Dana Foundation Blog

Flu may contribute to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s

Could the flu cause Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease? The answer may be yes, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, and St. Jude’s Research Hospital. In particular, the scientists found that the H5N1 flu strain—commonly known as bird flu—can infiltrate deep into the brain, causing a “slow-burning” immune reaction that may contribute to the onset of several neurodegenerative disorders.

The study, published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was inspired by reports that neurological symptoms seemed to occur more frequently following the 1918 “Spanish flu.” Similar signs appeared after recent cases of H5N1 in both people and animals. So the scientists infected 225 mice with bird flu to study the virus’s effect on the brain.

H5N1 is a highly virulent strain of flu, and, as it does people who contract the disease, it killed about half the mice. The other half showed signs of infection in their brains, but within three weeks all active signs of flu infection—along with any neurological symptoms—were gone.  This recovery was only surface-deep, however: The researchers found that the surviving mice had started to produce an abnormal, clumping form of a protein known as alpha synuclein in their brains. Abnormal clumps of protein are one of the hallmark signs of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

In addition, signs of activated microglia, the brain’s immune cells, indicated the presence of inflammation. These factors were linked directly to brain cell death; within 60 days of infection, the substantia nigra pars compacta regions of the mice brains showed a loss of about one-fifth of their dopamine-producing neurons, a milder form of the damage that occurs in Parkinson’s. The researchers also found aggregated clusters of protein in the hippocampus, cortex and brainstem—as is often seen in neurodegenerative diseases.

The researchers liken this to a hit-and-run; they speculate that the flu virus causes the brain’s immune system to turn on and then remain active long after the infection has been eradicated.  If their theory holds, they add, then any number of viruses that make their way past the brain’s defenses could contribute to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. (This also falls in line with a popular theory about why some flu strains, particularly Spanish flu, become so deadly and disproportionately kill off the young and healthy: They unleash a “cytokine storm,” an ultimately fatal overreaction by the immune system.)

For now, the findings are merely informative. The study did not extend long enough to check whether full-blown cases of Parkinson’s did occur in the mice, for instance, and more research—especially in primates—is needed to confirm that the results translate to humans. It’s also far too early to tell if bird flu survivors are contracting these disorders more often. And even if verified, viral infections are likely to just be another addition to the many risk factors, most notably age, for such neurodegenerative disorders.

As for those worried about H1N1—the current pandemic flu strain—good news: It does not appear to attack the brain.

 —Aalok Mehta

A treatment for peanut allergies

For people who have peanut allergies, something as simple as going out to eat or having a candy bar can be an anxiety-producing and potentially harmful experience. Not only do they have to stay away from peanuts themselves, many of the most allergic must avoid peanut oil and any utensils that may have come in contact with a peanut.

At first reflection, this may seem a little silly to those of us without such an allergy. How often does the average person even think about peanuts? Then you realize that a chopping board may not have been washed between chopping nuts and other vegetables; that ice cream scoops may not be cleaned off after they dip into the peanut butter ice cream; that a delicious plain milk chocolate bar came down the same conveyor belt as a bar that was chock full of peanuts. If you have such an allergy, it doesn’t take much to spark a reaction that can range from wheezing to anaphylaxis, putting quite a damper on that fun evening out.

Thanks to a team of doctors at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Children’s Hospital there may be new hope for the 1.8 million Americans suffering from an allergy to peanuts. In a pilot study, 29 severely allergic children spent a day in the hospital ingesting increasing doses of specially prepared peanut flour. Lest any adventuresome reader think this would be a good idea to try at home, the dosage given to the children was less than a thousandth of a peanut, impossible to prepare at home. Once the children had taken enough doses to have a reaction, they were sent home with directions to take a daily dosage just under that amount. Over time, their bodies developed a tolerance to the flour and the dosage was gradually increased. Eight to ten months later, most of the children could consume the equivalent of 15 peanuts a day without having a reaction.

Even more remarkably, five of the children in the study could stop treatment for a month and still eat 15 peanuts without having an allergic reaction. Wesley Burks, allergy chief at Duke University and the lead researcher in the study, said in an Associated Press article that changes to their immune systems show that the children are truly allergy free. This kind of tolerance has not been seen before with a food allergy.

Further studies are in progress at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and so far the results support the findings of the pilot study. If this form of treatment proves effective, it could end the threat of allergic reaction to peanuts, which accounts for 200 deaths in the United States each year, according to the article.

However, if peanuts still aren’t your thing, there’s really nothing that can be done about that. Seven-year-old Ryan Cassada, who has been allergy free for two years, may no longer face a health risk because of a peanut but he still doesn’t like them. Why? “They smell bad.”

