Daily Archives: July 5, 2021

Norris Burkes: The case of the stolen freedoms – Charleston Post Courier

Posted: July 5, 2021 at 5:53 am

READERS: You may recall how last year my wife, Becky, suggested we expand Independence Day celebrations by designating July as Freedom Month.

Taking inspiration from her idea, I sat down again to write three Freedom Month columns. Todays makes liberal exaggerations of some recent conversations.

NB

Chaplain, I want to report a theft! a reader wrote.

No, he didnt exactly say that, but his email definitely sought to account for the freedoms he considered missing.

I wasnt sure how a chaplain could help him recover his losses, and I considered reciting the commonly recorded message, If you want to report an emergency, please hang up and dial 911.

Nevertheless, I promised Id do my best at search and recovery or SAR as we called it during my Air Force career.

I began the recovery investigation by asking two key, journalistic questions: WHO and WHAT.

First, WHO has taken away your freedom? Most everyone to whom I pose this question answers the same. He was no exception.

The government.

I should have known, I said. Those pencil whippers are always stealing something or tapping my phone calls or squelching the UFO reports.

I posed my second question. WHAT freedom did they steal?

Theyre trying to take my guns, he said.

Im not a gun owner myself, so I knew I had no business suggesting common-sense regulation, like registration, waiting periods and background check for private sales as well as gun-show sales.

Instead of making that argument, I fired a follow-up question point blank: BUT, has the government actually taken your personal firearm?

His silence asserted his Fifth Amendment right over his Second Amendment rights. Its likely that his guns were never confiscated, unless he was writing from prison where they put the bad guys who misuse guns.

In another case, a neighbor voiced a similar complaint about freedom losses, I repeated my question WHAT exactly have you lost?

Ive been denied my right to breathe, she answered, overstating the mask mandate.

Yeah, I get it. I hate surgical masks too. They were such a pesky detail, pre-COVID, when my chaplain duties sent me to visit double-lung transplants or premature babies in our ICU.

My guess is that its not the mask that bothers her. Its the other M-word: mandate.

Yes, we temporarily lost some freedom. But the last time I checked, the U.S. wasnt alone in suspending that freedom. The entire world lives under masking restrictions while the U.S. remains the least restrictive.

So, I keep pressing folks WHAT have you personally lost? Name it.

Chaplain, you of all people should know, said one pastor. We lost our freedom of worship.

Again, temporary is the operative word. Even so, many churches responded with innovative answers.

During the worst of the lockdown, I maintained that freedom of worship wasnt threatened as long as restrictions were applied equally among churches, institutions, and businesses. In other words, if the Rotary Club wasnt meeting in person, then it was fair to restrict meetings, religious assemblies.

Gratefully, vaccinations are steering our lives back to normal. We have returned to church and will resume our July Fourth fireworks intended to celebrate our freedoms.

Fortunately, American freedoms are resilient little boogers. To paraphrase a military reply, All freedoms present and accounted for, sir.

I call this return to normal, Vaccinated, Liberated and Vindicated.

Even Dr. Fauci concurs. He has publicly proclaimed that fully vaccinated people are free to do whatever they like on July Fourth.

But seriously, Dr Fauci. Really? I now have the freedom to do anything?

If thats true, maybe I should ask Nicolas Cage if hell help me reprise his role in the 2004 Walt Disney Pictures film, National Treasure. Lets steal the Declaration of Independence.

These days, I know a few folks who need to read it.

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Why was Bill Cosby released from prison after being found guilty of drugging and molesting woman? – MassLive.com

Posted: at 5:53 am

Bill Cosbys sexual assault conviction was thrown out Wednesday by Pennsylvanias highest court in a ruling that swiftly freed the actor from prison more than three years after he was found guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion.

Cosby, 83, was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era, and his conviction was seen as a turning point in the movement to hold powerful men accountable for sexual misconduct.

Heres a look at the case against Cosby and the courts decision:

The split court found that Cosby was unfairly prosecuted because the previous district attorney had promised the comedian once known as Americas Dad that he wouldnt be charged over Constands accusations. Cosby was charged by another prosecutor who claimed he wasnt bound by that agreement.

The court said thats not the case. The justices found that Cosby relied on that promise when he agreed to testify without invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a lawsuit brought against him by Constand.

