If you or someone you know, (Like I do) has been dealing with brain fog after recovering from COVID-19, you're not alone, my friend. Scientists in Germany have found a possible explanation that's not exactly comforting. It turns out that the spike protein from the virus can stick around in the brain even after the rest of the virus is gone. Crazy, right? This could trigger inflammation and cause long-term symptoms like memory problems and brain tissue loss, which are often associated with long COVID.So, how does the spike protein even get into the brain? Well, the researchers have a theory. They think it could enter through tiny openings in the skull called niches in the bone marrow, or it could hang out in the meninges, which are thin layers of cells that protect the brain and skull. From there, it might sneak into the brain itself, causing inflammation and messing with our cognitive abilities. It's like an unwelcome guest that just won't leave! What's even more surprising is that they found spike protein in the skull niches of people who survived COVID and died later from unrelated causes. Can you believe that? It's like the virus just doesn't want to let go. This finding suggests that the spike protein could hang around in the brain long after we think we've recovered from the virus. And that's not all. The researchers also discovered that COVID can mess with how proteins behave in and around the brain, including ones linked to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. It's like the virus is playing tricks on our brains, and we don't even know all the details yet. We need more research to figure out what's going on in there! But hey, there's hope. Less invasive options like blood samples could be used to identify people at risk of brain complications after COVID, instead of more invasive tests. It's all about finding ways to keep our noggins safe and sound. In a nutshell, finding spike protein in the brain after COVID-19 is a concerning discovery. We need more research to understand what's happening and come up with ways to tackle it. If you or someone you know is struggling with lingering brain fog or other neurological symptoms after recovering from COVID-19, make sure to talk to a doctor and stay updated on the latest findings. Let's keep our brains in tip-top shape, folks! Avoiding plagiarism is important, so always strive to create original content. SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation in the Skull-MeningesBrain Axis: Potential Implications for Long-Term Neurological Complications in post-COVID-19 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.04.535604v1.full.pdf Medscape: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/990741?ecd=wnl_tp10_daily_230422_MSCPEDIT_etid5360142&uac=44619EV&impID=5360142 SARS-CoV-2 spike protein induces cognitive deficit and anxiety-like behavior in mouse via non-cell autonomous hippocampal neuronaleath https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09410-7 Spike protein implicated in Covid19 Memory loss https://neurosciencenews.com/spike-protein-covid-memory-22930/
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Sure! Here's a brief overview of warm water vs. cold water for drinking:
Warm Water vs. Cold Water: Which is Better for Drinking? Water is essential for maintaining overall health and well-being. Whether you prefer to drink warm water or cold water, both have their advantages and can be beneficial in different situations. Benefits of Warm Water for Drinking:
Eating a balanced diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables., 1. One simple tip is to eat a balanced diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables. Fruits and veggies are packed with essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that help keep your body strong and healthy. So make sure to add a variety of colorful fruits and veggies to your meals and snacks throughout the day. Your body will thank you! #healthytips #fruitsandveggies" 2. Make exercise a regular part of your routine. Regular physical activity can help maintain a healthy weight, improve your overall fitness, and boost your energy levels. Find an activity you enjoy, whether it's going for a walk, joining a dance class, or playing a sport, and make it a habit. Your body and mind will thank you! #healthytips #exercise" 3. Make sure to get enough sleep! Sleep is essential for your body to rest and recover from the day's activities. When you sleep, your body repairs and rejuvenates, helping to improve physical and mental health. Aim for 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night to feel your best. So turn off the screens, read a book, or listen to some calming music before bed to ensure a good night's rest. Sweet dreams! #healthytips #sleep" 4. Take control of stress by incorporating relaxation techniques into your routine. Yoga, meditation, and deep breathing exercises can help reduce stress and improve mental clarity. Find a technique that works for you and make it a habit. Whether it's a quick meditation in the morning or a relaxing yoga flow before bed, take time for yourself and manage stress in a healthy way. Namaste! #healthytips #relaxation" 5. Start by avoiding smoking and limiting alcohol consumption. Smoking is a leading cause of many serious health problems, including heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol