by William Bigelow 30 Jun 2013, 3:16 AM PDT post a comment
We need a solution that strengthens families. We need a solution that expands economic opportunity. And one of the reasons we need improved border security ? that is not mentioned enough ? is to further prevent violence and drug trafficking? and the brutal human trafficking and exploitation of women and girls.
Speaking at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference, Preibus noted, " It?s important that Republicans are taking a lead in this policy discussion ? We?ve completely reshaped our engagement efforts at the RNC to be more community based. We?re hiring from the community so we can get to know the community?the towns, neighborhoods, and churches.?
Although Priebus acknowledged that he doesn?t make policy decisions, he added, "But I join you in hoping the men and women on Capitol Hill get it right."
GOP conservatives have torched the Senate?s immigration reform proposal for its feeble attempt at border security. Priebus also trumpeted the success of governors in Texas, New Mexico and Nevada in reaching out to the Latino community by offering more school choices. He announced earlier this year that the RNC will spend $10 million to reach minority voters.
Priebus concluded that he wasn?t trying to convert the Latinos attending. He said, ?But I hope that it?s clear that we do want to earn your trust and your vote?and that we can find common ground.?
NEW YORK (AP) ? Police say seven people have been shot at a party in Brooklyn, including a woman taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Authorities say shots rang out at a party at a residence at approximately 1 a.m. Sunday. They say the woman and six other people who sustained non-life-threatening injuries have been transported to Kings County Hospital.
Police say there is no immediate word on the extent of the injuries or the identities of those who were hurt.
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and planned to return to Jerusalem for more talks with the Israelis as he continues his latest round of Mideast diplomacy in an effort to get both sides back to the negotiating table.
Kerry was using Amman as a base for the talks. He drove to Jerusalem Thursday night for a dinner meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that lasted about four hours.
He and his delegation returned to Amman early Friday. Around noon, he drove to a diplomatic area of Amman for a luncheon with Abbas.
"It's good to be back and I look forward to our conversation. We have a lot to talk about, obviously, as you know," Kerry told Abbas.
As reporters and photographers were ushered out of the meeting, Kerry turned to Abbas and said: "We had a good long meeting." It was an apparent reference to his meeting with Netanyahu the night before. "We're going back."
State Department officials have said little about the details of the talks. It was clear from the travel schedule given to the delegation that Kerry was going to go back to Jerusalem, but State Department officials wouldn't confirm the return trip.
It, however, was one of the first things Kerry told Abbas as the two men sat down to talk.
Kerry, who is on a two-week swing through the Mideast and Asia, left Amman on Thursday evening in a convoy of nearly a dozen vehicles for the roughly 90-minute drive to Jerusalem. A Jordanian military helicopter flew over his convoy during the trip, according to a reporter who was allowed to make the trip with Kerry and his delegation.
Netanyahu was about an hour late, apparently telling Kerry that he was delayed because he had been attending a graduation ceremony for Israeli military pilots. They talked mostly one-on-one, but advisers also were present for some of the discussion, which began around 9:30 p.m. local time in a suite at a hotel in Jerusalem and ended around 1:30 a.m. Friday.
The State Department released the dinner menu ? fish ceviche and a main course of red tuna and sea bream over lentils and mushrooms ? but offered no detailed information about their talks. The State Department said only that the two had a "productive, in-depth and wide-ranging conversation" and that Kerry reiterated his commitment to working with all parties to achieve a two-state solution.
There was no readout from the Israelis.
State Department officials say Kerry will continue to try to find common ground between the two sides that would lead to a re-launching of negotiations. On this trip, Kerry is trying to pin down precisely what conditions Abbas and Netanyahu have for resuming talks and perhaps discuss confidence-building measures.
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Weekend Highlights: The Macalope explores the less intelligent side of Apple punditry in Dubious Conclusions; New Apple/Google war comes out of left field, and it's all about gaming as Google said working on Android-based game console possibly in response to rumors Apple is on the same trajectory; Haydn Shaughnessy at Forbes believes Apple could once again claim top spot with QDEF color enhancing display technology which would put LCD tech, including Retina, on par with OLED; former Apple exec, Ken Segall, opines on press-battering of Apple, and how the company is different and not doomed without Steve Jobs; New York Times gives advice to reader concerning reorganizing iTunes 11 library; Macworld OS X Mavericks hands-on tackles new tabs and tagging in Finder; Adobe InDesign CC covered in detail at Macworld; Mactuts+ introduces beginners to Messages on your Macs, iOS devices; Android narrowing gap in app downloads, but iPhone downloads were up 31%; Ace Metrix says Apple's new ads are ineffective with consumers, but it should be noted that Samsung is currently a client of Ace Metrix; largest mobile carrier in Japan thinks Android phones are just as good as iPhone, sees no need to carry Apple's product; Apple Map errors featured as Salvador Dali-esque art; BGR hears word that iOS 7 Beta 3 will be released on 8 July; photograph depicting tray of batteries thought to be for iPhone 5S; PC Magazine has 5 solutions you can try if you are having WiFi issues with your MacBook Air.
