#Respiratory Virus

[alwaysbewoke]

side-eyeing all the anti-vaccine, anti-masks, "get back to normal," "the kids will be fine" fucktwats hella hard right now. fuck everyone one of you.

[ricisidro]

Very high COVID levels were detected in 7 states in the US. Doctors continue to urge people to get up-to-date COVID-19 vaccinations, especially if they are in higher-risk groups.

https://ktla.com/news/california/very-high-covid-levels-detected-in-californias-wastewater-first-since-winter/

CDC’s Respiratory Virus Guidance

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html

[gwydionmisha]

Wear Your Masks!

[trendspotter-123]

Respiratory Virus Going Around: Vaccination Updates and Recommendations

https://bestinusafortrendnewssmarthomeandeasyloanadvise.com/respiratory-virus-going-around/

[chiliger]

He’s never been sick before.

[willowreader]

The very first time I forgot to wear one while visiting with someone indoors I got Covid. A good well fitting N95 works well. I wear one in indoor public places and at home when visitors come. I have only been sick once since the summer of 2020. It happened in 2024 when I answered the door with no mask and got Covid from an asymptomatic person who had been on a plane unmasked. H5N1 is spread just like Covid. It has been found in wastewater in many places especially in the US. We need to protect ourselves. Respirators like N95's good ventilation, and vaccines all work. The science has proven it again and again.

[awkward-sultana]

You're posting a lot about politics for a period drama blog 🙄

Buckle in motherfucker, I'm here all goddamn night

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Another perfect example of how masking to help prevent covid keeps us *all* safer from *all* airborne illness.

by Tamara Schneider

Lingering respiratory viruses set the stage for chronic lung disease, mouse study shows

Doctors have long known that children who become seriously ill with certain respiratory viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are at elevated risk of developing asthma later in life. What they haven’t known is why.

A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may have solved the mystery. The study, in mice, shows that respiratory viruses can hide out in immune cells in the lungs long after the initial symptoms of an infection have resolved, creating a persistently inflammatory environment that promotes the development of lung disease. Further, they showed that eliminating the infected cells reduces signs of chronic lung damage before they progress to a full-blown chronic respiratory illness.

The findings, published Oct. 2 in Nature Microbiology, point to a potential new approach to preventing asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other chronic lung diseases by eradicating the persistent respiratory viruses that fuel these conditions.

“Right now, children who have been hospitalized for a respiratory infection such as RSV are sent home once their symptoms resolve,” said senior author Carolina B. López, PhD, a professor of molecular microbiology and a BJC Investigator at WashU Medicine. “To reduce the risk that these children will go on to develop asthma, maybe in the future we will be able to check if all of the virus is truly gone from the lung, and eliminate all lingering virus, before we send them home.”

About 27 million people in the U.S. are living with asthma. Many factors influence a person’s likelihood of developing the chronic breathing illness, including living in a neighborhood with poor air quality, having exposure to cigarette smoke and being hospitalized for viral pneumonia or bronchitis while young. Some researchers — López included — suspected that the link between serious lung infection and subsequent asthma diagnosis was due to lingering virus in the lungs that causes ongoing damage, but a direct link between the ongoing presence of virus and chronic lung disease has not been previously shown.

López and first author Ítalo Araújo Castro, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in her lab, developed a unique system involving a natural mouse virus known as Sendai virus, and fluorescent markers of infection. Sendai is related to human parainfluenza virus, a common respiratory virus that, like RSV, has been linked to asthma in children. Sendai behaves in mice in very much the same way that human parainfluenza virus behaves in people, making it an excellent model of the kinds of infections that could lead to chronic lung disease.

Using the fluorescent trackers, the researchers could observe signs of the virus throughout infection. After about two weeks, the mice recovered, but viral RNA and protein were still detectable several weeks later in their lungs, hidden away in immune cells.

“Finding persistent virus in immune cells was unexpected,” López said. “I think that’s why it had been missed before. Everyone had been looking for viral products in the epithelial cells that line the surface of the respiratory system, because that’s where these viruses primarily replicate. But they were in the immune cells.”