can also lead to long-term health problems and negatively impact your overall well-being. Make the choice to live a healthy life and avoid these harmful habits. Your body will thank you! #healthytips #quit smoking #limitalcohol" 6. Wear sunscreen! Sun exposure can cause skin damage, wrinkles, and increase your risk of skin cancer. Make sure to apply a broad-spectrum sunscreen with at least SPF 30 before going outside, especially during peak hours. Reapply as needed, especially after swimming or sweating. Keep your skin healthy and protected with this simple step. #healthytips #wearsunscreen" 7. One of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of germs is by washing your hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Make sure to wash your hands before eating, after using the bathroom, and after being in contact with anyone who is sick. By practicing good hygiene, you can help keep yourself and others healthy. #healthytips #washyourhands" 8. Get regular check-ups and screenings. Regular check-ups can help detect potential health problems early, allowing for earlier treatment and better outcomes. Don't neglect your health - schedule regular screenings for things like blood pressure, cholesterol, and cancer, and make sure to keep up with any recommended immunizations. Take control of your health by staying informed and proactive. #healthytips #regularcheckups" 9. Focus on balancing your work and personal life. It's important to prioritize self-care and make time for activities and people that bring you joy. Set boundaries for work, avoid checking emails outside of work hours, and make time for hobbies, friends, and family. By maintaining a healthy work-life balance, you can reduce stress, improve mental health, and live a more fulfilling life. #healthytips #worklifebalance" 10. Stay informed about current health guidelines and recommendations from credible sources. With a lot of information available, it's important to rely on sources based on data and science, such as health authorities and reputable organizations. Keep up to date on the latest information about preventative measures, vaccines, and treatments, and always consult with a healthcare professional before making any major health decisions. Stay informed, stay healthy! #healthytips #stayinformed" In conclusion, there are many simple steps you can take to improve your health in 2023. From eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep, to practicing good hygiene, avoiding harmful habits, and staying informed about health guidelines, there are many ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Make self-care a priority, balance work and personal life, and prioritize your health by following these tips. Here's to a healthy and happy 2023! #healthytips #healthylifestyle Creating Social Beauty in Response to Abusive Silence By Rob Rennebohm, MD Many excellent scientists and physicians have challenged the scientific merit and overall wisdom of the COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign. Throughout the pandemic these scientists and physicians have shared their thoughtful and scholarly analyses and deep concerns with those who have been promoting the vaccination campaign. In addition to sharing their analyses, these scientists and physicians have repeatedly asked the promoters of the vaccination campaign to engage in healthy, respectful, scientific dialogue with them. They (the challengers) have believed that engagement in respectful dialogue is a fundamental and necessary principle of science and medicine and is particularly necessary when there are disagreements regarding important complex issues. Unfortunately, the efforts of those scientists and physicians who have challenged the mass vaccination campaign have been met with silence, or worse. When they have shared their analyses with promoters of the vaccination campaign, the promoters have either remained silent or summarily and falsely dismissed the analyses as misinformation/disinformation. Even worse, many scientific challengers have been smeared, “debunked,” censored and threatened with job loss or de-licensure. Some have lost their jobs. The promoters of the COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign can be divided into two main groups: 1] the key architects and promoters of the campaign—e.g., the leadership at the CDC, NIH, White House COVID-19 Task Force, WHO, and, of course, the pharmaceutical companies—and 2] those who have more passively acquiesced and complied with the campaign—i.e., the majority of physicians (including academic physicians and scientists) and a large percentage of the public. Silence has been the primary response from both of these groups, when the challenging scientists and physicians have shared their analyses and have tried to engage both groups in scientific dialogue. Many of the most powerful promoters of the vaccination campaign are deliberately and knowingly using this silence as a preferred tactic to avoid dialogue and to give the public (and the challengers) the false message that challenges to the prevailing narrative are so misinformed and so bereft of scientific merit that they are not worthy of comment. Some of those most powerful promoters probably know full well that they are the ones who are providing misinformation/disinformation; others may strongly believe