—Juliana Avery

Outbreak of the vaccination debate

It’s hard to imagine that parents wouldn’t do everything possible to safeguard their child’s health. Yet keeping them safe can be a puzzle. A vocal group of parents questions the value of childhood vaccinations because they worry that this “preventive medicine” is not necessary and could be dangerous, particularly the supposed link between vaccination and autism. Yet choosing not to get vaccinated has its risks too—and they don’t affect just one child.

A recent USA Today article reports on some disturbing new evidence of the dangers of not being vaccinated. In Minnesota in 2008, five children were diagnosed with haemophilis influenzae type B, or Hib infection, a disease that had been virtually wiped out by vaccination. One of those five children eventually died. Outbreaks of measles, also preventable by vaccine, have affected 140 children and adults statewide in recent years.

Most people are protected by “herd immunity,” meaning that being surrounded by immunized people generally keeps even the unimmunized safe from harm. However, health officials are now concerned that anti-vaccination sentiment has led to a decrease in herd immunity, leaving more people vulnerable—especially children too young to be vaccinated or those people for whom vaccination was not effective. “By vaccinating your child, you’re doing good not only for that child, but for the community,” Kristen Ehresmann, immunization program manager for the Minnesota Department of Health, says in the story.

Ehresmann’s view is shared by a recent Newsweek article on vaccination, including concerns over a perceived link to autism, the amount of mercury in vaccines, the dangers of too many shots “overloading” the immune system and the belief that surviving an illness like chicken pox naturally is preferable to getting immunized. The article concludes that the concerns were generally without scientific backing and the benefits far outweigh the risks, pointing out that diseases such as chicken pox, often thought of as being uncomfortable but relatively harmless, can sometimes result in severe infection and even death.

While some people in the “autistic community” hold the view that vaccines could be the root cause of the illness, at least one mind has changed. Alison Tepper Singer, executive vice president of communications and awareness for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, recently resigned, citing Autism Speaks’ policy on vaccination research as the reason she stepped down. While the group continues to promote the study of the link between autism and vaccines, Singer says, “Dozens of credible scientific studies have exonerated vaccines as a cause of autism. I believe we must devote limited funding to more promising areas of autism research,”

Adding support to these views is a report by The Times of London about the work of Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who originally linked autism to the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). In a February 1998 article in The Lancet, Wakefield claimed that the families of eight out of twelve children in his study blamed vaccination for their autism and said that the children’s symptoms started days after vaccination. This small study helped spark the anti-vaccination fervor that exists today.

The Times’s investigation, though, showed that Wakefield manipulated the patients’ data: The children’s medical records conflicted with Wakefield’s reporting and only one patient reported symptoms within days of vaccination. In most cases, the children had medical concerns before vaccination. A second Newsweek article on the enduring effects of Wakefield’s research reports that other studies that have supported Wakefield’s results are also flawed.

Wakefield had a financial stake in demonstrating a connection between autism and vaccination. Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet, said that had he known of this financial connection, the paper would not have been published. Horton told the press, “There were fatal conflicts of interest.”

As long ago as 2004, the Institute of American Medicine reviewed more than 200 studies and rejected the autism-vaccine hypothesis. Yet anti-vaccine fervor continues (one need only look at the Newsweek site’s comments to see this). While autism may not caused by vaccination, we still don’t know what it is caused by. So fear persists and vaccination rates decline. As in Minnesota, England and Wales also have reported a spike in the rates of measles.

No one denies that autism is a real and pressing problem, or that many parents feel genuine concern over shots they worry are unnecessary or dangerous. Yet research is showing that these concerns may be groundless and may overshadow real, known dangers. They may also be drawing attention away from finding a more likely cause for illnesses such as autism. Many people today haven’t experienced the measles or the Hib infection that hit Minnesota. But they are real and deadly and a threat—not just to individual children but to everyone.

—Juliana Avery

Some biologists pre-emptively addressing “dual use” research

Some life scientists already are taking steps to reduce the harmful potential of their research, suggests a new survey about “dual use” research—scientific work that also has military or security implications.

Without formal guidelines or government restrictions, researchers have in certain instances broken collaborations, abandoned or altered planned lines of work or restricted what they publish, says the report, which was jointly conducted by the U.S. National Research Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

At a press briefing yesterday, however, report chairman Ronald Atlas said it wasn’t clear that such drastic reactions were appropriate. For example, the scientists surveyed thought there was a 51 percent chance of a bioterrorism attack somewhere in the world in the next five years and a 35 percent chance such an attack would take place in the United States, but only a 28 percent chance that anyone’s dual-use research would contribute.

Atlas, a professor of biology at the University of Louisville, also warned repeatedly about the limitations of the survey. The questionnaire was mailed out to 10,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who work in the life sciences, but only about 1,600 fully completed it. “[This] may or may not be reflective of the broader scientific community,” he said. “Be careful how you interpret the data.”

