...Current Event Article In the article titled “Costly drug for smallpox questioned” published in the Los Angeles Times on November 13, 2011 the antiviral vaccine for smallpox was looked at. This vaccine was developed by Siga Technologies Inc. as a treatment for people who are diagnosed with smallpox too late to use the current vaccine that the government has stockpiled in case of a bioterrorism attack. The drug is controversial as it is not known if it will work in humans due to testing only being allowed in animals. As there are no current smallpox outbreaks to test on, animals are the only test subjects at this time. Also it comes with a large price tag, around $255.00 a dose, this for 1.7 million doses per the contract to be stockpiled. This high price tag and the governments’ apparent favoritism to Siga has caused outrage by some. The disease which causes pustules and a 30% death rate was eradicated worldwide in 1978. The only strains known to exist are in Russian and US freezers. To date there is no credible evidence that any terrorist group or county has the virus and can attack the US with it. However, the government feels that it is important to have not only our current vaccine stockpile, enough to vaccinate the entire US population, but a backup for those not vaccinated or diagnosed in time. The new drug, ST-246, is said to have $115 million in federal support, not including the contract for manufacture and development, which is estimated to be around $433 million. One...
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...due to the role of the ribosomes in protein synthesis as they are released from the DNA. The codons allow for a certain amount of protein alteration & when this is near completion, the antibiotic disrupts the molecule before it starts all over again. The effects that this drug will have on the hosts cells are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hepatotoxicity, seizures & rash at iv site bc of the damage to the cell walls. With the Acyclovir, the protein synthesis is interrupted in a virally infected cell. It blocks the DNA synthesis by thymidine & alters & converts the acyclovir. The acyclovir doesn’t have any effect on a cell wall that isn’t infected by a virus so it won’t affect the host cells Erythr¬omycin is more effective against bacterial infection bc of the inhibitory protein synthesis properties it provides. Erythromycin will attack the g- cells. It has a wide variety of uses & can penetrate the cell walls of most bacteria. It is available as pills or liquids & is the treatment of choice for many doctors for minor illnesses. Acyclovir is the most effective against...
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...The Ebola Virus 10 out of 10 people infected with it will die with die with it. It is airborne. It is 100 times more contagious than AIDS. It has no known origin, vaccination or cure. It kills you in such a way that even highly trained professionals get sick from just hearing about the effects. It is real and it has started its attack on the human race. Mrs. Landau and fellow classmates. The symptoms I have just described to you are real. These are symptoms to a real and fatal virus. The virus's name is Ebola and it has started its burn into our society. Like the AIDS virus, nothing really is known about it except its effect on people. Like the AIDS virus, there is no cure, treatment or vaccination. Unlike the AIDS virus which can take up to 8 to 10 years to kill you, this virus can take as little as to 8 to 10 hours to result fatally. It starts off with a fever and symptoms of the flu. Then the muscles in your face stop moving freezing your face into a mask. Just before death, you start to bleed from every opening in your body starting from your nose and mouth to your gums. Your internal organs liquefy and you vomit them up. In reality, the virus has attempted to turn its host into a virus. You are dead before you have even started to show signs of this virus. It is believed that it is some sort of mutated form of AIDS because it started in the original spot as AIDS did, Kinshasa and moved along the highway ripping its way through Northern Africa....
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...Chikunganya virus. About thousands of people have been affected by Chikungunya virus throughout the world. During the years of 2005 and 2006, the virus altered over a millions of people in the Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Now, Chikungunya virus have spread to Europe, South American and North America. Chikungunya is a viral disease that is spread by mosquitoes. There are two type of mosquitos that spread this disease that we will talk further into in this paper. There is no signs or researches that the virus can be passed on or spread by contact from human to human. The nearness of mosquito breeding sites to human habitations is a major risk factor for Chikungunya. This disease shares a similar type of clinical signs with the dengue virus, therefore in locations where dengue is common, the virus can be misdiagnosed with the dengue virus. Once a person is affected by the virus it can lead to many symptoms but the most common symptoms can include muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash. As of today, there is no vaccine to cure Chikungunya virus. Treatment of chikungunya is concentrated in relieving the virus. In this paper, we are going to learn everything about chikungunya virus starting with where it came from, how it expanded, the structure of its genome, and all the way until how to treat the virus. Chikungunya virus is known to be abbreviated as CHIKV The topics that we are going to discuss will be, the structure of the virus, the history of the virus, the vectors...
