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Monthly Archives: July 2017
People with psoriasis will have new treatment option instead of Humira – Chicago Sun-Times
Posted: July 18, 2017 at 3:44 am
People with psoriasis will have a new treatment option for the itchy, sometimes painful condition, after the federal Food and Drug Administration approved a new psoriasis drug.
The FDA approved Tremfya for treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.
Johnson & Johnson said that, in one patient study, about seven in 10 patients getting Tremfya had clear or nearly clear skin after 24 weeks of treatment.
That compares with about four in 10 patients receiving rival AbbVies Humira, which treats several immune disorders and is the worlds top-selling drug. AbbVie is based in North Chicago.
The drug, which has the chemical name guselkumab, will cost $9,684 per dose, or about $58,100 per year, without insurance. Thats comparable to Humira, which costs about $59,200 a year.
Tremfya, which is injected every eight weeks, can cause infections and other serious side effects. Because it suppresses part of the immune system, it can increase the risk of developing tuberculosis and some types of cancer.
More than 7.5 million Americans are estimated to have psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory condition in which overproduction of skin cells causes raised red lesions called plaques, along with frequent pain, itching and burning sensations. Tremfya was able to both clear up lesions and help relieve those symptoms.
Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, sells other immune disorder treatment such as Remicade and Stelara for conditions including Crohns disease, ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis.
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FDA Approves Tremfya for Moderate to Severe Plaque Psoriasis … – Managed Care magazine
Posted: at 3:44 am
BSA bureau | FDA Approves Tremfya for Moderate to Severe Plaque Psoriasis ... Managed Care magazine The FDA has approved guselkumab (Tremfya, Janssen Biotech) for the treatment of adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis who are candidates for ... FDA actions on psoriasis, alopecia top dermatology reads for week U.S. FDA approves Janssen's TREMFYA for the treatment of ... |
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Psoriasis- What You Need To Know – Reports Healthcare
Posted: at 3:44 am
Psoriasis is unpredictable, infuriating and among the most perplex skin disorders. It is a condition in which your skin cells start multiplying at a rate ten times faster than the normal one. When the underlying cells skin cells move towards the surface of the skin and die, they cause red plaques all over the skin due to their sheer volume.
About 7.5 million people are said to get affected by psoriasis in America. Not only does this disease harm the skin, it can also result in several other complications such as psoriatic arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes type 2 and cardiovascular problems. Therefore, it is important to know the manifestations and diagnosis of psoriasis in order to deal with this irritating skin disease as fast as possible.
What Happens In Psoriasis
As mentioned before, psoriasis occurs when the skin production process is sped up. In a typical individual, it takes a month for the skin cells to grow in the skin, rise to the surface and fall off eventually.
In people with psoriasis, this process is sped up to a few days only. This means that the skin cells are not given enough time to fall off in a normal way. An overproduction of these cells occurs which causes the development of plaques in them.
Scales are usually seen in the body of such patients. The most common areas where they can be seen are elbows, joints and knees. Scales can also grow on other parts of the body such as neck, hands, scalp, feet and face.
Less commonly, psoriasis can also be seen attacking the mouth, nails and the area surrounding the genitals.
Causes Of Psoriasis
Scientists have categorized the reasons for psoriasis according to the two key factors- the immune system and the genetic makeup.
Immune System
Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease in which the body starts attacking its own cells. In this disease, the white blood cells or the T cells present in your blood start harming the skin cells.
In a normal individual, white blood cells are designated to destroy all the bacteria that make their way into your body and to fight them before they start spreading infection. These cells mistakenly start targeting the normal skin cells leading to overdriving of their production. New skin cells are quickly generated and start piling up on the surface of the skin.
Plaques are formed that are normally surrounded by inflammation in this case.
Genetic Makeup
The genetic makeup of a certain individual also makes him more vulnerable to developing psoriasis. If any one of your immediate family members is suffering from a skin disease, you are more prone to acquire psoriasis as well. However, only 2 to 3 percent of the people suffer from psoriasis due to genetic setup is quite less.
Is Psoriasis Transmissible?
Psoriasis is not generally contagious and the patient is unable to transmit this disease to the people surrounding him. Even if you come in direct contact with a psoriatic lesion, you will not acquire it.
Signs And Symptoms Of Psoriasis
The symptoms of this skin disorder can vary from person to person. However, the most commonly seen manifestations are mentioned below:
Treatment Options For Psoriasis
In general, psoriasis is untreatable. Medications can be prescribed to decrease the scales, slow down the growth cycle of skin cells and to reduce inflammation.
Several ointments and creams are given to be applied on the infected area. These topical treatments may include the use of topical retinoids, topical corticosteroids, salicylic acid and vitamin D analogues.
