Syphilis is Back. We need new tools

Syphilis, that terror of the early modern age, is back. Almost eliminated in the 1990s, by 2022 here were 200 000 cases in the US alone. And, if you are not worried start now. Because this is waht it does according to this short extract from Jessica Glenza of the Guardian [1]

“More advanced stages of the disease can bring feared complications, such as neurosyphilis, with dementia-like effects, or ocular syphilis that can cause blindness. Congenital syphilis, when the disease is passed from mother to child, is a special horror: the disease can cause death and neurological devastation in infants.“

How have we let it get out of control, and rather more pertinently, what can be done about it? The first is easy to answer: neglect of medical services to pay for tax cuts, and the general concentration on the narcissistic rewards of a consumer society. The latter is rather more interesting. And it sits across many of the concerns we raise on these pages, such as antibiotics, testing, new DNA based technologies and all the other things we admit we bang on about too often(no wonder we never get invited to parties) And frankly, Jessica’s article is a tour de force from which you will learn much about these many subjects, gentle readers.

While not wishing to spoil her article, which you must read, we’ll leave you with this particular thought. There is an antibiotic available: Bicillin L-A. But waht happens if it runs out, or significant resistance to it develop?. We suggest that you keep monitoring these pages.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/10/syphilis-sti-testing

#syhilis #std #antibiotic resistance #testing #health #medicine #dna

Antibiotic Resistance: Here’s an ill wind that blows no good

Just when you thought we were finally getting a handle on antibiotic resistant microbes, Damien Carrington of the Guardian[1] reveals a whole new, and rather surprising new danger. Antibiotic resistant organisms are not only thriving in agriculture, they are being blown across the planet by the winds. Ready to drop into an ecosystem near you. And start to spread their mischief once again.

That at least seems to be the conclusion of the versatile Professor Rodó and his colleagues at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. Sampling the low air wind patterns (0.97-3.05km) between North China and Japan they found that potentially pathogenic, antibiotic-resistant organisms were blowing up to 2000 km downwind. And landed perfectly capable of reproducing at the other end. To make matters worse, the samples included organisms such as E Coli and Clostridium difficile, no strangers to these pages.

Why are we worried? Well, frankly we didn’t see this coming. Although given the massive misuse of antibiotics in intensive farming, maybe we should have done. And, if this is the situation between advanced countries like China and Japan, what must be happening in less fortunate regions of the world? One thing is clear. Antibiotic resistance joins global warming and mass migration as one of those problems which no country will ever solve on its own. Remeber that next time you hear them banging on in the bar of the Dog and Duck.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/09/pathogenic-microbes-carried-vast-distances-by-winds

[2]https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2404191121

#weather #antibiotic resistance #farming #china #japan #prevailing wind #global warming

Waves of hope, waves of despair-yes, it’s another round up of top stories!

We hope you like the headline, good job WH Auden never got there first! Now, to business: our round up this week is a mix of stories, some designed to comfort the afflicted (“HOPE”) and others designed to afflict the comfortable (“DESPAIR”) So, without further ado, let’s set off on our journey of discovery!

HOPE: Smart Insulin We have always sympathised with diabetes sufferers who must depend for life itself on regular injections. Imagine if these were replaced with a smart insulin molecule that “knew” to kick in exactly when it was needed! Well, that day may dawn quite soon:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13733337/Scientists-uncover-holy-grail-insulin-adapts-diabetics-changing-blood-sugar-levels-real-time-inject-week.html

DESPAIR: Antagonistic antibiotics We have always hymned the praises of antibiotics. But we are also a fair and balanced lot (we would be thrown out of the Whig Party if we weren’t) and we candidly admit that there may be circumstances in which the prescription of antibiotics can produce unwelcome effects.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13724201/antibiotics-rash-life-threatening-Britons.html

HOPE: Solar Power everywhere. Last year a prominent member of the Editorial Board had Solar panels installed. And remarkable they have proved. But every technology is only as good as the year it’s made in. What if you could develop a new type which you could coat onto everything-the car, your anorak, the garden wall? Scientists at Oxford University may have done just that:

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-08-09-solar-energy-breakthrough-could-reduce-need-solar-farms

^{thanks to P Seymour}

DESPAIR: Microbes Mutate in the Microwave We keep a pretty clean microwave round here-and rightly so. All those nasty little stains contain microbes-and it looks as if some of them can mutate to survive the radiation beams. If they can do it a microwave oven then, they can do it in the presence of antibiotics or bacteriophages too. Depressing.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13719161/germs-lurking-microwave-Radiation-resistant.html