It is more useful to think of the report as a framework for how to proceed with additional research or policy projects, he said. For example, the survey suggests that scientists largely favor more self-policing of potentially dangerous research projects as well as mandatory education on the potentials and pitfalls of dual-use research. The scientists offered substantially less support for formal certifications or greater government oversight.

One potential bias in the report was a larger-than-representative response by researchers working with “select agents,” potentially harmful biological toxins already subject to government scrutiny. One-quarter of respondents had handled such agents at some point, including, presumably, a large number of immunologists, virologists and molecular biologists. Part of the reason for commissioning the report were several advances in those fields, such as 2005 work reconstructing and testing the 1918 influenza virus, which is estimated to have killed between 20 million and 50 million people worldwide.

But concerns have been raised at some point in almost all fields of biology. Even if the effects may seem less immediate and less potentially catastrophic, for instance, the field of neuroscience received such scrutiny just a few months ago, when the National Academies released the report “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies.” The paper “identifies and explores several specific research areas that have implications for U.S. national security,” including lie detection using brain scans, cognition-enhancing drugs, chemical weapons that act on the brain and brain-machine interfaces. One of the paper’s committee members, in fact, was Jonathan Moreno, a professor of medical ethics and the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania; his Dana Press book “Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense,” predicted many of these concerns.

—Aalok Mehta

The brain, the immune system and sepsis, a silent killer

Dr. Kevin Tracey, chief executive officer at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and author of the Dana Press book Fatal Sequence: The Killer Within, was featured this week in an article on CNN.com. “This isn’t a one in a million case,” he says of the recent death of 20-year-old Brazilian model Mariana Bridi da Costa, who died after an infection led to sepsis.

Most people haven’t heard of sepsis; if you have heard of it, you may believe that it strikes only the elderly and doesn’t affect healthy people. In fact, sepsis can affect people of all ages fighting off nonfatal illnesses or injury such as burns and pneumonia. Several well-known people have died from sepsis, including Jim Henson, Pope John Paul II and Christopher Reeve, each from a sequence of events in the immune system and the brain’s failure to regulate infection.

In Fatal Sequence, through the tragic example of a young burn victim, Dr. Tracey describes how the brain plays an integral role in the onset of sepsis, how the brain’s failure can unleash the immune system and allow it to indiscriminately kill normal cells along with, or instead of, foreign microbes, and what conditions predispose patients to develop sepsis.

Understanding this “killer within” is essential—especially for those who think that it cannot happen to them. Sepsis is the third most common killer, Tracey writes; more people die from severe sepsis than from acute heart attack, at an estimated cost of more than $17 billion annually.

—Leticia Barnes

Nobel Prize in medicine goes to virus pioneers

A pair of French researchers and a German scientist share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the virus that causes AIDS and unraveling the role of HPV in causing cervical cancer, respectively, the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute announced today.

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, a virologist at the Institut Pasteur in Garches, France, and Luc Montagnier, a virologist at the University of Paris, will receive their half of the prize for finding human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In the early 1980s, shortly after a new immune deficiency disease was first reported, the pair cultured cells from patients with swollen lymph nodes and discovered an unknown retrovirus that relied on T lymphocyte immune cells to reproduce. The research provided some of the first insights into how the virus damaged the immune system and led other researchers to confirm the role of the virus in causing AIDS.

“Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier's discovery made rapid cloning of the HIV-1 genome possible. This has allowed identification of important details in its replication cycle and how the virus interacts with its host. Furthermore, it led to development of methods to diagnose infected patients and to screen blood,” the Nobel Prize committee said in a press release. “The significance of their achievements should be viewed in the context of a global ubiquitous epidemic affecting close to 1 percent of the population.”

Harald zur Hausen, of the University of Düsseldorf, meanwhile, garnered recognition for bucking “current dogma” in the 1970s and finding that certain types of human papilloma virus (HPV) play a role in causing cervical cancer. Hausen’s discovery paved the way for a better understanding of the way in which many types of cancer arise as well as for the cervical cancer vaccines that recently became available on the U.S. market.

“The global public health burden attributable to human papilloma viruses is considerable,” the Karolinska Institute said. “More than 5 percent of all cancers worldwide are caused by persistent infection with this virus.”

—Aalok Mehta

Tomatoes, mom and memories

My mother and most of her 15 siblings spent their early childhood living in a one-room house on a small farm in northern Michigan. They had a lifelong love of fresh produce, and in the summer Mom set a plate of freshly sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and radishes on our table at every meal. Even after moving away, many of my mom’s brothers and sisters kept substantial backyard gardens to supplement their purchases from local grocers.