Systemic treatments are given to people who have moderate to severe form of psoriasis and do not respond to the topical treatment. The commonly prescribed medicine groups are biologics, cyclosporine and retinoids.
This treatment regimen involves the use of ultraviolet light or even the natural light to stop overactive T cells in the body. Symptoms of psoriasis are said to be reduced using UVA and UVB light.
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In South Asian Social Castes, a Living Lab for Genetic Disease – New York Times
Posted: at 3:44 am
Along with David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Thangaraj led an effort to analyze data from more than 2,800 individuals belonging to more than 260 distinct South Asian groups organized around caste, geography, family ties, language, religion and other factors. Of these, 81 groups had losses of genetic variation more extreme than those found in Ashkenazi Jews and Finns, groups with high rates of recessive disease because of genetic isolation.
In previous studies, Dr. Reich, Dr. Thangaraj and colleagues found that social groups in South Asia mixed between around 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. After that, the solidification of Indias caste system resulted in a shift toward endogamy. You can see writ in the genome the effects of this intense endogamy, Dr. Reich said.
Today, South Asia consists of around 5,000 anthropologically well-defined groups. Over 15 years, the researchers collected DNA from people belonging to a broad swath of these groups, resulting in a rich set of genetic data that pushes beyond the fields focus on individuals of European ancestry, Dr. Reich said.
The scientists then looked at something called the founder effect. When a population originates from a small group of founders that bred only with each other, certain genetic variants can become amplified, more so than in a larger starting population with more gene exchange.
Most people carry some disease-associated mutations that have no effect because theyre present only in one parents genes. In an endogamous group, however, its more likely that two individuals carry the same mutation from a common founder. If they reproduce, their offspring have a higher risk of inheriting that disease.
Rare conditions are therefore disproportionately common in populations with strong founder events. Among Finns, for instance, congenital nephrotic syndrome, a relatively rare kidney disease, is uniquely prevalent. Similarly, Ashkenazi Jews are often screened for diseases like cystic fibrosiss or Gaucher disease.
To measure the strength of different founder events, Dr. Reich and Dr. Thangarajs team looked for long stretches of DNA shared between individuals from the same subgroups. More shared sequences indicated a stronger founder event.
The strongest of these founder groups most likely started with major genetic contributions from just 100 people or fewer. Today, 14 groups with these genetic profiles in South Asia have estimated census sizes of over one million. These include the Gujjar, from Jammu and Kashmir; the Baniyas, from Uttar Pradesh; and the Pattapu Kapu, from Andhra Pradesh. All of these groups have estimated founder effects about 10 times as strong as those of Finns and Ashkenazi Jews, which suggests the South Asian groups have just as many, or more, recessive diseases, said Dr. Reich, who is of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage himself.
The next step, the authors say, is to map out and study the genetic origins of diseases prevalent in different groups. As proof of concept, they screened 12 patients from southern India for a gene mutation known to cause a joint disease called progressive pseudorheumatoid dysplasia. Of the six people that had the mutation, five instances could be traced to founder effects, and one case could be traced to a marriage between close relatives.
This distinction is important because its well documented that marriage between close relatives can increase the possibilities of recessive disease. But many South Asians are not yet aware that they should also look out for genetic risks among broader populations, said Svati Shah, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University who was not involved in the research.
Theres a tendency to think, This will never happen to me because I will never marry my first cousin, Dr. Shah said. But thats not whats happening here, according to the data.
There are many other suspected examples of disease associations that have yet to be systematically studied in South Asia. Some medical caregivers speculate that people with the surname Reddy may be more likely to develop a form of arthritis affecting the spine, Dr. Thangaraj said. Others think people from the Raju community, in southern India, may have higher incidents of cardiomyopathy, which affects the heart muscle.
If recessive disease mutations are cataloged, they could potentially be used for prenatal or premarital screening programs, which can be immensely powerful, said Priya Moorjani, an author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University.
An example of successful genetic cataloging can be found in Dor Yeshorim, a Brooklyn-based organization that screens Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews for common disease-causing mutations to inform marriage matchmaking. The program is credited with virtually eliminating new cases of Tay-Sachs disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, from these communities.
Beyond rare diseases, groups with founder effects hold lessons about common diseases and basic biology, said Alan Shuldiner, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and a genetics researcher for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, who was not involved in the study. He and his collaborators have gained new insights into heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, for instance, from studying Old Order Amish.
Scientists often try to manipulate, or knock out, genes in mice or flies to better understand human disease. But populations like those found across South Asia provide a powerful opportunity to study how gene changes manifest naturally in humans. These are genetic experiments of nature that have occurred across the planet, Dr. Shuldiner said.
The sheer number of people and different groups in South Asia means theres a huge, untapped opportunity to do biological and genetic research there, Dr. Reich said.
