Reposted from the Fabius Maximus website
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 7 Comments / 15 February 2020
Summary: The coronavirus epidemic provides amazing news. About the epidemic, about the barrage of fake news (that we love), about the fear it creates (that we love), and the wonderful hidden news that makes this a milestone in history.
“We need a vaccine against misinformation {and} a communications vaccine. We need to be able to communicate in a much more effective way.”
— Dr. Michael J Ryan at WHO’s Feb. 13 press briefing. He is Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.
“News” about the coronavirus global pandemic!
If you have been reading the headlines from the “right” sources, you are terrified of the coronavirus pandemic. Pants-wetting is America’s new national pastime. No wonder our rulers and foes have contempt for us. Coronavirus disease is now known as COVID-19, the virus is SAR-CoV-2; details here.
Jan 23: Coronavirus Pandemic Simulation Run 3 Months Ago Predicts 65 Million People Could Die.
Jan 23: “Doomsday Clock Hits 100 Seconds To Midnight As Viral Pandemic Sweeps Globe.”
Jan 24: Coronavirus Pandemic Simulation Run 3 Months Ago Predicts 65 Million People Could Die.
Jan 25: “Martenson: The Risk Of A True Pandemic Is Higher Than We’re Being Told.”
Jan 26: “Is Another Black Death On The Way?”
Jan 29: “How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda.”
Jan 30: “GnS Economics: Coronavirus Has The Potential To Trigger A Global Depression.”
Feb 1: “Fear Of The Coronavirus Is Spreading Like Wildfire All Over The Globe.” – I wonder why?
Feb 3: “Petition For WHO Director-General To Resign Reaches Over 210,000 Signatures.” – From where comes the misinformation about WHO?
Feb 3: “Brace For Impact: Global Pandemic Already Baked In” – “If we accept what is known about the virus, then logic, science and probabilities all suggest we brace for impact.”
Feb 5: “The Lies We Are Being Told About The Coronavirus.”
Feb 6: “Mish Exposes WHO’s Historical Controversies” – The usual nonsense. When dealing with disasters, some people always accuse agencies of acting too slow or too small. But I never hear people offering to give them the money to stand ready for any disaster, anywhere.
Feb 8: “The Pandemic Isn’t Ending, It’s Just The Beginning Of Global Disorder & Depression.”
Feb 10: “Even The Mainstream Media Is Now Admitting That Humanity Is Facing ‘A Perfect Storm’.”
Feb 11: “Why Is The Government Turning 11 Military Bases Inside The US Into Quarantine Camps?” – Remember the big camps supposedly being built before Y2k?
Feb 12: “‘All Disasters Are Not Created Equally’ – CDC Powerless In Halting Spread Of Covid-19.”
Feb 13: “In Shocking Admission, WHO Advisor Says Coronavirus May Infect Over 5 Billion People.”
Feb 14: “Chaos Is Coming: US To Start Testing People With Flu Symptoms.”
Feb 14: “What If… The November Election Has To Be Postponed?”
Feb 14: “Harvard Expert Warns, Coronavirus Likely Just Now ‘Gathering Steam.’”
These headlines are from ZeroHedge. These stories are not all exaggerations and misinformation. Some quote actual experts seeking their 15 minutes of fame. But they fail to provide any larger context, such as that by the experts at WHO and CDC. It adds up to fake news. They publish this because they are smart.
Gallup’s surveys of Confidence in America’s institutions show a collapse during the past four decades. Especially the well-deserved collapse of our confidence in newspapers from 41% to 23%. So, many Americans have turned to vendors of exciting misinformation (see other reasons for this here). This makes fake news a fast track to success on the Internet.
The bottom line: the scarier the story, the less accurate the stories. That’s true from Climate Change to Coronavirus. Institutions trying to keep us informed about these complex and poorly understood issues (e.g., IPCC and NOAA) are attacked all sides. Sadly, Americans often express the most confidence in the most bogus sources.
