(The Verge) Conservationists fear that horseshoe crabs, a 450-million-year-old living fossil, will be pushed to the brink of extinction because of the value of their blood to the pharmaceutical industry. Horseshoe crab blood provides a natural source of limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) which is used to test vaccines, drugs, and medical devices to ensure that they aren’t contaminated with dangerous bacterial toxins called endotoxins. With hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs captured and bled of their milky-blue blood each year, conservation groups are now stepping up their advocacy efforts and taking legal action to help save horseshoe crabs and the other species that rely on them.
Fortunately, there’s already an alternative to horseshoe crab blood: in the late 1990s, biologists at the University of Singapore created a synthetic version of the LAL called recombinant Factor C (rFC). Multiple studies show that rFC is just as effective as horseshoe crab-derived LAL, and it is currently commercially available.
Some 60 countries have approved rFC for use, including the EU countries and China. But in the US, conservationists were dealt a setback last year when Maryland-based US Pharmacopeia (USP), an organization that sets guidelines for the pharmaceutical industry, decided it needed to see more data before it would put rFC on equal footing with LAL. Companies can still opt to use rFC as a substitute for LAL (Eli Lilly already does) — but only if they go through additional bureaucratic processes first. Many environmentalists see the lack of approval by USP as short-sighted and unwise.
Check your packaged salads: CDC warns of 2 listeria outbreaks
Source: AP
U.S. health officials are warning the public not to eat certain brands of packaged salads, which they say are linked to two small, long-running listeria outbreaks in which three people died.
One outbreak is linked to packaged salads produced by Fresh Express and another has been tied to packaged salads produced by Dole. The outbreaks are caused by different strains of listeria bacteria and there’s no known link between them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
In the outbreak linked to Fresh Express, ten people in eight states were identified in the outbreak between 2016 and late October of this year. All were hospitalized and one person, in Pennsylvania, died.
This week, Fresh Express recalled many brands of packaged salad products with product codes Z324 through Z350. The CDC is telling people not to eat, sell, or serve any recalled products.
More than 28,000 pounds of ground beef recalled in seven states over E. coli concerns
Source: The Hill
More than 28,000 pounds of ground beef products are being recalled in seven states due to possible E. coli contamination, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) announced.
Oregon-based Interstate Meat Dist. Inc decided to pull approximately 28,356 pounds of products produced on Dec. 20 after a retail package of ground beef was purchased and submitted to a third-party laboratory for microbiological analysis and tested positive for E. coli.
“FSIS conducted an assessment of the third-party laboratory’s accreditation and methodologies and determined the results were actionable,” the agency said.
The raw, ground beef items were sold by Albertsons, Kroger, Walmart and WinCo under store brand labels and were shipped to retail locations in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The products subject to recall bear the establishment number “EST.965” inside the USDA mark of inspection or printed next to the time stamp and use or freeze by date.
(The Logical Indian) Researchers from China's Wuhan, where the first COVID-19 virus was discovered in 2019, have again sent a warning regarding a new type of virus called the "NeoCov" in South Africa. As per the scientists, NeoCov has a much higher transmission and death rate than sell. However, this NeoCov COVID virus isn't a new one.
The MERS-CoV virus was first discovered during an outbreak in the Middle Eastern nations in 2012 and 2015 and had similar identities to the SARS-CoV-2, which causes coronavirus in human beings, reported News18.
While this NeoCoV virus was found in a bat population in South Africa and has solely been understood to spread among these creatures, a new study released as a preprint on the bioRxiv website found that NeoCoV and its close relative PDF-2180-CoV can now also infect humans.
What Is The NeoCov Virus?
As per the researchers from Wuhan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biophysics, just one mutation is needed for the virus to penetrate human cells. The research findings also revealed that COVID-19 is a risk as it binds to the ACE2 receptor differently from the COVID pathogen. Due to this, neither protein molecules nor antibodies produced by humans with respiratory diseases nor who have been immunised can protect themselves against this NeoCoV virus.
The Chinese researchers also added that the NeoCoV harbours the possible assortment of MERS-high CoV's mortality rate (one in every three infected individuals dies) and the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus's high rate of transmission.
caltrek wrote: ↑Fri Jan 28, 2022 3:55 pmWuhan Scientists Warn About New COVID 'NeoCov' Virus with High Infection and High Death Rate by Snehadri Sarkar
January 28, 2022
How about we call it for what it really is, the Nightmare Virus.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
...
While this NeoCoV virus was found in a bat population in South Africa and has solely been understood to spread among these creatures, a new study released as a preprint on the bioRxiv website found that NeoCoV and its close relative PDF-2180-CoV can now also infect humans.
... just one mutation is needed for the virus to penetrate human cells...
well which is it?
Has it been found to infect people or not?
Is it out in the population or not?
Is it a new strain or not?
@Ken: I believe it's modelling done on the virus which shows how it could become transmissible in humans. This is important when it comes to creating a universal coronavirus and which antibodies are needed to do this. It is very closely related to MERS which has a 30% death rate in humans, but doesn't yet infect them but is potentially only 1 mutation off being able to do so...
I suppose I should apologize for editing choices that did not make it clear that the virus "is just one mutation away." Trying to keep within the no more than five paragraph and 375-word limit rule does have its drawbacks, although I still could have made a different editorial choice that would have included that important point.
Researchers in the Netherlands have discovered a "highly virulent variant" of HIV that causes a more rapid decline in immune system strength and can result in more damaging health outcomes if not treated early.
The study found that patients infected with the variant of subtype-B HIV-1, dubbed the VB variant, showed "significant" differences before antiretroviral treatment compared with individuals infected with other HIV variants.
Malawi finds Africa's first wild polio case in five years
Source: BBC News
Malawi has declared a wild polio outbreak after a case was identified in a three-year-old girl - the first of its kind in Africa for more than five years.
The continent was declared free of all forms of wild polio in 2020.
The Malawian authorities are now working to contain any possible spread including by boosting immunisation.
Wild polio remains endemic in only two countries in the world - Afghanistan and Pakistan.
(EurekAlert) The world has relied on adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as ventilation, mask-wearing and physical distancing, to keep us safe throughout the ongoing pandemic. With vaccines completing the toolbox, these measures and the accompanying public health messaging continue to play an important role.
Now a new study has shown that it is possible to test the effectiveness of interventions designed to foster safer behaviour in order to slow the spread of a virus.
The study, led by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany, with collaborators at the University of Plymouth, UK, and the IESE Business School, Spain, found that the most effective approach was a message that directly appealed to the public, contained moral reason, and was clear and consistent.
The research, published in Science Advances, asked seven groups of 100 people each in a cross section of the US population to take part in games designed to emulate virus transmission.