He suggested that knockouts of almost every single gene in the genome probably exist in India.
I would argue that its unequal to anywhere else, he said.
A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2017, on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Living Lab for Inherited Diseases.
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Philly biotech’s first-ever gene therapy progresses with FDA – Philly.com
Posted: at 3:44 am
Philadelphia drug developer Spark Therapeutics said Monday that the Food and Drug Administration has accepted its biologics license application and granted priority review for its lead drug candidate to treat rare inherited blindness.
If approved, the treatment would be the first gene therapy for a genetic disease in the United States.
Sparks treatment, called voretigene neparvovec, streams genes directly into the eyes retina. It has been granted priority review by the FDA because it treats a medical condition where no adequate therapy exists, the company said.
The time frame for possible approval is about six months, around Jan. 12, 2018.
Spark was spun out of Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, based on decades of research led by Katherine A. High, Sparks co-founder, president, and chief scientific officer.
Its really an exciting moment for medicine, said Spark chief executive officer Jeffrey D. Marrazzo, noting that an FDA panel last week reviewed an experimental T-cell immune therapy being developed by Novartis and the University of Pennsylvania to treat acute lymphocytic leukemia. The original study for the CAR-T cell technology was conductedat Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, he said.
Spark does not have confirmation, but expects that the FDA may convene an advisory meeting of medical experts in the fall to consider the companys data from three clinical trials, which enrolled 41 participants.
In a late-stage Phase 3 study, 93 percent (27 of 29 participants) had vision improvement and saw restoration of aspects of their functional vision, Marrazzo said.
No serious side effects were reported with the gene therapy itself. Two side effects were reported among 41 participants, due to the surgery, which is an injection in the eye. One participant lost visual acuity, or sharpness of vision. A second participant got a bacterial infection in the eye after the injection.
Patients in an earlier Phase 1 trial have been followed now for four years and continue to maintain their original vision improvement, he added. About 3,500 patients in the U.S. and five large European markets live with the disease. About half, or 1,750, are in the U.S.
Sparks treatment injects particles that are a copy of a normally functioning gene into the back of each eye.
Marrazzo said its too early to set a price. The company hopes the treatment will be a onetime injection, and not a lifetime of treatments, and thus deserves an appropriatepayment.
Were doing a lot of work trying to figure out value of this type of treatment, which could be indicated for restoring sight in kids and adults who otherwise are going to progress to complete blindness, Marrazzo said. Were looking at other rare disease products which are chronically delivered, and whats the value in not having to chronically deliver something for a rare disease.
Spark officials have met with health-care payers, including most large commercial health insurers, to discuss the companys clinical data with the goal of ensuring that patients can have access to the treatment, Marrazzo said. Theres a lot of work still in front of us, but Im very confident and pleased with where we are today in the process.
Spark is also developing treatments for hemophilia A and hemophilia B and for a hereditary retinal degeneration disease, choroideremia, whichusually manifests during childhood in males as night blindness and a reduction of visual field.
Sparks stock closed up $1.29 on Monday, or 2.17 percent, to $60.65.
Published: July 17, 2017 12:22 PM EDT
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Snip, snip, curecorrecting defects in the genetic blueprint – Phys.Org
Posted: at 3:44 am
July 17, 2017 Credit: The District
Gene editing using 'molecular scissors' that snip out and replace faulty DNA could provide an almost unimaginable future for some patients: a complete cure. Cambridge researchers are working towards making the technology cheap and safe, as well as examining the ethical and legal issues surrounding one of the most exciting medical advances of recent times.
Dr James Thaventhiran points to a diagram of a 14-year-old boy's family tree. Some of the symbols are shaded black.
"These family members have a very severe form of immunodeficiency. The children get infections and chest problems, the adults have bowel problems, and the father died from cancer during the study. The boy himself had a donor bone marrow transplant when he was a teenager, but he remains very unwell, with limited treatment options."
To understand the cause of the immunodeficiency, Thaventhiran, a clinical immunologist in Cambridge's Department of Medicine, has been working with colleagues at the Great Northern Children's Hospital in Newcastle, where the family is being treated.
Theirs is a rare disease, which means the condition affects fewer than 1 in 2,000 people. Most rare diseases are caused by a defect in the genetic blueprint that carries the instruction manual for life. Sometimes the mistake can be as small as a single letter in the three billion letters that make up the genome, yet it can have devastating consequences.
When Thaventhiran and colleagues carried out whole genome sequencing on the boy's DNA, they discovered a defect that could explain the immunodeficiency. "We believe that just one wrong letter causes a malfunction in an immune cell called a dendritic cell, which is needed to detect infections and cancerous cells."