The court concluded that prosecutor who later brought the charges was obligated to stick to the nonprosecution agreement, so the conviction cannot stand. The justices wrote that denying the defendant the benefit of that decision is an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was foregone for more than a decade.

The promise not to prosecute Cosby was made in 2005 by Bruce Castor, who was then the top prosecutor for Montgomery County. Castor was also on the legal team that defended former President Donald Trump during his historic second impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

During a court hearing weeks after Cosbys 2015 arrest, Castor testified that he promised Cosby he wouldnt be prosecuted in the hopes that it would persuade the actor to testify in a civil case brought by Constand and allow her to win damages. Castor acknowledged the only place the matter was put in writing was in the 2005 press release announcing his decision not to prosecute, but said his decision was meant to shield Cosby from prosecution for all time.

His successor noted, during the appeal arguments, that Castor went on to say in the press release that he could revisit the decision in the future.

Castor had said that Constands case would be difficult to prove in court because she waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby.

Bill Cosby, center, and spokesperson Andrew Wyatt, right, approach members of the media gathered outside the home of the entertainer in Elkins Park, Pa., Wednesday, June 30,2021. Pennsylvania's highest court has overturned comedian Cosby's sex assault conviction. The court said Wednesday, that they found an agreement with a previous prosecutor prevented him from being charged in the case. The 83-year-old Cosby had served more than two years at the state prison near Philadelphia and was released. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)AP

The first jurors who heard the case may have agreed with him, as they could not reach a verdict in 2017. But a second jury empaneled after the #MeToo movement exploded found him guilty at his 2018 retrial. Constand settled her civil case against Cosby for more than $3 million.

Castors successor, District Attorney Kevin Steele, charged Cosby in 2015 after a federal judge, acting on a request from The Associated Press, unsealed documents from her 2005 lawsuit against Cosby, revealing his damaging testimony about sexual encounters with Constand and others. Castor has said Cosby wouldve had to have been nuts to say those things if there was any chance he couldve been prosecuted.

Extremely rare.

Wesley Oliver, a Pennsylvania law professor who has followed Cosbys case closely over the years, said he has never heard of a high court in Pennsylvania or anywhere else grappling with a prosecutors informal promise not to prosecute.

It breaks new ground entirely, said Oliver, who teaches at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh. It sets precedent not just for Pennsylvania but probably other states.

He said the ruling should drive home to prosecutors the risks of suggesting at news conferences, in press releases or verbally in private that they will not prosecute.

They should at least add three words at this time, he said. If you add that qualifier, which wasnt done in Cosbys case, you should be good to go, Oliver said.

Its highly unlikely. The decision on Wednesday bars Cosby from being tried again over Constands complaint, finding it to be the only remedy that comports with societys reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.

And the accusations raised by dozens of other women, including the five who testified at his 2018 trial, often go back decades and are most likely too remote to prosecute.

Cosby turns 84 next month. However, his lawyer said he remains in good health, except for vision problems that render him legally blind.

The trial judge deemed him a sexually violent predator who could still pose a danger to women given his wealth, power and fame, and ordered that he be on a lifetime sex offender registry and check in monthly with authorities. However, the decision negates that finding.

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The dangerous appeal of technology-driven futures – MIT Technology Review

Posted: at 5:52 am

This view, known as technological determinism, is historically flawed, politically dangerous, and ethically questionable. To achieve progress, societies like ours need a more dynamic understanding of why technology changes, how we change with it, and how we might govern our powerful, marvelous machines.

Technology is not an autonomous force independent of society, nor are the directions of technological change fixed by nature. Technology at its most basic is toolmaking. Insisting that technological advances are inevitable keeps us from acknowledging the disparities of wealth and power that drive innovation for good or ill.

Technology is always a collective venture. It is what it is because many people imagined it, labored for it, took risks with it, standardized and regulated it, vanquished competitors, and made markets to advance their visions. If we treat technology as self-directed, we overlook all these interlocking contributions, and we risk distributing the rewards of invention unfairly. Today, an executive officer of a successful biotech company can sell stock worth millions of dollars, while those who clean the lab or volunteer for clinical trials gain very little. Ignoring the unequal social arrangements that produced inventions tends to reproduce those same inequalities in the distribution of benefits.

