirus since my last blog post, so I’ll start with an update on the statistics. According to the most recent article from the Washington Post that I could find at the time of writing this blog post (February 6, 2020), more than 28,000 cases of the coronavirus have been reported in China compared to last week when only 8000 cases had been reported. More than 560 people have now died from the coronavirus, compared to just 200 people last week. People have also now been diagnosed with the coronavirus in 28 different countries, an increase of 10 compared to last week. Other updates regarding the coronavirus in the past week include the doctor who first warned people about this coronavirus, Li Wenliang, died from the disease. Plus, a cruise ship is being quarantined in Japan because of this virus, and 20 people on this ship, including 3 Americans, have tested positive for coronavirus.

               An article from Wall Street Journal explained what scientists are currently investigating to find out how the coronavirus is spreading in hopes to develop efficient methods to prevent this spread. The incubation period of the coronavirus can be anywhere between 3 and 14 days, so it is difficult to pinpoint where an infected person contracted the virus. A long incubation period like this also means that infected people can spread the virus to others before symptoms appear. An asymptomatic person would have no reason to limit their interactions with others, so this can make the virus spread more quickly. This asymptomatic, yet contagious, phase also prevents screening methods at certain checkpoints ineffective because someone may not have a fever, but still be carrying the virus. Scientists have also determined that the coronavirus can spread from an asymptomatic person to someone else if they are within 6 feet of each other. Each infected person spreads the virus to 2 or 3 other people on average, and the reproduction number of the coronavirus is estimated to be 2.2.               

An article from Scientific American explained how the anatomy of the coronavirus contributes to its virulence. Coronaviruses are enveloped, so the use of hand sanitizer and frequent hand washing are effective methods to kill the virus because these activities will destroy the virus’ envelope. This virus’ genome consists of single-stranded RNA, so mistakes during replication are common due to the lack of proofreading ability in RNA polymerase. These mutations mean that the virus can change by antigenic drift, and a vaccine will be difficult to develop against it. Some coronaviruses only cause a simple cold, and that is because they attach to the cells of the upper respiratory system. Other coronaviruses that can cause a more serious illness attach to the cells of the lower respiratory tract, and may lead to pneumonia.

With recent news coverage focusing so heavily on the coronavirus, you may have forgotten that we are also in the middle of flu season. A recent article from CNBC explained how the flu is a more serious threat to the United States than the coronavirus is at this time. While only about a dozen cases of the coronavirus have been reported in the US, over 19 million people have had the flu in the United States, and 10,000 of these cases resulted in death. With that being said, the coronavirus does have a higher mortality rate than influenza, killing approximately 2% of the people who contract, while the flu kills only .095% of the people who fall ill. Luckily, if people begin to take more caution against the coronavirus as this is being discussed in the news, then they will also be protecting themselves from influenza. Hand sanitizer containing alcohol is effective at killing both of these viruses because they are encapsulated, and frequent handwashing is always a good precaution against becoming sick.

               The influenza virus changes annually due to antigenic drift, which changes the virus enough so that our immune systems do not recognize it and do not know how to defend against it. To combat this constantly changing virus, scientists predict which strains will be active each year and develop new vaccines. A recent CDC report examined previous trends in flu activity and explained how scientists decided what type of vaccine would be the most effective for the 2019-2020 flu season, and they also provided recommendations on how the vaccines should be used. Flu vaccines should be administered to everyone over the age of 6 months, and children between the age of 6 months and 8 years old require two doses of the vaccine. This year will one vaccine that is quadrivalent, containing HA from 2 influenza A viruses and 2 influenza B viruses, and one that is trivalent, which only contains one of the B viruses aforementioned. The trivalent vaccine is recommended for people aged 65 and older.

               According to an article from NBC, we do not know if flu season has peaked yet, so it is difficult to determine how effective this year’s vaccine is. However, the article did explain how children do seem to be highly affected by the flu this season, suggesting that the B strain of the flu, which impacts children more severely than adults, is not a perfect match. The A strain, which is more of a concern for adults, does not peak until later in the season, so we will not be able to tell how effective the vaccine is against this strain until later. Even though we are well into flu season, doctors recommend that you should still get the vaccine if you have not already done so. The symptoms of the flu include fever, cough, sore throat, and aches, so if you experience these symptoms, stay home from work or school and visit your doctor. Do not assume that it is not the flu just because you got the flu shot; they are not 100% effective!

