Can individual's state of mind can effect how well a vaccine may work?

Writing in Clinical Infectious Diseases, UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Michael Irwin and colleagues say they have found a link between untreated depression in older adults and decreased effectiveness of the herpes zoster - shingles - vaccine. Shingles is a painful, blistering skin rash caused by the varicella–zoster virus, which also causes chickenpox. It may affect a million people over the age of 60 each year in the U.S and each year health officials urge individuals 50 and older to get vaccinated against the virus. The vaccine boosts cell-mediated immunity to the virus and can decrease the incidence and severity of the condition.

If you have seen pictures of the Moon, you see a giant ball of dust with astronaut footprints etched into the surface - but information garnered from missions such as NASA's 2009 Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (L-CROSS) lunar-impact probe, along with more modern scanning technologies and precise measurements, are changing the perception it is all dry. 

You can find ratings for anything on the Internet; reviews and ratings for hotels and restaurants are surprisingly well-regarded.  Doctors, not so much.  But it's generational as well.

And one thing trumps all else: 'Do they accept my insurance?'  92% of parents listed that as very important while only 65% rated a convenient office location as very important.  

The University of Michigan
ott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health
found that only 25 percent of parents say doctor rating websites matter in their search for a child's physician. However, younger parents (considered those under 30) were more likely (44%) than parents 30 or older (21%) to think doctor rating websites are very important. 

The Swedish Obese Subjects study carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg found that, though weight-loss surgery is currently only offered to patients who exceed a certain BMI, surgical intervention would improve the health of many more people.

In order to meet the current selection criteria for weight-loss surgery, Swedish patients must have a body mass index (BMI) above 40 for healthy patients, or above 35 in combination with other risk factors such as type 2 diabetes.  They examined the cases of 104 patients who were operated on despite their BMI being "too low" by current standards yet as a result had a 67% reduced chance of developing diabetes.  

It seems that the first US patent for an internal-combustion powered ‘Pogo’ stick was issued to inventor R.J. Mays back in 1950. The jumping machine was intended to run on gasoline, and, according its creator was “…highly efficient and amusing in operation.” It’s not altogether clear whether May’s power-stick ever went into production, but a similar(ish) device, which was granted a US patent ten years later, did. According its inventor Mr. G.

Sea-level rise over the coming century could affect some regions far more than others, according to a numerical model which projects that parts of the Pacific will see the highest rates of rise while some polar regions will experience falls in relative sea levels due to the ways sea, land and ice interact globally.

Next Sunday Italians will vote to change the composition of the two houses of parliament: the "lower" Camera dei Deputati and "upper" Senato della Repubblica. And as often happens with Italian politics, things are complicated. So, despite this site is mostly visited for other reasons than trivialities about politics in foreign countries, I thought I would provide here my own short-sighted, biased panorama of the situation.

If you are a long-time Thor comic book reader, you know Thor's hammer used to be really, really heavy. That means Thor used to be really, really strong. 

Somewhere along the way Big Hulk lobbyists decided that the green guy should be the strongest character in Marvel comics,so writers gave him both virtually unlimited strength and decided that Thor's hammer, the creatively-named Mjolnir (doesn't it just sound like Norse should sound?) was magic, and that is why only he could lift it.  He wasn't the strongest guy around any more, which left it with being supernatural, kind of a cop-out even to me as a kid.

Neurim Pharmaceuticals has announced positive results from a phase II clinical study evaluating the efficacy and safety of Piromelatine (Neu-P11), a novel investigational multimodal sleep medicine developed for the treatment of patients with primary and co-morbid insomnia.

The new results are from a recent double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled, parallel group, non-confirmatory, sleep-laboratory study. The study evaluated piromelatine compared to placebo in 120 adult primary insomnia patients, ages 18 years and older. 

Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini,  Professor of Regenerative Surgery at Karolinska Institutet, has become famous worldwide due to successfully transplanting bioengineered stem cell-based trachea, composed of both artificial and biological material, in patients. That was an important waypoint on the road to the Big 5 organs, which are far largers and more complex.

Next up is the the esophagus and diaphragm and an experimental attempt to regenerate brain material in mice and rats, he said during his seminar at the scientific AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.