The cost of getting the flu

I've come across this neat infographic that explores the cost of influenza infection to the individual and to the country as a whole (here's the WHO factsheet on flu for more info). It really sends home the message of necessity of preventative and therapeutic options for treating these respiratory viruses.


 Of course this can also be extended worldwide and to the other viruses that cause the same roughly the same symptoms as influenza, like Respiratory Syncytial Virus. There's a couple of differences when you extend this to other countries, namely the UK, thanks to our National Health Service where Doctor's visits and prescriptions are free. 


Also in some countries it is good to remember that in some countries the fu season extends throughout the whole year. Despite some questions arising on the effectiveness of the seasonal flu vaccines, they are better and safer than nothing so remember to get protected if you're at risk!



Source: FrugalDad.com

So how does Respiratory Syncytial Virus infect your lungs?

This post is hopefully the beginning of a new series of stories on this blog covering the thinking behind the papers I cover from the point of view of those scientists doing the work. 

The first up is from Remi Villenave, a post-doc in my department at Queen's University, Belfast Centre for Infection & Immunity. Remi is currently working on understanding how Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infects and causes disease in humans. He studies this by using an in vitro culture of primary differentiated bronchial epithelial cells taken from children. This work is reported in a PNAS paper published a couple of weeks ago. 

In vitro modeling of respiratory syncytial virus infection of pediatric bronchial epithelium, the primary target of infection in vivo

Here is some answers he gave to a couple of questions I put to him last week:

Single mumps vaccine jab (versus MMR) in the UK - back again?

The "Children's Immunisation Centre" has recently announced that it plans to start administering the single mumps vaccine sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year in the UK. When I rang them up asked at the helpdesk, the very helpful receptionist told me they were scheduling vaccinations for July. Their website details:

"Currently Mumps single vaccine is not available due to Merck stopping the manufacture of it about 3 years ago. However we are working with our suppliers (who have an MHRA -Medicines and  Healthcare products Regulatory Agency - Wholesale license and who are regularly inspected) to source a Jeryl Lynn Strain (the safest strain) of Mumps vaccine." 

They continue,

"M-M-R single vaccines are manufactured by, France, India, and in some European countries and also China, Russia and in future the  UK. Our suppliers in the UK are working with UK manufacturers and are looking to produce the single mumps vaccine  for our patients."

The internet has picked up on this as well, here.

The curious case of Wipfelkrankheit "disease"

Baculovirus particles

I am sure you have heard of Wipfelkrankheit disease. If you haven't heard of this name at least you must have heard what it's symptoms are. Wipfelkrankheit - or in English, tree-top disease, is a fatal viral infection of caterpillars, an infection that causes them to climb up high, hang upside down and liquify themselves raining down millions upon millions of viral particles to the forest floor below. 

Here they are easily ingested by unsuspecting and uninfected insects. The question of how they do so has been consuming researchers for 100 years. But we may now have the full story. 

Your top 10 questions in virology? Here's some of mine:

Do you want to help organise a virology meeting? Paul Duprex, the chair of the Society for General Microbiology's Virology Division (and also my current PhD supervisor) is asking you guys to help him and the committee set-up the virology symposium in 2014. 

This event will be: "Top 10 questions in Virology". The aim of this is for ordinary people (scientists and non-scientists alike) to put forward a question that they really would like answered. Something which has been niggling at them for sometime now. Something they think is important and needs to be answered soon. 

TWiV live in Dublin

Goodbye nasty virus. Love, your spleen

What's that big brown bag - packed full of red blood cells - for in the upper left of your chest? Sure you can live without it but why's it there in the first place and what's it doing for you? You wouldn't just be carrying round that extra 175g (for an 'average' person) just for nothing would you? While it has been known that loss of your spleen, or asplenia has some pretty strange effects, such as an increase in some blood cells, lessened response to vaccinations and an increased risk of serious infections, we haven't exactly known why. That is until now, when a German team - publishing in Nature Immunology a few weeks back - uncovered an unrecognised role for a certain kind of immune cell that specifically hides out in your spleen.

Actually a number of years ago you might have heard something very like this story when researchers found that the spleen could aid in the regeneration of damaged tissue but this is something different. This is the second time that the spleen's function has been revolutionised.

You are continuously being bombarded by potentially dangerous molecules, microbes and other organisms who would really like to use you to further their own evolutionary lineage. This is why a system to specifically recognise these organisms and physically remove them and protect you from future attacks has been selected for over millennia. This is one of the reasons why you have a spleen.

For US$16,818.50 would you want a synthetic human virus?

In the media aftermath of the H5N1 transmission debate we've been hearing an awful lot about the possibilities of bringing synthetic biology to the field of virology. In fact, one of the best analyses of this situation is Carl Zimmer's piece in the New York Times. In it, Carl explores the capabilities of DIY, amateur biologists to investigate how viruses infect and cause disease. The pro's and con's of utilizing synthetic DNA to make viruses versus the more traditional methods are looked at briefly but really how easily can it be done? and how different is this new wave of synthetic virology versus earlier methods?

#openaccess: Exploitive prions versus your innocent immune system

Prion protein in red on dendritic cell beside neuron (green)

This blog focuses on trying to understand how viruses cause disease in their hosts - whether they be single cells or us, humans. Attempting to do so means that we must look at how viruses enter these hosts, survive within the hostile environment that is another organism and eventually make their way on to infect the next one. One thing this blog doesn't do, is look at how other kinds of pathogens complete this complex life cycle.

I'm going to change that now.

I'm going to take a look at prions - the dangerous proteins behind the fatal brain disorders such as: Kuru, mad-cow disease and scrapie, also known as 'Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies' or TSE's.

A paper published last week in PLoS Pathogens really highlights an issue that comes up a fair bit in this blog, that is: how pathogens - in this case prion proteins - exploit your immune system to promote their own survival. And in particular, how these molecular parasites make use of one cell: the dendritic cell. This work comes from the Medical Research Council's Prion Unit in the UK.

UK meet Schmallenberg virus - Schmallenberg virus meet the UK

Still-born lamb after Schmallenberg infection. http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/i

Europe is currently experiencing an incredibly worrying outbreak of disease across hundreds of farms in the North-West and it has finally popped up in the UK. The disease - caused by a previously unknown virus - has been causing a large number of still births in cows, goats and sheep after it was initially found in the Netherlands and Germany. What is worrying about this is our economic dependance on this kind of agriculture - but should we really be worried?

Following this initial outbreak in Germany/Netherlands it was rapidly discovered to be present in Belgium, France and the South-East of England where it was most likely spread by the movements of infected midge flies. And even now, Russia has begun to close off it's importing of Dutch meat and animals. The rest of the UK is even bracing itself for further spread of the virus and now the UK's veterinary labs have weighed in on the research. But a number of questions still need answered before we can really do anything about it, which is why so much interest has been generated over the last couple of weeks, especially as we have probably only seen the tip of the iceberg.