Throughout human history, the desire for economic gain has underwritten the search for new tools and instrumentsin fields like mining, fishing, agriculture, and recently gene prospecting. These tools open up new markets and new ways to extract resources, but what the innovator sees as progress often brings unwanted change to communities colonized by imported technologies and their makers ambitions.

The story of the internet shows that modern societies are often better at imagining the upsides of technology than its downsides.

For example, in West Bengal, where I was born, weavers lost such skills as making the intricate narrative motifs of the Baluchari sari during 200 years of British rule. Indeed, Britains first industrial revolution, which introduced the power loom in cities like Lancaster but adopted punitive tariffs to keep out hand-loomed cloth from India, was also a story about dismantling Bengals once-flourishing textile industry. Lost arts had to be regained after the British left. The cost of a radical break with a nations own economic and cultural heritage is incalculable.

The desire for military advantage is another driver of technological change that can, in some instances, benefit civil societybut dual use technologies often retain ties to forces that prompted their development. Nuclear energy, a spinoff from the pursuit of the atomic bomb, was sold to the world by US President Dwight Eisenhower as atoms for peace. Yet nuclear power remains closely tied to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Similarly, the internet and world wide web, which revolutionized how much of the world lives today, owe much to the US Defense Departments vision of a network of computers. First celebrated as a space for emancipation, the digital world has slowly revealed its antidemocratic features: constant surveillance, cybersecurity threats, the lawlessness of the dark web, and the spread of misinformation. More public awareness of the internets origins might have led to a more accountable cyberworld than the one designed by hotshot technologists.

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Musk ready to invest as much as $30 billion in Starlink – Mint

Posted: at 5:52 am

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said on Tuesday that his Starlink venture was growing quickly as he forecast total investment costs in the satellite internet business at between $20 billion and $30 billion.

The Tesla Inc CEO and founder of SpaceX, a rocket ship venture that seeks to colonize Mars, said up-front investment costs before Starlink achieves substantial positive cash flow would be $5-$10 billion.

"It's a lot, basically," Musk said in a video interview from California with the Mobile World Congress, the telecoms industry's largest annual gathering that is being held in Barcelona.

Starlink, an array of low-orbit satellites offering high-speed connectivity for people living in remote areas, is already offering a trial service and says it aims for near-global coverage of the populated world this year.

It now has more than 1,500 satellites aloft and is operating in about a dozen countries, adding more every month, said Musk, forecasting that total customer numbers would reach half a million over the next 12 months, from 69,000 now.

Skeptics question whether satellite internet can ever develop a viable business model, because the main market it targets is people living in remote areas, who are too few in number to support the vast up-front investment costs.

He pushed back against that idea, saying that Starlink could help fill in the gaps in fifth-generation mobile and fibre-optic networks.

"There's a need for connectivity in places that don't have it right now," said Musk.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.

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Is there life on Venus? American scientists ready space missions to explore the possibility – Washington Times

Posted: at 5:52 am

A group of scientists thinks they detected signs of life on Venus and America is intent on finding out the truth through a combination of public and private missions to Earths neighbor.

NASA is making plans for an uncrewed trek to Venus before the end of the decade to answer questions about life on other planets.

New attention to Venus was spurred on by a U.K.-led research teams apparent discovery last year of phosphine gas in the planets atmosphere. Scientists used powerful telescopes to discover the gas.

On Earth, phosphine is associated with life. On Venus, scientists are trying to figure out ifit is a sign of life.

In June, NASA selected two new missions: DAVINCI+, focused on Venus atmosphere, and VERITAS, focused on Venus surface. Tom Wagner, a NASA scientist who leads the Discovery Program that selected the missions, said the DAVINCI+ mission will measure phosphine.

The potential phosphine discovery, or the possibility that phosphine was discovered in the atmosphere of Venus, that was like a lightning bolt through the community, right? said Mr. Wagner. Because there are questions like, Hey, some people think that life could survive in the atmosphere of Venus even if it doesnt survive on the surface. Its a really intriguing question.

Venus, the second planet from the sun and Earths neighbor, is the brightest natural object in Earths night sky other than the moon. But it has traditionally been Earths other neighbor, Mars, that captures the imagination and inspires tales of extraterrestrials.

The potential phosphine gas discovery on Venus provoked a vigorous debate on the possibility of life on the brightly lit and extremely hot planet. Some scientists argued that the U.K.-led scientists misinterpreted the data.

Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist who co-authored the U.K.-led research teams study, said she is eager to examine more information but it was not just phosphine that was unexpectedly detected on Venus. She said there is other evidence of things in Venus atmosphere that do not make sense, including small amounts of molecular oxygen and the tentative detection of ammonia NH3.

Its like someone leaving these clues, you know? Ms. Seager said. Like a forensic crime scene, weve got a puzzle something together and you cant just say, Oh, that means theres life. Cause it doesnt, but its not just phosphine.

Mr. Wagner said NASAs team is considering making a subtle change to the instruments to measure trace amounts of phosphine in Venus atmosphere that it might otherwise miss.

NASA has said the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions, each costing $500 million, are both intended to study the lost habitable world of Venus.

According to NASA, Venus may have been the first habitable world in our solar system complete with an ocean and an Earth-like climate. Mr. Wagner said he expects NASAs upcoming missions to rewrite the textbooks on Venus and serve as a rediscovery of the planet.

Its not just going there and measuring phosphine, its actually really going and understanding how the planet works as a system, if phosphine was there, how it was generated, and what other markers for life might be your precursors to life, and overall habitability questions thats what were really getting at, Mr. Wagner said.

The DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions will take approximately six months to get from Earth to Venus, according to NASA officials. Mr. Wagner said VERITAS will orbit Venus for at least a couple of years mapping the planet while DAVINCI+ will descend through the atmosphere in approximately 40 minutes. Once DAVINCI+ hits Venus surface, it will have approximately 10 minutes to take readings before succumbing to the planets surface temperature that can top 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

NASAs focus on Venus is not fleeting. Both missions are expected to launch between 2028 and 2030, but NASA is already taking steps to make other trips to Venus possible. In June, NASA published a solicitation for partners to help develop Hot Operating Temperature Technology for Venus that Mr. Wagner said was about making electronics, batteries, and radios that can survive extreme heat.

The long-term outlook of NASA stands in stark contrast to the strategies of billionaires Jeff Bezos, who intends to visit outer space later this month, and Elon Musk, who has designs on colonizing Mars.

NASAs careful plodding is part of the approach that has sustained the agency throughout its history and enabled it to exceed expectations.

We use habitability when its like, OK, were not looking for a living thing moving around, right? Were trying to understand maybe how life could have formed, Mr. Wagner said. Heck, if we see life, thats great. But you know, if we dont, its still another piece of the puzzle.

If there is life on Venus, Ms. Seager said she thinks it would be associated with the planets cloud droplets and her team is working on a privately funded mission to examine the droplets. Her team is also working with Rocket Lab, a California-based company, that has made plans to hunt for life in Venus clouds in a mission scheduled for 2023.

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Mark Zuckerberg Marks 4th of July With Wakeboarding and John Denver, Sparking Mockery on Social Media – PopCulture.com

Posted: at 5:52 am

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a video of himself wakeboarding to mark the Fourth of July, with John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" playing. In the video, the 37-year-old carried a giant U.S. flag as he navigated the waves of a lake. The video was widely mocked, with many suggesting that it is the perfect foundation for memes.

"Happy July 4th," Zuckerberg wrote in the caption on Instagram and Facebook. On Facebook, Zuckerberg attempted to show a sense of humor by responding to some of the jokes people posted. "It's a hydrofoil. There's a wing under the water that I'm riding that pushes the board into the air," Zuckerberg explained in one comment. "It's a lot of fun. There's an electric-powered version that you can get, but in this video, I'm riding a regular foil board and surfing a little wave."

Some of Zuckerberg's followers suggested he was celebrating more than just Independence Day. On June 28, a federal court dismissed the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust complaint against Facebook. A parallel case filed by 48 state attorneys general was also dismissed, reports CNBC. The lawsuit claimed Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively, were attempts to stop serious threats to its monopoly.

We are pleased that todays decisions recognize the defects in the government complaints against Facebook, Facebook said in a statement last week. "We compete fairly every day to earn peoples time and attention and will continue to deliver great products for the people and businesses that use our services."