The old farm stories told at family reunions and the memories of my mother as a vege-maniac came flooding back to me while reading two articles dealing with Alzheimer's disease this week. The first discusses research done by a group at the Center for Brain Health at NYU’s Langone Medical Center. The scientists studied 49 cognitively normal individuals over a period of two years. Focusing their observations on glucose metabolism in areas of the brain typically affected by Alzheimer's, the researchers noticed that people who had a maternal history of the disease showed a significant decrease in brain glucose metabolism. Those individuals who had a father with Alzheimer's or no family history had no decrease in brain glucose metabolism. Though more work needs to be done in this area, it was enough to give me pause. My mother had Alzheimer's—as did her mother, a brother and two of her sisters.

The second article that piqued my interest this week involved a potential vaccine for Alzheimer’s that specifically targets beta-amyloid, the fibrous protein thought to play a significant role in the disease by damaging brain cells. Researchers from the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Digital Biotech Inc. and the Department of Biological Science at Wonkwang University in Korea are introducing the human beta-amyloid gene into a tomato's genome. The researchers hope that when tomatoes producing human beta-amyloid protein are eaten, the body will mount an immune response against the substance—and then continue to assault beta-amyloid protein anywhere it begins to accumulate. This might allow people to fight off Alzheimer's in the same way we fight off colds, flu and any number of foreign invaders on a daily basis.

My mother would have approved of this: a big, fresh, juicy tomato helping to ward off the disease that robbed her of all memory of those 15 siblings and the baskets, buckets and aprons full of vegetables they had to wash, peel, and prepare for their meals.

A vaccine would be too late for her, but I'd like to imagine my daughter setting a big plate of sliced tomatoes in front of her children and saying, "Eat your tomatoes so you'll always remember how lucky you were to have your Grandma Debbie!"

—Debbie Mioduszewski

Immunocalifragilisticexpialidocious

The day after he accepted the AAI-Dana Foundation Award in Human Immunology Research, I sat down with the affable Jim Allison so that he could explain to me what his research was about and what it means for cancer patients and their loved ones.

The subsequent article, published on this Web site (and to be included in July’s print edition of Immunology in the News), examines a small sliver of the current research scene that goes by the name “immunotherapy.”

I knew the term and was familiar with the basic underlying science, but I had heard “immunotherapy” used only rarely, and never before I became an editor here (where immunology, along with brain science and arts education, is part of our daily three-course meal).

I wondered if the word wasn’t a fairly recent portmanteau, perhaps introduced to describe succinctly to a lay audience what is in fact a complex domain of modern medicine (or maybe to jazz up dull med school lectures). I asked him how long the term had been around.

Allison, with the patience of a man who doubtlessly has long-suffered such public ignorance, responded: “Oh, 80 or 100 years.”

Red-faced, I later slinked back to my books for an ultimately fruitless investigation into the word’s etymology. In the process, however, I learned about the William B. Coley, a popular candidate for the title “Father of Cancer Immunotherapy.”

Coley worked at the New York Cancer Hospital (now part of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where Allison is a researcher), where as a young surgeon in 1890 he treated a childhood friend of John D. Rockefeller Jr. in a tragic case that meant a great deal for the future of cancer research.

I found the story in the first chapter of “A Commotion in the Blood,” available for free here. It is impossible not to be moved by the tale of a young, adventurous woman, killed in her prime by an excruciating disease for which 19^th century doctors had virtually no treatment.

That her death so devastated and inspired both one of our country’s great philanthropists and one of its pioneering cancer researchers makes this a medical drama that bests any “House, M.D.” or “Gray’s Anatomy” I’ve seen.

Coley devoted his life to studying biological vaccines for cancer, and his medical lineage can today be traced ahead to researchers such as Allison.

“Immunotherapy” may sound inscrutable, but behind the medical jargon is a history of loves lost and saved, doctors’ mad passions, medical miracles, deaths, and violent battles fought by microscope.

In truth, the reason one hears the term only rarely in public discussions of medicine is that, as Allison asserted in his lecture, the field has long been “thought of by too many as some sort of alternative medicine.”

Hopefully Allison and his fellow warriors change all that.

—Ben Mauk

A pox on cancer

For many, the beginnings of an education in immunology do not occur until parenthood, when a number of previously unconsidered hard truths of disease come to light. Among them: The only thing that might be less fun than having chicken pox is having a child who has chicken pox.

The usually permanent immunity that follows from infection will be little comfort to the sunken-eyed parent, cradling a shrieking, polka-dotted infant at 3 a.m. But the stresses of chicken pox pale in comparison with those of mumps, measles and rubella, infections that commonly come with health-endangering complications, and that in unvaccinated populations prove wildly infectious and even deadly.