that their understandings are correct. Other promoters of the vaccination campaign, particularly those who have passively acquiesced and complied, are choosing silence either because they have not critically examined the science involved—and are trusting and dutifully following the leading promoters of the campaign and are assuming that they (both the leaders and the passive followers) are “doing the right thing”—or because they are afraid to disagree with the prevailing narrative (out of fear of reprisals). There is another reason why promoters of the prevailing narrative have remained silent. Many, in both groups, worry (or know) that if they engage in dialogue the weakness of their position and the shallowness of their knowledge will be exposed. Rather than accept the scientific and ethical responsibility of exposing their beliefs to rigorous scrutiny, they choose silence. This choice goes against important fundamental principles of science, medicine, and ethics. As scientists and physicians, we have an ethical and scientific duty to engage in dialogue—especially about such profoundly important and complex issues as COVID-19. The silence on the part of the promoters of the COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign—i.e., their refusal to comment on the thoughtful analyses of challenging scientists/physicians and their refusal to enter into any scientific dialogue—represents an abusive tactic, especially when used as a deliberate tactic, but also when more innocently used by the most passive promoters of the campaign. It represents a powerful form of psychological abuse that can adversely affect not only those who challenge the prevailing COVID-19 narrative but also the Public. It belittles and dismisses the challengers by giving the message that the challengers’ analyses and concerns are so bereft of merit that the challengers do not deserve a response—other than to be labelled as purveyors of harmful misinformation/disinformation and to be told that they (the challengers) should be ashamed of themselves for even questioning the prevailing narrative. Those key promoters who are deliberately using silence as a tactic are hoping to undermine the self-confidence and self-esteem of the challengers to the point where the challengers shut up and shrink away in shame. This anticipated effect on the challengers is used as an example to give the same message to and have the same crushing effect on the general public. Silence is, indeed, one of the most effective, harmful, and deceitful forms of abuse. This tactic of silence is particularly abusive when used by those key promoters who know full well that they are the ones who are spreading misinformation and disinformation. The silence is less egregious when the igNORance (of the challengers’ analyses and concerns) is primarily due to IGnorance of the science, as is often the case among the passive promoters of the campaign. IgNORance and IGnorance are made even worse when arrogance, intolerance, and intransigence are added—which is the case with many of the key architects and promoters of the campaign and some of the more passive promoters. The abusive nature of such silence has been under-appreciated. The Public should be fully aware of this tactic and hold the powerful (both the key architects and the passive followers) accountable for using it. The passive followers of the vaccination campaign, who have tended to believe that their silence has been heroically protecting the public from misinformation, should realize how abusive and psychologically harmful their silence has been; and how scientifically mistaken, misguided, and medically harmful their understanding of and their silent compliance with the mass vaccination campaign has been. Their silent compliance has been psychologically and clinically harmful to billions of people —a quite unheroic and unprotective act and result, to say the least. Fortunately, most of us who have challenged the prevailing narrative have been sufficiently strong, scientifically knowledgeable, and wise to comprehend and repel this abusive silence. The ongoing silence has required us to exercise extraordinary patience and discipline, while continuing our deep study of the immunology, virology, vaccinology, and evolutionary biology of the COVID-19 situation. Nevertheless, the chronic/recurrent frustration that this powerful and intransigent form of abuse tends to generate within us can severely test our disciplined patience and can cumulatively take a toll—especially on those of us who care deeply about Humanity. But we must repel the frustration and we must focus, instead, on the healthiest aspects of human nature and on thoughts about how to create greater understanding of the COVID-19 situation and better responses to it. To my fellow challengers I suggest this: Be aware of the tactic of silence and its abusive nature. Call it out but do not let yourself fall victim to it. Let it strengthen your resolve and your self-respect, rather than weaken either. Let it strengthen the clarity and kindness of your thinking and actions. Let it create the opposite of the intentions of abuse. Assiduously avoid becoming like the abusers. Deflect the frustration by focusing on how fascinating the pandemic situation has been—scientifically, medically, ethically, geo-politically, economically, socially, culturally, philosophically—while