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"Apple adds auto-renewable subscriptions for Mac App Store apps in OS X Mavericks"?9 to 5 Mac?6/28
AppleCare/Troubleshooting
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Reviews/How-To/Tips
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"'Contra: Evolution' Review ? It's Evolved Into Something, Alright"?Touch Arcade?6/28
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"iPro.DJSampler Review: iPro.DJSampler is a nice sample player for iOS, but you won't get much out of it until you start using add-on packs."?148Apps?6/28
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"WSJ: Apple signs iOS device chip deal with TSMC, decreasing dependence on Samsung"?iDownload Blog?6/28
"Apple Is Finally Going to Ditch Samsung's Chips"?Gizmodo?6/28
"WSJ: Apple struck deal this month with TSMC for iOS device chip production, beginning in 2014"?9 to 5 Mac?6/28
"Microsoft And Apple Actually Don't Loathe Each Other, And Here Are Examples Of Them Working Together"?Business Insider?6/28
"Apple Should Be Ashamed of Itself"?TheStreet?6/28
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"Connect the Dots from Apple's Rainbow Logo and iOS 7's Color Scheme"?The Mac Observer?6/28
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"An iWatch? An Apple Videogame system? Google is afraid they might happen"?AppleDailyReport?6/28
"Apple Death Watch Continues"?TheStreet?6/28
"Apple Death Knell No. 62"?Fortune?6/28
"How Your Favorite iOS Apps Might Look Once iOS 7 Is Released"?AppAdvice?6/28
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"Apple's New Friend Is Google's 2nd Worst Enemy"?Mac 360?6/28
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"Digital Thievery: Is Apple Stealing From Competitors?"?PixoBebo?6/28
Non-Apple
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"The ARM Diaries, Part 1: How ARM's Business Model Works"?AnandTech?6/28
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Humor/Cartoons
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"The perfect gift for the pistol-packing 'Merkin: a handgun iPhone case/'Is that an iPhone in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?'"?The Register?6/28
"Coming June 29: Gene Steinberg meets Jim Dalrymple, of The Loop, Bob 'Dr. Mac' LeVitus, Gabriel Weinberg, of DuckDuckGo.com, and tech columnist Rob Pegoraro, this week on The Tech Night Owl LIVE!"?The Tech Night Owl LIVE?6/28
"'PatternUnlock' brings Android inspired security to iOS"?iDownload Blog?6/28
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Edith Windsor has a big tax refund coming, and other LGBT married couples have won a victory for their relationships with the recent SCOTUS rulings in US v Windsor and Hollingsworth v Perry. But lots of questions remain in the wake of the demise of DOMA.
For example, if you?re a college student applying for financial aid, you are required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which functions as a standardized form to determine how much a student should be required to contribute to their college education, how much their family should contribute, how much their parents should contribute, and to what extent the student might qualify for federal financial aid programs. It also is used by individual school to assess a student?s qualifications for various state, local, and institutional aid programs.
Under DOMA, if you were in a same-sex marriage, or your parents were a same-sex married couple, you were told to fill out this form as if you and/or your parents were single. Now, though, US v Windsor means that it does not matter to the federal government whether you (or your parents) are in a same-sex marriage or an opposite-sex marriage ? you fill out the form to reflect the marriage license you (they) have.
But what happens if you are going to school in a state that prohibits recognition of same-sex marriages? What if the laws say something like ?not one penny of state funds shall be spent in any way that would imply recognition of such marriages?? You know, a state like Brownbackistan Kansas:
Kansas State Constitution
Article 15: Other Matters
Section 16: Marriage.
(a) The marriage contract is to be considered in law as a civil contract. Marriage shall be constituted by one man and one woman only. All other marriages are declared to be contrary to the public policy of this state and are void.
(b) No relationship, other than a marriage, shall be recognized by the state as entitling the parties to the rights or incidents of marriage.