The dismissal was not a complete victory for Facebook though. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said it did not agree with all of Facebook's arguments, but ruled in its favor because the FTC failed to prove Facebook has a social media monopoly in the U.S. The court also ruled that the FTC could continue to push Facebook to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, but can only succeed if it can also succeed in proving Facebook has a monopoly. Still, the fact that the state attorneys general lawsuit was completely dismissed means the FTC could have a tough road ahead.

Over on Twitter, the response to Zuckerberg's wakeboarding video was even more critical. One person even edited the video to sup[erimpose a Facebook logo onto the American flag. "Zuck crossing the Delaware," the Twitter user joked.

"This is the stuff meme dreams are made of," meme page Tank.Sinatra wrote on Instagram. "This is some meme materials," another Instagram user wrote.

"Zuck really doing his part to make tech founders seem normal," Box CEO Aaron Levie sarcastically wrote.

"In a world of out-of-touch tech billionaires, Zuck somehow manages to make himself look even more out of touch than the guy who wants indentured servitude on Mars," one Twitter user wrote. The comment referred to remarks Elon Musk has made about colonizing Mars.

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Study: Some Systemic Anti-Psoriasis Therapies Increase Risks of Herpes Zoster – Pharmacy Times

Posted: at 5:51 am

New research from a Taiwanese insurance database suggests that some commonly used therapies against psoriasis may increase the risk of herpes zoster, although 2 other therapies lowered the risk.

Although biologic agents are frequently prescribed for patients with psoriasis, the resulting suppression of cell-mediated immunity can increase the risks of bacterial and viral infections, according to the research published in Scientific Reports. These potential links have been unproven, however, despite earlier study findings that patients with psoriasis face higher risks of herpes zoster infection.

To investigate this question, researchers identified 92,374 patients in the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database who were diagnosed with psoriasis between 2001 and 2013. They followed these patients for a median of 6.8 years and noted anti-psoriasis therapeutics as well as herpes zoster infection diagnoses.

According to their findings, etanercept, adalimumab, and methotrexate plus azathioprine were all associated with an increased risk of herpes zoster infection. The investigators also studied ustekinumab and found that none of these patients were diagnosed with herpes zoster. However, they said this could be because ustekinumab was not approved for use in Taiwan until 2011, so there was a limited amount of follow-up time for these patients.

In total, 5.2% of the patients were diagnosed with herpes zoster during the follow-up period. Older age, female sex, hypertension, dyslipidemia, psoriatic arthritis, and a high Charleston comorbidity index score were all associated with an increased risk of herpes zoster diagnosis. Concurrent exposures to steroids and statins were also linked with a higher risk.

Similar to previous studies on general population or on diabetic patients, the use of statin is associated with higher risk of [herpes zoster], the authors wrote. The actual mechanisms of these associations have not [been] fully understood, but may involve the effect of statin on T cell function.

Notably, however, the 3 anti-psoriasis therapies identified as increasing risk of herpes zoster were each associated with a more than quadrupled risk of infection. Etanercept had a hazard ratio of 4.78; adalimumab had a hazard ratio of 5.52; and methotrexate plus azathioprine had a hazard ratio of 4.17.

In addition to finding that methotrexate in combination with azathioprine increased the risk of herpes zoster, the researchers added that methotrexate combined with any biologic agent increased the risk, although not to a statistically significant level.

Two other treatmentsphototherapy and acitretinwere associated with a lower risk of psoriasis, with hazard ratios of 0.76 and 0.39, respectively. The lower risk associated with acitretin could be attributable to the lower level of immunosuppression associated with this monotherapy. Similarly, the benefit associated with phototherapy could be caused by the increased level of vitamin D associated with UV exposure. Earlier research has suggested that vitamin D therapy could lower the risk of herpes zoster, the authors said.

Although the effect of UV light on the skin is mainly anti-inflammatory, this may not imply an overt immunosuppressive effect, the authors wrote. Upon exposure to UV light, the human skin generates vitamin D, a vital nutrient for skeletal health and a well-known immunoregulator.

Based on these findings, the investigators concluded that patients with moderate to severe psoriasis who are prescribed certain biologic agents may have a higher risk of herpes zoster infection. This risk should be considered, and other treatments may mitigate this risk while allowing for effective anti-psoriasis treatment.