“While the virus spreads, misinformation makes the job of our heroic health workers even harder. It is diverting the attention of decision makers. And it causes confusion and spreads fear to the general public. At WHO, we’re not just battling the virus; we’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response. As a Guardian headline noted today, “Misinformation on the coronavirus might be the most contagious thing about it.”
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, at a press briefing on February 8.
The hidden story
On January 25, I wrote that that “the 2019-nCoV virus shows that we’ve built a better world.” The response by public health agencies was faster and more powerful than anything before in history, a combination of global organization and high technology. China’s scientists isolated the virus on January 9 and sequenced it on January 10. On January 20 the CDC released a diagnostic test for the virus. On January 22, China quarantined the city of Wuhan.
Since then, China has implemented quarantines on a scale never before attempted. Coordinated by the WHO, the world’s nations implemented screening and research programs of unprecedented scale. See the full timeline here.
China has been hit hard by the epidemic. It combines poverty, high population density, and people living in close proximity with animals (even wild animals). It will have horrific epidemics. China’s people must deal with them. The rest of the world must act so that these epidemics do not devastate the other six-plus billion people
The great fear of the global public health agencies is that coronavirus would spread to poor nations with weak health infrastructure (those nations with strong ties to China are especially vulnerable) – from which it would spread around the world. So far that has not happened. WHO is working with those nations to make that less likely.
Every day the world becomes better able to defend itself against the coronavirus, with better screening mechanisms, better detection machinery, and better treatments (the first human trials of treatments have begun). Whatever happens next, this has made us better able to cope with it. That is why this is a milestone on the road to a better future.
The public health agencies are the core of our defenses. They are criticized for not accomplishing miracles with the small funds given them (see the Director-General speech yesterday). This shows the nature of our greatest problem: a failure to assume responsibility for our nation. But we can learn and do better.
From WHO’s February 14 Situation Report.
See the full report.
- Lots of bad news from China. But at their February 12 press conference, the Director-General said “The number of newly confirmed cases reported from China has stabilised over the past week but that must be interpreted with extreme caution.”
- No coronavirus cases have been reported in new nations since February 4.
- A total of 505 cases have been reported so far outside China, with 2 deaths (Feb 1 in the Philippines and in Japan on February 13).
- Other than those on the quarantined Japanese cruise ship (blue below), there have been few new cases reported outside China in the past 5 days. See the graph; ignore the blue segment (click to enlarge).
Conclusions
Events in the three weeks since my post have validated my original assessment. This is a milestone in history, no matter what happens next. But this is not the amazing news. It is that this remains hidden news.
The news media are no different than McDonald’s. Both work in the free market, serving us what we want. Americans today want exciting and scary news, not accurate news. We saw this in the hysteria during the 2009 swine flu and 2015 ebola epidemics. This weakness of ours almost guarantees that we will make poor decisions as citizens about America’s future – about coronavirus and our many other big challenges.
It’s easy to follow the coronavirus story
The World Health Organization provides daily information, from highly technical information to news for the general public.
- There is their daily situation report, with detailed numbers.
- The Director-General of WHO gives frequent briefings, which are quite insightful.
- Their daily press briefings have more information. An audio goes up quickly afterwards. A transcript is posted the next day.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also, see these posts …
- See the ugly cost of the next big flu pandemic. We can do more to prepare.
- Stratfor: The superbugs are coming. We have time to prepare.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2009 swine flu in America.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2015 ebola epidemic in America.
A great film about epidemics in the 21st century
Contagion (2011).
This shows the progress of a pandemic from patient Zero, through global devastation, to eventual victory by the world’s scientists. The summary from the studio makes it sounds like a horror flick. It isn’t, or at least not entirely one.
“When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband (Matt Damon) that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia.”
I see Zero Hedge as a ‘clearing house’ of news – especially news that other outlets might be suppressing or marginalising because it doesn’t suit their pre-ordained narrative. (And yes, I do mean the NYT)
They see something that might be interesting, they post it usually citing the source. You read it, believe it, or disbelieve it, at your own discretion.
