PHE - Resources

"Facebook has been collecting potentially sensitive health data through a tracker that, until recently, was included in the online scheduling tools of roughly a third of the country's top hospitals, according to a new report from nonprofit investigative newsroom The Markup."

"Treatment with the immunotherapy dostarlimab showed promising results in a small trial of more than a dozen rectal cancer patients, according to new research, but further study is needed and it is too early to call it a cure. CNN's Erin Burnett speaks to Dr. Andrea Cercek, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center."

"Why are some people more resilient than others-and can it be taught? By Lorna Collier November 2016, Vol 47, No. 10 Print version: page 48"

"The simplest thing you can do to start your day happier by focusing on the positive and becoming more mindful. The Five Minute Journal's guided and structured exercises will lead you down a path toward an enhanced version of the person you already are. "

"We've built a learning experience from the ground to develop these essential skills. There's something for everyone: expert videos, engaging activities, the Mood Meter tool, personal reflections, and much more."

"Get inspiration and ideas from hundreds of self-tracking projects documented in our community archive, searchable by tools and topics."

"Thank you for considering buying our book, Personal Science: Learning to Observe. The book presents a step-by-step approach to exploring your personal questions with empirical methods. It contains no advice whatsoever on what treatments or medicines or diets or vitamins or exercises are worth trying. Instead, it offers meta-advice; that is, advice on how to know if the things that you try actually work the way you expect, and advice about how to develop reasonable new ideas of things to try."

"Uncover the real priorities of your community with our Community Driven Innovation™ program. Learn what matters the most to them and start sharing insights back with your community."

"Starting with an open-mind, questioning the foundational science, and conducting his own studies, Dr. Sarno discovered something revolutionary - the cause of most chronic back and body pain is not due to an underlying physical issue, but a specific way the brain and body interact.   "

"What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking. People keep track. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin kept charts of time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, people use technology to self-track: hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, medications administered. Ninety million wearable sensors were shipped in 2014 to help us gather data about our lives. This book examines how people record, analyze, and reflect on this data, looking at the tools they use and the communities they become part of. Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus describe what happens when people turn their everyday experience-in particular, health and wellness-related experience-into data, and offer an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of using these technologies. They consider self-tracking as a social and cultural phenomenon, describing not only the use of data as a kind of mirror of the self but also how this enables people to connect to, and learn from, others. Neff and Nafus consider what's at stake: who wants our data and why; the practices of serious self-tracking enthusiasts; the design of commercial self-tracking technology; and how self-tracking can fill gaps in the healthcare system. Today, no one can lead an entirely untracked life. Neff and Nafus show us how to use data in a way that empowers and educates."

"The San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas is expanding its plant curation and preservation efforts into medicine with a $384,000 grant from The Conrad Prebys Foundation, the garden announced March 8."

About this podcast Sometimes it seems like you need Ninja skills to defeat Lyme disease. Join acupuncturist Mackay Rippey and his producer, Aurora, as they bring you interviews with interesting and informative people who are using their unique skills and knowledge to deal with Lyme and other tick born diseases. My name is Mackay Rippey, I'm an acupuncturist in Clinton, NY (http://www.mackayrippey.com)and the host of Lyme Ninja Radio. I'll never forget the Sunday morning I dragged my sorry-feeling-self to the bathroom and found a perfectly formed bullseye on my left arm. I was lucky, able to return to my acupuncture practice after only few days. It's possible to beat the bacteria that are making you sick. I have and so have many others, but you have to be smarter than Lyme. That's why I created Lyme Ninja Radio. Join us as we talk to some of the most interesting people in the Lyme community.

VLA15 is currently the only active vaccine program in clinical development against Lyme disease. VLA15 is a multivalent recombinant protein vaccine that targets six serotypes of Borrelia representing the most common pathogenic strains found in the United States and Europe. Valneva has completed recruitment and reported initial results for two Phase 2 clinical trials [5,6] of VLA15 in over 800 healthy adults and in which Valneva observed high levels of antibodies against all six serotypes. Valneva announced a collaboration with Pfizer for late phase development and, if approved, commercialization of VLA15 [7]. As part of its collaboration with Pfizer, Valneva accelerated the pediatric development of VLA15 with an additional Phase 2 clinical trial initiated in March 2021. In July 2021, Pfizer and Valneva announced recruitment completion for VLA15-221 with a total of 625 participants, 5 to 65 years of age [8]. The VLA15 program was granted Fast Track designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July 2017 [9].

"Reflecting on fond memories goes a step beyond making you feel warm and fuzzy: nostalgia can reduce pain perception. Nostalgia decreases activity in pain-related brain areas and decreases subjective ratings of thermal pain, according to research recently published in JNeurosci."

"Dignity during the process of seeking treatment is a tall order. It requires first and foremost that a patient be believed. This, O'Rourke soon discovers, is much harder than it looks. At appointments, she's often met with disbelief, skepticism, and suspicion - daunting hurdles for her shot at wellness that highlight a gendered conundrum. Autoimmune disease disproportionately affects women (they make up 80 percent of patients), but health care professionals are less likely to take women's concerns seriously."

"Genomics and human ancestral genealogy Hundreds of thousands of modern human genomes and thousands of ancient human genomes have been generated to date. However, different methods and data quality can make comparisons among them difficult. Furthermore, every human genome contains segments from ancestries of varying ages. Wohns et al. applied a tree recording method to ancient and modern human genomes to generate a unified human genealogy (see the Perspective by Rees and Andrés). This method allows for missing and erroneous data and uses ancient genomes to calibrate genomic coalescent times. This permits us to determine how our genomes have changed over time and between populations, informing upon the evolution of our species. -LMZ"

"Despite their capacity to acquire and pass on an array of debilitating pathogens, research on ticks has lagged behind other arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes, largely because of challenges in applying available genetic and molecular tools. CRISPR-Cas9 is transforming non-model organism research; however, successful gene editing has not yet been reported in ticks. Technical challenges for injecting tick embryos to attempt gene editing have further slowed research progress. Currently, no embryo injection protocol exists for any chelicerate species, including ticks. Herein, we report a successful embryo injection protocol for the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis, and the use of this protocol for genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9. We also demonstrate that the ReMOT Control technique could be successfully used to generate genome mutations outside Insecta. Our results provide innovative tools to the tick research community that are essential for advancing our understanding of the molecular mechanisms governing pathogen transmission by tick vectors and the underlying biology of host-vector-pathogen interactions."

"Yale University researchers have developed a novel vaccine that in guinea pigs offers protection against infection by the bacterium that causes Lyme disease and may also combat other tick-borne diseases. Instead of triggering an immune response against a particular pathogen, the new vaccine prompts a quick response in the skin to components of tick saliva, limiting the amount of time that ticks have to feed upon and infect the host, the study shows. The vaccine is delivered by the same mRNA technology that has proved so effective against COVID-19."