REFERENCE

Ting SW, Ting SY, Lin YS, Lin MS, Kuo G. Risk of herpes zoster in psoriasis patients receiving systemic therapies: a nationwide population-based cohort study. Scientific Reports. June 3, 2021. Accessed June 30, 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91356-3

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Psoriasis treatment reduces infections, death in patients on dialysis with the skin condition – Jagwire Augusta

Posted: at 5:51 am

Patients on kidney dialysis who also have psoriasis are at increased risk of infection, and psoriasis treatment can reduce both the risk of infection and death, investigators report.

They looked at data on nearly 9,000 patients with both conditions in the United States Renal Data System, which has information on essentially all patients in the country on dialysis, says Dr. Wendy B. Bollag, cell physiologist in the Medical College of Georgia Department of Physiology and the studys corresponding author.

What they found indicates psoriasis treatment, which likely helps restore the natural frontline barrier protection of the skin, reduces infection rates and improves survival, indicating its potentially important role in better managing kidney failure, corresponding author Bollag and colleagues at MCG and the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta write.

Prospective studies are needed to further examine these associations, they note in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences.

We looked at all causes of mortality in this study and also the effect of treatment, says Dr. Stephanie L. Baer, infectious disease physician in the MCG Department of Medicine and chief of Infection Control and Epidemiology at the Charlie Norwood VA. The most important thing in this paper is that treatment helped.

They recommend that physicians taking care of patients who have both conditions be aware of their increased infection risk, and ensure psoriasis treatment as well as vaccination for herpes zoster.

Both psoriasis and kidney failure are known to increase the risk of infection with herpes zoster, the virus that causes shingles and chickenpox, infecting nerves where it can lie dormant for years. The investigators already had shown the virus presence is associated with increased death rates in patients in kidney failure. This time they found that this infection actually surfaced more frequently in the face of psoriasis treatment, which supports current recommendations that kidney failure patients get a herpes zoster vaccine, they say.

They suspect the increased risk of infection by herpes zoster and other invaders results from the common, compounding denominator of chronic inflammation caused by both conditions, and the subsequent wear and tear on the vascular and immune systems.

Patients on dialysis are known to be at increased risk of infection because of their typically multiple, weekly visits to a dialysis center and permanent intravenous access lines needed for dialysis, Bollag says, and the loss of barrier protection caused by psoriasis compounds that risk.

They also knew that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients on dialysis, that kidney disease is a downstream effect of vascular disease and they suspected psoriasis could further complicate the scenario.

We know that psoriasis is a proinflammatory syndrome, and we knew that it could increase cardiovascular complications in the general population, says co-author Baer.

The U.S. Renal Data System is a good system for exploring these kinds of associations, Bollag says, so they decided to find out.

In addition to herpes zoster, they focused on eight other infections common in patients on dialysis, and found psoriasis likely increased their risk of most of them.

They looked for problems like bacteremia, a common bacterial infection in the bloodstream that can result from even a slight injury like vigorous tooth brushing or medical procedures; septicemia, or blood poisoning, the more serious, body-wide illness resulting from significant bacterial infections; conjunctivitis, or pink eye; and cellulitis, a common but potentially significant bacterial skin infection that can occur in inflamed skin.

The most common infections they found were septicemia and cellulitis, which occurred in about half of kidney failure patients with psoriasis, and systemic inflammatory response syndrome, or SIRS, an overwhelming, body-wide inflammatory response to something like a severe bacterial infection or trauma, in 42%.

They also looked at three categories of treatment patients received, which have procedure codes so they could search for them in the huge national database. These include treatments with a body-wide, or systemic, impact like biologics, therapies made from living material like the RNA vaccines in use against COVID-19, or in the case of psoriasis, drugs that specifically block drivers of the immune response called T cells or block proteins immune cells produce like tumor necrosis factor alpha, which promote inflammation. Other treatments included were localized ones like corticosteroid injections directly into a psoriasis lesion, and light-based therapy like ultraviolet therapy that inhibits the immune response in the skin.

The investigators noted that information was not included in the database for all treatments, like self-administered topical creams, and it has been reported that overall a significant percentage of even moderate to severe psoriasis is undertreated or untreated, and that inadequate treatment can worsen the disease.

In this case, they found the therapies that work to suppress the effect of an overzealous immune response were effective at reducing both infection and death.

Now the investigators are pursuing associations between psoriasis and stroke as well as heart attack.

