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Breakthru: Why women get so many autoimmune diseases + Hospital insects carry superbu

#1
C C Offline
How HALF of all flying insects found in NHS hospitals carry superbugs (UK)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic...rbugs.html

EXCERPT: Half of all flies, moths and midges found in NHS hospitals may be carrying antibiotic-resistant bacteria, research suggests. Scientists collected 20,000 insects from seven different NHS sites across England, catching them in food storage areas and on actual wards. They found nine out of ten carried potentially harmful bacteria, such as strains of E. coli and salmonella. Both bugs can cause diarrhoea. Some 53 per cent of the strains of bacteria were shown to be resistant to antibiotics, which often prompts the label of 'superbug'. And of those, around a fifth were resistant to multiple antibiotics, according to the researchers at Aston University in Birmingham. (MORE)



Breakthrough: Why women get so many autoimmune diseases
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...cy/591901/

EXCERPT: . . . Autoimmune diseases turn people’s own immune systems against their bodies. In the United States alone, women represent 80 percent of all cases of autoimmune disease. Women are 16 times more likely than men to get Sjogren’s syndrome, in which the immune system goes after the glands that make tears and saliva, and nine times more likely to have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, in which it sets its sights on the thyroid. Sjogren’s forced Venus Williams to drop out of the U.S. Open in 2011. The singer Selena Gomez underwent a kidney transplant after suffering complications from lupus, which is eight times more common in women than in men.

Some scientists now think the placenta itself might be the reason why women are so disproportionately affected. In a paper published last week in the journal Trends in Genetics, Melissa Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, along with her colleagues from Arizona State University, put forward an explanation called the “pregnancy-compensation hypothesis.” It suggests that women’s immune systems are engaged in a fierce tug of war with placentas, even when the organs aren’t actually present.

Here’s how the theory goes: Women—and all other placental mammals—evolved such that they would be pregnant for many of their adult years. Before the advent of birth control, that was pretty much the fate of the female sex. In modern hunter-gatherer populations, Wilson told me, it’s not uncommon for women to have eight to 12 children each.

Though bearing so many babies might sound grueling, women’s bodies evolved to cope. When the placenta grows during pregnancy, the organ sends signals to the mother’s immune system to change its activity so that the mother’s body doesn’t eject the placenta and the fetus. This might even mean turning down the immune system in some ways, or for some periods of time. Turning down the immune system too much, though, risks leaving women sensitive to pathogens, which would also be bad for the fetus. So instead the mother’s immune system ramps up in other ways throughout adulthood, Wilson and her colleagues think, so as to remain vigilant against germs even when some of its parts become dormant during pregnancies.

Things get complicated, however, when those pregnancies don’t actually occur. Women today tend to have far fewer children—fewer than two on average in the United States, according to the CDC. Wilson reasons that without a more or less constant pushback from placentas during pregnancies—the pushback that women’s immune systems have evolved to anticipate—the immune system can get too aggressive, too ramped up. It starts looking for things to attack that aren’t dangerous, which is how autoimmune diseases set in.

For millions of years, minus the past 100, “the immune system was expecting to have exposure to a placenta,” Wilson says. Imagine if you’re pulling on something heavy, and then the rope snaps. “If you suddenly don’t have that heavy thing anymore,” she says, “you’re gonna go off the moon.”

This is certainly not the first theory for why women suffer from more autoimmune disease than men do.... (MORE - details)
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#2
Secular Sanity Offline
(Jun 21, 2019 01:56 AM)C C Wrote: Breakthrough: Why women get so many autoimmune diseases
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...cy/591901/

You know one theory that I always found fascinating was the role that fetomaternal microchimerism might play in autoimmune disorders.

It’s interesting to think that part of the DNA of a man that you sleep with might live on, not only in your children, but in you for the rest of your life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchimerism
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#3
C C Offline
(Jun 21, 2019 10:30 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: You know one theory that I always found fascinating was the role that fetomaternal microchimerism might play in autoimmune disorders.

It’s interesting to think that part of the DNA of a man that you sleep with might live on, not only in your children, but in you for the rest of your life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchimerism


Thanks for adding that mind-shaker, SS. As if we weren't already mobile habitats enough for scores of both necessary and contingent internal citizen types. Forget nomadic cities of the future being an innovation, our bodies are already those.