Now, hope for an eventual cure for family members affected by the faulty gene is taking shape in the form of 'molecular scissors' called CRISPR-Cas9. Discovered in bacteria, the CRISPR-Cas9 system is part of the armoury that bacteria use to protect themselves from the harmful effects of viruses. Today it is being co-opted by scientists worldwide as a way of removing and replacing gene defects.
One part of the CRISPR-Cas9 system acts like a GPS locator that can be programmed to go to an exact place in the genome. The other part the 'molecular scissors' cuts both strands of the faulty DNA and replaces it with DNA that doesn't have the defect.
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"It's like rewriting DNA with precision," explains Dr Alasdair Russell. "Unlike other forms of gene therapy, in which cells are given a new working gene but without being able to direct where it ends up in the genome, this technology changes just the faulty gene. It's precise and it's 'scarless' in that no evidence of the therapy is left within the repaired genome."
Russell heads up a specialised team in the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute to provide a centralised hub for state-of-the-art genome-editing technologies.
"By concentrating skills in one area, it means scientists in different labs don't reinvent the wheel each time and can keep pace with the field," he explains. "At full capacity, we aim to be capable of running up to 30 gene-editing projects in parallel.
"What I find amazing about the technology is that it's tearing down traditional barriers between different disciplines, allowing us to collaborate with clinicians, synthetic biologists, physicists, engineers, computational analysts and industry, on a global scale. The technology gives you the opportunity to innovate, rather than imitate. I tell my wife I sometimes feel like Q in James Bond and she laughs."
Russell's team is using the technology both to understand disease and to treat it. Together with Cambridge spin-out DefiniGEN, they are rewriting the DNA of a very special type of cell called an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC). These are cells that are taken from the skin of a patient and 'reprogrammed' to act like one of the body's stem cells, which have the capacity to develop into almost any other cell of the body.
In this case, they are turning the boy's skin cells into iPSCs, using CRISPR-Cas9 to correct the defect, and then allowing these corrected cells to develop into the cell type that is affected by the disease the dendritic cell. "It's a patient-specific model of the cure in a Petri dish," says Russell.
The boy's family members are among a handful of patients worldwide who are reported to have the same condition and among around 3,500 in the UK who have similar types of immunodeficiency caused by other gene defects. With such a rare group of diseases, explains Thaventhiran, it's important to locate other patients to increase the chance of understanding what happens and how to treat it.
He and Professor Ken Smith in the Department of Medicine lead a programme to find, sequence, research and provide diagnostic services to these patients. So far, 2,000 patients (around 60% of the total affected in the UK) have been recruited, making it the largest worldwide cohort of patients with primary immunodeficiency.
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"We've now made 12 iPSC lines from different patients with immunodeficiency," adds Thaventhiran, who has started a programme for gene editing all of the lines. "This means that for the first time we'll be able to investigate whether correcting the mutation corrects the defect it'll open up new avenues of research into the mechanisms underlying these diseases."
But it's the possibility of using the gene-edited cells to cure patients that excites Thaventhiran and Russell. They explain that one option might be to give a patient repeated treatments of their own gene-edited iPSCs. Another would be to take the patient's blood stem cells, edit them and then return them to the patient.
The researchers are quick to point out that although the technologies are converging on this possibility of truly personalised medicine, there are still many issues to consider in the fields of ethics, regulation and law.
Dr Kathy Liddell, who leads the Cambridge Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences, agrees: "It's easy to see the appeal of using gene editing to help patients with serious illnesses. However, new techniques could be used for many purposes, some of which are contentious. For example, the same technique that edits a disease in a child could be applied to an embryo to stop a disease being inherited, or to 'design' babies. This raises concerns about eugenics.
"The challenge is to find systems of governance that facilitate important purposes, while limiting, and preferably preventing, unethical purposes. It's actually very difficult. Rules not only have to be designed, but implemented and enforced. Meanwhile, powerful social drivers push hard against ethical boundaries, and scientific information and ideas travel easily often too easily across national borders to unregulated states."
A further challenge is the business case for carrying out these types of treatments, which are potentially curative but are costly and benefit few patients. One reason why rare diseases are also known as orphan diseases is because in the past they have rarely been adopted by drug companies.
Liddell adds: "CRISPR-Cas9 patent wars are just warming up, demonstrating some of the economic issues at stake. Two US institutions are vigorously prosecuting their own patents, and trying to overturn the others. There will also be cross-licensing battles to follow."
"The obvious place to start is by correcting diseases caused by just one gene; however, the technology allows us to scale up to several genes, making it something that could benefit many, many different diseases," adds Russell. "At the moment, the field as a whole is focused on ensuring the technology is safe before it moves into the clinic. But the advantage of it being cheap, precise and scalable should make CRISPR attractive to industry."
