It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Are shared medical appointments the key to solving global healthcare shortages?
This research was conducted by Nazlı Sönmez, ESMT Berlin; Kavitha Srinivasan and Rengaraj Venkatesh, Aravind Eye Hospital (India); Ryan W. Buell, Harvard Business School; and Kamalini Ramdas, London Business School. The researchers wanted to understand the impact of shared medical appointments on patient experience (knowledge gained and satisfaction) and behavior (follow-up rates and medication compliance rates).
In shared medical appointments (SMAs), patients with the same medical condition meet with the physician in a group, with each patient receiving attention in turn. The physician shares information customized to a patient’s specific needs as well as standardized information relevant to other patients with the same condition.
SMAs have been touted as a potentially effective way to meet healthcare demand worldwide, especially in countries facing significant strain on their healthcare systems. However, the limited adoption of SMAs in the healthcare sector can be attributed to patient concerns regarding loss of privacy, which may impede open discussion of sensitive medical issues and dampen learning, satisfaction, and engagement. This new research shows that SMAs significantly improved patient satisfaction, learning, and medication compliance, with no compromise of patient follow-up rates or measured clinical outcomes.
The researchers conducted a large-scale randomized controlled trial at the Aravind Eye Hospital in India. India has almost a fifth of the world’s population but spends only 1.1 percent of GDP on health and faces a dire shortage of healthcare capacity. One thousand patients with primary glaucoma were randomly assigned to either attend one-on-one appointments or SMAs with five total patients in four successive routine follow-up visits scheduled four months apart.
At the end of each appointment, patients were surveyed to assess their satisfaction with the appointment, their knowledge about glaucoma, and their intention to return for a follow-up appointment. Patients were also tracked for their medication compliance rates.
“The demand for healthcare worldwide is soaring and exceeds supply,” says Sönmez. “In underdeveloped countries, especially, the patient-to-doctor ratio is staggering, and patients face high barriers to receiving care. We must use innovative solutions, like shared medical appointments, to meet this demand. Failure to do so would deprive a huge number of people of their fundamental human right to healthcare access.”
According to the researchers, SMAs could expand access to public healthcare, lower costs for private care, and significantly improve medical outcomes for various conditions, particularly for Type 2 diabetes, in both primary and secondary care settings. The innovative utilization of SMAs could ensure that more patients receive access to healthcare faster, facilitating healthcare for all.
This research was published in the journal PLOS Global Public Health. The full research paper can be accessed via this link.
Evidence from the first Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs) randomised controlled trial in India: SMAs increase the satisfaction, knowledge, and medication compliance of patients with glaucoma
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
20-Jul-2023
Male crickets court females in unison – unless rivals get too close
Male crickets sing in unison to attract females – but stop singing if a rival gets too close, new research shows.
University of Exeter scientists watched more than 100 male field crickets, and measured how often they chirped at the same time (called “singing overlap”).
Singing by males one to five metres away from a listening male had a “stimulatory effect”, leading to a chorus of crickets singing together.
However, males were less likely to sing if another cricket chirped within one metre – possibly because the territorial insects instead chose to fight these space-invading rivals.
“Courtship displays are common in nature, but we know surprisingly little about how animals tactically adjust these in response to their environment,” said Joe Wilde, a PhD student at Exeter’s Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour.
“For crickets, singing is an energy-intensive activity, and males have to decide when to chirp and when to stay silent.
“Our results reveal show that singing by other males has an impact on this decision-making process.”
Wilde added: “We can’t say for certain why the males tend to sing together, but a likely explanation is that females are drawn to areas with multiple males calling.
“By ‘chorusing’ in this way, the males all benefit.
“We also can’t be sure why males sing less when others chirp within one metre, but it’s likely that they choose to fight rivals that get too close to their burrow.”
The researchers used data from the WildCrickets project, which continuously monitors field crickets (Gryllus campestris) in a meadow in northern Spain via CCTV cameras.
