#prevention medicine

[inkskinned]

"don't make it political!" .... what proportion of death and suffering must occur before politics are involved. if this isn't political, what is even the point of any politics, ever. of democracy. the words are "by the people for the people." if i am going to be left alone by my elected representatives to "figure it out" - to undergo damage, hardship, fear. what the fuck did i elect them for. what was their job. the entire point is that they handle this shit. this is why we were supposed to be electing leaders.

poverty is political. misogyny is political. gun control is political. climate change is political. how much aid a community gets is political. what the fuck are you talking about. it's been political this whole fucking time.

[meirimerens]

youtube shorts is just tiktok without being on the app the amount of "i'm a [qualification] and [misinformation]" could make one turn their skin inside-out in protest. "i'm a board-certified OB-GYN & it's only been about the last hundred years that women have actually experienced menopause. We didn't live long enough to experience it" how can you be so incredibly wrong about something so integral to your practice. King of the Hittites Hattusilis III was told in 1250 BCE that his sister was too old to reproduce at age 50+. Aristotle wrote in the 4th century BCE that women stopped menstruating between ages 40 to 50, common menopause ages today still. i cannot begin to tell you how 4th century & 1250 BCE don't really count as "the last hundred years" unless that -s is doing a lot of heavy lifting. waiter waiter more misinformation laws.

[reasonsforhope]

"Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.

While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine to provide lasting protection has eluded researchers for decades. Now, there may finally be a viable strategy for making one.

An experimental vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were published today [May 17, 2024] in the scientific journal Cell.

“This is one of the most pivotal studies in the HIV vaccine field to date,” says Glenda Gray, an HIV expert and the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, who was not involved in the study.

A few years ago, a team from Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) showed that it was possible to stimulate the precursor cells needed to make these rare antibodies in people. The Duke study goes a step further to generate these antibodies, albeit at low levels.

“This is a scientific feat and gives the field great hope that one can construct an HIV vaccine regimen that directs the immune response along a path that is required for protection,” Gray says.

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024. Article continues below.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a virus or other pathogen. They introduce something that looks like the virus—a piece of it, for example, or a weakened version of it—and by doing so, spur the body’s B cells into producing protective antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that when a person later encounters the real virus, the immune system remembers and is poised to attack.

While researchers were able to produce Covid-19 vaccines in a matter of months, creating a vaccine against HIV has proven much more challenging. The problem is the unique nature of the virus. HIV mutates rapidly, meaning it can quickly outmaneuver immune defenses. It also integrates into the human genome within a few days of exposure, hiding out from the immune system.

“Parts of the virus look like our own cells, and we don’t like to make antibodies against our own selves,” says Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and one of the authors on the paper.

The particular antibodies that researchers are interested in are known as broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can recognize and block different versions of the virus. Because of HIV’s shape-shifting nature, there are two main types of HIV and each has several strains. An effective vaccine will need to target many of them.

Some HIV-infected individuals generate broadly neutralizing antibodies, although it often takes years of living with HIV to do so, Haynes says. Even then, people don’t make enough of them to fight off the virus. These special antibodies are made by unusual B cells that are loaded with mutations they’ve acquired over time in reaction to the virus changing inside the body. “These are weird antibodies,” Haynes says. “The body doesn’t make them easily.”

Haynes and his colleagues aimed to speed up that process in healthy, HIV-negative people. Their vaccine uses synthetic molecules that mimic a part of HIV’s outer coat, or envelope, called the membrane proximal external region. This area remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block many circulating strains of HIV.

The trial enrolled 20 healthy participants who were HIV-negative. Of those, 15 people received two of four planned doses of the investigational vaccine, and five received three doses. The trial was halted when one participant experienced an allergic reaction that was not life-threatening. The team found that the reaction was likely due to an additive in the vaccine, which they plan to remove in future testing.

Still, they found that two doses of the vaccine were enough to induce low levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies within a few weeks. Notably, B cells seemed to remain in a state of development to allow them to continue acquiring mutations, so they could evolve along with the virus. Researchers tested the antibodies on HIV samples in the lab and found that they were able to neutralize between 15 and 35 percent of them.

Jeffrey Laurence, a scientific consultant at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, says the findings represent a step forward, but that challenges remain. “It outlines a path for vaccine development, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he says.

For one, he says, a vaccine would need to generate antibody levels that are significantly higher and able to neutralize with greater efficacy. He also says a one-dose vaccine would be ideal. “If you’re ever going to have a vaccine that’s helpful to the world, you’re going to need one dose,” he says.

Targeting more regions of the virus envelope could produce a more robust response. Haynes says the next step is designing a vaccine with at least three components, all aimed at distinct regions of the virus. The goal is to guide the B cells to become much stronger neutralizers, Haynes says. “We’re going to move forward and build on what we have learned.”

