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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:30AM (4 children)
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
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)
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
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:
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
Now just discovered there is an official name for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargemaster [wikipedia.org]