Since they're unrelated kinds of cell lineages and of different origins, I don't why the image of a mad doctor injecting a patient with "Henrietta Lacks" suddenly started popping into my mind. Of course, it would never work as a horror film because HeLa might be far more impotent in healthy individuals. (At least invasive fetal cells can garner an autoimmune rap.)

Vincent Racaniello: "When injected into animals, HeLa cells are usually rejected unless the animal has a compromised immune system. I’ve worked with HeLa cells for 30 years and I know of no incident in which these cells have established themselves in any human. Perhaps if you were severely immunosuppressed and injected the cells, they might be able to grow as a tumor; but in healthy individuals, even airborne transmission of HeLa cells would not be harmful." (quote source, comments section)
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#4
Secular Sanity Offline
(Jun 22, 2019 03:42 AM)C C Wrote: Thanks for adding that mind-shaker, SS. As if we weren't already mobile habitats enough for scores of both necessary and contingent internal citizen types. Forget nomadic cities of the future being an innovation, our bodies are already those.

[True story]

Just yesterday, I headed out to the kitchen.

Son: Have I told you lately that you’re the number one mom?
Me: Yes, whenever you need something. Let me tell you about microchimerism. What if you’re cells crossed the blood brain barrier and they’re controlling me like those mind controlling hairworms?
**he laughs
Me: What do you want?
Son: Do you have time to clean my room?
Me: [Don’t do it! He’s a grown man.] No.
Son: **smiles…But I have to train for that fight.
Me: [Eek! He’s showing his dimples. Don’t fall for it.] No. It’s my job to teach you how to survive in the world.
Son: Mom, I’m a Marine. I know how to survive.
Me: [Oh, shit! He’s pulling out the Marine card. Be strong!] Nope, sorry.
Son: Can you at least do my laundry?
Me: [Ought oh! His cells are activating the empathetic region.] Okay, but just your laundry.
**Robotic walk to his room. Opens the door. [What? It’s spotless.]

Sigh...bamboozled again.  Sad

Thank god, I’m a strong swimmer.  Wink
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#5
confused2 Offline
Indications that a room need cleaning.
1/ You see unpleasant creatures hiding when you enter the room.
2/ You see unpleasant creatures when you are in the room.
3/ Being in the room for any length of time causes itching, vomiting, diarrhea or other unpleasant symptoms that can (statistically) be traced back to the room that might need cleaning.
4/ Odour in room tends to cause nausea,
5/ Other people point out odour in room tends to cause nausea.
6/ Some agent (usually animal, insect or fungus) is found to be devouring the contents of the room.

If room passes tests 1 to 6 then room does not need to be cleaned.
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#6
Secular Sanity Offline
(Jun 23, 2019 01:10 AM)confused2 Wrote: If room passes tests 1 to 6 then room does not need to be cleaned.

He just needed his laundry done. You got that, right, C2? Undecided
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#7
C C Offline
(Jun 22, 2019 06:20 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [True story]

Just yesterday, I headed out to the kitchen.

Son: Have I told you lately that you’re the number one mom?
Me: Yes, whenever you need something. Let me tell you about microchimerism. What if you’re cells crossed the blood brain barrier and they’re controlling me like those mind controlling hairworms?
**he laughs
Me: What do you want?
Son: Do you have time to clean my room?
Me: [Don’t do it! He’s a grown man.] No.
Son: **smiles…But I have to train for that fight.
Me: [Eek! He’s showing his dimples. Don’t fall for it.] No. It’s my job to teach you how to survive in the world.
Son: Mom, I’m a Marine. I know how to survive.
Me: [Oh, shit! He’s pulling out the Marine card. Be strong!] Nope, sorry.
Son: Can you at least do my laundry?
Me: [Ought oh! His cells are activating the empathetic region.] Okay, but just your laundry.
**Robotic walk to his room. Opens the door. [What? It’s spotless.]

Sigh...bamboozled again.  Sad

Thank god, I’m a strong swimmer.  Wink


Geez, even if he chooses a car dealership over being a lawyer and politician, I envy your Mother's Days in senior years.

(Jun 23, 2019 01:10 AM)confused2 Wrote: Indications that a room need cleaning.
1/ You see unpleasant creatures hiding when you enter the room.
2/ You see unpleasant creatures when you are in the room.
3/ Being in the room for any length of time causes itching, vomiting, diarrhea or other unpleasant symptoms that can (statistically) be traced back to the room that might need cleaning.
4/ Odour in room tends to cause nausea,
5/ Other people point out odour in room tends to cause nausea.
6/ Some agent (usually animal, insect or fungus) is found to be devouring the contents of the room.

