As of July 15-17, 2015, no new cases of MERS infection or new deaths related to MERS have been reported. So far, 186 MERS cases have been documented in South Korea, including 1 case in China attributed to the South Korean outbreak, with 36 related deaths. There are still 155 contacts being monitored. The median age of cases is 55 years old (16-87 years old), 59% of cases were men, and 14% are health care workers. All cases have been linked to a single chain of transmission and are associated with health care facilities.
While only 30 people have been confirmed to be infected with MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), with 2 dead, South Korea has approximately 2,300 people in quarantine and 1,300 schools closed. Seoul police will enforce the quarantines and the Mayor may ask for city-wide self-quarantining. While human-to-human transmission is being seen, it is still not infectious enough to be considered a community-associated disease. To go pandemic, MERS would need to mutate so that it could spread easily between humans in the wider community.
Does the gut flora influence Parkinson’s disease or vice versa? Researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland say there is a correlation between Parkinson’s disease and the gastrointestinal flora. As to cause and effect, that remains to be shown.
The debate of our lifetime, no the 21st Century is raging!! Well, maybe not, but it's still an interesting microbiological question. Here's what you should know.
First off, don’t Google “hand dryers versus paper towels”. The manufacturers/retailers of both systems have bought up all of the search results and flood the search page with dubious, self-serving (self-profiting) websites and YouTube videos that look scientific, but aren’t. This is common for health- and food-related topics on the internet. Go to a reputable source of edited, peer-reviewed scientific publications, like PubMed, a website run by the US National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. This is where taxpayer-funded medical research conducted at universities, colleges, and the National Institutes of Health is posted in online publications.
Recent research at Kansas State University finds that in the coming decades at least 25% of the world's wheat production will be lost to extreme weather from climate change, if no adaptive measures are taken. Based on the 2012-2013 global wheat harvest of 701 million tons, the resulting temperature increase could result in 42 million tons less produced wheat. Crop ecophysiologists currently project a 6% decline in wheat production for each degree Celsius the temperature rises.
So what’s the status of MERS virus and MERS virus in the US? First reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, the corona virus MERS spreads from infected people through close contact, such as caring for or living with an infected person. There is no evidence of sustained spreading in community settings. It causes a severe, acute respiratory illness with fever, cough, shortness of breath. The majority of disease is seen in the Arabian peninsula, with >900 people sickened and >300 killed.
This video from 3 Minutes of Fun shows eosinophil granulocytes chemotaxing to an IgE-opsonized multicellular parasite. During a normal immune response to helminths, eosinophils degranulate and release cationic granule proteins (major basic protein [MBP], eosinophil cationic protein [ECP], eosinophil peroxidase [EPO], and eosinophil-derived neurotoxin [EDN]) to destroy pathogens too large to be endocytosed by phagocytes. They also induce mast cells and basophil granulocytes to degranulate, thus releasing histamine and proteolytic enzymes.
Russian photographer Nick Lariontsev filmed this time-lapse showing how mold grows. This is a mixed group of Aspergillus fumigatus, Botrytis spp., Mucor spp., Trichoderma spp., and Cladosporium spp.
