Tag: diseases

Autism – anecdotal evidence and possible link to gastrointestinal infection

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Research on the causes of autism is still at the stage where many etiologies seem possible. Althought a genetic link is likely, it may play a role of predisposition to another factor rather than being the only necessary and sufficient cause of autism.

One such connection being explored is the role of gastrointestinal infections in promoting autistic type behaviors.

This blog entry written by an occupational therapist refers to improvement in a young patient’s autistic type behaviors after she was treated for a Clostridium Bacteria infection.

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Why you should be afraid of catching the Flu

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Having recently recovered from a bad case of the flu, I got to wondering why they can’t just make a vaccine to take care of it once and for all, like the measles?

It turns out the flu virus is unique in its ability to mutate and adapt, making it impossible to use a single vaccine to combat it. The situation is complicated by the fact that animals, both wild and domestic, are a sort of “mixing bowl” in which new strains of the virus are created.

The variation in the virulence of the flu is apparently due to the varying degrees to which our immune system recognizes the two types of proteins on the surface of the virus -hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).

The virus strain is said to undergo “drift” when there are minor changes in the two proteins. This is what happens most years. But sometimes it undergoes a more major change, called “shift,” which is due to reassortment of the viral genes, often when it is mixed with another strain in animals. This is a really bad thing because it means humans will have no antibodies that recognize the new strain, and so no immunity to it.

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