Mostly Microbes and Infection

  As omicron -specific boosters near, scientists debate how ‘original antigenic sin’ will influence immune responses.

  How scientists, public health experts & plumbers are embracing wastewater surveillance as the future of disease tracking.  

  Natural and human-made disasters can cause tremendous physical damage, societal change, and suffering. In addition to their effects on people, disasters have been shown to alter the microbial population in the area affected. Alterations for microbial populations can lead to new ecological interactions, with additional potentially adverse consequences for many species, including humans. Disaster-related stressors can be powerful forces for microbial selection. Studying microbial adaptation in disaster sites can reveal new biological processes, including mechanisms by which some microbes could become pathogenic and others could become beneficial (e.g., used for bioremediation).

  Just 10 months after the initial genome sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, two mRNA vaccines were demonstrated to provide 95% efficacy against symptomatic infections via randomized, placebo-controlled trials of more than 74,000 participants ( 1 ). That unprecedented success was, in part, fueled by the $10 billion governmental investment in Operation Warp Speed (OWS) in March 2020 to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. We urgently need such an accelerated initiative now for nasal vaccines. During the first year of the pandemic, meaningful evolution of the virus was slow-paced, without any functional consequences, but since that time we have seen a succession of important variants of concern, with increasing transmissibility and immune evasion, culminating in the Omicron lineages. With that, there has been a dramatic falloff in the capacity for vaccinations and booster shots to block infections and transmission ( 2 ). A major unmet cli...

  Stress & aging of the immune system. As people age, their immune systems naturally begin to decline. But not all immune systems age at the same rate. A recent study found that social stress is associated with signs of accelerated immunosenescence .

  Boswellia  trees, found throughout the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, are the source of frankincense oil. Since antiquity, frankincense has been traded as a precious commodity, but it has also been used for the treatment of chronic disease, inflammation, oral health, and microbial infection.  

  Lung samples housed in archives yield 3 genomes for the influenza A virus that caused 1918 global pandemic. The sequences reveal mutations that might have triggered the pandemic’s devastating 2nd wave.