I dislike a lot of the comments/commenters there, and I do wonder if a) they are just a bunch of nutters; b) they represent a (rather horrifying) groundswell of opinion; c) they are the product of a concerted astroturfing campaign to give the impression of a groundswell of opinion.
But then again, I don’t have to read them – and mostly I don’t.
Correct – Tyler Durden is about 13 journalists, a kind of committee. It is a news aggregator. The toxic anti China 24×7 full nation info-warfare has the smell of regime-change tactics used by the swamp against hapless countries, turned against the USA population itself.
But , hey, we have seen that LtCol Vindman, Wray, Comey, Clapper, Strzok were capable of doing.
At least voters now get a taste of what other countries were put through over decades in THEIR name.
Suck it up, or buck? What’s it going to be?
“The news media are no different than McDonald’s. Both work in the free market, serving us what we want. Americans today want exciting and scary news, not accurate news. ”
You are wrong. “… it is not “news media” it is “political-journalist complex”
The scary news is to give more pretext for political power at expense of individual power.
The “news media” exists to proselytize for more and more Politics. Politics is the only religion that is still belived.
I have read that it is possible Asians are more susceptible to the virus due to them having a genetic pre disposition
https://theprepared.com/blog/new-study-suggests-2019-ncov-may-hit-men-asian-people-harder/
Also read some news today that it is possible virus causes male infertility, which if true, would have serious consequences on birth rate if it spreads
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-latest-research-published-by-chinese-scientists-say-coronavirus-will-render-most-male-patients-infertile
Upthread I cited a free scientific report that this “Wuhan” coronavirus uses ACE2 to get into cells & how Europeans have statistically less ACE2 than Asians. A commentator pointed out that smoking raises ACE2 (certainly true) & inferred that was all we can consider definitive.
I’d like to advance the issue further for those who have commented on this post since mine. Here are the six gene variations that the “1000 Genomes Project” found potentially resulting on greater ACE2. Their reference codes are, in no particular order rs1877752, rs879922, rs1978124, rs714205, rs233575,& rs2048683.
The percent of people of different ancestry with one of these ACE2 gene variants is different. For example Europeans in North & West Europe tested on average of 53% have one of these ACE2 variants (Caucasian British in England it is on average 61%) while Han Chinese in the south of China this rises to on average 92% (Han in Beijing it is on average 90%).
Africans also have variable rates of these ACE2 variants. For example: Yoruba (Ibadan, Nigeria) it is on average 57%, while Kenyan Luhya it is on average 63%. And I’ll add here that for southwest USA African Americans tested it is on average 66% (similarly on average 64% for Barbados’ Afro-Caribbeans).
thank you for that!
gringojay, I assume that it was my post you were referring to?
The paper I read states that:
“No significant disparities in ACE2 gene expression were found between racial groups (Asian vs
Caucasian), age groups (>60 vs <60) or gender groups (male vs female). However, we
observed significantly higher ACE2 gene expression in smoker samples compared to nonsmoker
samples. This indicates the smokers may be more susceptible to 2019-nCov and
thus smoking history should be considered in identifying susceptible population and
standardizing treatment regimen."
I wasn't suggesting that it was the only fact that could be considered definitive, just that any comparison of Asians and Europeans must consider smoking behavior as a control.
Hi Phil, – Actually I was not specificly responding to your mentioned quotes. I did read your initial comment with those quotes & without a cited source I have no way to assess the context of where/who.
Late last night I came across an excellent chart of smoking (among other features) ACE2 levels vs. “normal” levels; without any context of gene variants however. I don’t create computer files so may not be able to relocate that for the general interest, but will look.
Again Phil, – I came across your quote source. Authors state: ” … study … limitation[s] … data … from the normal lung tissue of patients with lung adenocarcinoma … may be different … healthy people ….”