Thankfully, widespread use of the MMR vaccine among one-year-olds in the developed world has largely eliminated these illnesses from family life. There's a chicken pox vaccine, too. (Again, small comfort for dad and daughter on vaccination day.)

But recent research may have found an upside to the otherwise unfortunate cases of poxes, measles and mumps. These infections, when incurred early on, teach the immune system to recognize and attack tumors later in life.

Of course, it would be unwise to forego vaccination in favor of racking up potential cancer defenses. But one consequence of this discovery will be clinical trials of cancer vaccines that take advantage of the same immune-memory mechanisms observed to result from infection.

I arrived too late at the American Association of Immunologists annual meeting, this year part of the triennial Experimental Biology conference, to hear in person the AAI Presidential Lecture “Immunologic weapons acquired early in life win battles with cancer late in life,” delivered April 5 by AAI President Olivera Finn. But I wish I could have attended, because the material released in conjunction with the presentation contains thought-provoking notions about the important role foreign invaders play in our growing bodies.

Finn, who is chair of the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, lectured that these infections create an immune memory not only for the foreign molecules known as antigens that invade the body but also for “self antigens” that are abnormally expressed on the body's infected tissues. When these same antigens are produced on tumor cells later in life, the immune system has the experience to respond appropriately.

In fact, Finn's laboratory linked the inflammation caused by non-malignant events such as measles and mumps to significantly decreased risk for cancer. Future cancer vaccines could use the “self” antigens produced by the body's infectious tissues to provide protection similar to that acquired from the more dangerous germs and viruses themselves, Finn argued.

We've long known roughly how immune defense cells recognize viruses and other foreign invaders. The news here is that the immune system can learn to recognize its own abnormal antigens, located on tumors within the body, and that this learning takes place during the immune system's early schooling.

Immunotherapy techniques based on these findings will soon enter a new phase of clinical trials. The seven trials that have been conducted, Finn reported, showed no adverse effects, and in 20 percent of cases the patients suffering from advanced cancers showed a stabilizing immune response.

So perk up, sleep-deprived parents! Your long-living children will thank you.

—Ben Mauk

The treatment doctors forgot

“You're not ever going to cure cancer unless you engage the immune system,” said Jim Allison, a scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, April 6 during his AAI-Dana Foundation Award in Human Immunology Research lecture.

I'll be writing more extensively on Allison and his (fascinating) work on cancer therapies later, but one general point of his so surprised me that I think it merits mention here.

Immunotherapy as a cancer treatment is not a new idea, but, Allison claims, it is a much maligned one. He began his lecture by saying, “What I'm going to try to do at the end of the talk is to make a case for moving immunologists into the mainstream. ... [Immunotherapy] is thought of by too many as some sort of alternative medicine.”

Immunology as alternative medicine? Looking around the Experimental Biology/American Association of Immunologists conference at the hundreds of posters, presentations and lectures by experienced scientists, Nobel and Lasker award winners among them, it is hard to believe that the “mainstream” would lump those therapies that target the immune system in order to enhance or suppress its activities with less conventional treatments such as acupuncture and herbal-based remedies.

And yet, doctors and clinicians have been slow to take to the new advances coming out of immunology research, in part because past failures have made doctors and the public skeptical of more successful recent studies. “Something new comes out and we hype it,” he said to me, “and [when] it doesn't work, people [say], ‘Eh.’ ”

It is inherently difficult to get the immune system to do what you want, Allison said in the lecture, because “there are a lot of intrinsic and extrinsic regulatory circuits to make sure the immune system doesn't go awry.” These fail-safe mechanisms in the body had in the past prevented successful manipulation by researchers of T cells and other immune defenses.

Allison's research during the past 25 years has led to treatments that target one of those fail-safe mechanisms that regulate the production of immune defenses. Recent trials of these treatments show great promise in comparison with the disappointing results of some past immunotherapies.

The payoff is that while traditional cancer treatments either involve a painful tradeoff of health concerns (as with chemotherapy) or are limited by their inability to adapt to tumor cell mutations (as with vaccines), the immune system can be harnessed to fight tumors with limited serious side effects and with the flexibility to create “neoantigens” that target virtually any tumor cell mutation, Allison said.

While en route to San Diego I met a man at the Denver airport whose daughter long suffered from headaches until she brought a decidedly alternative treatment to her doctor's attention, a treatment that seemed to successfully rid her of the affliction. Although our opinions on the strength of evidence for the medicinal benefits of Alaskan wild blueberries differed, one thing he said did come back to me during Allison's lecture:

“The onus is on the patient, now, to bring new treatments to the attention of the doctor.”

A bit of an overstatement, perhaps, but it wouldn't be outrageous to say that, when it comes to bringing immunologists into the mainstream, the onus is on all of us: patient, doctor, scientist.