In ten years or so, speculates Russell, we might see bedside 'CRISPR on a chip' devices that screen for mutations and 'edit on the fly'. "I'm really excited by the frontierness of it all," says Russell. "We feel that we're right on the precipice of a new personalised medical future."
Explore further: Testing the efficacy of new gene therapies more efficiently
Using a new cellular model, innovative gene therapy approaches for the hereditary immunodeficiency Chronic Granulomatous Disease can be tested faster and cost-effectively in the lab for their efficacy. A team of researchers ...
Scientists have developed a new approach to repair a defective gene in blood-forming stem cells from patients with a rare genetic immunodeficiency disorder called X-linked chronic granulomatous disease (X-CGD). After transplant ...
Researchers at Queen's University have published new findings, providing a proof-of-concept use of genetic editing tools to treat genetic diseases. The study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, offers an important first ...
A team from the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Research (IBS), succeeded in editing two genes that contribute to the fat contents of soybean oil using the new CRISPR-Cpf1 technology: an alternative ...
In recent years, science and the media have been buzzing with the term CRISPR. From speculation around reviving the woolly mammoth to promises of distant cures for cancer, the unproven potential for this genome editing tool ...
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have harnessed the power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that enhance tumor rejection in mice. The unexpected findings, ...
Large tubeworms living in the cold depths of the Gulf of Mexico may be among the longest living animals in the world. This is revealed in a study in Springer's journal The Science of Nature. According to lead author Alanna ...
Scientists at the University of Washington have discovered a simple way to raise the accuracy of diagnostic tests for medicine and common assays for laboratory research. By adding polydopaminea material that was first ...
It's not quite E=mc2, but scientists unveiled Monday a simple, powerful formula that explains why some animals run, fly and swim faster than all others.
The red algae called Porphyra and its ancestors have thrived for millions of years in the harsh habitat of the intertidal zoneexposed to fluctuating temperatures, high UV radiation, severe salt stress, and desiccation.
Invasive plant species can be a source of valuable ecosystem functions where native coastal habitats such as salt marshes and oyster reefs have severely declined, a new study by scientists at Duke University and the University ...
In zebra finches, sperm velocity and morphology and hence reproductive success strongly depend on a specific mutation (an inversion) on one of the sex chromosomes, called Z. This was discovered by scientists of the Max Planck ...
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Newly identified genetic marker may help detect high-risk flu patients – Medical Xpress
Posted: at 3:44 am
July 17, 2017 First author Kaity Sliger, PhD, and corresponding author Paul Thomas, PhD, member of the Department of Immunology, examine liquid nitrogen samples. Credit: Peter Barta / St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Researchers have discovered an inherited genetic variation that may help identify patients at elevated risk for severe, potentially fatal influenza infections. The scientists have also linked the gene variant to a mechanism that explains the elevated risk and offers clues about the broader anti-viral immune response.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital led the research, which appears as an advance, online publication today in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.
Researchers screened 393 flu patients ranging from infants to 70 years old. Patients with a particular inherited variation in the gene IFITM3 were more than twice as likely to develop severe, life-threatening flu symptoms as those who carried the protective version of the gene.
Working at the molecular level, the investigators showed how expression of the IFITM3 protein was reduced in killer T cells of patients with the high-risk variant compared to other patients. Researchers also found more killer T cellswhich help patients fight the infectionin the upper airways of flu patients with the protective variant compared to other patients.
"A genetic marker of flu risk could make a life-saving difference, particularly during severe flu outbreaks, by helping prioritize high-risk patients for vaccination, drug therapy and other interventions," said corresponding author Paul Thomas, Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Immunology. "These results raise hopes that this newly identified IFITM3 variant might provide such a marker."
Estimated U.S. flu-related deaths in recent years have ranged from 12,000 to 56,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Factors like age, obesity, pregnancy and such chronic health conditions as asthma, chronic lung disease and heart disease are associated with an elevated risk of flu complications and death. However, there are no proven genetic markers of flu risk with an established mechanism of action.
IFITM3 is an anti-viral protein that helps to block flu infection of lung cells and to promote survival of the killer T cells that help clear flu infection in the airways. Previous research from other scientists had reported an association between another IFITM3 variant (rs12252) and flu severity in Han Chinese patients. The underlying mechanism has remained unclear, and the rs12252 variant is rare in individuals of European ancestry.
Thomas and his colleagues began this study by searching for other possible IFITM3 variants that correlated with gene expression, levels of the IFITM3 proteins and were common in flu patients in the U.S. The search led to an IFITM3 variant known as rs34481144.