not losing sight of how tragic and criminal the mis-management of the pandemic has been for Humanity. Deflect frustration with heightened resolve and disciplined patience. Replace isolation with solidarity. Focus on dogged determination to create and explain a high and broad understanding of the pandemic and the social, philosophical, economic, and geopolitical context in which it has occurred. Finally, focus on the opportunity that this pandemic has created to replace the current “mean arrangements of man” with new social, economic, cultural, geo-political, and health care arrangements that can create new heights of social beauty and prevent such mean arrangements from prevailing again in the future. For example, exposure of specific and broad pandemic truths can open the door to the following:
We thought they might care; we thought they might listen. But there has been silence (and worse). It’s the silence that kills; It’s the silence that abuses. But we must believe that search for truth will prevail over simplistic statements that obscure. That properly practiced science, medicine, and ethics will prevail over malpractice and malfeasance. That human capacities for goodness will prevail over human capacities for unkindness. That disciplined patience and dogged determination will prevail over intolerance and intimidation. That patient and public education will prevail over authoritarianism and indoctrination. That the “mean arrangements of man” can be replaced by “vast fields of public activity” and new social arrangements that foster “Social Beauty.” The vast majority of people do care. The vast majority of people will increasingly listen. Soon the silence will be broken and deep questioning will come forth, like a fresh karst spring that tumbles exuberantly down the mountain side. And abusive silence will be replaced by an outpouring of respectful conversation and uplifting acts of human goodness. *The phrases “mean arrangements of man,” “vast fields of public activity,” and “Social Beauty” are borrowed from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. The paintings at the beginning and end of this essay are Honore Daumier’s depictions of Don Quixote. Daumier and Hugo were contemporaries and good friends. For more on Quixote, see: A Tribute to All the “Quixotes” who have Challenged the COVID Mass Vaccination Campaign. Note to Reader: The titles (above) that appear in blue represent essays that are posted on the Notes From the Social Clinic Website (www.notesfromthesocialclinic.org). By hovering over the titles, the reader may click on them to immediately access the full essays. 10 Tips for a Healthy Lifestyle as a Trader Trading can be a demanding job, requiring long hours in front of a computer screen and making quick decisions under pressure. But with the right mindset and habits, traders can maintain a healthy lifestyle while still being successful in the market.
Trade Moore just launched Trade Moore Daily to help make 2023 your best trading year ever. These are quick trading tips (less than 30 seconds) every day, delivered to your inbox for the next 90 days. It is completely free to register.. TradeMoore Daily: 90 Days of FREE Trading Tips to jumpstart your 2023 - http://bit.ly/3GiQ28d of FREE Trading Tips to jumpstart your 2023 - http://bit.ly/3GiQ28d Health is important for 2023 and beyond because it is the foundation of our overall well-being and quality of life. When we are healthy, we are able to lead active and productive lives, pursue our goals and passions, and enjoy our relationships and experiences. Good health also plays a crucial role in our ability to cope with and recover from challenges, such as illness, injury, or stress. By taking care of our health, we can improve our resilience and ability to bounce back from setbacks. Investing in our health now can also pay off in the long term. By making healthy lifestyle choices, such as eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep, we can reduce our risk of developing chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, which can significantly impact our health and longevity. In short, health is important for 2023 and beyond because it is the cornerstone of a happy and fulfilling life. By prioritizing our health, we can live our best lives and achieve our full potential. Here are some health tips for 2023:
Three doctors have filed a complaint against social media company Twitter, which suspended their accounts on the grounds that they had posted misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines. On behalf of the three physicians, their attorneys filed the complaint on June 26 against the social media company for permanently suspending their accounts or for refusing to apply the blue verified mark to the account of a physician who secured a new Twitter handle. The complaint was filed with the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The three physicians in the suit are internist/immunologist Robert Malone, MD, who is licensed to practice in Maryland, Brian Tyson, MD, of El Centro, California, and Peter McCullough, MD, MPH, a clinical cardiologist in practice at Dallas-based HeartPlace, which offers cardiovascular and related services. The complaint describes Malone as "the original inventor of mRNA vaccination technology, DNA vaccination, and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA platform delivery technologies." According to an August 2021 article in The Atlantic, Malone participated in the scientific process that led to the mRNA technology, although "the achievement of the mRNA vaccines of today is the accomplishment of a lot of collaborative efforts." Forbes reported in January that Malone made "unfounded claims about COVID-19 vaccines" on the Joe Rogan Experience, an eponymous podcast on Spotify that features its host. Time reported in February that musicians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young boycotted Spotify, and author Brené Brown paused her podcast in response to the episode on Rogan's show. Last year, Baylor Scott and White Health received a restraining order against McCullough, who allegedly continued to claim an affiliation with the nonprofit health system, despite its cutting ties with the doctor. Tyson is a candidate for Congress in California's 25th District. Suit Challenges Twitter's "Strike System"The complaint, which outlines the academic and professional backgrounds of the three physicians, alleges that Twitter violated its policy for violating COVID-19 misinformation guidelines and community standards. Specifically, the complaint asserts that the social media platform didn't comply with its "five-strike policy as part of its COVID-19 misinformation and community standards." According to the complaint, Malone (@rwmalonemd) and Tyson (@btysonmd) allege that their accounts were suspended for posting truthful information about COVID-19. McCollough's previous account (@cov19treatments) was suspended, and he was allowed to use a different Twitter handle (@p_mcculloughmd); he has been unable to receive the blue verified badge, despite having more than 475,000 followers. The complaint describes the value provided by a blue verified badge on Twitter as "indicat[ing] that an account of public interest is authentic...notable and active." Twitter has requirements for securing the blue verified badge; some of the requirements include providing personal identification, a website, and an official email address. Malone's and Tyson seek to have their accounts reactivated, to recoup the costs of filing a lawsuit (including attorneys' fees), and to receive any other relief, as determined by the court. McCollough seeks to recoup the costs of filing a lawsuit (including attorneys' fees) and to receive any other relief, as determined by the court, in addition to securing the blue verified badge for his @p_mccolloughmd account. Malone and Tyson's accounts continue to be suspended. McCollough sent tweets using his @p_mcculloughmd account as recently as July 7. Per Twitter's policy, as posted online, the consequences for violating its COVID-19 misleading information policy "depend on the severity and type of the violation and the accounts history of previous violations." For accounts that continue to violate the policy, Twitter has a strike system to determine any appropriate enforcement actions. "We believe this system further helps to reduce the spread of potentially harmful and misleading information on Twitter, particularly for high-severity violations of our rules," according to the company's policy. The policy is outlined as follows:
The complaint issued on behalf of the three physicians includes a letter dated May 12 that demands that Twitter immediately reinstate the accounts of Malone, Tyson, and McCollough, in addition to the accounts of two other physicians. Those two physicians are Vladimir Zelenko, MD, and George Fareed, MD; the complaint states that Fareed and Tyson are in practice together. Twitter did not respond to the May 12 letter, per the complaint. Copied in the complaint was the Twitter handle of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, who in April reached an agreement with Twitter to take over the company but recently announced he would not follow through with the purchase. Medscape Medical News received no response to a request for comment about the complaint from America's Frontline Doctors, which shared the complaint in a fundraising email. Credits to Aine Cyst Medscape PREVIOUS ARTICLES
The metaverse has the potential to radically transform the digital and global economy, shaping the world responsibly. With the metaverse in its early stages, organisations and people have the opportunity to shape the metaverse responsibly, revealed Mckinsey and Company, in its latest report. As per the report, the metaverse is an immersive, shared, and secure 3-D digital space where users’ avatar—a digital representation of oneself — can shop, play, learn, work out, attend virtual business meetings, trade digital currencies, and conduct other activities. Moving beyond its origin in gaming, the metaverse has already captured the interest of sectors such as fashion, art, and music. It is projected to reach $5 trillion in terms of value by 2030. “I believe absolutely that the advent of graphics-based computing and 3-D environments is going to change many of the technologies, standards, conventions, and monetisation models. It’s going to have profound generational change. And, most importantly, it’s going to reach many of the categories we’ve long hoped would be altered by mobile and the internet and yet haven’t been, ” said Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist, essayist, and observer of the digital