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There are several monoclonal antibody drugs that have been approved by the FDA one of which is omalizumab or its brand name is Xolair. A monoclonal antibody drug is a drug that is created from man-made antibodies. Man-made antibodies are created by putting human genes in mice and then injecting them with the specific antigen they want to target. The mice will then create the specific antibody and it will only be able to bind to one specific antigen. Omalizumab is a monoclonal antibody drug that is used to treat asthma caused by allergies in children over the age of six. This drug is prescribed when asthma symptoms are still occurring even though you are using a corticosteroid inhaler daily and the symptoms of asthma are being caused by allergies. This medicine is used to help reduce the amount of asthma attacks that occur but is not intended to treat an asthma attack if it happens.

Omalizumab works by specifically targeting IgE, which is an antibody that attaches to basophils and mast cells and is associated with allergic reactions. When pollen or other foreign substances get into the body it causes the antibodies to attach to the basophils and mast cells and release chemicals that lead to inflammation. This drug works by stopping the IgE from being able to bind to the receptors of the basophils and mast cells which stops the allergic reaction. This means that less asthma attacks occur in the person because the inflammation from the allergic reaction is stopped which is what causes most of the asthma attacks. The monoclonal antibody drug is impacting the adaptive immune response in a positive way because it is stopping the IgE from overreacting to every foreign substance entering the body. This means that it is stopping from as many allergic reactions to things such as pollen from happening so that there is less asthma attacks.

One possibly side effect of omalizumab is anaphylaxis which can be life threatening if not treated immediately so providers injecting the medication must monitor the patient. Some of the other common side effects are dizziness, skin rash, pain in arms or legs, feeling tired, bone fractures, and pain in ears. Other side effects that could possibly occur include fever, muscle aches, cancer, heart and circulation problems, parasitic infection, and inflammation of blood vessels. The common side effects make sense for this drug because it is being injected which can lead to rashes or dizziness. If you are very susceptible to getting parasite infections then you should probably not take this medicine because it can lead to these kind of infections. Women who are pregnant or breast feeding should also be cautious when taking this medication because no studies have been done on the affects of it on the developing fetus or breast milk.

There are two types of tests that are currently available for determining if a patient has COVID-19, which includes an antibody response test and a RNA genome test. The RNA genome test is being used primarily for patients with active symptoms of COVID-19 because it only tells you if you have the virus currently. The antibody response test has been developed to determine if you had the virus already and if you have built up an immune response to it. The RNA genome test will be helpful in ruling out if that is the cause of the person’s illness or for stopping the spread of the virus further by tracing how the virus is spreading. I think the antibody response test will be very useful soon because it will allow for everyone to be tested and determine if they have built up immunity and can return to their normal lives.

The antibody response tests are being developed by all kinds of researchers and are trying to be made available widespread. The serological test created by Stanford researchers takes blood from the patient and tests the plasma for antibodies for the virus. The article says that the test determines if there is IgG, IgM, or both antibodies within the plasma and based on that the patient would either have a built up immune response to it or not. IgM antibodies are the first antibodies to appear when an infection happens and if only they were present then the infection would still be happening and the person would not have an immunity. IgG antibodies are the second antibodies to appear and have a longer half life which means they stick around after the infection to provide an immunity of the virus. This means that if all IgM antibodies were gone and only IgG was within the plasma then the patient would have an immune response to the virus and would fight off the infection fast with little to no symptoms if they got it again.

The discovery of immune responses being developed within patients would mean that they could go back to work and other activities. This would also mean though that they could become a carrier of the disease and should be mindful of people in the population who have not yet built up an immune response or are at risk. The antibody immune response test should not be the sole test for COVID-19 though because when it is active antibodies might not yet be built up so it would be innacurate. This is why the RNA genome sequencing test is being used to diagnose symptomatic patients. This testing works by using samples of cells within the back of the throat that is then isolated for just the RNA and put through PCR. The article says that the PCR works by converting the RNA to DNA and then combining it with a sample of the virus DNA to see if it will bind and reproduce the virus DNA and if not then it is not a match. Both of these tests are going to be very vital to the world population for determining who is sick and who is immune so that at risk people have a better chance of not catching the disease.