--Ben Mauk

Educating the educators (with immunology lab time)

This week I report from the Experimental Biology 2008 convention in San Diego, where, from April 5-9, 13,000 members of several organizations, including the American Association of Immunologists, converge to discuss the year's advancements and next year's challenges. It's all a little overwhelming, but I hope to check in with as many findings and tidbits as possible.

A Sunday morning workshop at the EB/AAI convention brought together middle and high school science teachers, immunology-focused researchers and outreach activists to discuss one of AAI's more successful programs in bringing immunology to the classroom.

Many of those present had recently participated in the John H. Wallace High School Teachers Program, in which science teachers work with “mentor” scientists at immunology laboratories. Over the course of four to six weeks the teachers participate in research and devise lab exercises to take back to the classroom.

The program hopes to engage teachers who may not have had much experience in a research lab setting, thus giving them, as program director Brain A. Cobb quoted one satisfied educator, “street cred with ... students for having worked in the lab.”

As someone who remembers far too many 80-minute PowerPoint slide shows in high school science classes, I appreciate any program with the overarching goal of, as Cobb said, “enhancing science education [in] the middle and high school classroom,” as well as assisting “in narrowing the performance gap between majority and minority students.”

Since 1985, 145 teachers have participated in the program, including 75 teachers from 22 states since 1996. (AAI began sponsoring the program in 1993.)

After a summer internship investigating the role of cytokine levels in the autoimmune disease lupus at the University of Rochester, teacher Laurie Asermily returned to her school, the rural Mynderse Academy in Seneca Falls, N.Y., with fresh ideas.

“Kids see crime shows, and [with that background] are much more interested in investigating what's wrong than looking at [an immune system] where everything is working,” she said. The experiment she designed for her students dealt with looking at images of B cells, studying cytokine levels and “diagnosing” a patient as having either lupus or a healthy immune system.

“Autoimmune diseases affect mostly females,” Asermily said, “and my students were very interested in that. They've started to form their own hypothoses.” The children prepared posters and gave presentations on autoimmune diseases, including one student who spoke at length about his own juvenile diabetes.

Participating teachers worked with a curriculum expert to devise both the lab project and the activities surrounding it. For instance, Asermily demonstrated a computer-based, autoimmune-themed Jeopardy game. “Don't try to make one of these from scratch,” she said.

A major task of the Dana Foundation is educating the general public about immunology-related health guidelines and advancements in research. We strive to accomplish this through our free periodical Immunology in the News and our free Dana Sourcebook of Immunology, a textbook for secondary and post-secondary students and teachers. Hopefully, teachers are taking advantage of these resources in planning activities that get kids engaged. It helps, of course, to have an engaged, lab-experienced teacher.

—Ben Mauk

An end to flu season?

New Scientist is reporting on research that bring us closer to a universal flu vaccine. A vaccine that targets the M2e protein is doing well in clinical trials and raises my hopes that our days of having to get a flu shot every year are nearly over. The vaccine in testing would need to be given only once, would work against most strains of influenza A viruses (the ones that cause pandemics and many forms of run-of-the-mill flu) and can be mass produced.

A discovery like this can't come soon enough. While reviewing my favorite blog this morning (fitsugar.com), I was shocked to find that people in the United Kingdom are having one of their worst flu seasons. According to BBC News, 56 hospitals have been closed to new patients, and at least one hospital has postponed all non-emergency surgeries. Will this be a problem only for our friends on the other side of the pond? Stateside, we are just at the start of our flu season.

Until a universal vaccine is ready, what preventive measures can you take to avoid getting the flu? The Centers for Disease Control suggests the best way to protect yourself and others is to get a flu shot. It’s not too late: peak season here should last from January to March. And keep washing your hands.

—Ellen Davey

Write out the bad, think on the good

I have been keeping a journal ever since I can remember—from my early second-grade entries describing the sandwich I ate for lunch and the mean boy on the playground to my more recent entries discussing, well, more complicated matters. Writing is an outlet for me; problems put into words on the page somehow lose their severity. And now, we journal-writers have a bit of evidence to back up what some might think of as navel-gazing. An article in the August/September issue of Scientific American Mind, “The Power of the Pen,” discusses the link between expressive writing and the immune system.

“Expressive writing has a long-term favorable influence on the immune system and blood pressure,” the authors write, but there is a caveat—these positive effects occur only when the writing is about negative situations that haven’t been talked about. At least 15 minutes must be devoted to writing, and merely thinking the negative thoughts doesn’t do the trick. What’s more, the study found that writing about positive experiences weakened the positive feelings, while simply thinking about them did not.