               Most people have heard about the coronavirus in the news lately, but not everyone knows how it all started or the details of the current status of the outbreak. To begin, a CNN article explains that the virus was likely spread to humans by bats. Scientists determined this connection by analyzing the genetic sequence of the virus and comparing it to viruses found in various animals, and the virus associated with the bat has a genetic sequence that most closely resembles that of the virus found in humans during this outbreak. To many virologists, the virus’ origin is not surprising because bats are the reservoir for many other viruses such as Ebola, rabies, SARS, and MERS. Although the virus likely originated from bats, there is also a high chance that it was transmitted to another animal before being transmitted to humans. The disease was first reported during a time of bat hibernation, so it is unlikely that they would have had direct contact with humans. The first cases of coronavirus were reported in Wuhan, China, but has quickly spread to other countries in today’s globalized world.

According to a recent CNBC article the coronavirus has infected over 8000 people in 18 different countries. In fact, the US recently confirmed its first human-to-human transmission of this virus. Over 200 people have died from this illness, and these numbers continue to rise. Although this virus emerged less than a month ago, it has already infected more people than the SARS epidemic did over nine months in 2003. While it does spread much faster than SARS, it does not seem to have such a high mortality rate. The coronavirus causes flu like symptoms such as coughing, fever, difficulty breathing, and pneumonia. The virus is spread by human contact, droplet nuclei, large droplet transmission, and fomites.

In response to this outbreak, the WHO issued a global health emergency, which will enable them to easily provide financial and political support to China as they work to contain this outbreak. The WHO is most concerned that the coronavirus will spread to countries with poor healthcare systems, and they will be completely unequipped to treat people who fall ill or prevent the disease from spreading further. Many travel advisories are also in place to limit unnecessary travel to and from China in hopes to contain the virus. According to the WHO, the Chinese government is doing everything they can to contain the virus, despite the economic strain it could put on the country. According to a BBC article, scientists are working to discover a vaccine for the coronavirus, and they hope to begin human trials in the early summer.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield wrote an article claiming that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism and other health issues, and this article was published in Lancet. The article was later retracted, but not before it caused parents everywhere to be suspicious of vaccinating their children. An article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal analyzed Wakefield’s study and pointed out some of its flaws. To begin, Wakefield’s study consisted of 12 children who were referred to the Royal Free Hospital. All of these children experienced chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder. The onset of these children’s symptoms supposedly began shortly after they received the MMR vaccine. Upon later investigation, Britain’s General Medical Council determined that Wakefield carefully selected the children in his study, compromising the study’s scientific integrity.

               Not only did an investigation into Wakefield’s study determine that he carefully chose the subjects, but it also revealed a possible ulterior motive that could influence his results. Lawyers who worked for parents who were in the process of suing vaccine manufacturers funded some of Wakefield’s research. Clearly, if Wakefield’s study strongly implied that vaccines were linked to developmental disorders, the parents and lawyers would win their cases and receive a large monetary sum from vaccine manufacturers. The temptation of money likely interfered with Wakefield’s ability to conduct an unbiased study. Another article emphasizes how numerous studies have been unable to replicate the results from Wakefield’s study, further suggesting that the data were falsified. Even if these concerns were ignored, the study still consisted of an unreliably small sample size, an uncontrolled design, and relied heavily on speculation.

               Despite the tremendous response of scientists debunking Wakefield’s study and the Lancet retracting the article, many parents still believe that the MMR vaccine may cause autism. An article published by Cureus explains how the Anti Vaccination movement has taken hold in the western world and how it is affecting people. Measles is a disease that should not exist in the US because it is easily prevented with a vaccine. However, multiple outbreaks of the measles have occurred around the US in recent years as more and more parents refuse to vaccinate their children. As vaccination rates decline, western societies are sacrificing their herd immunity, putting the lives of immunocompromised individuals at risk. The Internet also plays a large role in the spread of Anti Vaccination propaganda around the world.

Welcome to my blog! I would like to start by introducing myself! My name is Aly Hamilton and I am from Greensboro, NC, but I was born in Richmond, VA. I have two older brothers, and more importantly, I have two amazing dogs. My dogs are named Bella and Sadie and they are the cutest, sweetest things in the entire world. A fun fact about me is that I lived in Basel, Switzerland for 4 years! While I lived there, I got to travel all over Europe and I absolutely love to travel now, but I do not get to do it as often as I used to. My major is biology, but I am also considering pre-nursing as a possible track on my way to PA school. Only time will tell how all of this works out…