Moreover, the presence of the virus changed the behavior of the infected immune cells, causing them to become more inflammatory than the uninfected immune cells. Persistent inflammation sets the stage for chronic lung disease to arise, the researchers said. Indeed, seven weeks after infection, the mice’s lungs exhibited inflammation of air sacs and blood vessels, abnormal development of lung cells and excess immune tissue — all signs of chronic inflammatory lung damage, even though the mice appeared outwardly to have recovered. Once the infected immune cells were eliminated, the signs of damage diminished.

“We use a perfectly matched virus-host pairing to prove that a common respiratory virus can be maintained in immunocompetent hosts for way longer than the acute phase of the infection, and that this viral persistence can result in chronic lung conditions,” Castro said. “Probably the long-term health effects we see in people who are supposed to be recovered from an acute infection are actually due to persistence of virus in their lungs.”

The findings point to new ways to think about preventing chronic lung diseases, the researchers said.

“Pretty much every single child gets infected with these viruses before the age of 3, and maybe 5% get serious enough disease that they could potentially develop persistent infection,” López said. “We’re not going to be able to prevent children from getting infected in the first place. But if we understand how these viruses persist and the effects that persistence has on the lungs, we may be able to reduce the risk of serious long-term problems.”

Study: Castro IA, Yang Y, Gnazzo V, Kim DH, Van Dyken SJ, López CB. Murine parainfluenza virus persists in lung innate immune cells sustaining chronic lung pathology. Nature Microbiology. Oct. 2, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01805-8

www.nature.com/articles/s41564-024-01805-8 (PAYWALLED)

[daisiesonafield-blog]

Abstract:

Full article here

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

fauci saying “vulnerable people will fall by the wayside” and that some will die but that’s ok because we’re not going to see the “tsunami of cases” we’ve seen before is so dehumanising. so babies with no immune system, elderly people, disabled people, and people without adequate access to healthcare can all die of covid. but it’s ok guys because actually they’re just falling to the wayside and everyone else will go back to normal and be fine (sarcasm).

my death or the deaths of my family or friends wouldn’t be us “falling by the wayside”, it would be us being failed by our government, healthcare systems, and communities who have refused to take coronavirus seriously despite mounting anecdotal and scientific evidence of the harm this virus does. fact that people can accept the deaths of vulnerable groups just because they want to eat in a restaurant or don’t want to wear a mask is horrifying

[dullahandyke]

they actually only let you do modern web design if youre skilled in compiling so many javascript elements on one page that all incoming traffic is funnelled behind a ten second wait time for all the stupid little widgets to load. and if you get really good at it the government hires you to make their websites the stupidest and worst working

[unopenablebox]

Too Much Tea

[the-blue-phantom]

sorry to my committee but I will NOT be completing my degree because I've spent too much time thinking about teen detectives lately

[deadlifts-and-deadlines]

I am so sick of being medically complex. None of my issues ever get fixed because of the other issues I have and specialists don’t really want to deal with anything outside of their scope of practice - which I get - but fuck, I have multiple chronic illnesses… I cant even have a cold without everything else flaring up! Can’t take ibuprofen because I have ulcers. Can’t take acetaminophen bc it raises my blood pressure to high levels. No one but my cardiologist is willing to consider my chest pain, and we’re going into month seven of trying to figure out what is wrong. But bc of the high blood pressure and the worsening RA I finally got my rheum to prescribe me methotrexate, and insurance actually approved it, and hopefully now that I won’t have to take Tylenol round the clock that will make some things better. But I can’t start this until my respiratory infection clears up, and then we just have to wait and see! I’m actually really scared of the MTX side effects (stomach pain ulcers) but I have to try something. We still can’t get insurance to approve my Stelara prescription for six weeks, we’re in round two of appeals… but now, apparently, my CRP is very high, to the point where my doctor thinks I need a complete medication change, but we won’t know that for sure until I have my CAT scan and colonoscopy next month. Oh, and the last time I will ever see my GI is after the colonoscopy because he is leaving the practice and I can’t get any info from his office on where he is going 🫠