Swine flu is still developing rapidly. For an hour by hour update subscribe to the W.H.O. RSS feed. Otherwise, there are pages from WHO, CDC, and CIDRAP.
As of 07:30 GMT, 10 May 2009, 29 countries have officially reported 4379 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection.
Unintended consequences. Helmet laws reduce net health.
A model is developed which permits the quantitative evaluation of the benefit of bicycle helmet laws. The efficacy of the law is evaluated in terms of the percentage drop in bicycling, the percentage increase in the cost of an accident when not wearing a helmet… The approach balances the health benefits of increased safety against the health costs due to decreased cycling. Using estimates suggested in the literature of the health benefits of cycling, accident rates and reductions in cycling, suggest helmets laws are counterproductive in terms of net health.
Animal trials showing a new human antibody effective against flu.
In a development that could create new tools to prevent and treat seasonal and pandemic influenza, researchers have identified and tested human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that can neutralize influenza A viruses, including lethal H5N1 avian influenza. The findings raise hopes for a universal flu vaccine and shed light on new options for preventing and treating influenza infections… A team from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, scanned billions of mAbs produced in bacteriophages and found 10 that were active against the four major H5N1 virus subtypes…
North America was populated by a single band of humans according to DNA evidence, supporting mitochondrial studies.
…researchers concluded that the most straightforward explanation for the distribution of the 9-repeat allele was that all modern Native Americans, Greenlanders and western Beringians descend from a common founding population. Furthermore, the fact that the allele was absent in other Asian populations most likely meant that America’s ancestral founders had been isolated from the rest of Asia for thousands of years before they moved into the New World
The presence of two chemical byproducts of tobacco in urine turns out to be a good indicator of cancer.
Smokers with high levels of a byproduct called NNAL — a known carcinogen in lab animals — had twice the risk of getting lung cancer compared with smokers who had low levels… People with high urine levels of cotinine, a nicotine byproduct, had three times the risk of those with low levels. Smokers with high levels of both NNAL and cotinine were 8.5 times more likely to get lung cancer than comparable smokers who had low levels of both chemicals… The two chemicals appeared to be independent risk factors for lung cancer, even after adjusting for daily pack usage and the number of years of smoking reported by study participants…
A researcher infected with Ebola is surviving due to previously untested vaccine, or maybe she never caught it.
A scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice… Less than 24 hours later, an experimental vaccine — never before tried on humans — was on its way to Germany from a lab in Canada. And within 48 hours of the March 12 accident, the at-risk scientist, a 45-year-old woman whose identity has not been revealed, was injected with the vaccine… tests so far show the scientist is healthy and free of the virus… It’s not entirely clear the researcher was actually infected with the virus. At the time of the accident, she was wearing three layers of protective gloves, and though the needle stuck her, the plunger of the syringe was not pushed so it’s not certain the virus entered her bloodstream.
Antibody tests might normally reveal that the researcher was exposed to the virus, but standard tests look for antibodies against Ebola’s glycoprotein, which is the same in the virus and the vaccine. That means that even if these antibodies are found, scientists can’t be sure whether they were triggered by the virus itself or by the vaccine.
Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions… The multimillion-pound deal involving NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, the world’s biggest medical research charity, means Britain will take centre stage in the global race to develop blood made from embryonic stem cells. The researchers will test human embryos left over from IVF treatment to find those that are genetically programmed to develop into the “O-negative” blood group, which is the universal donor group whose blood can be transfused into anyone without fear of tissue rejection… The aim is to stimulate embryonic stem cells to develop into mature, oxygen-carrying red blood cells for emergency transfusions. Such blood would have the benefit of not being at risk of being infected with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis, or the human form of “mad cow” disease.
American medical researchers are using a breakthrough by a New Zealand state science company to develop a new generation of antibiotics that do not provoke bacterial resistance. Industrial Research Ltd’s (IRL) carbohydrate chemistry team discovered that a specific enzyme interfered with “quorum sensing” – the process by which bacteria communicate with each other by producing and detecting signalling molecules known as “auto-inducers”. These molecules coordinate bacterial gene expression and regulate processes — including virulence – and studies have shown bacterial strains defective in quorum sensing cause less-serious infections.
Uwe Reinhardt – Economic Trends in US Health Care: Implications for Investors (pdf) via Willem Buiter’s site at NBER. Ideas: pharma & devices a good USD hedge; US private medical insurers are going to implode if a viable medical insurance program passes Congress.