The author of this constitutional provision was Tim Huelskamp, who now sits in Congress as the US Representative from the western two-thirds of Kansas, and he?s already proclaiming that Windsor does not trump his work as far as Kansas is concerned ? and that?s the kicker in the world in which US v Windsor replaces DOMA as federal law. Going back to the financial aid example, while the University of Kansas cannot force the federal government to use DOMA to decide what federal aid programs you do and do not qualify for, the university is also prohibited from treating same-sex marriages equally when it comes to state and institutional aid programs by the state constitution.
How individual financial aid officers will react to this mess is up to them, but with a reactionary state legislature and governor looking over their shoulders (and with them already being on record as not being happy with the state universities as a matter of general principles), KU, Kansas State, and other state colleges and universities will likely be hamstrung by the fact that Kansas has chosen to enshrine discrimination in their state constitution and SCOTUS declined to address that matter. No consideration of your marriage when it comes to state-based financial aid for you!
And it?s not just financial aid. Let?s go over to the university housing office.
Student: I?d like married student housing, please. Here?s a copy of my marriage license.
Housing Office staff: OK. *pause* Oh. *pause* I see your marriage license comes from Iowa, and you are a same-sex couple. *pause* I?m sorry, but according to the state constitution, we can?t give you married student housing.
Or go over to the university health service. You can get in the door, but not your spouse. Maybe you and your spouse have a child ? but if your spouse was the biological parent and not you, your child can?t go to the university health service either.
Or go to the parking office. The nice person behind the counter politely informs you that you can get a parking sticker for your car, but if your name isn?t on the car?s title, you can?t get one for your spouse?s car. For that matter, if your name isn?t on the title for the car you drive, you can?t get a parking sticker for that car either.
Or go to your academic department?s main office. You pick up the ?beginning of the school year? packet of information, and notice an invitation to a? ?welcome/welcome back? departmental picnic. ?Families welcome!? says the flyer, but after your experience at the financial aid office, the housing office, and the parking office, do you really think that state money will be allowed to be spent on food and beverages for your spouse and child? If you have an enlightened department chair, you and your family might be welcomed anyway, but if they want to be jerks about it, they?ll give you the same answer you got elsewhere on campus: your family still doesn?t count as a real family.
And according to the Kansas State Constitution, Article 15, Section 16, they?d be right. They?d be bigoted, discriminatory, and outrageously inhospitable, but they?d be legally right. Section 16 says that you, your spouse, and your child get no ?rights or incidents? of marriage if your marriage doesn?t fit their discriminatory definition. No state financial aid, no married student housing, no parking permits, and no brats and beer at the departmental party. If being married is a requirement for something provided with state funds, your spouse and family is still screwed.
Anthony Kennedy?s words in the majority opinion in Windsor (p. 25 of the opinion) are powerful:
What has been explained to this point should more than suffice to establish that the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage. This requires the Court to hold, as it now does, that DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
If DOMA at the federal level is unconstitutional because its demeaning purpose and effects violate the Fifth Amendment, the same can be said of Article 15, Section 16 of the Kansas State Constitution. The purpose in adopting it was plain, and remains plain as Rep. Huelskamp so eloquently demonstrates, and yet SCOTUS decided they?d done enough before going on their summer break, and declined to extend their legal logic to its logical conclusion by striking down similar state constitutional and legal provisions. Given that SCOTUS also just acted to decline to take cases challenging these non-federal laws, this is a feature, not a bug. As Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog noted,
The Court denied review Thursday in a total of ten pending cases that dealt with same-sex marriage.? Eight of those cases involved the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act?s Section 3?? the provision on access to federal benefits?that the Justices struck down on Wednesday. . . [Two of the others] went beyond the DOMA controversy, and involved state laws on same-sex marriage.?? The Court?s?refusal to hear those cases?could?be interpreted as a signal that it is not ready to move on to the core constitutional question over whether gays and lesbians have a right to be treated equally in access to marriage itself, or to public?benefits that go with marriage.
Don?t get me wrong ? I?m happy that Edith Windsor is going to get a big tax refund, with interest. I?m happy that in a growing number of states, marriage equality is true at both the federal and state level. I?m happy that federal employees in same-sex marriages are getting a fair shake on their federal employment benefits. But for anyone who isn?t in one of those states, you?re still a long way from equal ? even if you work for a gay-friendly company or the federal government. Lots and lots of questions remain, and sorting out the answers will be sticky indeed.
In a week when SCOTUS badly damaged the Voting Rights Act and took aim at affirmative action, Windsor and Perry stand as lonely signs of hope. Yes, there was progress made, but not enough ? not nearly enough.