The study used over a million scan samples of 129 males over 51 days to explore how the singing and proximity of other males influenced male singing behaviour.
The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is a rapid-onset, life-threatening disease associated with strains of Staphylococcus aureus.
New findings published in Microbiology Spectrum suggest that a probiotic combination could reduce incidence of TSS.
In lab experiments, the probiotics reduced production of the superantigen that causes TSS.
The researchers say a probiotic approach may also help people who suffer from other staph infections, including those with atopic dermatitis or type 2 diabetes.
Washington, D.C. – The widespread, pathogenic microbe Staphylococcus aureus can colonize the skin and mucous membranes throughout the body, particularly the vagina and gastrointestinal tract. A virulent strain of the bacterium produces proteins that trigger toxic shock syndrome (TSS), a disease characterized by the quick onset of fever, a telltale rash, and, without treatment, multi organ failure. In the vagina, TSS is associated with a life-threatening reaction from the immune system.
Probiotics may help prevent the disease before the cytokine cascade ever begins. A study published in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal Microbiology Spectrum reports that strains of 2 bacteria, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus, successfully inhibited the production of the superantigens that cause TSS, in lab experiments. L. acidophilus, in addition, inhibited the growth of the S. aureus strains that produce the problematic proteins.
A combination of the 2 could both prevent growth and inhibit the immune response. “It’s kind of a double whammy against S. aureus,” said microbiologist Patrick Schlievert, Ph.D., at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, in Iowa City. “If any toxin is made, the probiotics still prevent inflammation.”
He noted that adding these probiotics to tampons or other menstrual products could reduce the risk — and global incidence — of TSS associated with menstruation. Such a preventive measure has the potential to benefit millions of vulnerable people, Schlievert said. “We know that 20% of people over age 12 cannot make antibodies and never will make antibodies against toxic shock syndrome,” he said.
Schlievert has been studying TSS—and its prevention—for decades. In the early 1980s, he was the first researcher to identify the toxin that triggers an overreaction of the immune system, and to show how high-absorbency tampons facilitated production of that toxin if S. aureus was present.
The new work, he said, was motivated by observations made during an earlier study. A few years ago, he and his colleagues recruited 205 women to test whether a novel molecular mixture, when added to tampons, would inhibit pathogenic bacteria. That molecule proved effective against E. coli and other pathogens, but the researchers noticed an unexpected consequence.
“Some of the women in the treatment group had this tremendous growth of Lactobacilli,” Schlievert said.
Further studies revealed that 9 of those women were colonized with only L. crispatus and no other bacteria. In microbiology research, Schlievert said, colonization by a single bacterium is often regarded as unhealthy. In this case, however, it offered an effective action against pathogenic S. aureus.
Lactobacillus bacteria have already been shown to be safe, Schlievert said, and the new work suggests that treatment with L. crispatus alone, or L. acidophilus and L. rhamnosus in combination, could dramatically reduce the risk of TSS in vulnerable populations. Strains of S. aureus can also cause enterocolitis, a life-threatening immune response in the gut. Probiotics may also help reduce the production of dangerous proteins for that disease, said Schlievert.
In ongoing and future work, Schlievert and his team are investigating how to use probiotics to prevent skin staph infections. The skin of people with atopic dermatitis, or with type 2 diabetes, is often colonized with the strains of S. aureus that produce superantigens, which are often resistant to treatment with standard antibiotics. In patients with type 2 diabetes, those superantigens could lead to foot ulcers that, if not treated successfully, could lead to amputation.
Schlievert sees probiotics as a promising way to prevent those complications. “If we can improve their lives by using this approach, that would be wonderful.”
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The American Society for Microbiology is one of the largest professional societies dedicated to the life sciences and is composed of 30,000 scientists and health practitioners. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences.
ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications, educational opportunities and advocacy efforts. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences.
