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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 20 2020, @12:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the whoop-de-doo? dept.

Whooping cough evolving into a superbug:

Australia needs a new whooping cough vaccine to ensure our most vulnerable are protected from the emergence of superbug strains, new UNSW research has shown.

The current vaccine, widely used since 2000, targets three antigens in the bacteria of the highly contagious respiratory disease which can be fatal to infants.

All babies under six months old -- in particular, newborns not protected by maternal immunisation -- are at risk of catching the vaccine-preventable disease because they are either too young to be vaccinated or have not yet completed the three-dose primary vaccine course.

Australia's whooping cough epidemic from 2008 to 2012 saw more than 140,000 cases -- with a peak of almost 40,000 in 2011 -- and revealed the rise of evolving strains able to evade vaccine-generated immunity.

In a series of UNSW studies, with the latest published today in Vaccine, UNSW researchers took this knowledge further and showed, in a world-first discovery, that the evolving strains made additional changes to better survive in their host, regardless of that person's vaccination status. They also identified new antigens as potential vaccine targets.

First author and microbiologist Dr Laurence Luu, who led the team of researchers with Professor Ruiting Lan, said whooping cough's ability to adapt to vaccines and survival in humans might be the answer to its surprise resurgence despite Australia's high vaccination rates.

"We found the whooping cough strains were evolving to improve their survival, regardless of whether a person was vaccinated or not, by producing more nutrient-binding and transport proteins, and fewer immunogenic proteins which are not targeted by the vaccine," Dr Luu said.

[...] "Put simply, the bacteria that cause whooping cough are becoming better at hiding and better at feeding -- they're morphing into a superbug."

Dr Luu said it was therefore possible for a vaccinated person to contract whooping cough bacteria without symptoms materialising.

Journal Reference:
Laurence Don Wai Luu, Sophie Octavia, Chelsea Aitken, Ling Zhong, Mark J. Raftery, Vitali Sintchenko, Ruiting Lan. Surfaceome analysis of Australian epidemic Bordetella pertussis reveals potential vaccine antigens. Vaccine, 2020; 38 (3): 539 DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.10.062


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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday January 20 2020, @11:13PM (3 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 20 2020, @11:13PM (#946057) Journal

    No, they really goddamn don't. "Diseased state" is a non-concept. A fiction. A fantabulation of a diseased mind. And I don't know why I care that you don't get that.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @11:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @11:21PM (#946061)

    As I said, it is difficult to imagine someone more ignorant about biomedical topics than you:

    Morbidity (from Latin morbidus, meaning 'sick, unhealthy') is a diseased state, disability, or poor health due to any cause

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

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:51AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:51AM (#946194)

    No, they really goddamn don't. "Diseased state" is a non-concept. A fiction. A fantabulation of a diseased mind. And I don't know why I care that you don't get that.

    Would not a diseased mind be in a "Diseased state"? LOL at internal contradictions.

    Regardless of that; the AC may be talking a lot of crap, but he is not wrong when he accuses you of strawmanning.
    Vitamin C may not be a panacea, but all he is claiming is that it's anti-free radical properties reduce inflammation and reduce secondary damage from immune system reactions. That is not an unreasonable claim, and probably should be investigated properly. It won't be, because nobody can get a patent on vitamin C.

    I read some of his links from a previous argument on this, and there were interesting beneficial effects from large dose injections, that were not replicated by pill studies.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:12AM (#946206)

      Ikanread claims to be a cancer genomics researcher... But had never heard of the armitage-doll model of carcinogenesis and even said they could not understand it.

      Here we see they have obviously never heard of the term "disease state", so my guess is they are a python dev lab tech with no training in (and seemingly no awareness of) biochem, cell bio, epidemology, etc. They also seem to be proud of making things seem as complicated as possible rather than act like a scientist and attempt to distill phenomena down to general "laws".

      Btw, the IV vitamin C is still not ideal because it is excreted so quickly (after a few hours). Better would be a pump that attempts to maintain a given blood level, eg like described here: https://riordanclinic.org/journal-article-archive/continuous-intravenous-vitamin-c-in-the-cancer-treatment-reevaluation-of-a-phase-i-clinical-study/ [riordanclinic.org]

      They amazingly find that infusing 20g of sodium ascorbate over 20-22 hrs per day for a month is almost completely safe. It's interesting to think about why exactly the body normally keeps levels so low (peak of ~250 uM and "steady state" of ~80 uM in healthy people) if there is no harm of constant 1 mM concentration for a month. Perhaps it is to maintain a certain amount of ferric (3+) iron in the blood? What exactly is the tradeoff here?

      Also, there have been some tantalizing hints that the kinetics of oral ascorbic acid are different from sodium ascorbate. Presumably it can be absorbed faster via the stomach (vs the intestine) if the pH is right because it is uncharged and lead to blood concentrations in the mM range for like 20 min. All the kinetics studies I saw used "buffered" ascorbate, ie sodium ascorbate, and/or did not collect data so early.

      Finally, I've come to the conclusion the best way to overcome the ridiculous resistance to vitamin C is simply get it to be on a standard lab test. I've yet to see a report of anyone with an illness who did not have below average levels, even according to the "official" very low expectations (~22 uM).