Do you know if it is smoking or just the nicotine ? Lots of people nowadays use tobacco free pouches that they put in space between gum and lip. Some is nicotine that is not made from tobacco, just nicotine with some filler added to pouch.
Hi Stevek, – Maybe you, or someone else, can make more sense than I can of the significance of the ACE data (2012) reported in: “Assessment of renal damage using selected biochemical markers in smokeless tobacco users”; free full text available on-line.
Cited paper’s Fig. 2 shows comparative ACE urine levels & Fig 2 comparative ACE serum levels. Text states that, in urine, there was lower ACE (37.07) in smokeless tobacco users than in non-users urine who had higher ACE (44.97). However, authors do not report any specific ACE2 comparison.
Less renal ACE means there is less conversion of angio-tensin 1 into angio-tensin 2 [& thus less renal angio-tensin 2 that “could” be redirected to the adrenals for contributing to hypertension]. Which thus seems (to me) to imply that there is less renal ACE2 being made since there is less angio-tensin 2 forming that “should” be converted to [into the desirable vaso-dilator angio-tensin 1-7].
Frankly I am not sure this is relevant to ACE2 levels in our mucosal/respiratory tract viral target tissue(s). My uninformed conjecture is that smoking raises ACE2 levels by interactions other than unheated nicotine molecules in tobacco.
Thanks gringojay. Seems my best educated guess is that smoking tobacco is riskiest. Smoking has cascade of effects leading to all types of problems.
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v2
Watching the WHO public statements with deep scepticism. The head of that organisation is a disaster. He is a political animal and he seems to be playing politics in the midst of this crisis. His public statements seem more concerned with stamping out criticism of China and sucking up to the Chinese communist party than with the pandemic. I suspect that he would be entirely willing to downplay the danger for political reasons and I can’t bring myself to trust what he says.
The WHO would do well to sack him and put an apolitical doctor or scientist in charge. They need a blunt honest person clearly oblivious to politics who can be trusted to simply tell it as it is without trying to put political spin on it.
Anyone trusting WHO is the definition of the cuck.
In the end, Corona is rather harmless. Healthy people will survive it. It’s mostly old, weakened people that are in danger. Maybe they should try ClO2 which is a secret weapon against many illnesses. In contrast to antibiotics, it kills only harmless bacteria/viruses with a pH value below 7 (harmful stuff has a pH value below 7) and they can’t develope a resistance against ClO2.
“In the end, Corona is rather harmless….It’s mostly old, weakened people that are in danger.” Really? Then all those pictures of people in their 30’s just laying everywhere dead in China is a lie? You’re not protected because of your age. It’s going to get stronger as it mutates and like all viruses, like the flu, they won’t be able to keep up with the vaccines to stop it from causing havoc.
“It’s going to get stronger as it mutates”
Why would it? By what magic?
From reading troll posts.
It’s not magic … it’s science … when the virus mutates it will mutate in such a fashion that it will be able to affect those it hadn’t before – meaning that it has become stronger and more resilient to attack more people. Like most infectious diseases – fewer affected shorter life for the virus – mutate to reach a larger pool of victims. That’s how it usually works so why wouldn’t work like this this time?
It’s science. I like these answers!
What science is that? If every virus is mutating that way, why aren’t we all terminally ill?
Wow! What can I say to niceguy? As viruses mutate and people become ill – those that don’t die become immune to that particular virus – then it mutates again – people become ill, some die, those that don’t become immune to that particular virus strain – how dense does one have to be to not know this simple scientific fact?
Sometimes when a virus is so new there is NO ONE immune to it then everyone has the equal chance of becoming ill and dying from it. If the virus, like SARS, infects only a few people it has little impact on the greater number of people who don’t hug chickens for a living.
However, if it is like this virus, which apparently has a huge impact on a large number of people it has the probability of mutation as it passes from one host to the other much like other coronaviruses do, good example of a common coronavirus is catching a cold. Does this mean you would become “terminally ill” from catching a cold or the flu?
You have nothing.