Baer notes that psoriasis may seem like a more chronic, secondary problem in the face of kidney failure, but the reality is both conditions put patients at increased risk for infections and have inflammation and vascular damage as major factors.

The federally funded U.S. Renal Data System collects, analyzes and makes available information on patients who require dialysis because of chronic kidney disease or end stage renal disease. MCG and VA investigators looked specifically at all patients in the database ages 18 and older starting dialysis between 2004-11 a total of 8,911 individuals who also had a diagnosis of psoriasis.

About 1% of the patients in kidney failure also had psoriasis and they tended to be older, white, tobacco users and had higher rates of all nine infections the investigators looked at. The investigators noted that its highly likely more patients in the database have psoriasis but that diagnosis was not noted.

Other recent population database studies have indicated that having psoriasis increases the risk of kidney disease.

About 7.5 million Americans are living with psoriasis, and 10-20% of patients will also develop psoriatic arthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The typically cyclical, but chronic condition causes patches of thick, red, flaky, sometimes painful skin, most often in places like the elbows, knees and face, but can even surface inside the mouth and on the face, lips and soles of the feet.

Psoriasis is characterized as an immune-mediated disease, in which an overactive immune response dramatically accelerates skin cell growth, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation. While skin cells turn over comparatively rapidly, they go from being produced and shed in about a month to just a few days, which causes the raised pileup that looks distinctive from the rest of the skin.

More than half of patients report the disease to be a major problem in everyday life, the foundation says, and patients are known to be at increased risk for problems like heart attack, stroke and diabetes, in which inflammation also is a major factor.

The research was supported in part by a VA Merit Award (#CX001357).

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vTv Therapeutics to Participate at the 6th World Psoriasis & Psoriatic Arthritis Conference with Poster Presentation on HPP737 – Yahoo Finance

Posted: at 5:51 am

HIGH POINT, N.C., June 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- vTv Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: VTVT) a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of orally administered treatments for type 1 diabetes and psoriasis, today announced that it will be presenting data from the clinical development of HPP737 as a treatment for psoriasis in a poster presentation at the 6th World Psoriasis & Psoriatic Arthritis Conference held virtually June 30 July 3, 2021 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Poster Details:

Poster Title: Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of the Phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) Inhibitor HPP737 Following Single-dose Oral Administration in Healthy Subjects

Presenting author: Aaron Burstein, PharmD

ID: 35201

Topic: 4. Current and new therapeutic modalities

The poster will be added to vTvs website following the presentation and will be available at: https://vtvtherapeutics.com/pipeline/hpp737/.

About HPP737

HPP737 is a novel, potent, orally administered PDE4 inhibitor discovered by vTv Therapeutics. PDE4 is a validated therapeutic target for the treatment of a variety of disorders including psoriasis. In the phase 1 single ascending dose study presented here and a subsequent multiple-ascending dose study, HPP737 was well tolerated, with little or no gastrointestinal adverse events, such as nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, across the range of doses tested. HPP737 has evidence supporting target engagement from an ex vivo LPS stimulation TNF-alpha production assay and has demonstrated very potent activity in the Th17 skin resident immune cell activation (sRICA) assay, in which HPP737 was 10-100 fold more potent than apremilast in inhibiting the generation of cytokines/chemokines, depending upon the analyte. HPP737 is currently being tested in an on-going multiple ascending dose phase 1 study that is expected to complete during the third quarter.

About vTv TherapeuticsvTv Therapeutics Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing oral, small molecule drug candidates. vTv has a pipeline of clinical drug candidates led by programs for the treatment of type 1 diabetes (T1D) and psoriasis. vTvs development partners are pursuing additional indications in type 2 diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), renal disease, and primary mitochondrial myopathy.

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For more information, please visit http://www.vtvtherapeutics.com or follow us on Twitter: @vTvTherapeutics.

Forward-Looking StatementsThis release contains forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms anticipate, believe, could, estimate, expect, intend, may, plan, potential, predict, project, should, target, will, would and, in each case, their negative or other various or comparable terminology. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this release, including statements regarding the timing of our clinical trials, our strategy, future operations, future financial position, future revenue, projected costs, prospects, plans, objectives of management and expected market growth are forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause our results to vary from expectations include those described under the heading Risk Factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our other filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements reflect our views with respect to future events as of the date of this release and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent our estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this release and, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or review publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise after the date of this release. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause our views to change. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, merger, dispositions, joint ventures or investments we may undertake. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.

