#immunologic

[simplykaren]

Found this because of @sanddoc06 . No clue where it originally came from, but I had to share it.

[a-typical]

The risk perception gap is especially harmful when it comes to science and health topics.

The risk perception gap: excessive concern about things that pose little risk and insufficient concern about things that pose greater risk

Vaccine Hesitancy and Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric:

One of the most prominent examples of the risk perception gap is with vaccine hesitancy, where the perceived risk of vaccine side effects or the impact of vaccine ingredients is often much higher among the public than what is supported by scientific evidence.

In contrast, the benefits of vaccination and their ability to prevent deadly diseases (remember, measles is back) are underestimated. That is true with nearly all vaccines nowadays, with many people diminishing the substantial positive impact that vaccine have on individual and collective health (I discussed the harm of prominent figures, like Andrew Huberman, doing this here). As a result of this gap, vaccination rates for preventable illnesses are declining, and increased outbreaks of diseases that were previously eliminated or well-controlled are rising.

Food safety:

Conversely, risks associated with trace levels of chemicals used to grow crops are vastly exaggerated. This creates fear around more affordable conventional food items based on misinformation and misunderstanding of chemistry and toxicology when there is no credible scientific evidence to support these claims.

[mindblowingscience]

Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest's undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child's immune system, according to an experiment in Finland. When daycare workers rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth (such as dwarf heather and blueberries), and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of the young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time. Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement, tile, and gravel, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds at these greened-up daycare centers in Finland showed increased T-cells and other important immune markers in their blood within 28 days.

Continue Reading.

[reasonsforhope]

"A clinical trial studying severe allergic reactions in the U.K. is being called “life-transforming.”

Five United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) hospitals are participating in the £2.5 million ($3.2 million) trial to help patients live with their food allergies.

The study is being funded by the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Sky News reported. The foundation was formed in the memory of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in 2016 after eating a baguette that had sesame in it...

The trial is studying clinical oral immunotherapy treatments in which patients are given small doses of the food to which they are allergic to build up their tolerance. The food is given under medical supervision by trained staff, The Telegraph reported.

The study has 139 people participating who have allergies to peanuts or cow’s milk. They range in age from 2 to 23 years old, the BBC reported.

The Food Standards Agency said 2 million people in the U.K. have a diagnosed food allergy. In the U.S., about 5.5. million children have a food allergy, the National Institutes of Health reported.

One 11-year-old who was diagnosed with a severe peanut allergy when he was an infant can now eat six peanuts.

A 5-year-old with a milk allergy can drink 120 ml of milk every day and can enjoy a daily hot chocolate, the BBC reported.

“To have a patient who has had anaphylaxis [Note: Anaphylaxis is an allergic reaction so severe that it's potentially fatal without immediate treatment. It is very common with peanut allergies in particular. x] to 4mls of milk to then tolerate 90mls within six to eight months is nothing less than a miracle,” Sibel Donmez-Ajtai, a pediatric allergy consultant and principal investigator at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, said, according to Sky News.

The final results of the study are expected to be released in 2027.

Similar studies have been conducted in the U.S. To find one, visit FoodAllergy.org.

Earlier this year, the NIH released the findings of a study of an antibody treatment that would help children consume allergy triggers safely."

-via WHIO 7 Local News, May 8, 2024

[thoughtportal]

are we on the cusp of a breakthrough in endometriosis?

[halorvic]

"Do not let anyone convince you that you need to get sick to be healthy."

[chialattea]

whenever I feel sad I just sketch these guys to cheer me up,,, have a sketchdump,,,

[0ctogus]

every once in a while scientists cook so hard when making names

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[kirby-the-gorb]

[sparklingstudycare]

And we're back with : Immunology at library

[a-typical]

The distorted perception of real versus believed risks posed obvious harms.

Misguided Personal Choices: Individuals may make poor health choices based on inaccurate risk perceptions, such as neglecting preventive measures or engaging in risky behaviors.

Policy and Resource Misallocation: Governments and health organizations may allocate resources inefficiently, focusing on less impactful but more sensational risks.

Erosion of Trust in Science and Public Health Institutions: When public perceptions do not align with scientific evidence, it can erode trust in experts and institutions, leading to resistance against public health measures. This makes it much more difficult to get buy-in for a variety of interventions that have data to support them, from routine vaccinations, to overall lifestyle habits, to voting for specific policies during elections.

Increased Health Disparities: Groups with limited access to accurate information may be particularly affected by the risk perception gap, exacerbating health disparities. For example, in the context of food misinformation and risk perception gap, individuals with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to buy and eat fewer fruits and vegetables when they encounter false messaging about the harms of pesticides, which poses a FAR greater risk than the essentially non-existent risk of trace pesticide residues.

Delayed Response to Emerging Threats: Underestimating certain risks leads to delayed responses to emerging health threats, worsening public health outcomes. This is especially the case with issues such as climate change, when decisions and policies made now will only be measurable years down the line.

Addressing the risk perception gap requires a multi-pronged approach. We need improved communication strategies that make scientific and health information more accessible and understandable to the public, along with efforts to build trust and engage communities in dialogue about risk and health decisions. Much of this requires an educational foundation, so that people better understand how scientific research is conducted, how risk is calculated, and what that means for your everyday choices. Our media and social media organizations have a responsibility as well: to not give equal weight to claims that are unsupported, and to not deliberately feed emotion-based messaging.