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...Disease and Evolution The human body has been plagued with diseases since the beginning of time—pathogens like viruses and bacteria have made us privy to Mother Nature. As humans evolve, so do the diseases we are susceptible to. Some diseases that were once rare have become common, others have disappeared and newer, more daunting ones have emerged. Many of these changes have taken place in the wake of important transformations in human civilizations and ecology. It is therefore feasible to propose that diseases succeed and fail in response to humanity's advances. Natural selection is unable to provide us with perfect protection against all pathogens, because they tend to evolve much faster than humans do. E. coli, for example, with its rapid rates of reproduction, has as much opportunity for mutation and selection in one day as humanity gets in a millennium. And our defenses, whether natural or artificial, make for potent selection forces. Pathogens either quickly evolve a counter defense or become extinct. Diseases such as AIDS, Ebola, Polio have shown their wrath and humans have sought to find cures and treatment options. By definition, disease is essentially “a disorder of structure or function that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affect a specific location (not just from a physical injury)” (WHO, 2007). The true boundaries and limitations of disease remain elusive. Healthcare specialists and researchers use “normal” conditions as their basis in order to understand...
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...nucleic acid and protein, are very dangerous and in some cases can even be lethal. This essay will be focusing on two different viruses (Zika Virus and Lassa Virus), and will prove that an outbreak of Zika Virus would be more dangerous to public health in Queensland than an outbreak of Lassa Virus. This will be discussed through four different criteria: the mode of transmission, the treatment, symptoms and the mortality rate. TRANSMISSION: One way to reveal whether an outbreak of a specific virus would be dangerous to public health, would be to understand how that virus is transmitted from one person to another. Zika virus is mainly transmitted by the Aedes mosquitos....
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...1. Keeping in professional’s excited about work that is routine and standardized and chaotic is a major challenge for Vincent Weafer. How could he use technical, human, and conceptual skills to maintain an environment that encourages innovation and professionalism among the virus hunters? Answer: Vincent Weafer’s following techniques encouraged innovation and professionalism among the virus hunters: * Work was divided into smaller parts and specialization * The work never stopped, to maintain efficiency The work never stopped, to maintain efficiency Example: When Santa Monica’s team finished, Tokyo took over, this handed over to Japanese to Dublin and back to Santa Monica. 2. What management roles would Vincent be playing as he (a) Had weekly security briefing conference calls with coworkers around the globe. (b) Assessed the feasibility of adding a new network security consulting service, or (c) Kept employees focused on the company’s commitments to customers? Answer: (a) Based on the study by Henry Mintzberg managers have different but highly inter-related roles. According to this we can analyze that Vincent has approached towards Interpersonal role as he worked as a figurehead, leader, liaison and also informational role as he act as a monitor and a disseminator. (b) In this context Vincent has proved that he has approached towards that he has approached towards Decisional role as he worked as a role as he worked as a disturbance...
