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posted by janrinok on Friday June 15 2018, @09:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the atchoo! dept.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a way to predict whether someone exposed to the flu virus is likely to become ill.

Purvesh Khatri, PhD, associate professor of medicine and of biomedical data science, and his team used a computational approach to pinpoint a blood-based genetic biomarker to determine an individual's susceptibility to the disease.

"We've been after this for about four years," Khatri said. "To our knowledge, it's the first biomarker that shows susceptibility to influenza, across multiple strains."

The biomarker is a gene called KLRD1, and it essentially acts as a proxy for the presence of a special type of immune cell that may be a key to stamping out nascent flu infection. Put simply: the more of this cell type found in a person's blood, the lower their flu susceptibility. The research even hints at new avenues for pursuing a broadly applicable flu vaccine.

A paper describing the work will be published online June 14 in Genome Medicine. Khatri is the senior author. Graduate student Erika Bongen is the lead author.

[...] Khatri said his findings could help health professionals understand who's at the highest risk for flu infection. "If, for example, there's a flu epidemic going on, and Tamiflu supplies are limited, this data could help identify who should be prophylactically treated first," Khatri said.

Khatri emphasizes that for now, the link between KLRD1 levels and influenza susceptibility is only an association. The next step, he said, is to find the mechanism.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:33AM (10 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:33AM (#693784)

    My mother-in-law: 3 days into a 15-day hospital stay because of a liver problem, tab was already over $36k.
    Coworker: kid breaks wrist, tab exceeds $25k.
    Many other examples available, way too many sporting 6 figures.

    What portion of the world's/US's population has that mush savings ?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:12AM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:12AM (#693802)

    What portion of the world's/US's population has that mush savings ?

    Very few since they gave it all to the insurance company already... By the time you are 30 the typical person who paid into insurance should instead have about 70k saved for that purpose. And anyway those "prices" are all fake. Have you ever gotten healthcare, your car fixed, etc without using insurance? There is a real price that is much lower.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:15AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:15AM (#693805)

      I mean like $2k -> $300 lower

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:30AM (4 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:30AM (#693812)

      Too bad they had that accident at 22, then. Or that half-million coronary, discounted to a quarter-million just for you, at 40.
      It's called insurance for a reason. I'm low-risk, I'll most likely going to pay more than I'll ever get back, but then again shit could happen, and in this country unexpected health issues drive middle-class people to bankruptcy Many Many Times Every Single Day.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:46AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:46AM (#693819)

        More info I found on it after posting: http://selfpaypatient.com/2014/01/03/insured-patients-can-save-money-by-pretending-to-be-uninsured/ [selfpaypatient.com]

        So why not have the best of both worlds before it gets made illegal (ACA was already a step towards this...)?

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:55AM (1 child)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:55AM (#693821) Journal

        Anonymous Coward does make a point. Insurance drives prices up. Go to the doctor for some injury or ailment. The first thing they want is your insurance information. The doctor's office has a sliding scale of charges. If you, personally, are paying out of pocket, you are on the low end of the scale. Any insurance at all increases the charges. Some insurance policies trigger higher charges than others. Government insurance also seems to trigger scam and fraud charges.

        "Whatever the market will bear" is a centuries old concept, if not millenias old. People who have no money can't afford to pay inflated prices. When millions of people contribute to some central slush fund, there is money to dicker over, so the "market" can bear inflated prices.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:04AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:04AM (#693823)

          I think healthcare costs are something like 90% overhead from dealing with insurance in one way or another at this point. Just reading through the comments at that link I found:

          Today I discussed having my tonsils and adenoids removed at my Ear, Nose and Throat specialists office. Although they could not give me an exact number, they told me to expect the total bill to my insurance company to be in the $12000-14000 range. Even if I had reached my deductible for a calendar year, that leaves me with 20% responsibility: $2400-2800.

          Moot point though, as I no longer work for my old employers and I have no insurance. I was feeling pretty despondent until the lady in the office told me that if I can pay cash before the procedure, they can do a discounted rate of $2250. Thats not my portion, thats the total cost.

          http://selfpaypatient.com/2014/01/03/insured-patients-can-save-money-by-pretending-to-be-uninsured/#comment-89060 [selfpaypatient.com]

          Of course it could just be a dog on the internet, but I find this totally plausible based on my own experiences. Most people who rave about insurance really should just try pretending they don't have it. I think that is a really clever approach to unwinding this problem.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:07AM (#693824)

        Now just discovered there is an official name for this:

        In the United States, the chargemaster, also known as charge master, or charge description master (CDM), is a comprehensive listing of items billable to a hospital patient or a patient's health insurance provider. In practice, it usually contains highly inflated prices at several times that of actual costs to the hospital.[1][2][3]

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargemaster [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:27AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:27AM (#693830)

      > those "prices" are all fake.

      Interesting anecdotes in this thread, but the ones I read were all patients dealing with individual doctors or small clinics. At that level it may be reasonable to bargain. Particularly for elective procedures, where you have some time to work the problem in advance of the service.

      However, if you land in a typical for-profit hospital (perhaps from a traffic accident or other emergency), you will be (wildly over-) charged based on the hospital's so-called charge master (as noted by someone else nearby). The only entity with leverage to negotiate against this is an insurance company, you as an individual haven't got much of a chance, although it may be possible to hire a lawyer?

      I treat my expensive health insurance as a "get out of jail card", where the insurance company is being paid to go to bat on my (and their) behalf to work down the usurious bill from the money-grubbing hospital.

      Really, there is plenty of blame to spread around for the criminal costs of health care in the USA.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @07:24AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @07:24AM (#693879)

        Whats stopping you from negotiating with an ER provider beforehand?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @09:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @09:43PM (#694048)

          Errrr, perhaps the possibility that you will die if you don't immediately get treatment?