Infectious causes of chronic disease
tsmith | February 25, 2010Student guest post by Rajeshwari Nair
Discussion on consumption of meat products is a common occurrence in my household. Hailing from India, I have always relished meat dishes that my mom cooks up, hot and spicy! However, there is always a nagging guilt on eating animals. People have tried convincing me that we are all part of the food-chain in this ecosystem, so either eat or be eaten. However, in recent times one thought crosses my mind when I stuff that yummy piece of meat in my salivating mouth, will this karma get to me soon? Will my brain dissolve as I chew on the brain of this mute…
tsmith | February 24, 2010Student guest post by Anne Dressler
The idea of evolutionary medicine is new to me and my understanding is quite shallow but it has piqued my interest. Currently, the book "Why We Get Sick" by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams has been satisfying my curiosity during the 15 minutes of intellectual thought I have left at the end of the day while reading before bed. From what I've read, I'm finding how useful it can be to consider disease in light of evolution and I'm left wondering how I haven't heard of it before. I'm guessing I'm not the only one interested, so let's talk evolutionary…
tsmith | February 24, 2010Student guest post by Jay Watson
We've all been there at some point before: a hot summer day, your delicious ice cream cone or tasty treat, and that uneven sidewalk. After taking about ten steps away from the vendor, you mistakenly put your foot into a gigantic fault in the sidewalk and accidentally toss your tasty treat face-down into the pavement. For many of us, "what now?" is actually a deliberation of a bunch of different, yet seemingly important questions: Who is watching me? How hungry am I? How much did it cost? Does this thing look dirty? Can I salvage most of it? But perhaps…
tsmith | February 23, 2010Student guest post by Liz Stepniak
In the United States, the obesity epidemic is rapidly spreading. Since 1980 the prevalence of obesity has increased over 75%. Currently, over half the population is overweight, and nearly 1 in every 3 adults is clinically obese. Research has also been proliferating, exploring a plethora of possibilities to better understand and treat this growing epidemic. One of the recent trends in obesity research has been investigating the role of the microbiota in the gut and differences in the composition of these bacteria between obese and non-obese individuals.…
tsmith | February 23, 2010Student guest post by Dayna Groskreutz
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in adults in the United States. Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a term which includes both heart attacks and unstable angina. ACS occurs, in part, due to atherosclerosis, or plaque accumulation leading to narrowing of the artery. Some known risk factors for atherosclerosis and ACS include smoking, family history, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Recently, the role of inflammation in the development of atherosclerosis and ACS has been an area of intense study. Proposed causes of inflammation include…
tsmith | February 23, 2010Student guest post by Ron Bedford.
The first week of February 2010 must have been some sort of Post Polio Syndrome (PPS) week. The New York Times ran a story about PPS on February 2nd.
On the following Saturday, during the broadcast of the 2009 AKC/Eukanuba National Championship dog show, a Labrador Retriever named Benton was honored with an AKC Humane Fund Award for Canine Excellence (ACE) in the service category for his work as an assistance dog for his owner, Margo Dietrich, a polio survivor who "lives with physical limitations due to experiencing adult-onset Post Polio Syndrome".
Since…
tsmith | February 22, 2010Student guest post by Anh To.
When I found out my only non-smoking cousin had nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), I was puzzled. With all the hype about cigarette smoking associated with various kinds of cancers in the media, I did not understand why none of my smoking cousins had NPC but the one who didn't smoke did. At first, I thought it must be due to the second hand smoke. Now, I understand that the picture is very complex.
Before I go into what I have learned over the past several months, I need to make a disclaimer. I am not an expert in NPC. I am an average college student. This…
tsmith | February 22, 2010Guest post by Zainab Khan
In most western countries, germs have become synonymous with the idea of something bad that needs to be killed as quickly as possible. However, people have long been questioning the validity of these ideas; a few decades ago it was hypothesized that not enough exposure to germ can and does cause insufficient development of an individuals immune system. New studies have recently shown that this idea of getting rid of all germs, and keeping children exposure to them at an absolute minimum, may possibly cause more harm then good; over cleanliness is suspected to be…
tsmith | February 22, 2010It's that time again. I teach a class in even years on infectious causes of chronic disease, looking at the role various infections play in cancer, autoimmune disease, mental illness, and other chronic conditions. When I last taught the course in 2008, the students were assigned two writing assignments--to be posted here on the blog. Since this turned out pretty well last time, I decided to repeat the assignment this year; so over the next week or so, I will be putting up guest posts authored by students on various topics under the broad umbrella of infection and chronic disease.…
tsmith | June 28, 2008 Balance is a tricky thing to find in area, and medicine is notorious for its trade-offs. A drug that may make you well in the long run may also have side effects that make taking the medicine difficult. Even drugs that we often think of as typically innocuous, such as antibiotics, can have an enormous cost associated with their use, both at the individual and the population level. Sachs covers our love-hate relationship with antibiotics and germs in general in her book, Good Germs, Bad Germs. More after the jump...