T cell therapy is a new way of treating different types of diseases especially cancer that is still being explored. One of the types of T cell therapies being used is the CAR T-cell therapy, which involves modifying a patient’s own white blood cells to kill the cancer cells. This type of therapy has been approved for the treatment of large B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and advanced acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The treatment is also being tested and in clinical trials for many other types of cancers including multiple myeloma. This is really exciting to me that it has been approved to work against some cancers and that further testing is being done for other types of cancer.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a type of cancer that originates in the lymphatic system from tumors that develop from lymphocytes. This type of cancer can be very life threatening and can be hard to stop or treat because it can spread easily to other parts of the body. The advanced acute lymphoblastic leukemia is caused by cancer forming in the immature white blood cells located within your bone marrow and it can only be treated by the CAR T-cell therapy if you are under twenty-five years old. This type of therapy being able to treat blood or lymphatic cancers is revolutionary because it means that there is less chance the cancer will spread to other parts of the body. This would be amazing for cancer patients across the world because as of now these cancers are almost impossible to stop from spreading to other locations in the body.

The first article says CAR T-cell therapy involves taking blood from a patient and separating the T cells and then genetically altering them to have new antigen receptors on their surface. For clinical trials treating multiple myeloma the altered antigen receptors are very important and have not yet been identified but BCMA receptors are currently being tested. It makes sense that it would be very hard to find the correct receptors to use because if those antigen receptors are found in other cells then that could cause more harm to your body. This type of therapy seems like it could be less toxic than other cancer therapies and would allow for the killing of cancer cells over a wide range of area not just one specific part of the body. The first article says that some of the side affects of this treatment is low white blood cell count, low blood pressure, anemia, and some neurological events such as aphasia. It seems like most of the side affects for this therapy can be controlled by other medications and will not greatly affect your livelihood. Overall this new T cell therapy for certain cancers seems to be ground breaking and could save lots of people’s lives in the future.

At first I was excited that we were getting an extra week of spring break so that I could spend more time with my family and friends. Then when UNC decided to go to online classes and cancel in person classes for the rest of the semester I was very upset. I really enjoy living at UNC and miss doing my extracurricular activities. I participate in HOSA, Habitat for Humanity, and I am a new member of Phi Beta Chi and with the cancelling of in person classes I lost all of my participation in these activities. I also miss going to sporting events with my friends or going out on the weekends.

Online class has been difficult to transition to especially Microbiology and the lab that goes along with it. Trying to learn all of the difficult information for Microbiology lecture and retain it while not being able to go to actual class has been hard to overcome. One hard thing about online classes has been having to log on to zoom and do class discussion for some of my classes. The zoom classes have been hard because since I am living at home my lifestyle has to be different and I have had to balance both of my responsibilities. Another difficult part has been that the internet speed at my house cannot support lots of devices and has made issues with zoom calls.

Another part of me having to move back home early was that I started to go back to work. I work in my local nursing home as a CNA so I am considered essential and can still work. I have worked a couple times since coming home but have found its hard to balance work and completing my assignments. It is a little concerning going to work during the virus outbreak especially since I do not want to give the virus to any of my susceptible residents. Overall I am having a hard time adjusting to doing college work from home but it has gotten better over this past week.

HPV is a viral infection that is transferred during sexual activity and can cause up to 100 different varieties, some of which cause genital warts. The spreading of genital warts can come from just physical contact. Other types of HPV can lead to different types of cancers including cervical cancer and anus or penis cancers. This is quite concerning that just one viral infection can cause such severe diseases that could greatly alter your life. The article from before says that nearly all cervical cancers are caused by HPV but that it could take up to twenty years for it to develop after getting the infection. This is very concerning because you could have HPV for a long time and either not know you have it or believe it is not the type that causes cervical cancer and then develop it a lot later in life.

Knowing that HPV causes such severe diseases as cervical cancer and that there was a vaccine it made me curious how the world is trying to work at getting it eliminated. Currently the vaccine is being administered a lot less often in underdeveloped countries, which means that cervical cancer is more prominent in these regions. The article says that certain countries, such as Australia, are predicted to have only 4 in 100,000 women with cervical cancer by 2035 because of the HPV vaccine and screenings they have put into place. This would be a huge reduction in the amount of women with cervical cancer and could mean that HPV and cervical cancer are eliminated from the population in the near future. The eradication of both HPV and cervical cancer from the world would be amazing and could save millions of lives.

I was then curious about if there is a link between cervical cancer and HPV if there was any other cancers that were unrelated to the cervix, penis, or anus that could be linked to HPV as well. When I looked into it I found that some head and neck cancers have been found to be caused by certain strains of HPV and the risk of developing head and neck cancers from HPV are increased with smoking and immunosuppression. This means that HPV is not only a health risk in the genital region but also for developing oral cancers that are also very life threatening. The article also stated that there had been a link between non-sexual transmission of HPV orally such as deep kissing. I was very shocked by this because I had always thought that HPV could only be transmitted sexually. This means that even more men and women could be at risk for getting HPV orally and then possibly developing cancer later in their life. This means that vaccines and screenings for HPV are even more important for the protection of both men and women against developing cancer later on in their life.

Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria mutate and adapt so that certain antibiotics no longer affect them. This means that the bacteria that cause certain diseases cannot be treated anymore and it can lead to longer hospital visits or life threatening consequences. Before talking about antibiotic resistance in class, I did not realize it affected so many people and figured it only applied to MRSA strains. The article from before says that at a minimum 2.8 million people are affected annually by bacteria that has become antibiotic resistant and that of those 35,000 die each year. This information was very shocking to me because I knew it was becoming an issue but I did not realize that it was on that large of a scale already.

I wanted to find out more about these drug resistant strains of bacteria so I decided to look into superbugs. Superbugs are strains of certain bacteria that have gained immunity against multiple types of antibiotics and one example is MRSA, which is a strain of Staph aureus. The article says that the bacteria are becoming superbugs because of the over prescription of antibiotics and that the bacteria can share the resistant traits they picked up with other bacteria. This means that more superbugs will be created over time and that it will be harder for the human population to fight them off until eventually no antibiotics work anymore. This is quite concerning because antibiotics can be lifesaving especially for children or older individuals and more people will probably begin to die.

Then I decided to look into what areas of the healthcare field were improperly prescribing the most antibiotics and how it is impacting the world. Apparently, countries with poorer healthcare systems are the most affected and India prescribes the most antibiotics improperly.  The article says that dentists are one of the top abusers of antibiotics and that they prescribe around 10% of all antibiotics and between 30 and 50% of that is unnecessary. I had no idea that antibiotics were even prescribed by that many dentists and that they could prescribe them without even making sure that it is needed. The article says that many dentists prescribe it for endodontic infections when it has been proven not to work which means that instead it is destroying the other bacteria within our body, which makes them become more resistant. This was quite surprising that there is proof that antibiotics do not work on these type of infections and yet dentists still proceed to prescribe them to their patients. Overall, I have learned that taking antibiotics when you do not know for sure what you have is not good because then you could be helping to contribute to the growth of antibiotic resistance.

There are two different types of vaccines used to prevent Polio which are the IPV and OPV vaccine. The IPV is the inactive vaccine that is given by a shot in the leg or arm and is the only vaccine used within the United States now. The article says the OPV is the oral vaccine which is attenuated and is no longer used within the United States since 2000 to stop the risk of vaccine-derived polio. I had no idea before we started talking about the Polio vaccine in class that there was ever an OPV and thought that it was always given as a shot in the arm. I was also quite shocked that even though the original OPV vaccine stopped most polio infections that it was still causing some to occur because I have never heard of a vaccine being the cause of the virus it is protecting against.

When I was reading about the OPV from the first article I saw that some other countries still use it as their main vaccine. I found that during 2019 there was a slight outbreak of polio that came from the OPV vaccine causing vaccine-derived polio which then resulted in under-immunized populations becoming infected. The article talks about how this is less common in populations with a high immunity rate and that once polio is eradicated then these types of outbreaks will stop happening. What I found to be strange was that the outbreaks are coming from people who are accidentally getting the disease from the oral vaccine but the countries are not looking into the IPV vaccine to stop this from happening. These countries are instead relying on herd immunity for protection in case of an accidental case of polio from OPV when they could be using the IPV and herd immunity to protect infants in countries such as the United States.

I was also curious about polio in general because I did not realize that it was not eradicated completely from the world like smallpox. Out of the three polio wild type strains there is only one that is still circulating while the other two were eradicated in 1999 and 2012. This article says that many people are suggesting that the WHO should convert their efforts into just controlling the polio virus and to stop trying to eradicate it. The article says that some people think the virus will never be eradicated and that we should instead put the money and efforts into other healthcare issues. This is quite shocking that people are okay with the polio virus still existing when once it is eradicated then it will never resurface and cause harm like the smallpox virus. I think that effort should still be put into eradicating it because I don’t want to live in a world where any children could end up with this awful disease.

The human microbiome is normally located within the gut and has been linked to our overall health. It is a collection of bacteria, viruses, and different organisms that resides in the gut and helps us maintain a health lifestyle. The article states that it has been found to have a link with various diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. I found it very interesting that something that resides in our gut could be contributing to high blood pressure which has to do with your heart and blood flow. This could mean that there could be new alternatives to medicines and ways to treat hypertension and obesity.