Science literacy is critical, so that people can understand the difference between anecdotes and robust evidence, and more appropriately evaluated the information they encounter. All of us can take steps to enable this, so that our society on the whole is better equipped to navigate the deluge of fear-based messaging that only serves to hinder scientific progress and cause harm.

— Andrea Love, PhD | Immunologist & Microbiologist

[mindblowingscience]

Vaccination saves lives – an astounding 154 million of them since 1974 when the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its expanded global immunization programme, according to new research. The goal of the programme was to make vaccines available to all children, and while there are enduring challenges in that regard, the upshot is abundantly clear in the multitude of deaths that were averted in the past 50 years, the vast majority of which children under 5. "We also discovered that measles vaccination accounted for 60 percent of the total benefit of vaccination over the 50-year period, which was also the greatest driver of lives saved," says Andrew Shattock, an infectious disease modeler at the Telethon Kids Institute in Australia, who led the study.

Continue Reading.

[reasonsforhope]

"A team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a real-time air monitor that can detect any of the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants that are present in a room in about 5 minutes.

The proof-of-concept device was created by researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering and the School of Medicine at Washington University...

The results are contained in a July 10 publication in Nature Communications that provides details about how the technology works.

The device holds promise as a breakthrough that - when commercially available - could be used in hospitals and health care facilities, schools, congregate living quarters, and other public places to help detect not only the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but other respiratory virus aerosol such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well.

“There is nothing at the moment that tells us how safe a room is,” Cirrito said, in the university’s news release. “If you are in a room with 100 people, you don’t want to find out five days later whether you could be sick or not. The idea with this device is that you can know essentially in real time, or every 5 minutes, if there is a live virus in the air.”

How It Works

The team combined expertise in biosensing with knowhow in designing instruments that measure the toxicity of air. The resulting device is an air sampler that operates based on what’s called “wet cyclone technology.” Air is sucked into the sampler at very high speeds and is then mixed centrifugally with a fluid containing a nanobody that recognizes the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That fluid, which lines the walls of the sampler, creates a surface vortex that traps the virus aerosols. The wet cyclone sampler has a pump that collects the fluid and sends it to the biosensor for detection of the virus using electrochemistry.

The success of the instrument is linked to the extremely high velocity it generates - the monitor has a flow rate of about 1,000 liters per minute - allowing it to sample a much larger volume of air over a 5-minute collection period than what is possible with currently available commercial samplers. It’s also compact - about one foot wide and 10 inches tall - and lights up when a virus is detected, alerting users to increase airflow or circulation in the room.

Testing the Monitor

To test the monitor, the team placed it in the apartments of two Covid-positive patients. The real-time air samples from the bedrooms were then compared with air samples collected from a virus-free control room. The device detected the RNA of the virus in the air samples from the bedrooms but did not detect any in the control air samples.

In laboratory experiments that aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 into a room-sized chamber, the wet cyclone and biosensor were able to detect varying levels of airborne virus concentrations after only a few minutes of sampling, according to the study.

“We are starting with SARS-CoV-2, but there are plans to also measure influenza, RSV, rhinovirus and other top pathogens that routinely infect people,” Cirrito said. “In a hospital setting, the monitor could be used to measure for staph or strep, which cause all kinds of complications for patients. This could really have a major impact on people’s health.”

The Washington University team is now working to commercialize the air quality monitor."

-via Forbes, July 11, 2023

-

Holy shit. I know it's still early in the technology and more testing will inevitably be needed but holy shit.

Literally, if it bears out, this could revolutionize medicine. And maybe let immunocompromised people fucking go places again

Also, for those who don't know, Nature Communications is a very prestigious scientific journal that focuses on Pretty Big Deal research. Their review process is incredibly rigorous. This is an absolutely HUGE credibility boost to this research and prototype

[pandemic-info]

(via If we don't develop a treatment we're f*cked)

“Not to be a downer, but this is the result of a study researches led at the University of Toronto following SARS1 patients who were disabled by the virus initially and how they were doing 20 years later.“

Screenshot “from the presentation by; Prof. Daniel M. Altmann, Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Imperial College, Faculty of Medicine, London, UK at #UniteToFight2024 https://unitetofight2024.world/program/”

+ important comment:

“A study on SARS 1 survivors, if you're curious:

2023 study in The Lancet on SARS 1 survivors

Lots had femoral necrosis (bone death), osteoporosis, and long-lasting, possibly immunologically-based fatigue.

Just a reminder that while there are similarities, these are two different diseases. SARS CoV 1 hospitalized 70% of infected and killed 10% at the time of containment. They're similar in disease profile and in genetics, but they are NOT the same.

COVID-19 is much more infectious and less lethal, and the range of post-viral complications is different. Plus, we don't know what treatments will come out for Long COVID patients, but medicine is much more advanced and there is much more funding for Long COVID than there was for SARS CoV 1 survivors, who were infected in 2003, and never had access to a vaccine.”

[neuroandhemo]

platelet

one of my ideas for its design