HOPE Fusion Spin Offs before there is fusion One of our core beliefs is that learning generates learning. Discoveries in one area can have amazing spin offs in others. So, with a certain pride, we finish with this piece which suggests that all the herculean efforts to develop nuclear fusion technologies have not been in vain. We may not get the power until the late thirties-but there are already amazing benefits in everything from health to green energy. Next time some genius suggests cutting taxes, ask them if it will affect the University sector.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/11/nuclear-fusion-research-tae-power-solutions-cancer-propulsion?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

And finally: this thought from the late great Arthur C Clarke, who noted that there must be intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe: proof of this comes in the fact that they have never visited us on this planet.

#microorganisms #solar power #climate change #antibiotics #arthur c clarke

A Round-up of Hope: Cancer,antibiotics, green energy and life on the red planet

Photo by Duu0161an Cvetanoviu0107 on Pexels.com

A few science and health stories which prove there are still few intelligent people out there working for the common good

Mouth Bacteria may protect against cancer To beat cancer we need to think laterally at times, and take bits of luck when they come from unexpected discoveries. According to Xantha Leatham of the Mail, Scientists at London’s prestigious St Thomas Hospital may have done just that. It looks like the organism Fusobacterium may protect against certain types of neck cancer. We love these serendipitous discoveries by lab scientists-real shades of Alexander Fleming!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13676291/Common-mouth-bacteria-melts-cancer-scientists-explain-patients-better-survival-odds.html

Antibiotics for sepsis We scraped this straight from Nature Briefings, that most worthy source of scientific information Definitely a sign of progress, we think:

A method to quickly identify the bacteria involved in life-threatening sepsis — and which antibiotics will kill them— could save patient lives. Key to saving precious time are magnetic nanoparticles with bacteria-capturing molecules. They fish out the usually tiny number of microbes from a blood sample, so testers don’t need to wait for the bacteria to grow and multiply. “I think that this technology can be in one box within three years, and… within four years, it can be in the clinic,” says bioengineer and study co-author Sunghoon Kwon.Nature Podcast | 35 min listen
Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube Music, or use the RSS feed.

EU powers ahead on renewables Like other big power blocks such as India and China, the EU is rapidly achieving crossover on renewable energy generation, as this article by Ajit Naranjan for the Guardian makes clear. Smaller countries like the UK are doing well too. That’s the way the whole world is moving. And therein lies our real problem with Mr Donald Trump. “Drill, baby drill!” is a policy based on the psychology of nostalgia, not science. One day it will have to be reversed. At what cost?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/30/renewables-overtake-fossil-fuels-to-provide-30-of-eu-electricity

Life on Mars? Well David Bowie’s eponymous song was a long time ago. But not so long as these billions-of-year-old spots discovered by the Perseverance rover at Mars’ Neretva Vallis formation. Were they alive? Scientists are being very cautious, as Ian Sample explains for the Guardian. But when Bowie released his ditty back in 1971, it was almost heresy to suggest life anywhere in our star system. Now Mars, Europa, and Enceladus head a list of real hopefuls. Wahttps://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/26/nasa-rover-discovery-hints-at-ancient-microbial-life-on-marstch this space, as they say.

Well, we won’t be rounding up every week. But every so often we hope to bring you these little clutches of news which show our side is still out there-and keeping busy.

#cancer #fusobacterium #sepsis #antibiotics #reneables #global warming #donald trump #mars #astrobiology #david bowie

6 Problems which require global response,and only a global response

“You can’t stop me smoking! It’s an assault on my liberty!” It was a common cry in the early days of trying to save the world from tobacco pollution. Somehow the smokers never considered that that the toxic fumes they spread might inflict upon the liberties of others. Smoking is the world in miniature. For the same self-centred mindset may be found in those who cannot think beyond the boundaries of their own religious or ethnic group. So here are 6 problems which affect us all, and each of which will only be solved by deliberate acts of collective action, however cognitively difficult that may prove for some people.

1 Pollution As my country pumps out toxic metals, sh*t, plastics or whatever, it will get into the water, air and land of surrounding countries, poisoning their unfortunate inhabitants. If you don’t want to breathe someone else’s smoke, ways will be have to be found of asking people to stop. And to keep them stopped. Agreements, anyone?

2 Global Warming A subset of pollution really, except that we are only talking about carbon dioxide and methane. But as the water levels rise and the ocean currents collapse, you will have the comfort of blaming someone else. And they can blame you. Will you feel better?