The article also says there has been other diseases such as different types of cancer that have been associated with gut microbiome. The article states that that Helicobacter pylori has been linked with causing gastric carcinoma and that Fusobacterium nucleatum has been found in colorectal cancer. This could mean that scientists could possibly figure out how to prevent cancer before it develops by learning how to manipulate and control these bacteria within the gut microbiome. The article also says that recently there has been a study linking postmenopausal women with breast cancer to different microbiomes compared to healthy individuals. This means that not only does the microbiome affect digestive cancers but others as well. This could be critical in the future for both the prevention and maybe even ways to help combat or cure certain types of cancers.

The human microbiome does not just influence the chance of gaining certain types of diseases but other health factors as well. There was a recent study that came out that has connected gut microbiome with sleep quality. The study found that microbiome diversity and total amount of microbes was positively related to the amount of time people spent asleep. The study also connected that microbiome diversity lead to less frequency of waking up during sleeping. This could be very beneficial for human health because sleep is very important for day to day function and disruptions in sleep could have very negative consequences on people’s body and mind. If scientists could find a way to change people’s gut microbiome so that they could get better sleep then that could be life changing to many individuals that suffer from insomnia or waking up frequently during the night. Overall the gut microbiome has many linkages to general health and could be very useful in either preventing or providing alternatives for medicine to cure the diseases.

The flu season is known by people worldwide especially in the United States for being the most prevalent time for disease and sickness. The flu this year has recently been back on the rise with at least 22 million cases this season. This is quite shocking that there has been that many cases I did not realize how easily spread the disease was. The articles says type A flu has been seen with older adults while type B has been more common with children. The articles states that the vaccine covers both type A and B which is H1N1 and H3N2 respectively. I did not realize before doing this research that the vaccine could cover two different ones and not just one type. The vaccine being able to cover two different strains is very good because it gives you a better shot to be protected against the flu.

The flu this season has been relatively normal with the mortality rate for it and pneumonia only being at 7.1 percent which is below the epidemic rate of 7.2 percent. The first article said that there was a total of 12,000 deaths as of two days ago with 78 of them being children. It blows my mind that there could be that many people that die from flu or secondary infections such as pneumonia and the season is still not over. The second article from the CDC showed that almost all of the fifty states were experiencing high percentages of visits to outpatient clinics compared to normal. One of the high percentage states was North Carolina which means that we should be extra cautious about being cleanly.

The CDC article stated that the full report for how accurate the flu vaccine was for the season will be available later in February. The flu vaccine as of recent years has been about forty to fifty percent effective for the population. The flu vaccine according to the CDC article seems to be a pretty good match to the viruses that are circulating. This is good that they are a match so that more people especially children or older adults will have protection against the flu. The CDC article also states that almost all of the viruses that have been found this year have been susceptible to the four antiviral flu medications. The vaccine should definitely be everyone first line of defense though followed by antiviral medication.

Andrew Wakefield was a researcher who published the infamous paper in the Lancet that directly connected Autism to vaccines. The study gained wide publicity and many people began to get worried about vaccines even though the sample size of the study was only twelve children. The sample size of only twelve children is very concerning for how widely accepted it became in the public, because that is a very small number of children to make any sort of conclusions about an entire vaccine or disorder. The children used for the study were all referred to the Royal Free Hospital for chronic enterocolitis and regressive development disorder. The previously used article states that of the twelve children used eight of their parents believed that the MMR vaccine had caused their children’s Autism. This is quite shocking that the parents already had a bias about the study before it was even conducted.

The first article states that there was twelve other colleagues of Wakefield’s that also worked together to publish the article in Lancet. After the paper was published ten of the twelve colleagues decided to submit a retraction saying that they did not believe there was direct link between Autism and the MMR vaccine. This shows that even the scientists who were helping Wakefield with this study did not believe that their study proved any linkage between the MMR vaccine and Autism. The first article also states that Wakefield and his colleagues had failed to inform Lancet that they had been funded by lawyers who had been approached by parents who wanted to sue vaccine companies. This is interesting because it could possibly mean that Wakefield was getting financial gain from making sure that his study proved there was a link between Autism and the MMR vaccine.

The measles was almost completely eradicated in the early 2000s but within the last five to ten years there has been a resurgence in cases. The article states from the years 2014 to present day there has been an overwhelming amount of cases of outbreaks of the measles in younger children all across the United States. The increased number of outbreaks was very shocking and shows that even less people are vaccinating their children. The article also states that parents who are vaccine hesitant are compromising herd immunity which is leading to more outbreaks. This means that while lots of times parents use herd immunity as an excuse for not vaccinating their child if everyone proceeds to do this then herd immunity will be damaged or no longer exist.