JOURNAL
Microbiology Spectrum
On the hunt for strangeness
2023 JSA Postdoctoral Prize Winner Peter Hurck wants to make it easier to find strange particles that will tell us more about our universe’s building blocks
DOE/THOMAS JEFFERSON NATIONAL ACCELERATOR FACILITY
IMAGE: PETER HURCK HAS BEEN SEARCHING FOR STRANGE PARTICLES, NAMED SUCH BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN STRANGE QUARKS, SINCE BEGINNING WORK ON HIS PH.D. AS THE 2023 JEFFERSON SCIENCE ASSOCIATES (JSA) POSTDOCTORAL PRIZE WINNER, HE’LL CONTINUE CONDUCTING DATA ANALYSES TO IDENTIFY STRANGE PARTICLES AND LEARN ABOUT THEIR PROPERTIES AT JEFFERSON LAB.view more
CREDIT: DOE'S JEFFERSON LAB
NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Peter Hurck has been searching for strange particles, named such because they contain strange quarks, since beginning work on his Ph.D. As the 2023 Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Postdoctoral Prize winner, he’ll continue conducting data analyses to identify strange particles and learn about their properties.
Many of these experiments that contribute to the data Hurck is analyzing are conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, which is managed and operated by JSA.
“Strangeness hasn't been studied as much because it's quite hard to do,” said Hurck, a research associate at the University of Glasgow. “So far we don't know a lot about these particles because they're hard to find.”
Learning more about strange particles will help physicists learn more about quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory used to describe interactions between quarks.
“We look for many different configurations of quarks and attempt to understand how they work to try to figure out something about the underlying nature of this theory,” Hurck said. “QCD is quite fundamental to our everyday world, because in the end it also governs the protons and neutrons that are the fundamental building blocks of matter.”
To learn more about QCD—and our universe—these strange particles need to be produced and measured. That’s where the GlueX experiment comes in.
Sticking down strangeness
In Jefferson Lab’s Experimental Hall D, GlueX is looking for strange and other types of exotic particles. Hall D is a part of the lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). CEBAF supports the research of more than 1,800 scientific users worldwide as a DOE Office of Science user facility.
When CEBAF’s electron beam hits a thin diamond target, it produces a linearly polarized photon beam. This photon beam then hits a proton target, which produces a slew of different particles.
“Jefferson Lab’s CEBAF is the only facility in the world right now that has a photon beam that is high energy and stable enough to produce this many strange particles,” Hurck said.
The detector of GlueX is also optimized to measure a wide variety of particles. GlueX will take more and higher quality data than previous experiments searching for the same particles.
“This is really the high-quality data that I will need to do my research project,” Hurck said.
The Jefferson Lab User Organization (JLUO) Board of Directors has awarded the JSA Postdoctoral Prize since 2008. The group represents the scientists who come to Jefferson Lab to conduct research with its unique facilities. The board judges each applicant on their record of accomplishment in physics, proposed use of the research grant, and the likelihood of further accomplishments in the Jefferson Lab research fields.
“I was quite surprised to win, but it’s great. It means that what I've done so far wasn't completely wrong and that my vision for the future is something that other people share and are willing to give money towards,” Hurck said. “I hope it will be good.”
The grant is funded by the JSA Initiatives Fund program, which JSA provides to support programs, initiatives and activities that further the scientific outreach, and promote the science, education and technology missions of Jefferson Lab and benefit the laboratory’s user community.
Double the strange
For his prize-winning project, titled “Strange physics at GlueX,” Hurck will use GlueX data to investigate two types of strange particles.
The first is called strangeonium, which consists of a strange quark and an anti-strange quark. Not many strangeonia have been detected before. Particles that contain strange quarks are difficult to detect. Physicists must perform difficult analyses called partial wave analyses to pick them out of experimental data.
“These types of analyses are quite complicated, quite data intensive, quite computationally intensive, and hard to do,” Hurck said. With Darius Darulis, a Ph.D. student at University of Glasgow, Hurck will perform these analyses on GlueX data to find and study strangeonium.
He also hopes to improve the efficiency of how physicists perform partial wave analyses searching for strangeonium.
