mumps
oracknows | May 30, 2016Andrew Wakefield, his claims to the contrary, is antivaccine to the core. To be honest, I’m not sure if he was always antivaccine. After all, around 20 years ago when he was doing his “research” into whether the MMR vaccine causes autism, he was being generously funded by a barrister seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers and he was developing a competing measles vaccine (for which he filed for a patent) that would be unlikely to be profitable unless the MMR became discredited. In retrospect, knowing what I know now about these aspects of Wakefield’s “research,” I consider it highly likely that…
sa smith | November 5, 2012Let me break down the overall scheme of vaccination, real quick.
You get exposed to a dead/weakened/chunks of a pathogen (virus, bacterial toxin like tetanus, etc).
Your body reacts to the vaccine 'invader' and triggers an adaptive immune response.
Your adaptive immune system 'remembers' what it has seen, so when you are exposed to the real virus/bacteria/etc, it is already ready, and kills the pathogen before it can make you sick.
That is the ideal situation.
Sometimes your body just ignores the vaccine. The vaccine is dead, so it degrades before your body even sees it, much less develops…
tsmith | June 23, 2011As I've laid out this week (part 1, part 2, part 3), the realization that a fairly simple, toxin-carrying bacterium could cause a "complex" and mysterious disease like hemolytic uremic syndrome came only with 30 years' of scientific investigation and many false starts and misleading results. Like many of these investigations, the true cause was found due to a combination of hard work, novel ways of thinking, and simple serendipity--being able to connect the dots in a framework where the dots didn't necessarily line up as expected, and removing extraneous dots as necessary. It's not an easy…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…
sa smith | April 3, 2010From my post on testicular cancer and ERVs earlier this week, to Randys balls in the last episode of South Park, the word of the week appears to be "BALLS!"
This trend is continuing, considering Judy Mikovits/the Chronic Fatigue communities vociferous support for anti-vaccination cranks:
The increasing incidence of mumps orchitis: a comprehensive review-- There has been a recent increase in mumps orchitis among pubertal and postpubertal males. These outbreaks can be attributed to a reduction in the uptake of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine during the early to mid-1990s in children who…
sporte | September 25, 2008Do mosquitoes get the mumps? Part V. A general method for finding interesting things in GenBank
This is the last in a five part series on an unexpected discovery of a paramyxovirus in mosquitoes and a general method for finding other interesting things.
In this last part, I discuss a general method for finding novel things in GenBank and how this kind of project could be a good sort of discovery, inquiry-based project for biology, microbiology, or bioinformatics students.
I. The back story from the genome record
II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
III.…
sporte | September 24, 2008Part IV. Assembling the details and making the case for a novel paramyxovirus
This is the fourth in a five part series on an unexpected discovery of a paramyxovirus in a mosquito. In this part, we take a look at all the evidence we can find and try to figure out how a gene from a virus came to be part of the Aedes aegypti genome.
image from the Public Health Library
I. The back story from the genome record
II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink.
IV. Assembling the details of the case for a novel mosquito paramyxovirus
V. A…
sporte | September 23, 2008Part III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink
In which we find an unexpected result when we Blink while looking at the mumps polymerase.
This is the third in a five part series on an unexpected discovery of a paramyxovirus in mosquitoes. And yes, this is where the discovery happens.
I. The back story from the genome record
II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink.
IV. Assembling the details of the case for a mosquito paramyxovirus
V. A general method for finding interesting things in GenBank
To paraphrase Louis Pasteur,…
sporte | September 22, 2008Part II. What do mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
This is the second in a five part series on an unexpected discovery of a paramyxovirus in mosquitoes, and a general method for finding interesting things.
I. The back story from the genome record
II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink.
IV. Assembling the details of the case for a mosquito paramyxovirus
V. A general method for finding interesting things in GenBank
In Part I, we looked at the NCBI SeqViewer, and found a new way to check out a genome map, and learn more…
sporte | September 21, 2008Part I. The back story from the genome record
Together, these five posts describe the discovery of a novel paramyxovirus in the Aedes aegyptii genome and a new method for finding interesting anomalies in GenBank.
I. The back story from the genome record
II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink.
IV. Assembling the details of the case for a mosquito paramyxovirus
V. A general method for finding interesting things in GenBank
I began this series on mumps intending to write about immunology and how vaccines work to stimulate the immune…
sporte | August 28, 2008Mumps was a common childhood disease when I was a child. We grew up learning that it was better to get mumps as a child because getting it as an adult would make you sterile. No doubt that idea arose from symptoms like swollen glands, swollen testicles, etc. When I looked in PubMed though, I couldn't find much data on sterility (at least not easily).
I did find data on hearing loss.
Death is not a common outcome of mumps. Between 1953 and 1962, there were 162,344 cases of mumps in the U.S. every year and only 39 deaths per year. People, mostly children, did die from mumps, but other…
sporte | August 27, 2008It's déjà vu all over again.
The first chapter in Arthur Allen's book "Vaccine" describes the history of smallpox vaccination in the United States. In 1721, in Boston, the prevailing belief was that to get vaccinated was to intervene with "divine providence." If you tried to protect yourself, it meant that you lacked faith in God.
Today, I read that a mumps outbreak is happening in Vancouver, Canada. So far 116 cases have been confirmed.
Why is mumps, a preventable and serious disease, causing problems in Canada?
photo of a child with mumps by by Barbara Rice, from the Public…