Contacts

Investors:

Corey DavisLifeSci AdvisorsCDavis@LifeSciAdvisors.com

or

Media:

PR@vtvtherapeutics.com

Source: vTv Therapeutics Inc.

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vTv Therapeutics to Participate at the 6th World Psoriasis & Psoriatic Arthritis Conference with Poster Presentation on HPP737 - Yahoo Finance

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Dry scalp: Causes and treatment options – Medical News Today

Posted: at 5:51 am

People can have dry skin anywhere on their body, including the scalp. Although dry scalp and dandruff have similar symptoms, they have different causes and treatments.

This article will describe what a dry scalp is and how it differs from dandruff. It will also look at some of the common causes of dry scalp, some available treatments, and a few prevention strategies.

People can have dry skin anywhere on the body, including the scalp. Dry skin occurs when the skin loses water too quickly.

A person with dry skin on the scalp may notice:

There are many potential causes of dry skin, such as low humidity or indoor heating. In fact, the American Skin Association notes that dry skin is not usually anything to worry about.

Sometimes, however, an underlying skin condition might be the cause of a dry scalp. When this is the case, a person might need medical treatment.

The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) says that some people are more at risk of dry skin than others. These people include:

Lots of different things can lead to dry skin and a dry scalp. Some examples include:

Sometimes, underlying health conditions can also lead to a dry scalp. These might include the following.

Atopic dermatitis is the most common form of eczema.

In children, atopic dermatitis causes dry, itchy rashes anywhere on the body. In adults, rashes are less common, and a person may have skin that is extremely dry and easily irritated.

Contact dermatitis, which is another form of eczema, happens when the skin has an allergic reaction to something it comes into contact with.

On the scalp, hair care products, hair dye, and hair accessories can all lead to contact dermatitis. Contact dermatitis can cause itching and burning or blistering of the skin.

Around 50% of people with psoriasis experience flare-ups on the scalp. A person may also experience:

Learn more about scalp psoriasis here.

The best treatment for a dry scalp will depend on what is causing it.

In many cases, making healthy lifestyle choices will help. Some examples include:

Other causes may need additional treatment. If contact dermatitis is the cause, a person may require corticosteroids.

Treatments for other medical conditions that can cause a dry scalp include the following.

Doctors recommend that people with atopic dermatitis avoid triggers, or things that make the condition worse. Triggers are different for everyone, but some common ones include:

Sometimes, people may need medical treatment. Doctors might recommend special shampoos or biologic medications that help control the immune system.

Learn more about how to treat atopic dermatitis here.

Over-the-counter products can sometimes help treat scalp psoriasis.

According to the National Psoriasis Foundation, people should try to look for shampoos that contain salicylic acid or coal tar.

In more severe cases, doctors might recommend phototherapy, which uses UV light to slow skin cell growth, or biologic drugs, which help control the inflammation.

Dandruff is a common skin condition. It causes gray or white flakes of skin to appear on the scalp and in the hair.

Dandruff only affects the scalp, but people with a dry scalp tend to experience dry skin on other parts of the body as well.

According to the AAD, researchers are unsure of the exact cause of dandruff. However, it may be the result of other skin conditions, such as:

The above conditions can also lead to dry skin on the scalp.

Learn more about the difference between dry scalp and dandruff here.

A person can use medicated shampoos to treat dandruff.

Learn more about how to treat dandruff here.

There are lots of things that people can do to help prevent developing dry skin on the scalp. These include:

Anyone who suspects that they have an underlying skin condition should talk with a doctor. This is especially true if the symptoms are interfering with their everyday life.

The doctor will assess the persons skin and recommend the best treatment or course of action for them.

A person with a dry scalp may experience itching and flaking skin. Although it may look like dandruff, a dry scalp is different. The two conditions have different causes and different treatments.

Many dry scalp cases resolve on their own with a few lifestyle changes. These changes include drinking plenty of water and avoiding harsh shampoos and hair care products.

Sometimes, a dry scalp may be a symptom of an underlying skin condition. When this is the case, a person can talk with a doctor. They will be able to assess the skin and recommend the best course of action.

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Dry scalp: Causes and treatment options - Medical News Today

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