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...Henderson 1.When an organism is transfected with a virus, it triggers several mechanisms to protect itself from the viral genes affecting it. Such mechanisms involve the innate immune response of the D. Melanogaster against the virus. Another mechanism that has been discovered not too long ago is the ability of silencing viral genes using an RNA interference pathway. The Argonaute paper has focused on the RNAi pathway of D. Melanogaster. The pathway involves a RISC complex composed of Argonaute 2 , viral siRNA and other proteins that act as a “strike and search” antagonist against viral genes and silencing them. In counter-defense, Viruses try to protect themselves by encoding viral suppressors of RNAi VSR to suppress the RNAi pathway. This leads to an “arms race” of adaptation and counter-adaptation by the host and virus. An important aspect of viral genome is its ability to undergo mutations to protect its self. Viral RNA is capable of antigenic shift and antigenic drift to cause mutations in its own genome and remain adaptable in host environment. The RNA Polymerase of the virus is phage-induced, so it is going to replicate the mutated genome and is different than eukaryotic Polymerase in that manner. In turn, host will evolve according to the viral genome to silence the “new” mutated genes. The evolutionary significance of VSRs in the Argonaute paper has enabled to understand how a conserved protein VP1 from Nora Virus is able to suppress viral siRNA in D. Melanogaster...
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...let’s take a look at a well-documented example of natural selection in action, infection by HIV. Then let’s dissect the essential elements of the process. Finally, we’ll wrap up with some other examples of natural selection. Sound good? Let’s get started. Let’s begin by discussing the tragic course of an HIV infection and the role that natural selection plays. Stay with me on this. It will take a bit of time to summarize how HIV works, but this will be time well spent. HIV is a slow-acting virus that eventually devastates the immune system. When HIV first invades a host, it is able to reproduce rapidly. This is because it takes a while for the immune system to muster a response to the new invader. About six to eight weeks after a person is first infected with HIV, they may experience flu-like symptoms due to the high number of viruses in their bloodstream. Normally, the immune system starts to get the upper hand at this point and the symptoms go away. If this person’s blood is sampled, the virus is still present but the person appears to have normal health. Then much later—sometimes several years later—symptoms return. This means that the immune system has been overwhelmed and the disease has progressed to full-blown AIDS, a condition in which a devastated immune system can no longer fight off infection. Unless aggressively treated, death is inevitable. Why does HIV appear to go dormant only to reemerge with lethal results? During the course of an infection, a deadly race is being...
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...It's most commonly caught by having sex without a condom. Also It can also be passed on by sharing infected needles and other injecting equipment, and from an HIV-positive mother to her child during pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. The virus attacks the immune system, and weakens your ability to fight infections and disease. There is no cure for HIV, but there are treatments to enable most people with the virus to live a long and healthy life. Hepatitis B, It is a virus that can infect the liver and there is some Symptoms such as, being sick or feeling sick ,lack of appetite, flu-like symptoms, e.g. Tiredness aches and pains also headaches, yellowing of the eyes and skin. Furthermore most people they don’t recognize if they have been infected with the virus this is because the symptoms might not develop immediately, or on some people it don’t at all. In addition it takes between 40 and 160 days for any symptoms to develop after exposure to the...
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...infection, which is a virus. A virus is a small infectious agent that can reproduce inside a many living organisms. With the polio virus it attacks various nervous cells and in some cases it can even sometimes affect the central nervous system. Virus could not be seen until the late 1930s when the electronic microscope was invented. So it was very difficult for people to result these kinds of diseases. The polio virus attacks the body by entering the mouth and then traveling into the digestive tract. It is then excreted through stool....
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...Gene therapy fact sheet 1. What is a gene therapy? * Gene therapy is an experimental way of using genes to treat or prevent disease. * Gene therapy is an experimental technique for treating disease by altering the patient's genetic material. Most often, gene therapy works by introducing a healthy copy of a defective gene into the patient's cells. 2. Methodology of gene therapy In general, genetic material cannot be inserted directly into a person's cells. Instead, it is delivered to the cells using a carrier, or “vector.” The vectors most commonly used in gene therapy are viruses, because they have the unique ability to recognize certain cells and insert genetic material into them. Scientists alter these viruses to make them safer for humans (e.g., by inactivating genes that enable them to reproduce or cause disease) and or to improve their ability to recognize and enter the target cell. 3. How gene therapy is applied or works As this is still an experimental treatment, the way in which gene therapy is given may vary or change as new techniques develop. Initially, cells are taken from a blood sample. The genes are isolated and changed (engineered) in the laboratory. They are then attached to a chemical or inserted into a vector. Then the changed genes within the carrier are usually given by a drip into a vein (intravenously), through a small tube (cannula) inserted into the vein. They may be given directly into the tumour by injection, which...
