All the break-neck speed with which the progress that is happening today in tracking, detecting and treating the disease, like everything else, is owed in part to the giants whose shoulders we’re standing on. One such thing is the usage of serum (from recovered patients or derived elsewhere) for treatment. So, as a little tribute, I would like to share with you today, on the birthday of Dr. Hattie Elizabeth Alexander (born April 5, 1901), the information that she pioneered the work in using anti-influenzal rabbit serums to treat the then always-fatal influenzal meningitis (effectively bringing down the fatality rate to 20%!), and was also sone of the very first to study bacterial mutations that come along with antibiotic resistance !

So we’ve come a long way and are forging our way forward. Here are a few interesting articles that are slowly pushing this boundary, a piece at a time.

COVID-19

From PREDICT to prevention, one pandemic later – Colin J Carlson – The Lancet.

Human Microbiome

Review: Risk factors associated with gastric malignancy during chronic Helicobacter pylori infection – Ami Y Seegar – Medical Research Archives.

Review: From Association to Causality: the Role of the Gut Microbiota and Its Functional Products on Host Metabolism – Ara Koh – Molecular Cell.

Pregnancy and Early Life

Breast Milk and Microbiota in the Premature Gut: A Method of Preventing Necrotizing Enterocolitis – Orga PL et al – Karger.

Human Brain and Microbiome

Book: Integrative and Functional Medical Nutrition Therapy. Chapter: The Microbiome and Brain Health – Sharon L. Norling -Springer

Animal Experiments

Integrated omics profiling of dextran sodium sulfate-induced colitic mice supplemented with Wolfberry (Lycium barbarum). Wanping Aw et al – NPJ Science of Food.

Botany

Rhizobacteriome: Promising Candidate for Conferring Drought Tolerance in Crops – Vinod Yadav et al – Journal of Pure Applied Microbiology

Legionella species: A potential problem associated with rain water harvesting systems? – Judith A Taylor et al – SAGE Journals

Bioinformatics

Applications of Machine Learning Predictive Models in the Chronic Disease Diagnosis – Gopi Battineni et al – Journal of Personalized Medicine

PS: I know, I am with you on this — the lockdown isn’t ideal. But we are also the generation, who for the first time can end articles signing off as “Stay Safe and Wash Your Hands” and manage to prevent a large proportion of its species from suffering / dying. Isn’t that crazy! Have a great day!

More information on Dr. Hattie Elizabeth Alexander — here and here.