We introduce the antibody landscape, a method for the quantitative analysis of antibodymediated immunity to antigenically variable pathogens, achieved by accounting for antigenic variation among ...pathogen strains. We generated antibody landscapes to study immune profiles covering 43 years of influenza A/H3N2 virus evolution for 69 individuals monitored for infection over 6 years and for 225 individuals pre- and postvaccination. Upon infection and vaccination, titers increased broadly, including previously encountered viruses far beyond the extent of cross-reactivity observed after a primary infection. We explored implications for vaccination and found that the use of an antigenically advanced virus had the dual benefit of inducing antibodies against both advanced and previous antigenic clusters. These results indicate that preemptive vaccine updates may improve influenza vaccine efficacy in previously exposed individuals.
Resumen La tendencia del gasto social a distribuirse hacia las edades más avanzadas se ha advertido en varios países desarrollados. Mientras el envejecimiento de la población es una tendencia común, ...no es obvio por qué el cambio en los gastos excede a la propia evolución del envejecimiento, o por qué el gasto aumenta en términos por cápita. En la primera parte del artículo mostramos que hay indicios claros de esta tendencia en España, identificamos a los colectivos perjudicados, abordamos las políticas que afectan a esta tendencia, y proponemos ajustes basados en la regla de proporciones fija de Musgrave para una distribución intergeneracional más justa. Son las políticas relacionadas con el envejecimiento poblacional, con la inserción laboral de jóvenes y mujeres, y las estrategias del work-fare , junto con las más tradicionales del welfare. En la segunda parte insertamos el gasto sanitario público en el conjunto del gasto social. Adoptamos la perspectiva de que las políticas sanitaria y social deberían ser más horizontales, menos dependientes del formato de financiación, y coordinadas con visión intersectorial en su destino e interdepartamental en su origen. El criterio normativo de equidad pretendido debe ser explícito y preciso. Las políticas deben asegurar coherencia entre los distintos tipos de prestaciones públicas, y determinar la cuantía de componentes de bienestar adicionales a los derivados de la renta personal, para compensar su desigualdad mediante prestaciones públicas monetarias o en especie. En España (1980-2000), el grupo de edad más avanzada ha sido el que ha obtenido unas mayores ganancias, «acaparando » una mayor proporción de recursos, que han aumentado más allá de lo que podría explicarse solamente por el envejecimiento de la población. Los «perdedores» son individuos en diversas condiciones de fragilidad y, en términos medios, la generación de trabajadores más joven es la categoría de edad que ha sufrido las mayores pérdidas relativas.
Abstract Numerous studies have explored whether the antibody response to influenza vaccination in elderly adults is as strong as it is in young adults. Results vary, but tend to indicate lower ...post-vaccination titers (antibody levels) in the elderly, supporting the concept of immunosenescence—the weakening of the immunological response related to age. Because the elderly in such studies typically have been vaccinated against influenza before enrollment, a confounding of effects occurs between age, and previous exposures, as a potential extrinsic reason for immunosenescence. We conducted a four-year study of serial annual immunizations with inactivated trivalent influenza vaccines in 136 young adults (16 to 39 years) and 122 elderly adults (62 to 92 years). Compared to data sets of previously published studies, which were designed to investigate the effect of age, this detailed longitudinal study with multiple vaccinations allowed us to also study the effect of prior vaccination history on the response to a vaccine. In response to the first vaccination, young adults produced higher post-vaccination titers, accounting for pre-vaccination titers, than elderly adults. However, upon subsequent vaccinations the difference in response to vaccination between the young and elderly age groups declined rapidly. Although age is an important factor when modeling the outcome of the first vaccination, this term lost its relevance with successive vaccinations. In fact, when we examined the data with the assumption that the elderly group had received (on average) as few as two vaccinations prior to our study, the difference due to age disappeared. Our analyses therefore show that the initial difference between the two age groups in their response to vaccination may not be uniquely explained by immunosenescence due to ageing of the immune system, but could equally be the result of the different pre-study vaccination and infection histories in the elderly.
Neural reality is part of nature, independent of our cultural agreements. Social conventions are part of culture and fictions created and sustained by our accords. The classical Greeks had already ...established a difference between phýsis (nature, reality) and nómos (norm, law). Pain, pleasure, emotion, and compassion belong to the first realm. Rights, duties, guilt, responsibility, and dignity are in the second. Do they overlap anywhere? Perhaps around the emotion of compassion, which is morally relevant but also neurologically real. We briefly consider the relation of compassion to mirror neurons and neuromodulators in the brain. When jumping from neurons to norms, we must beware of the naturalistic fallacy and the moralistic fallacy.
