med-hints

  ACCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION Globally in 2023, there were an estimated 263 million malaria cases and 597 000 malaria deaths in 83 countries. The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2023, the WHO African Region was home to 94% of malaria cases (246 million) and 95% (569 000) of malaria deaths. Children under 5 accounted for about 76% of all malaria deaths in the Region. Malaria  is a  mosquito-borne infectious disease     people who are bitten by infected mosquitoes often develop a “ fever ,  fatigue ,  vomiting , and  headaches , and in severe cases, it can cause  jaundice ,  seizures ,  coma , or  death . [1] [9]  Symptoms usually begin 10 to 15 days after being bitten   The current therapy is Artemisinin.   It’s discovery led to a Nobel Prize in 2015. The World Health Organization began to recommend ACTs as the front-line treatment for ma...

  An article in the October issue Science described a new drug that could save the lives of up to 100,000 Africans.   It’s 3 years away from trials in humans but if it works—who knows.   The article claims that each year about 100,000 Africans are killed by venomous snakes and the current antivenom isn’t very effective for a number of reasons.   “This new kind of antivenom has proved protective only in mice so far. But   “It’s a potential game changer if all goes well.” To make their antivenum Laustsen-Kiel and colleagues injected mixtures of venoms from 18 African snakes into llamas and alpacas and the animals made antibodies. Their antibodies are smaller than those of horses and humans and have only one protein chain, instead of two, on each arm of the Y-shaped molecule. Each arm, dubbed a nanobody, can be separated from its base while remaining able to bind a target molecule, such as a toxin . The isolated arms lack the animal-specific sections th...

  THIS years nobel prize in medicine was awarded to researchers – for their discoveries regarding the role of regulatory T cells in keeping the immune system in check. Faulty regulatory T cells can result in autoimmune disease.  There has been considerable interest in this system from drugmakers. In the 1980s Sakaguchi removed the thymus from three-day-old mice, who then developed autoimmune disease.   He injected them with mature T cells developed in genetically identical mice and found that the T cells protected the mice from autoimmune disease. In 1995 he showed that regulatory T cells carried CD4 and CD25 proteins on their surface. Brunkow and Ramsdell mapped the x chromosome in detail and found a faulty mouse gene that caused an auto immune disease in the mice and two years later Sakaguchi proved that the  Foxp3  gene controls the development of regulatory T cells.   Julia Robinson chemistry world.  Two years later Sakaguchi, followed...

     Type one Diabetes is an immunologic disease.  It occurs when the body, for some reason, destroys the beta cells.  Beta cells make insulin. They are hormone producing cells.  They are found in islets of cells that are scattered in the pancreas.        Humans and other creatures of the earth survive, in part, because they have evolved an immune system that protects them from a universe of pathogenic microbes that are themselves constantly. evolving.  There are two kinds of lymphocytes that destroy invading pathogens.    B lymphocytes are a cadre of cells each of which recognize a different pathogen, toxin, or allergen.  when a B lymphocyte encounters a potential invader, it proliferates, divides rapidly, and creates an army of identical cells.  They in turn mount an effective response against the microbe or the toxin.  Some of the new cells are long-lived.  They persist in an apparently dor...

  Discussion of avian flu by Yoshihiro Kawaoka In the New England Journal of Medicine 2025   Bottom line:   More mutations will be needed for avian flu viruses to be highly transmissible in humans. But, for now, pasteurize milk and thoroughly cook poultry and meat.     We are dealing with an H5N1 virus, a subtype of influenza A virus known for primarily infecting birds. It’s called H5N1 because of two surface glycoproteins on the virus. Hemagglutinin — H, and neuraminidase — N. Avian flu refers to influenza viruses that circulate among birds. There are 19 H types and 11 N types. H5N1 is just one of them. They can sometimes cross species barriers and infect mammals, including humans, but are considered avian because birds are their natural host where they replicate most efficiently. When we say highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses,that means highly pathogenic for poultry. There are two kinds of avian influenza viruses in terms of path...

      "In 1421 builders of the Florence Cathedral needed marble for its construction.   Filippo Brunelleschi devised a boat that would carry the heavy rock up the Arno River and he was granted the right to exclude all new means of transport on the Arno for three years.”   Historians claim this was the first modern patent.     "In 1449 English King Henry VI granted John of Utynam a 20 years monopoly for a stained glass-making process.     " During the reign of Queen Anne 1702-1714 the British Crown required a patentee to provide a written description of the invention to be patented and the manner in which it was to be performed.      The U.S. constitution gave the government the right to issue patents “ ...limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings,” and in 1790 "Congress passed the first patent statute." To be eligible for a patent an invention must be novel—...