world, wrote in the report. Ball further stated that the metaverse is a transformative event for the global and within that digital economy in many cases and further hoped that the metaverse and VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) will finally start to show actual, tangible, measurable productivity improvements in education and healthcare. For example, Johns Hopkins University recently performed its first pair of surgeries on live patients using augmented reality displays. The head of the neurosurgery and spinal department had described the experience as its like using GPS for the first time. “It’s not that it teaches you how to drive; it doesn’t drive the car for you, but you find that your ability to execute this task is much better than ever. Why does that matter as a use case? Well, not only is healthcare a costly industry, but like GPS and AR in surgery, it just needs to have a marginal impact on something of critical importance. It doesn’t need to perform the surgery; all we need is a meaningful increase to success rate,” Ball said. Augmented Realityfor Orthopedic Surgery The technology used by the physicians for the augmented reality surgeries consisted of a headset with a see-through eye display that projects images of the patient's internal anatomy such as bones and other tissue based on CT scans — essentially giving the surgeons X-ray vision PREVIOUS ARTICLES Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine leads to lower levels of semen, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed 220 samples of semen from three sperm banks in Israel, drawn from men who received two doses of the vaccine. The semen collection was scheduled seven days after receipt of the second dose. The researchers, led by Dr. Itai Gat with the Sperm Bank and Andrology Unit at the Shamir Medical Center and Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Medical School, found that there was a decrease in sperm concentration between 75 and 120 days post-vaccination. The decrease led to a reduction in the motile count, or the number of sperm. Followup testing completed over 150 days after vaccination revealed “overall recovery,” with semen volume and sperm motility bouncing back, the researchers said. However, the levels outlined in the study were still lower than before vaccination. The peer-reviewed study was published online (pdf) ahead of being printed by Andrology. Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment. Gat told that a major strength of the study was the relatively long-term followup. “Overall we demonstrate long term safety of the vaccination regarding semen analysis among sperm donors. The temporary decline we found is similar to already known side effects of short febrile illness (ex. flu), followed by later recovery,” he said in an email. “It seems that the immune response after vaccination is similar as in cases of common infections which results with short term impairment of sperm production.” Previous research has indicated that getting sick with COVID-19 causes a change in the composition of semen, and that some illnesses can lead to sperm production being impaired. Men should only be concerned by the new research as much as they worry about similar issues arising after other infections, Gat said. “Obviously, most men are not aware of the short decline in their sperm counts after viral infection,” he said. Other studies conducted during the pandemic have found that sperm concentration and semen motility were not affected by COVID-19 vaccines, although Pfizer’s clinical trial included detection of anti-sperm antibodies. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence that vaccines affect fertility in women or men, despite the shots altering menstrual cycles in women. However, researchers acknowledge that the long-term impacts of the shots remain unknown, and won’t be known until longer-term studies are conducted. Gat wants to conduct further research on men who were vaccinated but described his team as lucky to have a large group of donors who were vaccinated during a short period of time. “When it comes to next doses, I expect timing diversity between donors, which will make further studies much more complicated,” he said. " In conclusion, in this longitudinal multicenter study, we found a selective temporary decline of sperm concentration and total motile count 3 months post-vaccination followed by recovery among SD. " credits to: By Zachary Stieber June 21, 2022 Updated: June 22, 2022 Epch Times Previous Articles
Using this diagnostic, doctors could avoid prescribing antibiotics in cases where they won’t be effective. Many different types of bacteria and viruses can cause pneumonia, but there is no easy way to determine which microbe is causing a particular patient’s illness. This uncertainty makes it harder for doctors to choose effective treatments because the antibiotics commonly used to treat bacterial pneumonia won’t help patients with viral pneumonia. In addition, limiting the use of antibiotics is an important step toward curbing antibiotic resistance. MIT researchers have now designed a sensor that can distinguish between viral and bacterial pneumonia infections, which they hope will help doctors to choose the appropriate treatment. “The challenge is that there are a lot of different pathogens that can lead to different kinds of