There?s still a lot of work to do. Just ask LGBT sort-of-but-not-really-married students at places like the University of Kansas.
____
Photo by Jamison Wieser and used under Creative Commons generic license.
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BOSTON (AP) ? The founder of the rock band Boston has been ordered to pay a newspaper $132,000 for the court costs it incurred in successfully defending itself against his defamation lawsuit.
Musician Tom Scholz claimed the Boston Herald and two reporters blamed him for the 2007 suicide of lead singer Brad Delp. A Superior Court judge dismissed his lawsuit in March, saying it was impossible to know why Delp killed himself.
Scholz's attorneys argued he shouldn't have to pay court costs. The judge said court rules require it and such costs could have a chilling effect on "free expression of ideas and opinions by media defendants."
Herald publisher Pat Purcell said Friday the decision is a reminder of "the harmful impact" such lawsuits can have.
Boston peaked in the 1970s and '80s with hits such as "More Than a Feeling."
June 27, 2013 ? A single dose of a commonly-prescribed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug helps improve brain function in cocaine addiction, according to an imaging study conducted by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Methylphenidate (brand name Ritalin?) modified connectivity in certain brain circuits that underlie self-control and craving among cocaine-addicted individuals.
The research is published in the current issue of JAMA Psychiatry, a JAMA network publication.
Previous research has shown that oral methylphenidate improved brain function in cocaine users performing specific cognitive tasks such as ignoring emotionally distracting words and resolving a cognitive conflict. Similar to cocaine, methylphenidate increases dopamine (and norepinephrine) activity in the brain, but, administered orally, takes longer to reach peak effect, consistent with a lower potential for abuse. By extending dopamine's action, the drug enhances signaling to improve several cognitive functions, including information processing and attention.
"Orally administered methylphenidate increases dopamine in the brain, similar to cocaine, but without the strong addictive properties," said Rita Goldstein, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai, who led the research while at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in New York. "We wanted to determine whether such substitutive properties, which are helpful in other replacement therapies such as using nicotine gum instead of smoking cigarettes or methadone instead of heroin, would play a role in enhancing brain connectivity between regions of potential importance for intervention in cocaine addiction."
Anna Konova, a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University, who was first author on this manuscript, added, "Using fMRI, we found that methylphenidate did indeed have a beneficial impact on the connectivity between several brain centers associated with addiction."
Dr. Goldstein and her team recruited 18 cocaine addicted individuals, who were randomized to receive an oral dose of methylphenidate or placebo. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the strength of connectivity in particular brain circuits known to play a role in addiction before and during peak drug effects. They also assessed each subject's severity of addiction to see if this had any bearing on the results.
Methylphenidate decreased connectivity between areas of the brain that have been strongly implicated in the formation of habits, including compulsive drug seeking and craving. The scans also showed that methylphenidate strengthened connectivity between several brain regions involved in regulating emotions and exerting control over behaviors -- connections previously reported to be disrupted in cocaine addiction.
"The benefits of methylphenidate were present after only one dose, indicating that this drug has significant potential as a treatment add-on for addiction to cocaine and possibly other stimulants," said Dr. Goldstein. "This is a preliminary study, but the findings are exciting and warrant further exploration, particularly in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy or cognitive remediation."
Additional co-authors included Nora D. Volkow, MD, the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; Dardo Tomasi, the MR director at BNL; and Scott J. Moeller, PhD a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry at Mount Sinai.
This research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (grants 1R01DA023579 and 1F32DA030017-01) and the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, divisions of the National Institutes of Health.
Another week, another grouping of markets getting or expanding their AT&T LTE network footprint. Each time we get a new set of cities they seem to be smaller and smaller, indicating that AT&T has covered many of the largest markets and is working to fill out its complete nationwide network. Users in the following cities with LTE-enabled devices and the correct plan provisioning should see the network available now:
Don't expect these announcements to slow down any time soon, though. AT&T still has a lot of ground to cover, and they're going to be sure to let us know what the progress is.
Triple-negative breast cancer has been defined by what it is not, but Dr. Jennifer Pietenpol and her team has identified six different subtypes of the disease.
Over the last decade, oncologist Jennifer Pietenpol has been trying to decode and kill a difficult-to-treat type of breast cancer. Known as triple-negative breast cancer, this form of the disease can be highly aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy.