Highlights • Although it is not known which one of two influenza B lineages will circulate in any one season, only a representative virus of one of the two lineages is part of the trivalent seasonal ...influenza vaccine. • We describe three lineage selection strategies to choose which lineage to include in the seasonal vaccine, including the common strategy of using the last lineage that has been observed to dominate, and a new strategy which takes into account population immunity. • We show why the “hedging strategy” leads to higher expected vaccine efficacy for influenza B by describing the underlying immunity management mechanism. • We show that the hedging strategy would have lead to higher vaccine efficacy to influenza B in the seasonal vaccine in the decade 2000–2010. • We show that some of the benefit of transferring to a quadrivalent vaccine can be captured without the cost of moving to a quadrivalent vaccine with an improved trivalent vaccine lineage selection approach.
Is there such a thing as human nature? If there were, can we deduce human rules from it? Starting from the thesis where all species have their nature supposed by their genome and humans are things ...(protai ousiai, or primary beings) and not relationships or accidents, the author reviews 'the tricks' that human beings have inherited from their ancestors, heritage that compose human nature. He discusses biped walking, the development of a precision clamp and the growth in the size of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex genetically programmed for that certain margin of indetermination that we call freedom. He explains that this partial indetermination of human behavior is correlated to pain, an ability that contributes to survival and biological efficacy. There is a tendency to minimize it, inherent to human nature, revealing two basic moral emotions described by Hume: love of oneself and compassion for others. He suggests, following Darwin, that non-primitive human beings are beings who include all creatures capable of suffering in the circle of compassion. He then says that the issue lies in elucidating which aspects of social life are by nature (physei) and which are by convention (nomo) (in accordance with the Greek distinction) as well as voluntary and compulsory conventions; the indispensable distinction between moral and ethical; and the development of the naturalistic fallacy and the moralistic fallacy. Adapted from the source document.
Avian A/H5N1 influenza viruses pose a pandemic threat. As few as five amino acid substitutions, or four with reassortaient, might be sufficient for mammal-to-mammal transmission through respiratory ...droplets. From surveillance data, we found that two of these substitutions are common in A/H5N1 viruses, and thus, some viruses might require only three additional substitutions to become transmissible via respiratory droplets between mammals. We used a mathematical model of within-host virus evolution to study factors that could increase and decrease the probability of the remaining substitutions evolving after the virus has infected a mammalian host. These factors, combined with the presence of some of these substitutions in circulating strains, make a virus evolving in nature a potentially serious threat. These results highlight critical areas in which more data are needed for assessing, and potentially averting, this threat.
Antigenic and genetic analysis of the hemagglutinin of ~13,000 human influenza A (H3N2) viruses from six continents during 2002-2007 revealed that there was continuous circulation in east and ...Southeast Asia (E-SE Asia) via a region-wide network of temporally overlapping epidemics and that epidemics in the temperate regions were seeded from this network each year. Seed strains generally first reached Oceania, North America, and Europe, and later South America. This evidence suggests that once A (H3N2) viruses leave E-SE Asia, they are unlikely to contribute to long-term viral evolution. If the trends observed during this period are an accurate representation of overall patterns of spread, then the antigenic characteristics of A (H3N2) viruses outside E-SE Asia may be forecast each year based on surveillance within E-SE Asia, with consequent improvements to vaccine strain selection.
Abstract Annual influenza epidemics in humans affect 5–15% of the population, causing an estimated half million deaths worldwide per year Stohr K. Influenza—WHO cares. Lancet Infectious Diseases ...2002;2(9):517. The virus can infect this proportion of people year after year because the virus has an extensive capacity to evolve and thus evade the immune response. For example, since the influenza A(H3N2) subtype entered the human population in 1968 the A(H3N2) component of the influenza vaccine has had to be updated almost 30 times to track the evolution of the viruses and remain effective. The World Health Organization Global Influenza Surveillance Network (WHO GISN) tracks and analyzes the evolution and epidemiology of influenza viruses for the primary purpose of vaccine strain selection and to improve the strain selection process through studies aimed at better understanding virus evolution and epidemiology. Here we give an overview of the strain selection process and outline recent investigations into the global migration of seasonal influenza viruses.
Scholars East and West Mosterín, Jesús
European review (Chichester, England),
05/2016, Letnik:
24, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The great contribution of China to politics was the development of a bureaucratic, meritocratic civil service, based on mastery of a well-defined canon of scholarship. Civil servants were scholars. ...Already under the Han dynasty, Confucianism (the Rújiā or school of the scholars) was made the official ideology of the State and the basis of the competitive examination system. Europe was less advanced in political organization than China. Rulers and their courts relied on family ties and brute force. The only working bureaucracy belonged to the Catholic Church. This paper follows the parallel development of both the Western and the Chinese traditions and emphasizes their points of intersection, such as the Jesuit missions to China in the 16th and 17th centuries and the visits of Bertrand Russell and John Dewey around 1920.
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