When I look through my many filled-up journals, I see that some years I wrote nearly every day, while others I wrote once a month or less. When I’m happier, I’m less inclined to write, perhaps subconsciously following an immune-healthy regimen. And this all leads me to wonder, what about the brain? Knowing the effects on the immune system, I’m curious to know more about the before, during and after of the journaling brain. For now, I’ll keep writing—but only if I need it.

--Emily Fisher

Feeling the burn of youth

The week of Halloween, I felt positively ghoulish. It started with a sharp pain radiating from my shoulder up my neck to my hair line, and then the rash started. Patches of tiny, painful blisters appeared on my neck and collarbone, only on the left side of my body.

A visit to the clinic confirmed my suspicion: I had shingles. Shingles occurs when the chicken pox virus, which normally lies dormant in the body, re-emerges. It typically occurs in people over the age of 60. That same week I celebrated my 22nd birthday.

After I frightened my friends and co-workers with my ugly rash, they listed people they knew who had gotten shingles. Judging by our conversation, shingles in younger people is surprisingly common, which makes me think that we should stop thinking of shingles as an older person’s disease.

I received medication for the underlying Herpes zoster virus, and the pain and rashes subsided. But I also wondered if there might be a connection between the chicken pox vaccine and shingles. A February 2005 New York Times article suggests just such a connection. There is evidence, the article states, that exposure to children with chicken pox acts as a booster shot for adults, and thus a chicken pox vaccine might increase the adult risk for shingles because they would be exposed to fewer children infected with chicken pox.

I don’t know if these instances of younger-onset shingles have to do with the chicken pox vaccine; I think my case likely had more to do with my weakened immune system. Shingles strikes when the immune system is down from illness and stress; I had been sick with a cold the week before.

For those who are 60 or older and have had chicken pox, a shingles vaccine was approved in 2006. For the rest of us, my advice is to eat well, sleep well, be well. I can promise you, you don’t want shingles.

-Emily Fisher

Bad bugs, good reporting

"As many as 1.2 million hospital patients are infected with dangerous, drug-resistant staph infections each year, almost 10 times more than previous estimates," reported Judith Graham in the Chicago Tribune this weekend. The number is an extrapolation of the rate of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, counted as 34 per 1,000, in a major new study presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology.

The study is based on reports by staff of more than 1,300 hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities of how many patients on a certain day were carriers of MRSA bacteria and how many had MRSA infections. But the news is the big number—how many people altogether—and that was added by Graham, with an assist from expert immunologists who know statistics. She explains how she reached that figure and that estimates are only as good as the basic data.

Reporters often don’t have time to do such math—they pull the numbers out of a study, grab some quotes from the experts who answer the phone and send the story to the editing desk. In this case, the extra time added dimension to the story, and probably drew more readers in.

--Nicky Penttila

Plenty more to debate over stem cells

There was a lot of food for thought (as well as good food) during a daylong session on stem-cell research I attended at the French Embassy on Thursday. We heard reports on current research in the European Union (mostly the U.K. and France) and in the United States in the morning, and on the various regulations, policies and public sentiment in the afternoon. A smaller session today will debate where we should go from here and how to get there.

One topic that hasn't received that much public attention yet is the idea of chimeras, mixing human and other species in one body. While there are some human chimeras now, such as people who have had faulty heart valves replaced with one taken from a cow or pig, the idea of implanting human genetic material into animals or cells of animals drew contrasting reactions even from the scientists at the meeting.

One scientist apologized for coming near that state in his research, which uses non-human cells as a "feeder" base to grow human stem cells. Another said don't apologize for chimeras--researchers will need them as models before they can translate their work directly into humans. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has a limited approval of chimeras for research in its voluntary guidelines; in the U.K., rules on approval are included the regulations up for renewal this year.

"If there's one topic that has yet to fully emerge on the public's plate, it's this one," said Jonathan Moreno, a former co-chairman of the National Academy's committee for stem-cell research guidelines and one of a half-dozen organizers of the sessions (and author of the Dana Press book Mind Wars). When it does, I hope people's first impulse is to understand the issues, then to decide how they stand.

-- Nicky Penttila

Thinking about autism

The New York Times deserves a pat on the head for an op-ed on autism it published Monday. In “A Spectrum of Disputes,” a couple of researchers, Paul T. Shattuck of Washington University and Maureen Durkin of the University of Wisconsin, described how difficult it is to confirm statistically the widespread belief that we are amid an epidemic of autism. They wrote that the available evidence fails to support the claim—not just for but also against an epidemic, and they laid out several illuminating reasons, ranging from changes in diagnostic criteria to improvements in science to the federal mandate that schools identify autistic children for special education. Although the writers’ tone was sympathetic and they declared their results “do not mean we have nothing to worry about,” the Times is sure to receive scolding letters from people who will see the piece as an effort to minimize the urgency of autism.