You know nothing.
You are dismissed.
And apparently neither do you – dismiss facts – attempt to shame others – same old leftist tripe – : )
Many posters here wonder if there is an environmental or even genetic variation behind the severity of the Covid19 flu. Or even smoking habits?
The progress of the infection in Singapore – with a wealthy, clean city-state, and first-rate health care, and three-quarters Chinese but around 15% non-East Asian population, is very likely to give us useful information about relative risks.
Joanne Nova, who graduated in microbiology at university, has a useful write up about this at her climate blog, for those like me, attempting to arrive at useful risk/reward calculations. (I was already closely following The Straits Times, the leading newspaper in Singapore.) She thinks three months is the total period to assess. And since Singapore has a tropical summer climate, I believe the situation there gives us a test case as to whether or not Northern Summer can be expected to stem the disease transmissibility, like other influenzas.
Singapore infections have not yet gone exponential in their rise. Jo Nova concludes: “As long as the growth factor [in Singapore] is below one (in the growth of daily cases below), the growth is not exponential. However, be aware that at some point our ability to slow the linear growth and keep it under ‘1’ will be overwhelmed. It is simply not possible to do exhaustive tracking of each new case, tracing back to find the source and isolating all the other contacts. At 50 cases Singapore had one unexplained source. Is that the point nations lose control? We don’t know. Singapore might get lucky. They will be tracking hundreds of people.
“Cruise boats aside I hope this is a pattern that stays under 1. But there is that nagging concern about untested cases and the superspreader wildcard. Perhaps Singapore was just unlucky and got one, or perhaps even the strain of virus there may be different. Mutations are high in single stranded RNA viruses so there is possibly a cloud of different ones spreading right now. The most infectious strains will win that race, we just hope they are also less nasty.”
Thus, hope for the best, plan for the reasonable worst, is meaningful advice. Wait, watch for the basic evidence to develop, and then be personally proactive.
Thanks much for the posts. I think ZeroHedge is garbage, and I refuse to take them seriously.
If you read more in-depth about the effects of tobacco and nicotine more specifically you will find that chronic use upregulates ACE2 receptors only as a compensatory mechanism. This is the effect of chronically abusing any medicinal compound. Just like any other body system, the ACE-ACE2 pathway maintains homeostasis by responding to down-regulation with compensation in the opposite direction.
In the short-term, used for an acute infectious illness, tobacco is actually a medicinal herb which lowers ACE2 receptors and decreases the chances of contracting the virus – I’m almost sure of it.
With regard to the recent “study” showing that there were no racial differences in ACE2 found, and that the only factor found to increase ACE2 was smoking tobacco – there are comments pointing out that the inverse is true for both of these factors:
“I second Leo Hopkins in wondering what it is about tobacco smoke that would increase ACE2 receptor sites, especially in light of other studies that indicate that exposure to cigarette smoke/nicotine upregulates ACE1 and actually downregulates ACE2, which is potentially the reason that tobacco use is associated with elevated blood pressure. And isn’t it also the case that there are legitimate, well-established differences in ACE2 allele frequencies (and thus gene expression) between those of different ethnicities? Both of these factors would appear to indicate the opposite of what was found in this review. I will be very interested to see the results of further research on this topic.”
Nicotine is also broadly medicinal in many other ways:
Not only does tobacco inhibit ACE2 expression, which reduces one’s chance of catching this novel coronavirus, it down-regulates cytokine production. Cytokine storms are a part of the disease progression here.
“In primary cultures of neurons and glial cells isolated from brainstem and hypothalamus of 1-day-old rats, nicotine treatment resulted in increased expression of AT1R but decreased expression of ACE2 … In chronic cigarette smoke-induced PAH in rats, ANG II level in the lung was increased with increased expression of ACE and decreased expression of ACE2.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6295500/
It also regulates the immune system and vagus nerve downstream of that, and its effects on CD4+ T-Cells suggest it can actually be strongly anti-HIV.
