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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, 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.

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  • (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?