Zika: Current Knowledge and New Directions

Check out the Zika post I wrote for the "Science Policy For All" blog! It summarizes the Zika outbreak, including new updates:

https://sciencepolicyforall.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/zika-update-current-knowledge-and-new-directions/

Like Cures Like: Assessing the Claims of Homeopathy (In Rapid Succussion)

What is homeopathy?

          Homeopathy was first described in a book written by Samuel Hahneman in 1796, based on the central tenet that “like cures like.” This form of alternative medicine utilizes extreme dilutions of chemicals – usually natural – as therapeutic agents for symptoms and conditions often caused the original source of the substance (for example, arsenic as a cure for severe pain). Homeopathic solutions are prepared by diluting substances many orders of magnitude in either water or ethanol and vigorously shaken (known as succussion). Several rounds of dilution and succession are repeated until the desired dilution has been reached. This repeated process of succession and diution is known as potentisation. Homeopathic dilutions are logarithmic in scale, meaning that each round of potentisation is diluting the substance by 10-fold (Table 1). 

2015 Nobel Prizes!

The 2015 Nobel Prizes were recently awarded.  Annual Nobel Prizes are awarded for achievement in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Economics, Literature, and Peace.

The 21st Century Cures Act: Is it an overall positive?

The below article is published in the Fall 2015 issue of the National Institutes of Health -NIDDK newsletter "The Informer"

In a rare showing of bipartisan collaboration, on July 10th the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 21st Century Cures Act by the substantial margin of 344-77. The 21st Century Cures Act is a large bill that is subtitled as “an act to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st century cures, and for other purposes.” According to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce committee where the bill was drafted, the goal of the Cures Act is to streamline the process from drug discovery to development and ultimately delivery to patients. The Act promotes scientific research on deadly diseases and attempts to reduce regulatory hurdles in bringing new drugs to market.

In an era of ever-decreasing federal research funding, the bill offers a welcome boost to the research community, allocating $8.75 billion in research funds to the NIH over 5 years and an additional $550 million to the FDA. Not all scientists are in favor of the bill, however. The Cures Act aims to expedite the regulatory approval process for drugs by the FDA. As a means to this end, the bill promotes drug approval based on less rigorous clinical trials, biomarker readouts as opposed to clinical end points, and even non-quantitative anecdotal evidence in some cases. It also further reduces the rigor and objectiveness of medical device approval, which is already more lenient than the drug approval process. In the name of accelerating innovation, the bill attempts to streamline existing bureaucratic barriers to drug development and public release. However, while the bill does contain a section dedicated to “reducing administrative burdens of researchers”, it also adds additional unnecessary bureaucracy by requiring individual review by NIH institute directors of all awarded R-series grants and creating several instances of redundancy with programs or directives already in place at the NIH.  

While there are some potentially troubling issues with this bill, it is refreshing to see Congress finally recognizing the need for additional biomedical research funding. The Senate is now debating the bill and drafting their own version, but the upcoming budget debate may define whether the Cures Act is even passed this year. Assuming the 21st Century Cures Act becomes law, it will be several years before its full effects will be known. In the meantime, it is important to continue evaluating the potential long-term outcomes of this bill for everyone affected.

My Chemical Romance: Natural Is Not Always Better

The Free Dictionary defines ‘chemical’ as “a substance with a distinct molecular composition that is produced by or used in a chemical process”. However, based on the word’s usage by many people such as health bloggers and environmentalists, it has become synonymous with “unnatural”, “additive”, “unhealthy” and most simply, “bad”.

The food industry today loves to advertise products as being “natural” with “no added chemicals”. This is especially true for the organic food industry, whose fearmongering about toxins in everything has eeven expanded to non-edible products! There is no clear standard for what constitutes a toxin however, and any molecular compound whether naturally-existing or artificial is by definition a chemical. The ambiguity of terms such as “natural” and “toxins” allows health food peddlers to define these words as best promotes their products.  The organic and homeopathic industries vilify scientifically-validated biomedical achievements such as vaccines and GMOs (genetically-modified foods, see my blog post on GMOs for more details) for containing potentially dangerous “toxins”. Ironically, organic food often contains higher incidences of ACTUAL biological toxins and pathogens from increased bacterial and fungal load due to their proudly-advertised natural farming practices. Additionally, organic farming produces substantial environmental pollution that can be more damaging than traditional means.

The Star"buck"s Stops Here: What is the Role of Coffee/Caffeine on Long-Term Health?

            The market for coffee sales in the United States alone is $18 billion, owing to the fact that over 50% of Americans drink coffee daily, and the average coffee drinker consumes 3.1 cups of coffee per day.  Coffee consumption has sharply increased worldwide over the past several decades (Figure 1), although it has surprisingly decreased dramatically in the United States (Figure 2). 

Figure 1: Worldwide coffee consumption in weight by decade (www.unctad.info) .

Figure 2: Volume of coffee consumption in the United States by year www.marketwatch.com) .

            With so much recent focus on trendy nutritional regimens and the popularity of “chemical”-free diets such as gluten-free and organic, it is surprising that there has not been a greater public interest in the health effects of coffee.  Should we be drinking more, or drinking less? Fortunately, several studies have been performed assessing the association between coffee consumption and mortality.  While all of these studies exhibit the caveat of only evaluating correlations and not causal relationships, meaning that some other associated variable may actually be responsible for the observed effects (known as a cofactor), they can still provide useful information. 

2014 Nobel Prizes Awarded!

The 2014 Nobel Prizes were recently awarded.  Annual Nobel Prizes are awarded for achievement in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Economics, Literature, and Peace.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".  While LEDs have existed for half a century, the creation of the blue-emitting LED when combined with either existing red and green LEDs or phosphor excitement allows the production of bright white light that is far brighter and more efficient than previous lighting technology. The development of blue LEDs was a long process, and the laureates’ updated work was presented through a series of publications over the course of 5-10 years. Both a general and a more scientific overview of the technology and its creation can be found at the Nobel Prize website. 

         
                                                                                                                  

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner for improving optical microscopy beyond the previously believed limit to the nanometer scale.  This feat was achieved by two independent methods, stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy by Stefan W. Hall, and single-electron microscopy by Eric Betzig and William E Moerner. STED creates high-resolution images by detecting fluorescent light with a nanoscale-width laser as all surrounding area is quenched.  Single-electron microscopy works differently, by weakly activating fluorescence randomly throughout the sample, repeating several times and then combining the images to obtain a high-resolution final processed image.  These two methods allow fluorescent visualization of structures such as viruses and individual proteins that were previously too small to resolve.  The physics behind these breakthroughs will surely revolutionize biological microscopy.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded 50% to John O’Keefe and 25% each to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for discovering how our brain is able to orient ourselves and properly position ourselves within the environment.  O’Keefe identified hippocampal “place cells” that provide positional and spacial memory information while the Mosers discovered “grid cells” within the etorhinal cortex that offer directional coordination.  Each of these cells were found to be activated in particular locations and sequences of their respective brain regions and have important roles in understanding spacial memory and navigation.

Since this is a science blog I will not delve deeply into the other prizes, but just to summarize: the Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Jean Tirole for describing the framework for proper regulation of financial institutions, the Nobel Prize for Literature went to French author Patrick Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation", and the Nobel Prize for Peace was given to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai for fighting for children’s rights.  Satyarthi protested against child labor while Yousafzai risked her own life to fight for girls’ right to an education.