pneumonia, and even with the most extensive and advanced testing, the specific pathogen causing someone’s disease can’t be identified in about half of patients. And if you treat a viral pneumonia with antibiotics, then you could be contributing to antibiotic resistance, which is a big problem, and the patient won’t get better,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that their sensors could accurately distinguish bacterial and viral pneumonia within two hours, using a simple urine test to read the results. Bhatia is the senior author of the study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Melodi Anahtar ’16, PhD ’22 is the lead author of the paper. Signatures of infection One reason why it has been difficult to distinguish between viral and bacterial pneumonia is that there are so many microbes that can cause pneumonia, including the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae, and viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). In designing their sensor, the research team decided to focus on measuring the host’s response to infection, rather than trying to detect the pathogen itself. Viral and bacterial infections provoke distinctive types of immune responses, which include the activation of enzymes called proteases, which break down proteins. The MIT team found that the pattern of activity of those enzymes can serve as a signature of bacterial or viral infection. The human genome encodes more than 500 proteases, and many of these are used by cells that respond to infection, including T cells, neutrophils, and natural killer (NK) cells. A team led by Purvesh Khatri, an associate professor of medicine and biomedical data science at Stanford University and one of the authors of the paper, collected 33 publicly available datasets of genes that are expressed during respiratory infections. By analyzing those data, Khatri was able to identify 39 proteases that appear to respond differently to different types of infection. Bhatia and her students then used those data to create 20 different sensors that can interact with those proteases. The sensors consist of nanoparticles coated with peptides that can be cleaved by particular proteases. Each peptide is labeled with a reporter molecule that is freed when the peptides are cleaved by proteases that are upregulated in infection. Those reporters are eventually excreted in the urine. The urine can then be analyzed with mass spectrometry to determine which proteases are most active in the lungs. The researchers tested their sensors in five different mouse models of pneumonia, caused by infections of Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, influenza virus, and pneumonia virus of mice. After reading out the results from the urine tests, the researchers used machine learning to analyze the data. Using this approach, they were able to train algorithms that could differentiate between pneumonia versus healthy controls, and also distinguish whether an infection was viral or bacterial, based on those 20 sensors. The researchers also found that their sensors could distinguish between the five pathogens they tested, but with lower accuracy than the test to distinguish between viruses and bacteria. One possibility the researchers may pursue is developing algorithms that can not only distinguish bacterial from viral infections, but also identify the class of microbes causing a bacterial infection, which could help doctors choose the best antibiotic to combat that type of bacteria. The urine-based readout is also amenable to future detection with a paper strip, similar to a pregnancy test, which would allow for point-of-care diagnosis. To this end, the researchers identified a subset of five sensors that could put at-home testing closer within reach. However, more work is needed to determine if the reduced panel would work similarly well in humans, who have more genetic and clinical variability than mice. Patterns of response
In their study, the researchers also identified some patterns of host response to different types of infection. In mice with bacterial infections, proteases secreted by neutrophils were more prominently seen, which was expected because neutrophils tend to respond more to bacterial infections than viral infections. Viral infections, on the other hand, provoked protease activity from T cells and NK cells, which usually respond more to viral infections. One of the sensors that generated the strongest signal was linked to a protease called granzyme B, which triggers programmed cell death. The researchers found that this sensor was highly activated in the lungs of mice with viral infections, and that both NK and T cells were involved in the response. To deliver the sensors in mice, the researchers injected them directly into the trachea, but they are now developing versions for human use that could be administered using either a nebulizer or an inhaler similar to an asthma inhaler. They are also working on a way to detect the results using a breathalyzer instead of a urine test, which could give results even more quickly. The research was funded, in part, by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Janssen Research and Development, the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Original Article: Anne Trafton | MIT News Office |
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