If room passes tests 1 to 6 then room does not need to be cleaned.


Either you fibbed to us about not having any kids or Alzheimer's is creeping up prematurely with those erratic, restricted to nothing but vivid childhood memory episodes.
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#8
confused2 Offline
CC Wrote:Either you fibbed to us about not having any kids or Alzheimer's is creeping up prematurely with those erratic, restricted to nothing but vivid childhood memory episodes.

The points I made are all pretty much current (with or without Alzeimer's).

From the OP
Quote:Half of all flies, moths and midges found in NHS hospitals may be carrying antibiotic-resistant bacteria, research suggests. Scientists collected 20,000 insects from seven different NHS sites across England, catching them in food storage areas and on actual wards.


In the UK hospital cleaning is done by contractors who will (at best) carry out the work laid out in the contract. Any cleaning that isn't in the contract doesn't get done. Flies, moths and midges don't arise spontaneously - they are breeding somewhere - and that somewhere needs to be cleaned.

Standard deratting and demousing practice is to put down poison for the little creatures - when they die they don't tend to do it in a place you easily reach to dispose of the corpse - especially in rented properties you may not have access to the corpse zone. Not only do you get the dreadful smell but you may also get a biblical quantity of flies as the corpse is slowly consumed by maggots. Does this kind of thing not happen in the US?
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#9
C C Offline
(Jun 23, 2019 11:54 AM)confused2 Wrote:
CC Wrote:Either you fibbed to us about not having any kids or Alzheimer's is creeping up prematurely with those erratic, restricted to nothing but vivid childhood memory episodes.

The points I made are all pretty much current (with or without Alzeimer's).


You need to finally get that thread started about facetious "metaphors, similes, hyperbole, sarcasm and irony" -- because I'm that in between the lines almost 24/7. No wonder aspies get confused with so many of us camouflaged and deadpan "wry-sters" running loose. (BTW, with respect to those folk, I'd probably chart somewhere on the mild side of the autism spectrum myself, but minus that Elise Wassermann drabness and "high-functioning sociopath" stuff in the that other UK television series)

Quote:From the OP
Quote:Half of all flies, moths and midges found in NHS hospitals may be carrying antibiotic-resistant bacteria, research suggests. Scientists collected 20,000 insects from seven different NHS sites across England, catching them in food storage areas and on actual wards.


In the UK hospital cleaning is done by contractors who will (at best) carry out the work laid out in the contract. Any cleaning that isn't in the contract doesn't get done. Flies, moths and midges don't arise spontaneously - they are breeding somewhere - and that somewhere needs to be cleaned.

Standard deratting and demousing practice is to put down poison for the little creatures - when they die they don't tend to do it in a place you easily reach to dispose of the corpse - especially in rented properties you may not have access to the corpse zone. Not only do you get the dreadful smell but you may also get a biblical quantity of flies as the corpse is slowly consumed by maggots. Does this kind of thing not happen in the US?

Nah, or at least I've yet to encounter rodents and modest swarms of flying insects. Note that via high insurance rates and taxes inputted into ObamaCare/medicare/medicaid... Yanks are stuck with either paying roundaboutly or directly those incredible prices for receiving universal rich-man's medical standards. (Barring maybe some inner-city hospitals swamped by a continuous overwhelming flow of the ill and injured homeless, drug users, victims of violent neighborhoods, and those of general poverty.) That is, no cheaper 2nd-world or 3rd-world level standards are available as options, protected from runaway litigation. (As if those would be mere "options" in many parts of the globe.)

Of course, even that lone level of affluent standards may deteriorate in the future as costs skyrocket beyond even Democratic Socialists' imaginative ability to cope with in terms of utopian promises. Again, I'm not the ubiquitous infomorph presence of a technologically yielded goddess or some Janet yet (AKA "archailect") infiltrating all monitoring networks of hospital facilities in America. So that decline in quality might already be incrementally occurring in some places (excluding the already mentioned and "expected to be compromised" facilities).
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#10
Secular Sanity Offline
(Jun 23, 2019 05:43 PM)C C Wrote: You need to finally get that thread started about facetious "metaphors, similes, hyperbole, sarcasm and irony" -- because I'm that in between the lines almost 24/7.

That you are. I appreciate it , though. Keeps us on our toes.
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