Common Science

During a conversation with friends I realised I needed a better understanding of seasonal flu viruses, and how or if Swine Flu and Bird Flu are seasonal, whether there are other seasonal influenza viruses, and what protection the flu vaccine provides, as, we were all just guessing answers to these points! I couldn't readily find all of the answers online in one place, so I've pieced together information from various sources and created some comparison tables covering the more widely discussed swine, avian and seasonal influenza viruses. This post is by no means supposed to be a comprehensive review of each virus, but an overview to give readers a better understanding of seasonal flu, the viruses that cause it, and the flu vaccine. Feel free to comment with any questions or corrections, all pertinent information is referenced, the majority of which came from various pages of the World Health Organisation’s and CDC's website, alongside data from several recent publicati...

Jon Hopkins' ambient, relaxing titular track from his album, Immunity.

The re-emergence of diseases that were thought to be part of our history, defeated by immunisation, and hoped to be found only in category 4 labs deep underground and textbooks, are now increasingly common in headlines covering new epidemics. Of current popular concern is Measles, the virus not to be confused with German Measles nor Rubella, which prior to a vaccintation program beginning in 1963, killed 2.6M people annually [1]. In 2018 more than 140,000 people died from the virus [1], an incredible decrease since the 1960s but this number has been increasing. Image: Measles Virus Micrograph The reason for the rise in measles cases is not only because of the recent fall-off in immunisation program uptake, thanks to baseless claims linking autism with the combination vaccine, MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella), but also because of the virulence of the virus. Measles is the most infectious virus known to the human race, and before vaccination programs were in effect, infect...

As an academic working within a research institute there are often talks by various high profile individuals (many of whom I should probably be writing about!), however this week's lecturer within a seminar series revolving around bench-to-bedsite 'translational' medicine was given by Ben Goldacre. Ben's latest campaign has been for the release of clinical trials data. Especially from trials where an end point hasn't been reached, i.e. letting negative trial data see the light of day. In fact it's not actually the public that really matter regarding this disclosure, rather the clinicians running new trials, often using novel drugs with similar modes-of-action and pharmacokinetics to those in previous failed trials. This openness has the ability to not only save a lot of time and money but importantly reduce the risk to those brave enough to partake in phase 1 clinical studies. TGN1412 Trial  An incredibly grim example Ben provided was for the much publi...

I was recently asked about the surveillance system present within immunity which operates to kill virally infected cells by lack of MHC expression, and why this same system doesn't destroy red blood cells (RBC), which lack MHC. One function of Natural Killer (NK) cells is to destroy cells infected by viruses, which have a mechanism of evading T-cell killing by down-regulating MHC class I expression. MHC class I molecules are expressed on every cell in the body apart from RBCs; a lack of expression is detected by NK cells which act to destroy the cell. However, RBC remain unharmed. SEM of NK cells Red Blood Cells                         V.S Like everyone else I assumed the almighty google would provide me with the answer to my friends question, so I typed in my query and the only relevant link was to a 'yahoo answers' page, which answered a succinctly phrased question whi...

In a moment of rare foresight I decided to spend my 1 hour waiting for a connecting train at Euston station, visiting the latest exhibition on brains at the Wellcome collection . Previously I'd visited the exhibition on skin (unsurprisingly named SKIN ), which served up the right amount of visual and mental stimulation. This latest exhibition proved to be as interesting, but didn't live up to my own hype after the last visit. Security staff greeted me with the deferential smile of 'I'm just doing my job mate', as they politely searched my bag. After being established as benign, I entered through glass doors to be welcomed by an aptly simple title for the show: BRAINS. The familiar blurb preceeding the exhibition provided a précis and rationale for the show. The latter, as you can imagine, was due to a lack of understanding by the public and the obvious importance of the brain. I particularly enjoyed the boldness of the neuroscientists sentiment - to prove that per...