random bits from the news

[cellio]

An article in my local dead-tree news reported on something I'd been wondering about for a while: are allergies and asthma more prevalent than they used to be (versus just being diagnosed more), and, if so, is it because of lifestyle changes? Yes and yes, apparently; research shows that more sterile environments mean our immune systems don't have as much to do, so they go off and find other ways to keep busy. (I couldn't find the local article online; Google found me this one from half a year ago.) I'm glad my parents let me play in the great outdoors and eat anything, and that we had pets, when I was growing up; I do have some allergies (environmental, not food), but they're mild. I feel sorry for one of my in-laws: his parents are hyper-paranoid about food allergies and are attempting to build a shield around him. They didn't come to our wedding because we couldn't guarantee that none of a long list of foods had never passed through the hall's kitchen. That kid is going to be a mess when he grows up, and he's probably going to think this is normal when he has kids of his own. Ugh.

Via Slashdot: daylight "saving" time actually increases energy usage. ("Saving" is a misnomer; we should call it "daylight shifting time", which is all it accomplishes. There are not, after all, storehouses in which we collect excess sunlight for use during lean times; nothing is saved.) The researchers were handed a great data-collection opportunity: they did their work in Indiana, where until recently some counties did DST and others did not. So they not only had before-and-after data, but also a control group nearby to factor out weather and the like.

A few days ago a house in Plum (near Pittsburgh) exploded, apparently from a gas leak. (I actually saw this on national news before I saw the local news.) This made me wonder whether it's possible to build a detector (other than the human nose) for household use. We have smoke detectors and carbon-monoxide detectors; why have I never heard of a gas-buildup detector? Granted that such incidents are extremely rare, but they are potentially much more devastating than fires and CO buildup, so if an inexpensive household gadget could provide some potential warning, that'd be great.

In lighter news:

You know that "who do you want to answer the phone at 3AM?" ad the Clinton campaign is running? The little girl in the ad was stock footage; she's now an adult and working on the Obama campaign (via insomnia).

Headline of the day, from thnidu: Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo.

Comments

[siderea]

Yes and yes, apparently; research shows that more sterile environments mean our immune systems don't have as much to do, so they go off and find other ways to keep busy.

Notice the complete lack of research substantiation in that article. I'm given to understand the hygene theory is one with lots of "face validity", and it widely accepted as reasonable, but for which nobody's really managed to come up with substantiating evidence... and, most damning, it doesn't fit the epidemiological evidence.

Unless there's some reason inner-city African-American kids are being raised in ultra-sanitary environments much, much more often than their European-American peers in the 'burbs.

[cellio]

Unless there's some reason inner-city African-American kids are being raised in ultra-sanitary environments much, much more often than their European-American peers in the 'burbs.

Interesting. I didn't know that that population had disproportionate allergies/asthma/etc.

[siderea]

Before confirming this, I went looking for data. According to this 2002 CDC report has asthma occuring among non-hispanic blacks about a quarter again as much as among non-hispanic whites... but among Native Americans about 50% again more than n-h whites. That, that's news to me. Fascinating.

Haven't yet found urban/rural data.

[siderea]

Hmm! Also this:

"Rethinking race/ethnicity, income, and childhood asthma: racial/ethnic disparities concentrated among the very poor."

[...] CONCLUSIONS: Non-Hispanic black children were at substantially higher risk of asthma than non-Hispanic white children only among the very poor. The concentration of racial/ethnic differences only among the very poor suggests that patterns of social and environmental exposures must overshadow any hypothetical genetic risk.

[siderea]

And this abstract mentions "Urban African-American youth, aged 15–19 years, have asthma fatality rates that are higher than in whites and younger children". (Which is not the same thing at all as having a higher rate of incidence, but I thought it was also interesting and wanted to throw it out there.)

[siderea]

Irritatingly, this article would seem to be the one we want, but makes no mention of its conclusions in its abstract. If you're sufficiently motivated, I'll go get a copy.

[cellio]

Thanks for the links. That last one does sound like the one we want, since the abstract suggests that they (unlike the others) accounted for the other points of variation, like money. (One of the other ones, for instance, reports a higher rate of emergency care for one group without addressing whether those people were getting the same levels of routine care. Poor people sometimes skip checkups because of the cost.)

How much trouble is it for you to get a copy of this article? I assume you have free access?

[siderea]

Here at work, no trouble. You should receive an email with a PDF attachment, kicked out from EBSCOhost (not sure what domain it will be from; maybe ebscohost.com). Has this username of mine in the subject line.

[cellio]

Received and queued for reading. Thanks!

Allergy evidence

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

There is some interesting evidence in favor of this. Several autoimmune diseases respond to therapies where they infect the person with parasites. The portion of the immune system that would take care of parasites is the portion that mediates the autoimmune response.

Exactly how this fits in, no one is sure, since autoimmune syndromes seem to be related to chimerism and mosaicism (the former where two non-identical embryos merge, partially merge, exchange cells by a merged placenta, or the embryo swaps cells with the mother -- embryonic brain cells wind up in the mother, and seem to be related to a decrease in brain deterioration, but may be linked to other problems, the latter caused by dropped chromosomes or portions of chromosomes or excess duplication of chromosomes during development). It may be that your body normally would tolerate the alien cells (alien being a difficult concept to define). To give you an idea of the extent, approximately 70% of people are thought to be either chimeric or severely mosaic; moderate mosaicism may actually approach 100%, and that's not including cancer under the mosaic label.

The evidence is pretty clear on the parasites. One research team is actually looking into breeding a parasite that can be kept in check and would help remove cholesterol from the gut.

One known weight loss technique involves ingesting tape worms and then closely monitoring the patient, killing the tapeworms when either they get too aggressive or the patient reaches a desired weight. Some herbal weight loss supplements contain tapeworm eggs, and tapeworm eggs can be purchased for weight loss without a doctor's supervision, but that's not a bright idea.

The question is what effect killing bacteria and viruses has on humans. There are more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells. The bacterial cells are smaller.... It's unlikely that allergies are caused by a lack of bacteria -- bacteria are tackled by a different segment of the immune system. It's pretty unlikely that bacteria can mutate to avoid antibacterial soaps -- and most soaps themselves do a good job of killing bacteria.

The main problem thought to come from killing bacteria and viruses in the environment is that our immune systems get lazy. Going back to the cowpox vaccine, it's been known that vaccines sometimes cause tumor destruction. If you get an otherwise untreatble cancer, and it's not otherwise contraindicated, getting every possible vaccination over a period of time isn't a bad strategy. Even if it works by placebo, hey, it works!

Children that don't receive vaccinations but live in an area where most children do get vaccinations sometimes get hit especially hard when they experience the disease later in life than would have been normal.

Basic hygiene has saved more lives than all other medical interventions combined. The question is whether we're going overboard.

And by the way, the epidemiological evidence does support the allergy/autoimmune/parasite link, and it also supports the bacteria/virus/cancer link as well as the bacteria/vaccination problem.

Inner city kids in the United States don't tend to get exposed to intestinal parasites. Go some place where everyone has intestinal parasites, and you find there aren't nearly as many allergies.