3 Migration As we have said before, the real cause of this is imbalances in living standards between different parts of the planet. Successful transfers of wealth to the areas where migrants come from will slowly but surely eliminate the problem. How many Germans migrate to Iraq, for example?

4 Knowledge and fakery Since the invention of the Interweb and the subsidiary technologies that feast upon it, the world has been plagued by a deluge of fakes. Fake news stories, fake scientific papers, fake images and the utterly uninformed opinions thereby generated. Only a single world reference library with the veracity of its contents contents carefully agreed by all will allow a single reliable point of reference. This won’t be perfect, but will allow a fresh starting point, and mimics the way that single standards of things like currencies and weights and measures slowly ameliorated the human condition

5 The next pandemic Everyone agrees it’s coming, the question is where and when does it start. IT will probably be a virus. But could our hoary old favourite, an antibiotic-resistant superbug, be the killer?

6 Inequality As long as the super-rich can move their money and their yachts from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the rest of us will never see a fair share of the wealth which we have created. Hence the shortages of things like hospital beds, school places, decent roads, etc.A single world taxation and financial authority would not only eliminate this problem, it would rapidly provide the resources to deal with those discussed above.

National sovereignty, tribal identity or whatever are extremely powerful forces in human affairs. And we ignore them at our peril, as we have oft-times warned on these pages. But they are also licences to pollute. Are we clever enough to reconcile the the conflict?

#pollution #global warming #climate change #antibiotics #pandemic #poverty

Pancreatic Cancer-the brave ladies who offered hope

Escaping the concrete canyons of Croydon recently, we took a short break in the Sussex town of Worthing. (Which has been compared to Nice in Provence ; but only by people who have never been to Nice). While strolling along the Promenade at Worthing, we ran into a group, mainly comprising ladies, who were dressed in a variety of outre costume, including those of Pink Panthers and Star Wars Galactic Warriors. It turned out to be one of those happy occasions when we learned, not something new, but when something which we were dimly aware of was moved sharply up our agenda . For they were campaigning to gather money for the rising disease of Pancreatic Cancer. [1] And this is what we learned (overseas readers- we bet the UK is pretty representative of your jurisdiction too)

The pancreas is a vital organ, standing at the crossroads of both your digestive and endocrine system. So getting cancer in it is a pretty bad state of affairs. There are several types of this cancer. But last year, overall, saw 10 500 new cases in the UK. Actually, its among the 10 most common forms of cancer in these islands. The risk factors? You guessed it. Being overweight., smoking and diabetes are among the highest. All the features of a civilisation focussed too much on quick-fix marketing, and not enough on quality of life. If you want to drill down, here’s another link from the Charity Pancreatic Cancer UK. [2]

So these ladies, and the charity which they represent means that, even if your family is struck with this terrible affliction, you will not be alone. And, as we parted from the ladies, we closed on a moment of hope. For Pancreatic Cancer UK works closely with the other cancer charities in this country. And we agreed how useful it was to set up laboratories with ethe money raised. Who knows what other discoveries could be made with all those scientists and all that kit? Apparently these ladies intend to run the whole of the seafront down there, and back again. Good luck to them, we say. And thanks.

[1]https://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/information/just-diagnosed-with-pancreatic-cancer/what-is-pancreatic-cancer/

[2]https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0424/0949/2641/files/221123PC01_PCUK_What_is_Pancreatic_Cancer_Factsheet_Updates_Web.pdf?v=1670945787

#pancreatic cancer #cancer #research #health #medicine #charity

Processed Foods: Reader Feedback

Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Pexels.com

Today we reproduce the comment of our regular reader Ms Gaynor Lynch, on our recent piece about processed foods. Many thanks to her for taking the time to contact us:

Ultra-processed foods are bad for you – full stop. They are highly addictive and affect your brain chemistry so that you crave them more. Emerging research suggests ultra processed foods are particularly bad for not just the gut but the heart and brain as well, with mood and cognition badly affected.

Professor Tim Spectre is the go expert on the gut https://zoe.com/post/tim-spector-gut-tips,

There is an excellent excellent article in National Geographic on brain health but there is a pay wall. It may be available through your library service.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/ultra-processed-foods-damage-brain-depression-anxiety-cognitive-decline#:~:text=Although%20many%20ultra-processed%20foods%E2%80%94soda%2C%20candy%2C%20energy%20bars%2C%20fruit-flavored,brain%2C%20with%20mood%20and%20cognition%20taking%20a%20hit.

