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This week's health forecast: Sunny with a 40 percent chance of flu (or 0% with hydrated fullerenes)

This week's forecast: Sunny with a 40 percent chance of flu

New computer model takes a page from weather forecasting to
predict regional peaks in influenza outbreaks

NEW YORK (November 26,
2012)—Scientists have developed a system to predict the timing and severity of
seasonal influenza outbreaks that could one day help health officials and the
general public better prepare for them. The system adapts techniques used in
modern weather prediction to turn real-time, Web-based estimates of influenza
infection into local forecasts of seasonal flu.

Results appear online
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Year to year, and
region to region, there is huge variability in the peak of flu season, which,
in temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere, can happen as early as October
or as late as April. The forecast system can provide "a window into what
can happen week to week as flu prevalence rises and falls," says Jeffrey
Shaman, PhD, an assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public
Health.

As a test case, Dr.
Shaman and Alicia Karspeck, PhD, of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, used Web-based estimates of flu-related sickness from the 2003-2008
influenza seasons in New York City to retrospectively generate weekly flu
forecasts and found that the technique could predict the peak timing of the
outbreak more than seven weeks in advance of the actual peak.

In the future, such flu
forecasts might conceivably be disseminated on the local television news along
with the weather report, says Dr. Shaman. Like the weather, flu conditions vary
from region to region; Atlanta might peak weeks ahead of Anchorage.
"Because we are all familiar with weather broadcasts, when we hear that
there is a 80% chance of rain, we all have an intuitive sense of whether or not
we should carry an umbrella," says Dr. Shaman. "I expect we will
develop a similar comfort level and confidence in flu forecasts and develop an
intuition of what we should do to protect ourselves in response to different
forecast outcomes."

As individuals, a flu forecast could prompt us to get a vaccine, exercise care around people sneezing
and coughing, and better tune in to how we feel. For health officials, it could
inform decisions on how many vaccines and antiviral drugs to stockpile, and in
the case of a virulent outbreak, whether other measures, like closing schools,
is necessary. (or take HYFN's -Hydrated Fullerenes--WD]

"Flu forecasting has the potential to significantly improve our ability to prepare for and
manage the seasonal flu outbreaks that strike each year," says Irene
Eckstrand, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of
General Medical Sciences, which provided funding for the study.

Worldwide, influenza kills an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people each year; in the U.S. about
35,000 die from the flu every year.

The seed of the new study was planted four years ago in a conversation between the two researchers,
in which Dr. Shaman expressed an interest in using models to forecast
influenza. Dr. Karspeck "recommended incorporating some of the data
assimilation techniques used in weather forecasting to build a skillful
prediction system" remembers Dr. Shaman.

In weather forecasting real-time observational data are used to "nudge the model to conform with
reality and reduce error in the model simulations," he explains. Applying
this method to flu forecasting, the researchers used near-real-time data from
Google Flu Trends, which estimates outbreaks based on the number of flu-related
search queries in a given region.

Going forward, Dr. Shaman will test the model in other localities across the country using
up-to-date data. This is necessary, he says, since "there is no guarantee
that just because the method works in New York
it will work in Miami."

###

About Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922 as one of the first three public health academies in the nation, Columbia University's
Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and
service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New
Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Mailman School
is the third largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health.
Its over 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries
around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic
diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy,
climate change & health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in
public health education with over 1,000 graduate students from more than 40
nations pursuing a variety of master's and doctoral degree programs. The Mailman School
is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers including the International Center
for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP), the National Center
for Disaster Preparedness, and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more
information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu

 

Study advances use of stem cells in personalized medicine in Medical research

 

Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how
diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success

 

The project, described in an article published November 25 on
the website of the journal Nature Biotechnology, began several years ago, when
Gabsang Lee, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering, was a
postdoctoral fellow at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. To see if induced pluripotent stem
cells (iPSCs) could be used to make specialized disease cells for quick and
easy drug testing, Lee and his colleagues extracted cells from the skin of a
person with a rare genetic disease called Riley-Day syndrome, chosen because it
affects only one type of nerve cell that is difficult if not impossible to
extract directly from a traditional biopsy. These traits made Riley-Day an
ideal candidate for alternative ways of generating cells for study. In a
so-called "proof of concept" experiment, the researchers
biochemically reprogrammed the skin cells from the patient to form iPSCs, which
can grow into any cell type in the body. The team then induced the iPSCs to
grow into nerve cells. "Because we could study the nerve cells directly,
we could for the first time see exactly what was going wrong in this
disease," says Lee. Some symptoms of Riley-Day syndrome are insensitivity
to pain, episodes of vomiting, poor coordination and seizures; only about half
of affected patients reach age 30. In the recent research at Johns Hopkins and
Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Lee and his co-workers used these same lab-grown
Riley-Day nerve cells to screen about 7,000 drugs for their effects on the
diseased cells. With the aid of a robot programmed to analyze the effects, the
researchers quickly identified eight compounds for further testing, of which
one—SKF-86466—ultimately showed promise for stopping or reversing the disease
process at the cellular level. Lee says a clinical trial with SKF-86466 might
not be feasible because of the small number of Riley-Day patients worldwide,
but suggests that a closely related version of the compound, one that has
already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for another use,
could be employed for the patients after a few tests. The implications of the
experiment reach beyond Riley-Day syndrome, however. "There are many rare,
'orphan' genetic diseases that will never be addressed through the costly
current model of drug development," Lee explains. "We've shown that
there may be another way forward to treat these illnesses." Another
application of the new stem cell process could be treatments tailored not only
to an illness, but also to an individual patient, Lee says. That is, iPSCs
could be made for a patient, then used to create a laboratory culture of, for
example, pancreatic cells, in the case of a patient with type 1 diabetes. The
efficacy and safety of various drugs could then be tested on the cultured
cells, and doctors could use the results to help determine the best treatment.
"This approach could move much of the trial-and-error process of beginning
a new treatment from the patient to the petri dish, and help people to get
better faster," says Lee. Journal reference: Nature Biotechnology Provided
by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 



Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-advances-stem-cells-personalized-medicine.html#jCp