Researchers screened three different groups of U.S. flu patients and found those with the high-risk version of IFITM3 rs34481144 were likely to become infected with flu more rapidly and to develop more severe symptoms than those with another variant. For example, researchers checked 86 children and adults in Memphis with confirmed flu infections and found two-thirds of patients with the most severe symptoms carried at least one copy of the newly identified high-risk IFITM3 variant. The high-risk variant was found in just 32 percent of patients with milder symptoms.
Researchers also found an association between the newly identified high-risk variant and severe and fatal flu infections in 265 critically ill pediatric flu patients hospitalized in one of 31 intensive care units nationwide. The patients did not have health problems that put them at high risk for severe flu. Of the 17 patients in this group who died from the infection, 14 carried at least one copy of the newly identified high-risk variant. "When we looked at patients of European descent who died, they all carried at least one copy of the high-risk variant," Thomas said.
The predictive value of the newly identified IFITM3 variant is now being studied in flu patients in other countries.
The newly identified variation is found in the region of IFITM3 involved in regulation of gene expression through the binding of proteins and other chemicals that promote or suppress gene activity. Working in the laboratory, researchers showed how binding of proteins like CTCF, which can suppress gene activity, differed between the high-risk and protective variants.
Further study revealed how binding differed between the high-risk and protective variants. Those differences led to lower levels of the IFITM3 protein in ndividuals with two copies of the high-risk gene variant compared to other patients, researchers said. The Memphis flu patients also had fewer of the killer T cells in their upper airways.
"While this research focused on flu infections, the mechanism we identified has implications for regulating many genes involved in anti-viral activity," Thomas said. "CTCF has gained prominence in recent years as a master regulator of genomic organization. Evidence in this study suggests the high-risk variant we identified may be part of a larger network of CTCF binding sites involved in regulation in other genes with anti-viral activity."
Explore further: Genetic variant linked to overactive inflammatory response
More information: E Kaitlynn Allen et al, SNP-mediated disruption of CTCF binding at the IFITM3 promoter is associated with risk of severe influenza in humans, Nature Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nm.4370
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Circadian Rhythm Algorithm Could Lead to More Effective Dosing for Many Existing Drugs – Sleep Review
Posted: at 3:44 am
Circadian rhythm is reflected in human behavior and in the molecular workings of our cells. Now scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a powerful tool for detecting and characterizing those molecular rhythmsa tool that could have many new medical applications, such as more accurate dosing for existing medications.
The tool is a machine learning-type algorithm called CYCLOPS that can sift through existing data on gene activity in human tissue samples to identify genes whose activity varies with a daily rhythm. (The acronym CYCLOPS stands for CYCLic Ordering by Periodic Structure.)
We can take advantage of that information potentially in many ways, for example to find times when it is easier to detect cancers and other diseases, and also to improve the dosing of many existing drugs by changing the time of day they are given, says lead author Ron C. Anafi, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of sleep medicine, in a release.
Described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, CYCLOPS at least partly overcomes what has been one of the major obstacles to studying circadian rhythms in humans.
Its just impractical and dangerous to take tissue samples from an individual around the clock to see how gene activity in a particular cell type varies, Anafi says.
CYCLOPS instead is meant to use the enormous amount of existing data on gene activity in different human tissues and cellsdata obtained from people at biopsies and autopsies, in scientific as well as medical settings.
Such data almost never includes the time of day when tissue samples were taken. But CYCLOPS doesnt need to know sampling times. If the dataset is large enough, it can detect any strong 24-hour pattern in the activity level of a given gene, and can then assign a likely clock time to each measurement in the dataset.
In an initial demonstration, Anafi and colleagues used CYCLOPS to analyze a dataset on gene activity levels in mouse liver cellsa dataset for which sampling times were available. The algorithm was able to put data on cycling genes into the correct clock-time sequence even though it had no access to actual sampling times.
The algorithm performed best when restricting its analysis to genes whose activity is known to cycle in most mouse tissuesand under this condition it was able to correctly order samples for all mouse tissues. Focusing on human genes that are related to strongly cycling mouse genes, CYCLOPS also was able to correctly order samples taken from human brains at autopsy. It effectively provided an independent, accurate prediction of the time of death, Anafi says.
Next the researchers used CYCLOPS to generate new scientific data on human molecular rhythms. In a first-ever analysis of human lung and liver tissue, the algorithm revealed the strongly cyclic activity in thousands of lung-cell and liver-cell genes. These included hundreds of drug targets and disease genes.
For many of these genes, the daily variability in activity turned out to be larger than the variability due to all other environmental and genetic factors, says study co-author John Hogenesch, a former professor of Pharmacology at Penn Medicine now at the Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center.
