Ricki Lewis

Before COVID, reports of a new bird flu trickling or even sweeping out of Asia didn't garner much attention. That's certainly changed. So when two members of the China Novel Coronavirus Investigating and Research Team, who co-authored the first warning of what was to come in February 2020 in The New England Journal of Medicine, sound a new alarm, maybe we should listen.

In a short Insights Perspective published in Science, "Emerging H5N8 avian influenza viruses," Weifeng Shi and George Gao make the case for concern that a bird flu now in more than 46 countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa has jumped to humans. Only seven poultry farm workers in Russia were reported to have gotten sick, while trying to contain an outbreak among their feathered charges. But there must have been a time, in the fall of 2019, when COVID, too, had sickened only a few people.

An avian influenza virus would need to pass easily from person-to-person to seed a pandemic in people, like SARS-CoV-2 does. That's unlikely, but as we've learned, not impossible.

To continue reading, go to my DNA Science blog at Public Library of Science, where this post first appeared.

We're obsessed with aging. 

In the quest to prolong life while remaining healthy, people have tried everything from turtle soup to owl meat to drinking human blood.

Russian-French microbiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ilya Mechnikov believed that a person could live 150 years with the help of a steady diet of milk cultured with bacteria. (He died at 71.)

It's a favorite topic of Hollywood. From Cocoon to Death Becomes Her to Chronos, the quest to extend our limited time on this planet has been a favorite focus of science fiction. Now it's edging closer to science fact.

A new report in Nature Communications from researchers at artificial intelligence company GERO.AI indeed points to a maximal human lifespan of 150. And they've pioneered a metric that might one day pop up on a smartphone to indicate an individual's state of aging – something more meaningful, in terms of future health, than counting gray hairs or celebrating birthdays.

To continue reading, go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this post first appeared.

Biotech interventions to help sick children—like gene therapy—are approached with supreme caution. If a treatment has a reasonable chance of working, and especially if there aren't alternatives, potential benefits might clearly outweigh the risks, and favor running a clinical trial. 

But genetic modification of sperm, eggs, or embryos is a different story, even with a therapeutic goal (see GLP Ricki Lewis' Designer babies? US scientists swap DNA in embryos, replacing mutation that causes heart problems). Scrutiny is even more intense if the intervention aims not to heal or prevent illness, but to genetically enhance children, striving to somehow "improve" them.

Could genetic modification endow a child with high intelligence, facility with learning languages, musical or artistic ability, or mathematical genius? And what would happen to a society in which wealth determines whose children are enhanced?

Gene editing creates class-ism

Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, Klara and the Sun, imagines a world in which some children are rendered exceptionally intelligent with genetic modification. The British author, recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, also wrote the 2005 dystopian masterpiece Never Let Me Go (and 2010 film), set at an English boarding school in the 1990s. In that alternate reality, people are cloned to provide organs for the wealthy, perishing proudly in young adulthood when they run out of spare parts.

To continue reading, go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this post first appeared.

Today, May 6th, is Wishbone Day, to raise awareness about osteogenesis imperfecta (OI).

Also known as "brittle bone disease," OI is a consequence of mutations that disrupt the highly organized structure of collagen, a major component of connective tissues. Collagen accounts for more than half the protein in bone and cartilage, and is also part of skin, ligaments, tendons, and the dentin of teeth.

Because OI is due to a deficit of collagen, eating more calcium doesn't help – the advice given to members of a family I wrote about here. Before many genes behind OI were identified, some parents of children with OI were suspected of child abuse, especially when a second child had fractures too.

A Collection of Collagen Conditions

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, my blog at Public Library of Science.

Sumatran rhinoceroses are solitary creatures that browse the dense rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, living in small, scattered, shrinking groups. Taking a census is challenging, although they "sing." It isn't known how many of them exist, exactly, but the number is small.

A multinational research team has unearthed clues in the genomes of 21 of the animals, five "historical" from the Malay Peninsula where they are extinct, and 16 modern genomes from the remaining populations on Sumatra and Borneo. "Genomic insights into the conservation status of the world's last remaining Sumatran rhinoceros populations" appears in Nature Communications.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

I just returned from an enlightening trip to CVS, to photograph Abbott Lab's at-home rapid antigen test for COVID, BinaxNOW. It became available at three major drugstore chains on April 19.

"Do you have the rapid COVID test? The at-home one?" I asked the woman behind the pharmacy counter.

Deer-in-the-headlights.