As an editor, I dread article proposals from freelancers attracted to controversies like the one about vaccines being the cause of autism and book proposals from people with other theories. Almost always, these ideas are described using published science and usually that science is misinterpreted or is only a sliver of truth used as a springboard for a leap into an evidential void. It’s hard rejecting such well-meant and misguided pieces when parents and kids are suffering and serious science has no easy answers for it.

The better news is that autism research is growing fast and attracting terrific investigators from diverse areas of neuroscience. They are looking at all aspects of the disorder—developmental, environmental, neuroimmunological, to mention just a few—and what seems now like a confusing hash of information and speculation will eventually become coherent. Order will come to questions of risk, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and finally statistics.

Meanwhile, we could do worse than heed the last words of Shattuck and Durkin’s article: “We should not have to deliver a verdict on whether there is an epidemic to fulfill these obligations” to children with autism and their families.

-- Jane Nevins

TB is everyone's problem

The continuing story of Andrew Speaker, a U.S. citizen who traveled overseas after he was diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, is another reminder that these deadly diseases, while relatively rare in the United States, are only a shared plane or train ride away from all of us.

"No industrialized nation can ever tell me it's not their problem," said Willem Hanekom, an immunologist working in South Africa, where the current tuberculosis rate is 800 in 100,000 people, including roughly 600 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB each year.

Hanekom, a former Dana grantee, is one of many investigators working under a World Health Organization program promoting research into new vaccines and therapies for all strains of TB. But while new vaccines are the solution, he says, they are a long-term prospect. In the short term, better care and committed public policy can help hold the bacteria at bay. "TB is really treatable," in most cases, he says. "It's a shame people die."

As someone who travels by plane and train for work and for pleasure, I trust that my seatmates are not disease-carriers. And I regret that I watched the movie "Outbreak," which so skillfully illustrated the potentially deadly course of a single sneeze.

-- Nicky Penttila

When Malaria Goes to the Brain

Malaria is a preventable, treatable disease, but it’s far from under control in Africa, where it kills a child every 30 seconds. Until I began working with the author of an upcoming Cerebrum article on cerebral malaria, I wasn’t aware that much of that toll is the result of malaria infiltrating the brain. There it can cause, in the short run, high fever, seizures, even coma, and, if you’re lucky enough to survive, lifelong neurological damage such as blindness, epilepsy and cognitive impairment.

Terrie Taylor, D.O., a Michigan State University researcher based in Malawi who was interviewed for the Cerebrum article, calls cerebral malaria a wily foe. But, with increased attention and funding, research on malaria is flourishing in some unexpected areas, including understanding the interaction of the brain and the immune system.

You’ll have to wait until May to read more about what Taylor and other researchers are discovering. But today, April 25, is Africa Malaria Day 2007, this year’s focus of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, organized by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank. From the Malaria Day Web site, I learned that, in addition to more predictable activities such as a congressional briefing, “American Idol” will feature performances by famous artists along with education about malaria. So, quite literally, “stay tuned.”

-- Cynthia A. Read

A riveting story

One of my more fulfilling assignments at Dana Press was to edit Fatal Sequence, by Kevin Tracey, MD. In it, doctor beco

Kevin Tracey, MD

mes both storyteller and teacher as Tracey shares his emotional account of Janice, an 11-month-old girl who seemed to be recovering from a severe burn injury but then suddenly died. In the process, his readers—including me—learn about severe sepsis and the connection between the brain and the immune system.

More than two decades after her death, Janice continues to inspire Tracey’s groundbreaking discoveries, and now Reader’s Digest has taken notice. The March issue includes an article called “Brain Powered: A wave of new advances shows how the mind affects health in ways we never imagined.” Among the featured findings is “How Your Mind Heals You,” which focuses on Dr. Tracey’s research.

Tracey has shed light on the “inflammatory reflex,” his term for the brain’s connection with the immune system via the vagus nerve. The findings suggest that we may be able to help ourselves fight disease, using only our brains. The Reader’s Digest piece is a concise look at exciting research—and the little girl who inspired it.

-- Dan Gordon

More than two decades after her death, Janice continues to inspire Tracey’s groundbreaking discoveries, and now Reader’s Digest has taken notice. The March issue includes an article called “Brain Powered: A wave of new advances shows how the mind affects health in ways we never imagined.” Among the featured findings is “How Your Mind Heals You,” which focuses on Dr. Tracey’s research.

Tracey has shed light on the “inflammatory reflex,” his term for the brain’s connection with the immune system via the vagus nerve. The findings suggest that we may be able to help ourselves fight disease, using only our brains. The Reader’s Digest piece is a concise look at exciting research—and the little girl who inspired it.

-- Dan Gordon