Underscoring the potential medical relevance of this research, CYCLOPS found strong cycling in several genes whose protein products are targeted by common drugs. In one case, CYCLOPS detected a strong circadian-type rhythm in the activity of the gene for angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), a protein in lung vessels that is targeted by blood pressure-lowering drugs. Prior studies have found that ACE inhibitor drugs appear to work better at controlling blood pressure when given at night. Our discovery of daily cycling in the ACE gene could explain those findings, Anafi says.
He and his colleagues applied CYCLOPS to liver cell gene activity data, and again found many genes with strong circadian rhythms. Comparing normal liver tissue samples with those from primary liver cancers, they found that about 15% of the normally cycling genes they identified lost their rhythmic activity in the cancerous cellswhich suggests that there are times of day when cancer cells can be more readily targeted while avoiding injury to normal tissue.
One of the strongly cycling genes CYCLOPS detected in liver cells was SLC2A2, which encodes a glucose transporting protein, GLUT2. The pancreatic cancer drug streptozocin interacts with GLUT2 in a way that tends to be toxic to cells that express itsometimes toxic enough to kill patients receiving the drug. Anafi and colleagues showed that by giving mice streptozocin at a time of day when liver GLUT2 levels are lowest, they were able to significantly reduce the drugs toxicity, without impairing its ability to hit its intended targets.
Anafi and his colleagues are now using CYCLOPS to generate an atlas of cycling genes in different human tissues, in order to find other drugs whose dosing could be optimized by altering the time of day they are given.
The researchers also plan to use CYCLOPS to study gene activity cycling in cancerous cells, which could one day enable doctors to detect cancers more sensitively as well as to optimize the dosing of cancer therapies.
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How Trump’s latest Russia spin contradicts his claims during the campaign – Washington Post
Posted: at 3:43 am
Theres a transition point that comes in many scandals when the facts make it impossible to sustain the argument the administrations allies had been using. Specifically, it requires them to go from saying, These accusations are false; it never happened to saying, Sure, it happened, but theres nothing wrong with it.
That is where Republicans now find themselves, and theres a deep irony at work. Donald Trump rode into office on the widespread belief that politics is corrupt and only an outsider like him could clean it up. Now, it looks like his all-purpose excuse for his own misdeeds and those of his family and advisers will be, Hey, dont blame me we all know politics is corrupt!
You can see it in this tweet President Trump sent this morning:
As numerous politicians and political professionals from both parties have attested since the story of the meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a group of Russians who were explicitly presented to them as acting on behalf of the Kremlin, thats not just untrue but absurd. When a hostile foreign government offers you help in your campaign, what you do is call the FBI.
The idea animating Trumps position is that during a presidential campaign there is virtually no sin or even crime that cant be justified on the grounds that, well, its a campaign. As Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro saidin defending Trump, As someone whos run for office five times, if the devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, Id be on the first trolley to Hell to get it. Or in the words of Sean Hannity, It always happens. And if anyone says it doesnt, its a lie.
So having spent months claiming that the accusation that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government in its attempt to swing the election to Trump was ridiculous, now their position is that theres nothing wrong with collusion. Forget it, Jake. Its Chinatown.
This can become a handy excuse for almost anything. Did Trump fire FBI Director James B. Comey to shut down the Russia investigation? Its politics! Is Trump using the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his family? Its politics! Having convinced his supporters that Washington is an irredeemable swamp of corruption that he will clean up, Trump now holds himself blameless for any malfeasance, because look at what a swamp this place is.
The people who actually have experience in politics agree that there are ethical limits to what you may do in pursuit of your political goals. But Trump, believing his own caricature of what politics is, feels constrained by no limits whatsoever. He approaches governing as though it were professional wrestling, not something with any substantive meaning but a series of staged fights you perform so your side cheers. Sure, there are rules, but theyre no more important than the rule that youre not supposed to hit your opponent with a folding chair. If its part of the show, you do it.
In the context of that show, theres no such thing as a political opponent with whom you still share some things in common, like a commitment to the countrys founding ideals. There are just enemies, and the war against them has to be total. If Russia wants to help you fight your true enemy (Hillary Clinton), then you welcome the help.
And there are a certain number of Trumps supporters for whom the fight is its own reward, just as his 2016 campaign was its own reward even before he won. It was thrilling and liberating, allowing them to stop hiding their thoughts and give vent to their feelings, no matter how politically incorrect they might be. No need to worry anymore about some liberal calling you racist or sexist just put on your Trump That Bitch T-shirt, tell somebody with a Spanish accent what you think of immigrants, and let it rip. Who cares if he actually accomplishes anything on policy or makes anyones life better? As one Republican voter tells the Des Moines Register, I just want him to annoy the hell out of everybody, and hes done that.
Just to be clear, there are Republicans criticizing the Don Jr./Jared/Manafort meeting and no doubt dreading what the next revelation will bring. Trumps approval is down to the mid-30s, and when the latest Post/ABC News poll asked about the meeting, only 48 percent of Republicans said it was appropriate, hardly unified support for the White Houses position.
