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Sorry, off-topic: TWIV on YouTube just reviewed two new papers that show the relationship between Epstein-Barr virus and Multiple Sclerosis right down to the molecular level! Pretty simple: People have different HLA types (What they match for transplants). These are the molecules that stick out of cells and "present" foreign antigens (like virus epitopes) to the T-cells. T-cells talk to B-cells and convince them to make a bunch of antibodies against the foreign epitopes.
Humans with normal immune systems start out with B-cells that make antibodies against every possible epitope (a series of amino acids the immune system can react against) . They even make antibodies against everything you could possibly be allergic to. These antibodies go through a testing phase, so every antibody against "self" is knocked out. This is why we don't all die as infants of autoimmune diseases.
But when people with the right HLA types get Epstein-Barr virus (which 90% of us have) it can turn on production of a certain antibody. That keeps the EBV in check. But the new antibodies also undergo something called "somatic hypermutation" in which the antibody genes get varied enough to protect us from virus variants we may encounter in the future. One (or a few) of those mutated antibodies cross reacts with a protein used by oligodendrocyctes, the cells that make myelin. They stop or are impaired in making new myelin (nerve cell insulation) and voila: You have MS.
You can go back and read through that again. This will be on the test.
So the interesting question is would an Epsein-Barr vaccine give a bunch of people MS? I think it could, if you used the wrong virus epitope to make the vaccine. The first Pasteur rabies vaccine used rabbit spinal cord to grow the virus before killing the "live" virus, and it did tend to give people autoimmune paralysis when they cross-reacted to the nerve cells..
So Hong Kong is surging, medical experts are saying that OMICRON beta has not hit the US hard - YET - but it's here, and might not hit hard because 80% of us have had C19 or have been vaxxed + boosted.
It sure would be nice to back to normal. I haven't been to the gym in two years. But I'm not going to breathe someone's breathy COVID aerosols, either.
The HIV vaccine is being tested currently in human beings. PrEP has pretty much eliminated sexually active men of a certain marginalized group from getting HIV and/or reduced the viral load so far that it's undetectable now.
PrEP is one thing and an HIV vaccine is another. Paxlovid is the corona virus version of PrEP. They both work by inhibiting their virus's protease, the viral enzyme that cuts the big mega-protein into the functional proteins. If that doesn't happen, the virus can't reproduce. Your immune system cleans up any remaining corona virions, until the infection is gone. But it can't do that with HIV. HIV is a retrovirus, which means it copies it's genome into some infected cells DNA. You can kill off all the "live" virus, and cells with that modified DNA will make new virus. This is why PrEP is a life sentence.
For a corona vaccine to work, it needs to make antibodies and sensitize T-cells that attack most of the virus. For an HIV vaccine to work, it has to "kill" every single HIV virus before it can do it's "retro trick". We don't know how to make vaccines that are perfect yet, and we don't know how to edit the HIV genes out of your DNA.
But there is another approach. People who's ancestors survived the Bubonic Plague may have a gene that denies entry for the Yersinia pestis bacteria into cells. This gene also renders single-gene people resistant to HIV and double-gene people HIV-proof. If we can figure out a way to get this gene into people (or maybe delete the "normal gene") then we might be able to end AIDS. The ironic thing is that HIV may just show us how to insert genes into cellular DNA, while it is "running".
I'm not going to post my email address in public, but TAT and greger know it, and it's in the private message going around. I have some of your's from that thread, and hopefully NWP does setup something for us.
Interesting paper recently from Israel. There has been controversy regarding Vitamin D levels and Covid severity. Many studies have found very low levels in the sickest patients, but critics have claimed the disease depletes your Vitamin D levels. In this study, researchers looked at Covid severity and mortality in patients where they had a Vitamin D level from before they caught the virus. So there is no possibility the disease causes the low Vitamin D level.
They found a very strong correlation between pre-existing Vitamin D levels and disease severity, with a huge relative risk ratio, and probability of error below 0.001. No drug company wants to fund a Vitamin D study, since it is dirt-cheap and not patentable. The take-away from this study is you would be a fool not to keep your Vitamin D level over 40 ng/ml. Cost is pennies a day, and for all the naysayers claiming they get all the Vitamin D they need from sunlight, these researchers pointed out the majority of people in sunny Israel are deficient! And Arab Israelis (with darker skin) are the worst since they make it from sunlight slower than lighter-skinned folks.
Popular discussion: The paper itself: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0263069
So back in the day when everyone was half-naked and in the sun all the time this pandemic would have probably passed un-noticed.
I'm a hell of a lot healthier here toward the end of the pandemic because I started paying really close attention to other nutritional needs as well as vitamin D. Almost everything I eat now has targeted nutritional outcomes.
Exactly. We are evolved to have dark skin and so to make enough Vitamin D for somebody living in Central Africa. When humans moved North, those with darker skin couldn't make enough Vitamin D, so they were selected out. There was selective pressure to have lighter skin, which increased Vitamin D production. Now we have lots of mobility which leads to darker-skinned people living in areas with less sun, and we have clothes, cars, indoor occupations, and skin-cancer warnings. So there are wide-spread deficiencies in places you would never suspect. For example Muslim women in the sunny Middle East have a cultural requirement for extremely modest clothing, which makes them very deficient. In some cultures, lighter skin is associated with class, so people stay out of the sun as much as possible.
Central African tribesmen and lifeguards in Hawaii both top out at about 70 ng/ml. Some of the more liberal medical establishment says 30 ng/ml is fine. Well, you certainly won't get rickets at 30. USRDA is enough to get you to 6 ng/ml with no sun-made Vitamin D. It still assumes we all work on farms, or ride horses all day long.