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024

[theoihalioistuff]

Hermes Kriophoros

"[In the city of Tanagra] There are sanctuaries of Hermes Kriophoros (Ram-bearer) and of Hermes Promakhos (Frontline Fighter). They account for the former surname by a story that Hermes averted a pestilence from the city by carrying a ram round the walls; to commemorate this Kalamis made an image of Hermes carrying a ram upon his shoulders. Whichever of the youths is judged to be the most handsome goes round the walls at the feast of Hermes, carrying a lamb on his shoulders." (Paus. 9.22.1)

We know what to do when the next pandemic hits. We are prepared. Assemble the beautiful boys. Bring forth the lambs.

READY THE BEAUTY PAGEANTS!!!

[remyfire]

D. S. Stylus, Director's Note // S4E1-2 Welcome to Korea // S7E23 Preventative Medicine // S9E14 Oh, How We Danced // S8E6 Period of Adjustment // S10E17 Where There's A Will, There's A War

[klingerfashionarchive]

season 7 episode 23

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

I don't think Lacey deserved to get his appendix removed because he was a bad person. I think Lacey proved himself to be virtually unstoppable and it was a more humane alternative to killing him

[lilithism1848]

[asofterpostop]

Doctors are supposed to be / comrades in arms / Yeah? You wanna tango? (5x11) asw

[autumn2may]

Johnson & Johnson is currently, like right this minute, trying to extend their patent on the TB drug bedaquiline, keeping it out of generic for another four years. TB killed about 30,000 people last week and is the world's deadliest infectious disease.

If this drug does not go generic now it could affect 6 million people in the next four years (the time it would take the "new" patent to run out). Out of those millions of people who get TB, but can't get bedaquiline, most of them will die. From a PREVENTABLE DISEASE.

Why is this happening? Money. But also, because TB is not an issue in countries like the US. We can afford its $1.50 a pill price. But if you live in a poor country, that's too much money to spend on something you need to take for up to four months.

J&J needs to let this drug go public and do its job in places that can't currently afford it. They need to help people, instead of trying to wring the last few drops of money out of one of their many products, at the cost of human lives. @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog does a waaaay better job of explaining this than me. Check out the video and the video description for links and ways to help!

[wikipediapictures]

Copper IUD

[bywandandsword]

I'm putting together my costume for tomorrow as the ghost of a mad lighthouse keeper, and I put it on to see which sweater works best, and I realized that without the ghost makeup I'm basically cosplaying a miniature Peter Lukas

[mashpoll]

Preventative Medicine (s7 e23): Hawkeye and B.J. wrestle with an ethical dilemma about a colonel whose battlefield maneuvers are giving the 4077th too much business.

O.R. (s3 e5): The wounded pour into the camp as artillery booms nearby and war planes scream overhead.

[laurencetgayao]

A Life Well-Lived: My Psalm of Purpose and Gratitude

This is my psalm of life—a celebration of existence, a call to purpose, and a testament to the enduring hope I have in the God who gave me this precious gift. #Gratitude #purpose #LifeLessons #ThankGOD https://www.drgayao.com/2024/10/23/a-life-well-lived-my-psalm-of-purpose-and-gratitude/

[white-haired-mahariel]

Fenris using his lyrium powers to give Hawke an "open"-chest cardiac massage to restart their heart after the Arishok fight. Is this anything.

[constantvariations]

thinking about the adam's red sclera you were talking about. if his aura is constantly trying to prevent it from getting worse, would someone with aura amp semblance like jaune be able to cure it? it wouldn't give him back his vision, but stop the chronic pain maybe?

it also gets me thinking about the fact that blake has chronic pain on her scar where he stabbed her (i cant recall where the chronic pain fact was mentioned nor implied, so i cant really tell if it's canon or fanon), which got talked about a lot back when the volume was out

In theory, I don't see why an Aura boost couldn't help cure an infection. It completely closed Weiss's injury and that was complete impalement open to the air! A true feast for bacteria. I imagine even modern doctors would struggle with a wound like that

Once again, though, we bump against the reality that a) Adam shouldn't have this infection after literal years. (6 years minimum if my math from the comics is right.) It should've either been healed or taken out to prevent more damage, and b) Auras aren't consistent throughout RWBY because the writers care more about Events than Story. In some cases, Aura will stand up to incredible amounts of force and others be shattered in a single hit, even with the same character! (Ex. Ghira in the v5 fight vs the ambush in the Adam short/Yang in pretty much any fight yet going down in a single hit from Neo in v8.) Scars are just another Event for the writers, story and logic be damned. (Seriously, how the fuck did Cinder lose both her arm and eye? I don't think the writers know. Or care.)

As for Blake's wound, that is 110% fanon. I have no idea how a stab just above the hip would lead to chronic pain. Perhaps in flashbacks or nightmares she would relive the pain, but unless there were complications with the healing (considering she was leaping on rooftops shortly after, this is not the case), that should be the only pain she gets. I can only hope someone made an ignorant mistake rather than deliberately foisting more suffering onto Blake just so Adam would look worse