Week of September 26, 2022
There is a visceral urge to protect our children. And then you find yourself at a pre-Elton John concert event in a restaurant where the "drag queen bingo night" hosts are singing and roaming the audience. The contrast of my quiet 16-year-old silently screaming, "do not draw attention to me," as the makeup-laden entertainer in a one-piece yellow-sequined jumpsuit (singing Spice Girls songs) approached our table evoked both my parental empathy and amusement. I now have to process having had schadenfreude at my child's discomfort. On the other hand, you can only prepare your children for so many of life's circumstances.
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In the U.S., COVID case rates, hospitalizations, and deaths are declining in almost all states. On average last week, 430 people died daily, with 30,000 hospitalized patients.
N.Y. Times Tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
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There was some concern that the new bivalent vaccines would not induce new, specific memory B-cells but active already formed B cells to earlier coronavirus variants. (In other words, the bivalent vaccines would induce B cells to make antibodies to non-omicron variant spike proteins). This pre-release (not yet peer-reviewed) paper from Washington University shared data demonstrating that the bivalent vaccines induce NEW B-cells generating antibodies specific to the omicron BA.4 and .5 variants. Take home message - updated vaccines work and are specific for the new variants. Moreover, these data point to the flexibility of the immune system (which is not so surprising, but good to see data!)
See the commentary
https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1573173695908118528
The paper
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.22.509040v1
Jeremy Faust published an excellent review of data supporting the vaccination of school-aged children, even if they have had prior COVID infections.
https://insidemedicine.bulletin.com/opinion-previously-infected-school-aged-children-still-need-covid-vaccines
UCSF researchers published a pre-release article demonstrating an association between human HLA types and symptomatic COVID infections. (HLA are proteins on cells that vary amongst different populations of humans.) Individuals with one allele of HLA-B*15:01 were more likely to have had *asymptomatic* COVID infections. Those with two alleles were eight times more likely to have had an asymptomatic infection.
I am unclear how this association changes with other coronavirus variants or what, precisely, it is about this set of HLA variations that confers the lack of symptomatic response to COVID. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating observation.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.13.21257065v2
a few related Tweets
https://twitter.com/ExplantLab/status/1397830823542407169
and, of course, it appears having HLA-B*15:01 is associated with other not-so-good things, like the autoimmune vascular disease giant cell arteritis
https://twitter.com/ibsGRANADA/status/1448906711423668224
In case you want to know more about HLA
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/transplant/html/hla.html
Medical Trends and Technology
Vaccine development is complex and challenging to scale. This NPR article explains numerous concepts as it describes developing and testing a new malaria vaccine. The article covers the trade-offs of different vaccine types (protein only vs. attenuated virus), different delivery vectors (using live mosquitos), and how CRISPR made their work easier. The article is a little intellectual all-you-can-eat buffet of topics I often mention.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/09/21/1112727841/a-box-of-200-mosquitoes-did-the-vaccinating-in-this-malaria-trial-thats-not-a-jo
Infographics
Potatoes.
As a child, I often wondered why Pantry Pride sold "New Potatoes" since I thought all food was "new." Likewise, I often wondered if the old, discounted potatoes sold quickly since I never saw them.
https://cdnimg.webstaurantstore.com/uploads/blog/2020/11/typesofpotatoes_infographic.jpg
Get to know our AI Overlords!
At the prompting of a loyal reader, I signed up for a DALL-E 2 account - an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a written description. It is a great way to see how one AI engine interprets human words. More philosophically, DALL-E reflects how the algorithm sees us and what humans put on the web. My first few explorations with the AI engine have been enlightening - I offer:
"Andy Warhol pop art - smiling panda with sunglasses, an earring, and a hat."
https://labs.openai.com/s/8dCcqnAGsh4XjOoYmxu6ti5D
Periodic updates will follow
Things I learned this week
Doctors discussing the portrayal of medical care in movies is highly amusing. And, it is comforting to know I am not alone in my thoughts about common entertainment depictions of healthcare.
Examples:
Star Wars Episode III - Padme dies in childbirth prompted a whole series of discussions and an article:
https://twitter.com/quality_nguyen/status/1554563297122422785
and
Vice.com's 2017 (scarily on-point) "Did Inadequate Women's Healthcare Destroy Star Wars' Old Republic?"
https://www.vice.com/en/article/53d4db/womens-healthcare-star-wars
and
For more fun, here is a broader look at medical movie scenes:
https://twitter.com/thehouseofpod/status/1573676812541886465
Silphion was (or is) a plant related to carrots, parsley, and fennel. It was renowned in Greece and Rome for its flavor and wide-ranging medicinal uses, including as a contraceptive. Silphion was highly valued (and priced) but vanished mid-1st century AD. I learned that botanists are confident there are living samples of silphion in Turkey and have been studying and cooking with it. National Geographic did a fantastic job making an extinct plant story intriguing and engaging.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/miracle-plant-eaten-extinction-2000-years-ago-silphion
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
and
Learn to cook like the Romans https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2QeASk1nMQEbL46rZbKhQ/videos
Clean hands and Sharp minds, Team
-Adam
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