“Chronic nicotine exposure is known to activate nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in immune cells. We demonstrate a novel role for α4 nAChRs in the effect of nicotine on T-cell proliferation and immunity. In the circulation, spleen, bone marrow, and thymus, we find that nicotine promotes an increase in CD3+CD4+ cells … In particular, nicotine is found to promote a helper T cell 2 adaptive immunologic response within T cells that is absent in α4−/− mice. We thus present a new mechanism of α4 nAChR signaling and immune regulation in T cells, possibly accounting for the effect of smoking on the immune system.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3868899/
HIV+ individuals have also been shown to metabolize nicotine faster than HIV- individuals. I suspect this is related to the body’s NEED for something to activate nAChR receptors in the absence of acetylcholine, and that nicotine actually proves medicinal in the case of HIV.
“The HIV-positive individuals smoked a median of 13 cigarettes daily compared with 15 cigarettes in the HIV-negative group. The two groups had an NMR of 0.47 and 0.34, respectively (a higher figure indicates faster metabolization). The study authors stratified the participants into four groups according to their NMR and found that 35 percent of the HIV-positive individuals, compared with 17 percent of the HIV-negative people, fell into the fastest metabolization quartile.”
https://www.poz.com/a…/people-hiv-metabolize-nicotine-faster
Nicotine also increases white AND red blood cell counts (through an “unknown” mechanism, which I suspect is regulated by nAChR). This is anti-2019-nCoV, as 2019-nCoV has been shown to lower both white blood cell count, and in some cases (oddly) also red blood cell count.
“Whether tobacco smoking causally affects white and red blood cells and thrombocyte counts is unknown. Using a Mendelian randomization approach, we tested the hypothesis that smoking causes increases in these blood cell indices.
In multivariable adjusted observational analyses and compared with never smokers, white blood cells were associated with up to 19% increases, thrombocytes with up to 4.7% increases, and red blood cell indices with up to 2.3% increases in former and current smokers.
Smoking causes increased blood leukocytes, neutrophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes, as well as increased hematocrit, hemoglobin, and mean corpuscular volume. The observational smoking relationships were long term for white blood cells and short term for red blood cell indices.”
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.118.312338
Because it lowers cytokines, tobacco has been clinically shown to increase survival rates of mice infected with lethal doses of Influenza virus and coxsackievirus B3, because their lethality largely relies on inflammatory pathways.
” … after H9N2 infection, cigarette smoke exposed mice displayed significantly less weight loss, which might be attributed to lower cytokines and chemokines production, less macrophages, neutrophils, CD4+ and CD8+ T cells infiltration and reduced lung damage compared to the control mice.
To further investigate the underlying mechanism, we used nicotine to mimic the effect of cigarette smoke both in vitro and in vivo. Pre-treating the primary human macrophages with nicotine for 72 h significantly decreased their expression of cytokines and chemokines after pdmH1N1 or H9N2 infection.
The mice subcutaneously and continuously treated with nicotine displayed significantly less weight loss and lower inflammatory response than the control mice upon pdmH1N1 or H9N2 infection. Moreover, α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor knockout mice had more body weight loss than wild-type mice after cigarette smoke exposure and H9N2 infection.
Our study provided the first evidence that the pathogenicity of both pdmH1N1 and H9N2 viruses was alleviated in cigarette smoke exposed mice,”
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15895
Truly organic, untreated (or wild) tobacco, if only taken into the mouth and not inhaled, seems to be a very potent immune-regulating medicinal herb. One that is active against a broad spectrum of viruses, fungi, and bacteria, regulates the immune and cardiovascular systems, and restores homeostasis. It also appears to ameliorate many of the negative effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields and/or radiation, toxic substances like insecticides that affect acetylcholine, and many other forms of background pollution.
Remember gp120 is an insert in 2019-nCoV.
“Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are fast ionotropic ion channel receptors that bind to and are activated by their endogenous ligands acetylcholine (ACh) and choline; they also bind nicotine. These heteromeric receptors (assembled with more than one type of subunit) are characteristic for their high affinity to nicotine but differ in their pharmacological properties depending on subunit composition.
… studies have shown that nAChRs can modulate cellular processes in the central nervous system (CNS). For instance, nicotine administration can improve cognitive performance in normal subjects and produce a number of physiological effects.
Studies performed by Bracci et al. demonstrated a significant homology between a specific sequence of gp120, the coat protein of HIV, and the putative active sites of snake curare-mimetic neurotoxins, which have the ability to bind irreversibly to nAChRs.
Furthermore, the authors demonstrated that recombinant gp120 inhibits the binding of the nAChR antagonist, α-bgtx, suggesting that other type of receptors (such as nAChRs) can function as HIV receptors, and supports the notion that ion channels may have a role during HIV infection.
Subsequent studies performed in SIV-infected monkeys found that reduced cholinergic neurotransmission was present in the form of a dramatic reduction in choline acetyltransferase activity, the enzyme responsible for the biosynthesis of ACh (Koutsilieri et al. 2000).
Consistent with these observations, González-Lira et al. (2006) performed electrophysiological studies in rats and found that, in addition to motor and cognition impairments, gp120 interferes with cholinergic neurotransmission as part of the neuropsychiatric abnormalities characteristic of HAD.
However, nicotine administration maintained these parameters near normality, supporting the participation of nAChRs in the beneficial outcome.
An interesting proof-of-concept study was designed and carried out to evaluate if an increase in the bioavailability of ACh, through the chemical inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, was capable of enhancing the anti-inflammatory reflex in patients infected with HIV (Valdés-Ferrer et al. 2009).
Results demonstrate that pyridostigmine (an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor) was able to modify the overactivation and proliferation of T-lymphocytes in patients chronically infected with HIV. This approach also led to an increase in the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10, a decrease in T-lymphocytes proliferation, and the production of the proinflammatory cytokine IFN-γ.
Moreover, recently, a 16-week proof-of-concept open trial was performed using pyridostigmine as add-on therapy in seven HIV-infected patients with discordant immune response receiving combined antiretroviral therapy, to determine whether pyridostigmine would promote an increase in total CD4+ T-cells (Valdés-Ferrer et al. 2017). Results indicate that in patients suffering from HIV+, add-on pyridostigmine results in a significant and persistent increase in circulating CD4+ T-cells.
The anti-inflammatory activity of the α7-nAChR occurs by the ACh-induced activation of the receptor to inhibit the production of proinflammatory cytokines in macrophages, thereby modulating immune responses and the progression of inflammatory diseases, avoiding organ and systemic damage (Tracey 2009). Altogether, these studies highlight the importance of this neuroimmune tract for the well-being of healthy people and accents the α7-nAChR’s pivotal role in the innate immune response necessary to resolve inflammation.
Another plausible medication is varenicline, a full agonist of α7-nAChRs (Mihalak et al. 2006) and smoking cessation drug that has been demonstrated to be safe and effective in patients infected with HIV (Cui et al. 2012; Ferketich et al. 2013). Results from varenicline suggest similar or even higher cessation rates than for the general population (Cui et al. 2012; Ferketich et al. 2013; Shirley et al. 2013). Thus, repurposing FDA-approved pharmacotherapeutics targeted at α7-nAChRs to treat HIV-associated diseases implies that new treatments could reach patients faster.”
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus:
– till now was hard preoccupied with red meat:
https://www.google.com/search?q=tedros+adhanom+ghebreyesus%2C+director-general+of+who&oq=&aqs=chrome.
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Chicken May Be as Bad for Your Cholesterol as Red Meat – MSN.com
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https://www.ctvnews.ca › health
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https://www.paho.org › …
Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer among women in … – PAHO/WHO
1 Feb 2019 · … Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in his call to action in May 2018 at the World Health Assembly. … and vegetables and high in red meat and processed meat, …