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...reviewed journal is from the American Academy of Pediatrics. This journal is about influenza virus. Focal points on this topic will be age ranges that are at risk, treatments plans, national or global perspective, and scientific evidence to support claims (if any). Influenza is a contagious viral infection. Influenza can inflame the respiratory system. The virus attacks the cells of the respiratory tract and begins to multiply to spread infection throughout the body. Symptoms of influenza are vomiting, runny or stuffy nose, diarrhea, sore throat, fatigue, fever, chills, body aches, and decrease in urination. Influenza can be dated back to as late as 1918 and has caused many deaths over the years. Influenza is an air born virus which means anyone can catch it just by simply breathing it in. Influenza can be transferred by coughing, sneezing, or direct contact. Incubation time for influenza is 1 to 7 days. The infection can last for a few days for a healthy person. Most cases of influenza are not serious. Most people recuperate after a few days of rest for a healthy person. But an unhealthy person, influenza can be quite serious and deadly. Prevention for influenza is by making sure one gets their vaccinations. The vaccination allows small amounts of non-active influenza in your body. This is so that the body can build up antibodies which can make you immune to the virus. One can always practice good hygiene to prevent catching the...
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...infectious agent causing tobacco mosaic disease. In 1935, Wendell Stanley isolated tobacco mosaic virus, making it possible to carry out chemical and structural studies on a purified virus. Viroids are infectious pieces of RNA that cause some place diases such a potato spindle tuber disease. In 1980s Prions were first discovered as infectious proteins. Prions are pathogens that are proteins, and they appear to cause a number of degenerative brain diseases, such as Scrapiein sheep, mad cow disease, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. 2. How do viruses, viroids, prions, and bacteria differ in terms of their biological identity and method of infection? Viruses contain both nucleic acids such as DNA or RNA and a protein coat. Viruses cause infection by inserting their genetic material in a host cell. The host cell then reproduces and reads the genetic material, making new viruses that eventually burst out of the cell and leave to infect more. The reason viruses cause disease is that the infected cells can’t carry out the normal functions necessary. Viroids on the other hand have no protein coat, but are only the nucleic acid RNA. Since they have no protein coat and are only the nucleic acid RNA they are often carried around inside viruses. Viroids are naked RNA molecules that infect plants and disrupt their growth. An example of a viroid that is carried in the capsid of the Hepatitis B virus is Hepatitis D. Prions are only proteins without the nucleic acid. Prions generally have...
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...were never done, if your market shifted 30 times a day. The computer-virus hunters at Symantec Corp. don’t have to imagine. “That’s the reality of their daily work life. At the company’s response lab in Santa Monica, California, described as the “dirtiest of all our networks at Symantec. “ Software analysts collect viruses and other suspicious cod and try to figure out how they work so the company can provide security updates to its customers. There’s even a hazardous materials box by the door to the lab, marked DANGER, where they put all the discs, tapes, and hard drives with the nasty viruses that need to be completely disposed of. Symantec’s situations may seem unique, but the company, which makes content and network security software for both consumers and businesses, reflects the realities facing many organizations today: quickly shifting customer expectations and continuously emerging global competitors that have drastically shortened product life cycles. Managing talented people in such an environment can be quite challenging as well. Vincent Weafer, a native of Ireland, has been the leader of Symantec’s virus hunting team since 1999. Back then, he said “there were less than two dozen people, and . . . nothing really happened. We’d see may be five new viruses a day, and they would spread in a matter of months, not minutes. “Now, Symantec’s virus hunter around the words deals with some 20,000 virus samples each month, not all of which are unique, stand-alone viruses....
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