Category: Immunology (Page 1 of 3)

Of COVID-19: Immunity, Vaccines, Herd Immunity

July 15, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Today is the 15th of July. For more than half a year, humanity in the entire world has been witnessing the ravages of a deadly pandemic, caused by a respiratory virus that belongs to the ‘Coronavirus’ family and is named SARS-CoV-2. Currently, we are practically defenceless against the disease, termed COVID-19, caused by this virus. In clinical studies, limited effects, in overall small number of patients under special conditions, have been seen with an antiviral medication (remdesivir) and the use of an anti-inflammatory medicine (dexamethasone), while a few other medicines fell off the wayside when rigorously tested for efficacy against COVID-19.

But that situation may change. All hope is not lost.

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When Hype Meets Medicine: the Curious Case of Dexamethasone in COVID-19

July 1, 2020 / / 0 Comments

“Evidence-based medicine requires evidence. It’s not optional.”—these golden words in science- and evidence-based medicine were re-emphasized by Dr. Angie Rasmussen, virologist at Columnbia University and prolific science communicator, on Twitter recently.

For proper appreciation of the magnitude of this quote, let me elaborate on the fascinating context in which Rasmussen wrote it.

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Homeopathy: Is It Really Effective In Upper Respiratory Tract Infections With Fever In Children? Not Quite

August 16, 2016 / / 0 Comments

ResearchBlogging.org

A recently published paper, with the outcomes of a collaborative European Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) undertaken in Germany and Ukraine, is making waves amongst jubilant homeopaths as yet another evidence supporting their long-held belief in the clinical effectiveness of homeopathy. Naturally, this 2016 paper in the Journal Global Pediatric Health by van Haselen et al. piqued my curiosity and I dove in to see what the hullabaloo was all about.

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Keep Calm and Know Your Fever (Before You Reach for That Medicine)

May 13, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Growing up in the Eastern part of India, I was subject to a most peculiar cultural phenomenon known as “ThanDa lege jaabe” (ঠাণ্ডা লেগে যাবে in the vernacular, translated as: You’ll catch a cold). This odd concept, most beloved of the mothers in that region and handed down generations after generations, would teach them that any vagary of the sub-tropical weather — sun, rain, autumnal zephyrs, wet and foggy riparian winters, and everything in between — was liable to cause acute upper respiratory tract infections (uRTIs), characterized by runny nose, cough and sneeze, perhaps even progressing to pharyngitis, laryngitis or tracheobronchitis. And the most feared symptom was elevated body temperature, or fever.

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Of Serious Concern: Drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in Treated Wastewater

April 15, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Currently one of the most common disease-causing bacterium in the world, Acinetobacter baumannii, for sure, is a nasty bug — an emerging nosocomial (hospital-associated) pathogen, being increasingly observed in serious conditions requiring intensive care (including ventilator-associated pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, wound infection and urinary tract infection). Unfortunately for patients, particularly immune-suppressed ones, this bug is now known to be extensively drug resistant (XDR; resistant to most antibiotics including carbapenems, with the exception of two drugs of last resort, colistin and tigecycline), with a smaller proportion resistant to even these two (known as pan-drug resistant, PDR, which are therefore virtually untreatable with the current crop of FDA-approved medications).

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Vox Media Report On Pandemrix And Narcolepsy Misses A Key Highlight, Progress By Trial

July 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I read with a great deal of interest a report on Vox by their science and health reporter Julia Belluz (@juliaoftoronto on Twitter) on the recently publicized story of Pandemrix, an H1N1 pandemic influenza (a.k.a. “Swine Flu”) vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the condition of narcolepsy (a debilitating sleep disorder) that affected a small fraction of individuals who received this vaccine.

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Inflammation, Acupuncture, and HPA axis: Faulty Science Clouds Understanding

February 18, 2015 / / 1 Comment

In the wake of my recent critique of acupuncture being touted as a remedy for allergic rhinitis, I was pointed (via a Twitter comment) towards a 2013 review in Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which purported to propose a mechanism for the much-claimed anti-inflammatory effects of acupuncture. There are several putative mechanisms, discussing all of which will make this post gargantuan. Therefore, I shall focus on the explanation involving the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

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No, Drinking Your Own Urine Will Not Cure Ebola (Or Anything Else)

October 22, 2014 / / 7 Comments

Fear does strange things to people. The fear du jour currently permeating the US is, of course, the Ebola virus disease. Despite the august efforts to reassure and educate from CDC and the WHO, there has spread a modicum of panic (often with tragic results); we have seen Ebola response become a political issue, and as pointed out recently by that redoubtable scienceblogger, Orac, a ghastly profusion of conspiracy theories and quackery has crawled out of nooks and crannies, feeding into the overall noise that is smothering rational discourse on the topic. But even before Orac wrote on it, my attention was drawn on Twitter to the latest volley of insane quackery to emerge, a supposedly “Ayurvedic approach” to curing Ebola – the Ayurveda nowadays being a catch-all term to refer to everything pre-scientific mumbo-jumbo allegedly written in the ancient Hindu holy texts, the Vedas. Because culture.

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Lies, misrepresentation, cherry picking quotes: PeTA’s tactics to garner support against animal research

April 30, 2014 / / 17 Comments

I work with immunology of infectious disease and study host-pathogen response. My work has naturally involved a good amount of animal experimentation, especially mouse models of various infections. These mouse models are incredibly useful, because they offer a valuable window into the process of infection, pathogenesis (‘disease production’), and the kind of immune response a vertebrate mammal generates to the infection. The same broad reasoning applies to rodent models of various metabolic and endocrine diseases, as well as cancer. These models are attractive because most often these research animals are genetically homogeneous, and therefore, provide a less complex (and more manageable) environment to study the genesis, as well as treatments, of a disease – while mimicking much of the same physiological responses seen in larger and more complex animals.

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“Faith Healing”, medical neglect by another name

February 21, 2014 / / 2 Comments

In Scientio Veritas is my blog for talking about professional matters, related to science in health and disease, and so forth; and long-time readers (if any!) may know that I don’t like to bring in discussions on the controversial (and – I think – personal to many) issue of religion or religious faith, unless the specific issue impinges upon scientific and/or public health matters. Today, two of my scientist-blogger friends highlighted via social media a particular case of the latter kind, which screams to be commented upon because of its serious public health implications. So I shall endeavor to do so as best as I can.

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