“One aspect that I'm personally quite interested in, and that I think is also important going forward, is finding a way to optimize these types of analyses and improve current statistical methods,” Hurck said.
To do so, it’s important for experimentalists like Hurck to get input from theorists. He plans to use the $10,000 JSA Postdoc Prize money to organize a three-day-long workshop dedicated to strange physics. At the workshop, now planned to take place in Glasgow, Scotland, next year, he hopes to facilitate exchange between experimentalists and theorists across labs.
“It's very important that experimentalists measure stuff that's useful to theorists and that theorists try to explain stuff that we measure, so we know we need to bring the communities together,” he said. “I think this workshop will help our efforts.”
While the workshop will have plenty of built-in time for open discussion, Hurck also wants to include presentations on strange physics. For example, he wants to bring in an expert on the second strange particle he’s studying, Lambda(1405).
Lambda(1405), which consists of three quarks instead of two like strangeonium, is extra strange because it exhibits properties that physicists don’t know how to interpret. This could be because Lambda(1405) is actually multiple particles that live close together and interact.
“We want to figure out if Lambda(1405) is one weird particle or is two particles that are constantly quantum mechanically interfering with each other and making weird shapes in our data,” said Hurck, who is collaborating with Nilanga Wickramaarachchi at Catholic University and Reinhard Schumacher at Carnegie Mellon University to investigate Lambda(1405).
Hurck and his collaborators are currently analyzing data collected during phase one of GlueX, which concluded in 2018. Phase two of data collection has been in progress since 2019. Between the two phases, the GlueX collaboration upgraded the experiment’s detector system to optimize its ability to measure strange particles.
Phase two will also produce two to three times more data than phase one, which excites Hurck.
“I really can't wait to get my hands on the full datasets and continue this analysis,” he said. “A lot of the time, it's about gaining enough data to be able to make a conclusive statement.”
By Chris Patrick
-end-
Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. JSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc. (SURA).
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
About one in two women are affected by cystitis during her lifetime, and many suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections. Bladder infections are not only painful and potentially dangerous, but they also pose a significant dilemma for physicians. With antibiotic resistance becoming widespread in urinary tract infections and continually increasing, physicians are often forced to blindly prescribe antibiotics without knowing their effectiveness against the pathogen causing the infection. This is because it takes several days to identify a specific pathogen using conventional diagnostics.
Researchers at ETH Zurich, in collaboration with Balgrist University Hospital, have now developed a rapid test that employs the natural viral predators of bacteria, bacteriophages. The researchers also genetically modified the phages to make them more efficient at destroying the pathogenic bacteria.
Fast and reliable diagnosis
Phages are highly specialised viruses. Each species of phage infects only one particular type or strain of bacteria. ETH Zurich scientists from the Food Microbiology research group led by Professor Martin Loessner are now taking advantage of this unique characteristic. The first step was to identify the phages that are effective against the three main types of bacteria implicated in urinary tract infections, namely Escherichia coli, Klebsiella and Enterococci.These natural phages were then modified in such a way that any bacteria they recognize and infect are propelled to produce an easy-to-measure light signal.
Using this method, the researchers were able to reliably detect the pathogenic bacteria directly from a urine sample in less than four hours. In the future, the method could make it possible to prescribe a suitable antibiotic immediately after diagnosis and thus minimize resistance development and improve antibiotic stewardship.
The method also has another advantage: it allows physicians to predict which patients are likely to respond particularly well to a tailored phage therapy, as the strength of the light signal produced in the assay already indicates how efficient the phages are in attacking the bacterium – the more the sample glows, the better the bacterium will respond to the therapy.
Double-action sniper
Phage therapies have been used for over 100 years but fell into oblivion in Western industrialised countries with the discovery of penicillin. In view of increasing antibiotic resistance, they are currently seeing a renaissance. They also have the decisive advantage of attacking only a single target bacterium, much like a sniper.