Abstract of research article in the journal Neurology on associations between ultra-processed food consumption and adverse brain health outcomes. Free, paywall to full article.

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209432

We at LSS think that this whole issue is only going to grow in the next few years and welcome the thoughts of any other readers who might care to join the debate

#nutrition #obesity #food #diet #sustainability #health #heart

Are Ultra-Processed foods bad for your immune system? The Conversation thinks they might be

Go on any diet course these days (we’ve been on many) and the chances are that your course leader will inveigh against the dangers of processed foods[1] You know, those ones that saved us all so much time in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was essential to answer your e-mails and plan a talk over a delicious microwaved chicken korma. Well, processed foods comprise a lot more than just quick ready meals.And, l like a lot of labour-saving devices, they’re not all bad if used in moderation. Trouble comes when we all go too far. And our old friends The Conversation have an intriguing take on that. [2] Look at this extract frpm their article by Sam White and Phillipe Wilson

[there is] growing evidence that ultra-processed foods may affect how our immune system works. This may explain why some studies have linked ultra-processed foods with inflammatory bowel disease and potentially autoimmune diseases.

We on this blog have been tracking stories which link the digestive tract and immune system for some years. So it’s nice to see some real scientists really opening up this field. But there is a deeper lesson for us here, and it’s from economics, not science. Because economists of the classical school, or at least those who swallow their undergraduate textbooks, whole, always asseverate the a pure free market is the quickest way to achieve the optimum benefit. Well, processed foods are certainly free market. They have developed at breakneck speed, and certainly give the people what they want. The question is: how much do they need it? And at what cost does it come?

[1]https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/how-to-eat-a-balanced-diet/what-are-processed-foods/

[2]https://theconversation.com/ultra-processed-foods-heres-how-they-may-affect-the-way-the-immune-system-functions-231884?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest

diet #food #microbiome# gut #immune system

New test leads to real progress on antibiotic prescriptions

One of the scourges of modern medicine is the over-prescription of antibiotics. The more they are used, the more chances are made for target organisms to develop resistance. ( as well as other bacteria that live alongside them) Hence the current crisis. Everyone agrees we should be saving our last antibiotics for when they are really, really needed, not just throwing them at every random infection presented in the Doctor’s surgery on a rainy Monday morning.

A typical example is infections of the urinary tract, as James Gallagher explains for the BBC. [1] It’s never easy to know whether one of these is bacterial or viral. And currently it can take three days to find out. Yet the risk of an untreated bacterial infection is so high, the consequences so grave, that Doctors have to prescribe antibiotics, just in case. Of course, if it turns out to be viral. the antibiotics are useless, and the risk of adding more resistant bacteria to the ecosystem has just been ratcheted up again.. If only there was a way of cutting diagnostic time!

Well some Swedish researchers seem to have done just that. Their new test seems to have cut the time to answer the question “is this an antibiotic-treatable infection?” down to 45 minutes. James waxes lyrical, with the aid of some excellent graphics. Even more encouraging, the system is now being marketed by a pioneering firm called Sysmex Astrego [2] which suggests a strongly robust, repeatable test which could be rolled out in the millions. Billions, even? There’s lots of good news here, and we hope that all involved enjoy their Longitude Prize. If anyone deserves a little celebration, it is surely they.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crggj9led0no

[2]https://www.sysmex-astrego.se/

#antibiotic resistance #medicine #bacteria fungi virus #superbug

No-Sky Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We interview A. Doctor

Following media speculation about No Sky Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a new syndrome sweeping the nation, LSS is proud to present this exclusive interview with Ann Doctor

LSS Is there really such a syndrome as No Sky Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (NSPTSD)?

AD Yes, NSPTSD is a new syndrome , but it’s very real nonetheless.

LSS What causes it? And what are the symptoms?

AD It happens when an otherwise healthy child is deprived of Sky TV in their formative years. It causes many tragic symptoms. A desire to stand out in the rain for long periods. A phobia about meeting important world leaders causing the sufferer to rush back to England to do an interview in ITV. To ignore obvious cues, such as the word “TITANIC” in the background, or hoping to rev things up by hanging around deserted motor car racing tracks in Northamptonshire. And otherwise make all kinds of gaffes, mistakes, blunders and unforced errors.

LSS is there any cure?

AD Generally we advise sufferers to collect as much money as they can and depart to a warm place, such as California, as soon as possible. And never, ever come back.