Fortunately, the pharmacist behind her overheard. "Not only don't we have it, but we don't know when we'll be getting it." I wasn't too surprised; I live in a small town.

So I got on line to buy some vitamin gummies, appropriately socially distanced, and saw to my immediate left a prominent display of items that everyone should have to prevent COVID: wipes, hand sanitizer, gloves, masks. They provided a backdrop to a stack of 6 boxes of – BinaxNOW!

Of course, a detection test to see if you've been infected is not at all the same thing as a preventive measure. So I circled back to the pharmacy, and within seconds of notifying the pharmacist that the tests were indeed available, an angry summons for the manager bellowed out over the loudspeaker.

Oops.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

Lauren Thomas, who just turned 26, is trying to get into a clinical trial at the University of Oxford, where the American is in a master's program in data science. She's seeking to be intentionally reinfected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused her bout with COVID-19 back in October.

Thomas had a mild case – just a fever. So now she's volunteering to help researchers understand the aftermath of infection, waiting to hear whether she'll get into the clinical trial. In the meantime, she's an organizer for 1daysooner, a non-profit advocacy group for people wishing to participate in research and launched in April 2020. A major focus has been joining clinical trials for COVID vaccines.

Why would anyone sign up for a second encounter with the virus that has shattered the world?

To continue reading, go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this post first appeared.

"Virus outbreak: research says COVID-19 likely synthetic," shouted the headline in the Taipei Times on February 23, 2020. The idea that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 arose in a virology lab in China – by accident or as a bioweapon – has sparked an undulation of accusation and explanation ever since.

The latest chapter: An "open letter" in the April 7, 2021 New York Times, calling for "a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19." The two dozen scientists who signed the letter cite the continuing absence of a "robust process" to examine critical records and biological samples. Their argument responds to the WHO's March 20 press event that barely considered an origin other than from a natural spillover.

But two types of new information may counter the lab escapee hypothesis: filling-in-the-blanks of mammals that may have served as "missing links" in the evolution of disease transmission, and the rapid rise of viral variants reflecting a tendency to mutate that may underlie SARS-CoV-2 seemingly bursting from out of nowhere.

So here is my view, as a geneticist, of three possible origins of SARS-CoV-2:

1. Bioweapon – an engineered pathogen or escape of a natural candidate

2. Gradual evolutionary change through intermediate animal hosts, mutating along the way and becoming more virulent

3. "Mutator" genes that trigger mutations in other genes, speeding evolution

To continue reading, go to my blog DNA Science at Public Library of Science.

Last week's DNA Science post considered the ebb and flow of treatment possibilities for Alzheimer's disease. This week, it's Huntington's disease.

Like Alzheimer's, the less familiar HD also affects the brain, but HD is always inherited and is much rarer. The only treatments for HD manage symptoms, some of them prescribed off-label, borrowed from other conditions. A treatment that addresses the underlying cause of the disease, which delays onset or slows progression, has been elusive for decades.

A Disease Like No Other

HD is one of 40 "expanding repeat" diseases. A tiny part of a gene repeats many times, resulting in an encoded protein burdened with extra amino acids that interfere with its folding, rendering the protein sticky. In HD, mutant huntingtin protein gums up neurons in the brain's striatum, blocking signals essential to control movements and to think. Behavior changes too – anger and aggression may soar, as irritability, loss of impulse control, and confusion reign. The white matter part of the brain – the axons of those neurons – shrinks.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

The avalanche of TV ads for Prevagen that coincided with my reaching Medicare age has inspired me to investigate what's coming for Alzheimer's disease (AD) – real treatments. Prevagen is not that.

Deceptive Advertising

The scenes, unending lest they immediately vanish from the viewer's disintegrating memory, show gorgeous older folks, especially couples, enjoying life and claiming that Prevagen keeps them thinking clearly, implying that they wouldn't have otherwise. A banner on the lower right proclaims "Prevagen improves memory." Yet there's no evidence that this is in fact true.

Prevagen pitches don't mention the class action lawsuit against Quincy Bioscience that was settled in 2020. Customers who had their receipt could get $70 back, and those who didn't, a generous $12. The red flag? Those claims to improve memory.

Prevagen, a "brain health supplement" and not a drug, falls into that regulatory backwater for products skirting rigorous clinical trials. The settlement demanded the company stop the claims, but "Buy Prevagen® Brain Health & Memory Improvement Supplements" appears instantly on Google. The asterisk above "Supplements" is the standard disclaimer: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

To continue reading, go to my DNA Science blog at Public Library of Science, where this post first appeared.