However, previous therapeutic approaches have one problem: “Phages aren’t interested in completely killing their host, the pathogenic bacterium,” explains ETH researcher Samuel Kilcher, one of the study’s two final authors. To enhance the phages’ effectiveness, the researchers genetically modified them. The modified phages produce not only new phages inside the infected host bacterium, but also bacteriocins. Once they are released, these bacteria-killing proteins are particularly effective against bacterial strains that have altered parts of their surface in such a way that the phages no longer recognise them. This double-barrelled attack makes the treatment more effective.
From the laboratory to the clinic
In individual cases, such as the recent rescue of a lung patient at the University Hospital of Geneva, phage therapies have been successfully used experimentally. “There are also many academic and commercial clinical trials underway worldwide that are systematically investigating the potential of natural and genetically optimized phages,” says Matthew Dunne, one of the study's final authors. However, there is a long way to go before such therapies can be applied more widely in Western countries. In addition to extensive clinical studies, regulatory adjustments would also be useful, taking into account the fact that phages are biological entities that co-evolve with their bacterial hosts, i.e., they are constantly evolving.
The present study is a proof of concept. Next, the ETH Zurich researchers, together with their partners from Balgrist University Hospital, will test the efficacy of the new phage therapy in a clinical trial with selected patients.
ANN & ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO
Errors in installation of child car seats are common, even with seats that have a five-star rating for ease of use, according to a study published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention. The study found that although the rating system was a suitable indicator of ease of use, with fewer errors detected when parents installed seats that had higher ratings, more efforts are needed to ensure optimal safety for young passengers.
Child restraint systems (CRSs) reduce risk of crash-related injury by 50%-85%, however use errors undermine their benefits. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) created the Ease of Use (EOU) rating system to help guide consumers and incentivize manufacturers to improve their products. The EOU rating system assigns one to five stars to four CRS features and overall.
Child passenger safety technicians working in the community and with car seat manufacturers are available to answer questions about installing and using car seats. The NHTSA website provides a resource directory by zip code to help parents connect with a local certified child passenger safety technician who can check if the seat is installed correctly or provide help on installing and using an appropriate car seat.
“New parents often receive training on car seat installation before the baby is born. However, it would be beneficial for them to take advantage of the available resources after the child’s birth as well, especially during the transition from infant carrier to rear-facing car seat, and then again when switching to the seat to face forward,” said lead author Michelle Macy, MD, MS, Emergency Medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Dr. Macy and colleagues analyzed data from Safe Kids Illinois seat check records from 2015 through 2019 and EOU ratings from 2008 to 2020. Errors were most common for seats installed with seat belts (70%) and least common for recline angle (37%).
One of the more common errors that was found around 50% of the time, even with 5-star rated car seats, involved the top tether on forward-facing car seats. The top tether is a strap on the top of the seat that needs to be hooked to an anchor point on the vehicle. Often parents either do not attach the strap or hook it to the wrong location.
“Overall, our study results show that parents can rely on the car seat rating system when choosing an appropriate car seat for their child,” said Dr. Macy. “They just need to be aware that installation and use errors can still occur even with the top-rated car seats. We encourage parents to get help from a certified technician to ensure their child’s safety on the road.”
Dr. Macy holds the Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Research Professorship for the Director of Child Health Research. She is the Director of Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Child Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation Center; and Scientific Director of Community, Population Health, and Outcomes at Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute.
Research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute. The Manne Research Institute is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is a nonprofit organization committed to providing access to exceptional care for every child. It is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Lurie Children’s is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Emergency medicine-focused research at Lurie Children’s is conducted through the Grainger Research Program in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.