Sachs opens her book with a dramatic example of the cost of our "war"…
tsmith | April 16, 2008This is the sixth of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease.
By Courtney Cook
Kidney stone disease affects approximately 5% of Americans. While several risk factors are well-established, including genetic predisposition, metabolic diseases, lifestyle, and diet, there are still questions over the actual mechanism of calcium stone formation. Many cases do not have any kind of underlying disorder and therefore it is difficult to know how to treat these patients to prevent further stone formation.
This seemed to change when, in 1998, Kajandar and Ciftcioglu isolated an unusual…
tsmith | April 16, 2008 This is the fifth of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease.
By Whitney Baker
My previous blog post examined the idea of an infectious etiology for obesity by a group of possible infectious agents. While these pathogens have been associated with obesity in humans or animals, their causative role in human obesity has not yet been established. So for this round, I thought I'd focus in on the bug showing the most evidence for human obesity: Adenovirus-36.
(More after the jump...)
First, a little background on Adenovirus [1]... it most commonly elicits respiratory illness;…
tsmith | April 15, 2008This is the fourth of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease.
By Ousmane Diallo
Last week in class we tackled an interesting topic, the role of Mycobacterium Avium Paratuberculosis (MAP) in the genesis of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). The authors Saleh E. Naser (oops the name means in Arabic 'The virtuous helper') and colleagues detected using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) techniques in a lab based case controls study "viable MAP in peripheral blood in higher proportion of individuals with Crohn than controls". Not surprising after all since the pathology of…
tsmith | April 14, 2008 This is the second of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease.
By Rachel Kirby
In light of April being Autism Awareness Month it is only natural that certain topics be brought about in the media. Until now I was not aware of the controversy behind the "risk factors" of autism. Let's begin with the basics. Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, all starting before a child is three years old. Having autism may or may not involve all three characteristics. Some may even have symptoms that…
tsmith | March 7, 2008It's just not been Vegas' week. First a ricin-laced hotel room, then a clinic-associated outbreak of hepatitis C virus (and potentially hepatitis B and HIV) that could become enormous. Meanwhile, an outbreak of hepatitis E is raging in Uganda. So what are these virues, and how in the world could a medical catastrophe of this magnitude happen in the U.S.? More after the jump...
The group of hepatitis viruses (A, B, C, D, E, and G) are related in name only. They've all been either associated with or found to cause hepatitis--inflammation of the liver. This can be acute inflammation (short…
tsmith | February 27, 2008This is the sixth of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Ousmane Diallo
I was dumbfounded when I read this news article relating HPV to the increase of lip and oral cancers because of oral sex.
It reminded me my younger years, as a med student, debating with my professor of psychology the fundamentals of Freudian psychoanalysis, the Id, the Ego and the Super-ego. It was a rather philosophical debate more than anything else, a combination of religious and cultural reciprocal statements of beliefs. At that time, we were exposed to the new French "sexual education"…
tsmith | February 27, 2008This is the fifth of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Rachel Kirby
There are about 500,000 (or approx 1 in 544 people) in the United States who suffer from Crohn's disease, and is most prevalent in both men and women between the ages of 20-30. Crohn's Disease is an autoimmune disease which causes a chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. It can affect the entire digestive tract but is most prevalent in the lower small intestine and in the ileum. It will cause swelling, causing pain and diarrhea.
More after the jump...
Though a lot is known about the disease;…
tsmith | February 26, 2008This is the fourth of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By David Massaquoi
Working in public health is an interesting and satisfying job. Adding infectious disease investigation to such task makes the job not only difficult but the challenges of encountering numerous disease conditions; including learning about the Morgellon's disease. In recent years, doctors have been faced with an unexplained skin disease condition, dubbed "Morgellons Disease". I will not go into details with all the debates on merits and demerits of this "New" or "Emerging"? condition. However, as…
tsmith | February 26, 2008This is the third of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Whitney Baker
While working out at the gym last night, I was perusing the latest SHAPE magazine to help pass the time. In it, I read a small article about researchers finding an association between Adenovirus-36 and human obesity. Since I am in the infectious disease field, I was already aware of this proposed link- an infectious cause (or contributor) for obesity. But for the millions of health-conscious readers hearing of this for the first time, what would they make of it? Would they have visions of…
tsmith | February 25, 2008This is the second of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Courtney Cook
Scientists have been aware of a relationship between infections and mental illnesses for quite some time. For example, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, some patients were seen to exhibit a delirium unlike that which had typically been associated with a viral infection. In a 1926 report, Karl Menninger called it a "schizophrenic syndrome" and further observed that two-thirds of those diagnosed with schizophrenia after having influenza fully recovered from the mental illness within five years.…