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05/19/26 3:12:55am [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4, 5 ]
Subject: Re: brownie anyone?


Author:
krz
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Date Posted: 11/14/05 1:11:32pm
In reply to: pjk 's message, "brownie anyone?" on 11/11/05 9:09:17pm
 >Bird flu and bioterror.
>
>Hey krz, perhaps this is outside of your range, but
>would tammiflu really counter what H151 has to offer,
>if such a virus were to adapt to spread from human to
>human?

There is a difference between tamiflu and a vaccine. Tamiflu is only for after infection - vaccination is pre-infectious.

Your ideas about vaccination are correct - hard to get to effective vaccination via current mechasims of creating vaccine (i.e., egg based live culture) in less than 6-8 months turn around. There are other ways of creating vaccine - one that involves a version of cloning the RNA (viruses don't have DNA) of the virus. The turn around on that is much shorter - but the mechanism of innoculation is still a little shaky so the technology isn't used for predicted strains yet. An H5N1 pandemic might force researchers to test this mechanism before NIH might be 'ready' because it's the better option to doing nothing.

Tamiflu might help some people better than nothing at all. Every virus we know makes 3 different enzymes: one to get into the human cell, one to trigger the human cell DNA to replicate the virus RNA (a hostile take over as it were), and one to break out of the cell. Tamiflu blocks the enzyme neuraminidase which is the enzyme that lets the virus out of the cell. As such, the length, duration, and severity of the infection are seriously reduced -- but it doesn't keep you from getting infected in the first place.

H5N1 kills people because of the human inflammatory response. Once the H5N1 virus gets out of human cells the cells themselves rupture and the human response to this is an inflammatory reaction. When this happens in the lungs or gut (prime sites for H5N1 infection) then human death comes from pneumonia like problems or profound dehydration.

H5N1 has me scared - much more so than SARS ever did. It doesn't kill the host fast - that's an evolutionary advantage. The nastiest viruses (like ebola) kill the host so fast that the spread is limited - this one doesn't seem to be in that cagegory.

Moral for now I guess - don't smoke, stay healthy, eat right, take extra C, exercise and keep your lungs in as tip top a shape as you can.... perhaps stock up on tamiflu. Quarrantine sick people - it's not the best solution, but better than any other way to halt a human-to-human spread.
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Replies:
Subject Author Date
Re: if it's brown...pjk11/14/05 3:41:52pm
Re: brownie anyone?krz11/16/05 2:18:14pm

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