IMAGE: FALL RIVER ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE HYDROPOWER PLANT ON THE TETON RIVER NEAR FELT, IDAHO.view more
CREDIT: IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY
FELT, Idaho — Idaho National Laboratory (INL) celebrated the ribbon-cutting of its new Microgrid in a Box, which was deployed in partnership with the Fall River Electric Cooperative at its hydropower plant in rural Idaho. Using newly developed technologies, INL researchers demonstrated that hydropower, coupled with a mobile microgrid, can enable small communities to maintain critical services during emergencies. During today’s ribbon-cutting, power from the Microgrid in a Box was combined with power generated from the hydropower plant to restore electrical supply after a simulated electrical grid blackout in a process called a “blackstart.”
The new technologies showcased, developed by INL and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, demonstrate how communities with similar resources can maintain critical services during blackout emergencies.
“There are hundreds of hydropower plants like this one serving small communities across the country,” said Thomas Mosier, INL’s Energy Systems Group lead. “What we’ve demonstrated are new technologies that can enable these communities to use the hydropower resources they already have to restart and maintain stable power to essential services, even during an emergency event.”
Nearly 70 people attended the event, representing utilities, government agencies and industry from across the country.
WHAT IS THE MICROGRID IN A BOX?
The Relocatable Resiliency Alternative Power Improvement Distribution Microgrid in a Box, also known as RAPID MIB, is a portable, self-contained grid system developed by INL engineers in collaboration with private industry and government customers. It enables integration and optimization of multiple energy sources — such as hydropower, solar panels, wind turbines, diesel generators or even small nuclear reactors — to ensure a reliable and resilient power supply in remote or off-grid locations, or during emergency situations or power outages.
“Restarting a grid isn’t as simple as flipping a switch,” said Kurt Myers, INL’s Energy and Grid Systems Integration group lead. “It requires a steady power input that many small utilities alone can’t provide. Combining the tech built in to the Microgrid in a Box with the existing capabilities of the Fall River plant, we’re showing how communities with limited resources can recover and continue to function during an emergency.”
WHAT IS A BLACKSTART?
Blackstart refers to the process of restarting and energizing power generation units, transmission lines and distribution systems to restore electricity supply after a blackout or widespread power disruption.
INL continues to innovate approaches for efficiently recovering the power grid during these critical situations. This includes studying the resiliency and reliability of power systems, designing advanced control and communication systems, and testing new approaches to optimize the blackstart process.
Representatives from utilities, government and industry gathered from across the country for the Microgrid in a Box ribbon-cutting and blackstart demonstration.
CREDIT
Idaho National Laboratory
SUPPORTING RURAL UTILITIES
Many rural communities have untapped energy resources that can enable them to maintain services, even during emergency events. INL, with support from the Water Power Technologies Office, is proud to partner with utilities like the Fall River Electric Cooperative to demonstrate and test these new technologies.
“Fall River Electric Cooperative is focused on investing in technology that can improve the lives of our owner-members and this partnership with INL is a prime example,” said Fall River CEO Bryan Case. “The Microgrid in a Box test has accelerated our ability to deploy a hydropower and battery system to provide our members with electricity in the event of natural disasters or other local emergencies.”
Through research, analysis, simulations and real-world testing like the blackstart demonstrated at the ribbon-cutting event, INL is enhancing the ability of power utilities to recover from blackouts and minimize the impact on communities and critical infrastructure.
About Idaho National Laboratory Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visitwww.inl.gov. Follow us on social media:Twitter,Facebook,InstagramandLinkedIn.
About Fall River Electric Fall River is a customer-owned, nonprofit electric utility with over 15,000 owner-members providing electrical service to portions of three states including Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Fall River is committed to safely and economically providing reliable energy and other services that bring value to its members. For more information visit www.fallriverelectric.com.
Scripps Research scientists develop AI-based tracking and early-warning system for viral pandemics
Machine-learning system effectively predicts emergence of prominent variants
IMAGE: A NEW SCRIPPS RESEARCH MACHINE-LEARNING SYSTEM TRACKS HOW EPIDEMIC VIRUSES EVOLVE. THIS TECHNOLOGY COULD HAVE PREDICTED THE EMERGENCE OF SARS-COV-2 “VARIANTS OF CONCERN” (VOCS) AHEAD OF THEIR OFFICIAL DESIGNATIONS BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO).view more
CREDIT: IMAGERY CREATED USING BIORENDER.COM.
