Category: Infectious Disease (Page 1 of 4)

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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Pseudoscience of Homeopathy Exacts a Tragic Cost; What Would Science Advocates Do?

January 8, 2020 / / 0 Comments

The mood in New South Wales State Supreme Court was somber that early June day in 2009. Seven years earlier a little girl of nine-months from Earlwood, Sydney, had died under tragic circumstances, and in the dock for medical negligence were her Indian immigrant parents, Mrs. Manju and Thomas Sam. The jury heard, from experts and other witnesses, how baby Gloria Thomas suffered from significant malnutrition early in her short life, which compromised her immunity; how she was diagnosed with eczema at four months, and through her broken skin, disease-causing bacteria entered her bloodstream, attacking her lungs and one eye; and how throughout the entire, extremely painful ordeal, her father—a homeopath—steadfastly, repeatedly refused medical care, electing instead to treat her with one homeopathic remedy after another, until she passed away. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced the couple to up to 8 years in prison.[1]

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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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Uncovered Cough And Sneeze Help Spread Nasty Disease

June 8, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Achoo!

Feel like a sneeze or cough coming on? Cover it in a cloth or tissue paper, or even your sleeves, and wash your hands, admonishes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — and for good reasons, too! Microbial pathogenic agents of a variety of respiratory illnesses, both viral [ranging from the common cold (rhinovirus); influenza (orthomyxovirus); parainfluenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and human metapneumovirus (all paramyxoviruses); severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-Coronavirus)] as well as bacterial [such as those responsible for pneumonia (Streptococcus pneumoniae), whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis), and tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis)] are often transmitted by cough, sneeze, and/or unclean hands/palms carrying these germs on their surfaces.

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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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2015 Nobel to Traditional Chinese Medicine Expert is a Win for Evidence-based Pharmacognosy

October 7, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Yesterday, on October 5, 2015, one half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to scientist and pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou (alternatively, Tu Yo Yo, 屠呦呦 in Chinese), for her discovery of the anti-malarial Artemisinin. (The other half went jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura, for their discovery of a novel therapy for roundworm infection.)

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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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