The cancer, which accounts for 10 to 20 percent of all breast cancers in the United States, is also a deadly genetic riddle that doctors find easiest to describe in terms of what it is not. ?Between 75 to 85 percent of breast cancers express one of three clear targets for therapy,? says Pietenpol, who runs the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn. ?But with triple-negative cancer, there is nothing to attack and patients go into a standard of care that involves combinations of chemotherapy that have been determined by experiment. We felt that in this era of precision medicine, we should get a better handle on the treatment.?
Pietenpol and her team have collected and analyzed more than 600 cases of triple-negative breast cancer so far, and their results have defined six biological subtypes of the disease. This breakthrough could help scientists apply existing drugs and procedures to attack the cancer, develop new ones, and map out treatment.
Last year, GE?s Healthymagination Challenge, an open innovation quest that seeks to find and fund the best new ideas in breast cancer detection and treatment, gave Pietenpol?s team $100,000 to finance more science. ?We are beginning to get that molecular information from an individual patient?s tumor,? she says. ?This is helping us guide therapy and align it with patients. Every bit of additional funding helps to accelerate this further.?
Doctors divide breast cancer into four groups, based on what is driving tumor growth. The vast majority of breast cancers use the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor or the HER2 pathway for growth. ?When we see this, we can apply existing therapy, like Tamoxifen,? Pietenpol says.
Her research group and other teams are now looking for similar tools and targets to destroy the fourth type of breast cancer, triple-negative cancer. ?Our task is to understand how these tumor cells grow, find their Achilles? heel, and how we can hit it,? she says.
Pietenpol starts by looking at the different pathways the tumor cells appear to use to signal growth, pairs that information with genetic data about how the cells mutate and then tests the hypotheses in her lab. ?In cancer, we want to move to predictive oncology where we can use molecular information to better guide treatment,? she says.
Pietenpol?s team has already pinned six unique targets to triple-negative cancer?s back. One of them, an androgen receptor, could expose as many as 10 percent of triple-negative cancer cases to attack. But additional targets will likely be smaller. ?As we go more into precision medicine, the fraction of people with any given molecular subtype will get smaller and smaller,? she says. ?This is where we are going, using much more precision therapy where no two tumors are going to be alike.?
Pietenpol?s team has started designing clinical trials for each of the six subtypes. She says that ?androgen-receptor antagonists? used for treating prostate cancer could be effective against the androgen receptor subset her team discovered. ?We are continuing to accelerate this, but we have a lot of work to do,? she says. ?We?ve just begun to uncover these lower hanging fruits.?
Influenza infection increases likelihood of bacterial pneumonia 100-fold, U-Michigan-led study findsPublic release date: 26-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Erickson ericksn@umich.edu 734-647-1842 University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR It's been known for more than two centuries that pneumonia cases increase during flu epidemics.
But population-level epidemiological studies looking at seasonal patterns of influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia incidence have revealed either a modest association or have failed to identify any signature of interaction between the two.
These seemingly inconsistent observations at the personal and population scales have puzzled public health officials. Now a team of University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues have used a novel approach that they say resolves the dichotomy and shows that influenza infection increases susceptibility to pneumococcus, the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia, by about 100-fold.
An accurate characterization of the influenza-pneumococcal interaction can lead to more effective clinical care and public health measures, including influenza pandemic preparedness, according to the authors.
"The results concerning the nature of the interaction between influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia were unequivocal in our study," said U-M population ecologist and epidemiologist Pejman Rohani, senior author of a paper scheduled for online publication in Science Translational Medicine on June 26. "Simply put, our analyses identified a short-lived but significant about 100-fold increase in the risk of pneumococcal pneumonia following influenza infection."
Rohani and his colleagues created a computer model of pneumococcal pneumonia transmission that analyzed various hypotheses about the potential effects of a prior influenza infection. By challenging the model with hard data from epidemiological reports weekly records of influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia hospitalizations in Illinois between 1989 and 2009 they were able to rank the likelihood of each hypothesis.
The clear winner was the susceptibility impact hypothesis, which proposed that individuals infected with influenza are more susceptible to pneumococcal pneumonia. The increased susceptibility to pneumonia lasts for up to a week after infection by influenza.
The researchers also looked at the fraction of pneumonia cases that could be attributed to interaction with influenza. They found that during the peak of flu season, interaction with the influenza virus accounted for up to 40 percent of pneumococcal cases. But on an annualized basis, the fraction was between 2 percent and 10 percent of cases, a relatively subtle signature that could help explain why previous epidemiological analyses failed to detect the connection, Rohani and his colleagues concluded.