LA JOLLA, CA — Scripps Research scientists have developed a machine-learning system—a type of artificial intelligence (AI) application—that can track the detailed evolution of epidemic viruses and predict the emergence of viral variants with important new properties.
In a paper in Cell Patterns on July 21, 2023, the scientists demonstrated the system by using data on recorded SARS-CoV-2 variants and COVID-19 mortality rates. They showed that the system could have predicted the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 “variants of concern” (VOCs) ahead of their official designations by the World Health Organization (WHO). Their findings point to the possibility of using such a system in real-time to track future viral pandemics.
“There are rules of pandemic virus evolution that we have not understood but can be discovered, and used in an actionable sense by private and public health organizations, through this unprecedented machine-learning approach,” says study senior author William Balch, PhD, professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research.
The co-first authors of the study were Salvatore Loguercio, PhD, a staff scientist in the Balch lab at the time of the study, and currently a staff scientist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute; and Ben Calverley, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in the Balch lab.
The Balch lab specializes in the development of computational, often AI-based methods to illuminate how genetic variations alter the symptoms and spread of diseases. For this study, they applied their approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. They developed machine-learning software, using a strategy called Gaussian process-based spatial covariance, to relate three data sets spanning the course of the pandemic: the genetic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 variants found in infected people worldwide, the frequencies of those variants, and the global mortality rate for COVID-19.
“This computational method used data from publicly available repositories,” Loguercio says. “But it can be applied to any genetic mapping resource.”
The software enabled the researchers to track sets of genetic changes appearing in SARS-CoV-2 variants around the world. These changes—typically trending towards increased spread rates and decreased mortality rates—signified the virus’ adaptations to lockdowns, mask wearing, vaccines, increasing natural immunity in the global population, and the relentless competition among SARS-CoV-2 variants themselves.
“We could see key gene variants appearing and becoming more prevalent, as the mortality rate also changed, and all this was happening weeks before the VOCs containing these variants were officially designated by the WHO,” Balch says.
He and his team showed that they could use this SARS-CoV-2 tracking system as an early warning “anomaly detector” for gene variants associated with significant changes in viral spread and mortality rates.
“One of the big lessons of this work is that it is important to take into account not just a few prominent variants, but also the tens of thousands of other undesignated variants, which we call the ‘variant dark matter,’” Balch says.
A similar system could be used to track the detailed evolution of future viral pandemics in real time, the researchers note. In principle, it would enable scientists to predict changes in a pandemic’s trajectory—for example, big increases in infection rates—in time to adopt appropriate public health countermeasures.
Balch and his colleagues also envision the use of their approach to better understand virus biology and thereby enhance the development of treatments and vaccines. Currently they are using their AI system to uncover key details of how different SARS-CoV-2 proteins worked together in the evolution of the pandemic.
“This system and its underlying technical methods have many possible future applications,” Calverley says.
“Understanding the Host-Pathogen Evolutionary Balance through Gaussian Process Modelling of SARS-CoV-2” was co-authored by Salvatore Loguercio, Ben Calverley, Chao Wang, Daniel Shak, Pei Zhao, Shuhong Sun, Scott Budinger, and William Balch.
About Scripps Research
Scripps Research is an independent, nonprofit biomedical institute ranked one of the most influential in the world for its impact on innovation by Nature Index. We are advancing human health through profound discoveries that address pressing medical concerns around the globe. Our drug discovery and development division, Calibr, works hand-in-hand with scientists across disciplines to bring new medicines to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, while teams at Scripps Research Translational Institute harness genomics, digital medicine and cutting-edge informatics to understand individual health and render more effective healthcare. Scripps Research also trains the next generation of leading scientists at our Skaggs Graduate School, consistently named among the top 10 US programs for chemistry and biological sciences. Learn more at www.scripps.edu.