Theres obviously a great risk for Trump and his allies in using the Its politics defense. As pollster Guy Molyneux recently explained in the American Prospect, while we use the word populism to describe both Trumps appeal to working-class voters and that of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, unlike those Democrats Trump made an argument focused not on economic elites but on politicians and Washington, and his voters responded. But hes now saying that hes no different from any other politician, and the people he brought with him (including his own family) are simply adopting the mores and standards of Washington.
Even if that excuse were to fly, it wouldnt leave him a lot of room to claim in 2020 that he had transformed politics, drained the swamp and fulfilled the promise of his 2016 campaign. Most of his supporters might decide that its enough for him to have the right enemies. But they may not be as excited to get out to the polls again if he keeps telling them that what he does is just politics.
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What to do with the narcissist’s children – Washington Times
Posted: at 3:43 am
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Pity the poor presidents. Its not enough for presidents to deal with enemies foreign and domestic, conduct warfare with Congress and dispense lollipops. Sometimes they have to deal with help from sons, daughters, brothers, in-laws and other hangers-on to the bully furniture at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Sometimes its a son or daughter who just wants to help the old man, but at other times its an in-law who just wants to help himself to whatevers available. A grateful child, offering help from a big heart and an untutored brain, can be the greatest threat of all.
The current president, like most fathers, thinks his kids are the greatest. He has described his son Donald Jr. as a lad like he once was, smart, clever, ambitious and a man who subscribes to the gospel of famous football coaches that winning isnt the most important thing, its the only thing.
Psychologists are lately brought in to diagnose the Donalds various failings. One of them is that he suffers narcissism, a common affliction of politicians. Even doctors of voodoo can make a diagnosis that sounds, if not profound, at least plausible.
The witch doctors have concluded that Mr. Trump sees his adult children, particularly Ivanka, his daughter, and Donald Jr., as extensions of himself, like most fathers, only more so. They are his world because they are him, says Elan Golomb, author of Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self. Such children, she says, dont exist in their fathers eyes as separate persons. To a narcissist, the child is seen as me.
Even [Mr. Trumps] children agree that there is little separation between themselves and their celebrity father, writes Marc Fisher in a psychological autopsy in The Washington Post. Weve all made peace with the fact that we will never achieve any level of autonomy from him, Ivanka told an interviewer. No wonder [the president] places them in positions of power.
A simpler explanation of why the president indulges his children, even as they distract attention from what he is trying to do as president, is that theyre the only people in town whom he can trust, fully and completely. Every president yearns for someone like that. If you want a friend in Washington, Harry S. Truman once remarked, get a dog. That goes double for presidents.
John F. Kennedy braved considerable criticism when he appointed his brother, Robert, to be his attorney general. Robert was a lawyer picked green and of limited accomplishment, but he was a brother whom the president could trust. Bobby was thus more important than a million dollars worth of Harvard lawyers, who are usually worth only what theyre paid.
Its not just the kids and other relatives in official positions who can be a distraction, or worse, for a president. Jimmy Carter, full of piety and rectitude, was embarrassed by his beer-swilling brother Billy, who more often exhibited the familys common sense and street smarts. Bill Clinton not only had to abide Hillary, but his half-brother Roger, a drug dealer whom he pardoned to get him out of the pokey.
Harry Truman, who has become everybodys idea of a president who wont abide misfeasance and nonsense from anybody, had his burdens, too. His mother, Martha Ellen Young, had a delightfully politically incorrect tongue and to the delight of reporters, wagged it frequently. She was an unreconstructed rebel whose hatred of the Yankees was born of watching, as a 10-year-old girl in Missouri, a Union Army detail plunder and burn the family homestead. Once, when her son Harry was invited to dinner at the home of a prominent Kansas City family, she told him, When you go there, turn the silverware over and check the hallmark. Its probably ours. When she visited the White House for the first time she even refused to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. Her heroes were Lee, Jackson and Sterling Price (you could look it up).
The Trump children, like American children of an earlier generation, are devoted to their father in a way that seems strange and even subversive in the present day, when the dysfunctional family is in fashion. You would never hear us yelling at our parents or using a tone that was inappropriate or disrespectful, Ivanka told Politico. Even a tone.
Another son, Eric, thinks he figured out why they so viciously attack the family. They cant stand that we are extremely close and will always support each other.
President Trump often boasts about his children, and hes entitled. Theyre good children, he says. Who could argue? The president owes it to them not to put them in troubled water over their heads. He should repay their loyalty by sending them home to run the family business. A swamp full of alligators is no place for worthy progeny.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief emeritus of The Washington Times.
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