"We infer modest population-level impacts arising from strong processes at the level of the individual, thereby resolving the dichotomy in seemingly inconsistent observations across scales," they wrote.
Rohani said the results suggest that the best way to reduce the incidence of bacterial pneumonia is to encourage the public to receive both pneumococcal and influenza vaccinations.
Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs that is usually caused by bacteria or viruses. Globally, pneumonia causes more deaths than any other infectious disease. In 2009, 1.1 million people in the United States were hospitalized with pneumonia, and more than 50,000 people died from the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1918, at least 24 percent of those killed during the Spanish influenza pandemic showed signs of a bacterial pneumonia infection.
In the United States, the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia is pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumonia), and the most common viral causes are influenza, parainfluenza, and respiratory syncytial viruses, according to CDC.
###
Rohani is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, a professor of complex systems and a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health. The first author of the Science Translational Medicine paper is Sourya Shrestha, a postdoctoral fellow in Rohani's laboratory.
The other authors are Betsy Foxman of the U-M School of Public Health, Daniel M. Weinberger of the Yale University School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health, Claudia Steiner of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Cecile Viboud of the National Institutes of Health.
Funding was provided by the Vaccine Modeling Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Fogarty International Center and the National Institutes of Health.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Influenza infection increases likelihood of bacterial pneumonia 100-fold, U-Michigan-led study findsPublic release date: 26-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Erickson ericksn@umich.edu 734-647-1842 University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR It's been known for more than two centuries that pneumonia cases increase during flu epidemics.
But population-level epidemiological studies looking at seasonal patterns of influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia incidence have revealed either a modest association or have failed to identify any signature of interaction between the two.
These seemingly inconsistent observations at the personal and population scales have puzzled public health officials. Now a team of University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues have used a novel approach that they say resolves the dichotomy and shows that influenza infection increases susceptibility to pneumococcus, the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia, by about 100-fold.
An accurate characterization of the influenza-pneumococcal interaction can lead to more effective clinical care and public health measures, including influenza pandemic preparedness, according to the authors.
"The results concerning the nature of the interaction between influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia were unequivocal in our study," said U-M population ecologist and epidemiologist Pejman Rohani, senior author of a paper scheduled for online publication in Science Translational Medicine on June 26. "Simply put, our analyses identified a short-lived but significant about 100-fold increase in the risk of pneumococcal pneumonia following influenza infection."
Rohani and his colleagues created a computer model of pneumococcal pneumonia transmission that analyzed various hypotheses about the potential effects of a prior influenza infection. By challenging the model with hard data from epidemiological reports weekly records of influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia hospitalizations in Illinois between 1989 and 2009 they were able to rank the likelihood of each hypothesis.
The clear winner was the susceptibility impact hypothesis, which proposed that individuals infected with influenza are more susceptible to pneumococcal pneumonia. The increased susceptibility to pneumonia lasts for up to a week after infection by influenza.
The researchers also looked at the fraction of pneumonia cases that could be attributed to interaction with influenza. They found that during the peak of flu season, interaction with the influenza virus accounted for up to 40 percent of pneumococcal cases. But on an annualized basis, the fraction was between 2 percent and 10 percent of cases, a relatively subtle signature that could help explain why previous epidemiological analyses failed to detect the connection, Rohani and his colleagues concluded.
"We infer modest population-level impacts arising from strong processes at the level of the individual, thereby resolving the dichotomy in seemingly inconsistent observations across scales," they wrote.
Rohani said the results suggest that the best way to reduce the incidence of bacterial pneumonia is to encourage the public to receive both pneumococcal and influenza vaccinations.
Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs that is usually caused by bacteria or viruses. Globally, pneumonia causes more deaths than any other infectious disease. In 2009, 1.1 million people in the United States were hospitalized with pneumonia, and more than 50,000 people died from the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1918, at least 24 percent of those killed during the Spanish influenza pandemic showed signs of a bacterial pneumonia infection.
In the United States, the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia is pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumonia), and the most common viral causes are influenza, parainfluenza, and respiratory syncytial viruses, according to CDC.
###
Rohani is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, a professor of complex systems and a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health. The first author of the Science Translational Medicine paper is Sourya Shrestha, a postdoctoral fellow in Rohani's laboratory.
The other authors are Betsy Foxman of the U-M School of Public Health, Daniel M. Weinberger of the Yale University School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health, Claudia Steiner of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Cecile Viboud of the National Institutes of Health.
Funding was provided by the Vaccine Modeling Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Fogarty International Center and the National Institutes of Health.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
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