#types of pcr

[godofsmallthings]

if i somehow got covid twice this year...

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

me every time i’m violently sick: why am i cash money dyin’ like this??? why must god try to nerf me like this??

[flockofdoves]

its 89°F out but i have a fever and am feeling so so cold so i havent been able to rest at all without like winter layers even tho i know thats not recommended :(

[kirishwima]

and bc, yknow, life HASNT given me enough punches the last few weeks-im also sick w covid 🤡

[egg-king]

i have physical access to literally everything i need to sequence my own DNA and I have to restrain myself every day

[reality-detective]

Lithium was found in the PCR test sticks‼️

Analysis of test sticks in Slovakia has revealed the following; (read full article with images as well)

“After spawning a mixture of nylon fiber fragments, Darpa Hydrogel remains on the nasal mucosa under the pituitary and pineal gland along with lithium.

This mixture immediately reacts with living structures to form crystals that are directionally oriented to the pineal gland, which has its own electromagnetic field. The shape of the crystals determines the type of hydrogel used. The crystals are conductive due to the lithium contained in it.

The crystals can receive the signal from the transmitter to the cell and transmit signals from the cell to the transmitter. These are actually nano-antennas.”

Source: 👇

[crywolfboy22]

donation links for Gaza and Ceasefire

Care For Gaza:

(20) Care For Gaza (@CareForGaza) / X (twitter.com)

PayPal.Me

arab.org .clicks generate funds that go to Gaza :

Help the Palestinian People with a Click | arab.org

The PCRF (Palestine Children's Relief Fund) :

PCR

International Medical Corps :

E-SIMS n e-SIM now D-10 for palestinians :

https://x.com/najungie/status/1755601859296014592?s=20

(D-10) e-SIMs Fundraiser by Malaysian ARMYs💜 (google.com)

many ways to demand ceasefire :

Ceasefire In Gaza NOW! (ceasefiretoday.com)

sends funds to displaced families in gaza :

Fundraiser for One Child at a Time by Sab by : CareForGaza Supporting Displaced Families in Gaza (gofundme.com)

Direct Aid for Gaza :

(21) Direct Aid for Gaza 🇵🇸 (@GazaDirectAid) / X (twitter.com)

(20) ehab M rida (@rida_ehab) / X (twitter.com)

PayPal.Me

provides hygiene kits for women in gaza :

Feminine Hygiene Kits for Gaza With the Asad Sisters | Pious Projects

phans4palestine - support/education/donation for Palestine :

https://x.com/phans4palestine?s=20

Phans4Palestine Giveaway Fundraiser (google.com)

ARMY for Palestine - support/education/donation for Palestine

https://x.com/ARMY4Palestine?s=20

ARMY 4 Palestine

UNRWA : (United Nations Relief and Works Agency)

https://www.unrwa.org/

here card way to help:

don't stop talking about Palestine please share everything and help out in the way you can help them

fuck Isreal fuck everyone who supports them

Gaza and keep boycotting.

[tiktaalic]

I hope these questions don't annoy you, but whats it like working in a lab?

I'm considering the same career path cause I really like my lab classes so far

Not annoying! from what ive seen there are 3 or so types of labs, which are labs in the hospital, which are obviously a faster pace (did half of my preceptorship in one), reference labs, which get a fairly high volume since they're doing testing everybody's sending out for (did other half of my preceptorship in one), and privately owned labs which pick up samples from clinics urgent cares nursing homes etc (both of my jobs have been with private labs).

I like it! It's very routine. I have my set of tasks i do when i clock in and my set of tasks i do at the end of the night and in between I'm just sticking samples on the machines and releasing results. and there is imo enough variation to it to keep it interesting - troubleshooting failed qc, or double checking criticals, or having to do manual difs. if you're liking undergrad lab work I'm assuming you're doing stuff like pcr and gels and micro plates? which is a lot of what molecular departments do in a lab besides micro which is micro. I currently work in the core portion of a lab, which is hematology, coagulation, urinalysis, and chemistry. You really only break out the microscope for urinalysis and hem. we have a micro department that handles all the cultures, and a molecular department that does molecular testing. lots of labs have small micro factions and do lots of micro send out instead. the last lab i worked at did that. the hospital i did my preceptorship at would do plating, but then send all the plates out to be read and send out all the blood culture tubes to be cultured elsewhere. the lab I'm currently at does most cultures in house.

re: education to work in a lab you have to be ASCP certified. After I got my biology degree, I enrolled in texas tech's CLS certification program, which was 3 semesters of classes (preceptorships were the majority of the coursework the last semester). I didn't mind doing it because I was a fresh graduate and I didn't want to Career Hunt or go to grad school. so 3 sems to get a guaranteed job sounded great to me. Since I had my bio degree, I had most of the baseline credits out of the way. chem biochem ochem cell bio genetics etc etc. And the 3 sems I did were lab specific courses like blood banking, clinical chemistry, molecular methods, immunology, phlebotomy, lab management, clinical micro and hematology. there are tons of post bachelor's cls programs, and tons of them are delivered online so that you can chip away at it part time while working.

A nice thing about it is that you can get work literally anywhere. I moved to a town with a population of 90k. Applied for 3 jobs as a brand new graduate. and got 3 offer letters. the payscale's pretty variable, depending on where you are, but it is nice to know that i'm certified in like. 47 states and could get some sort of job in any of them no problem. i think once you've been certified a year you can get cali state certification, which is the route a lot of people go since cali is on the high end of the pay scale. it'll depend on what the lab you're at is like, obviously, but it is pretty difficult to get day shift positions since what a lot of places do is open internal applications for any night/evening shift people who want to move up. I work an evening shift of 2pm to 11pm and i really like it. A very common complaint i see is that there's no like... career ladder. if you're a bench tech. you're a bench tech. which sometimes gets parlayed into section leader, or section manager, but that's a years of experience thing.

My plan is to work in the same place for a couple of years so I feel more experienced, and then to take a few travel contracts which are shorter term higher pay. again, they're available pretty much anywhere, but sometimes the tradeoff is lower compensation or a worse shift or being in the middle of nowhere america. but i think it'll be fun to get paid to bop around the country for awhile. I like my job and I like that it's very secure, but I do plan to go back to school for Something Else at some point and probably shift careers. My review: good thing to do in your twenties! good thing to have under your belt in general. very dependable.

if you have other questions in general or about anything I said you can 100% msg me! Ik I had a lot of trouble finding info when I was looking into this as an undergrad

[careforcritters]

Vet Med in Warrior Cats: Oncology (Cancer)

Disclaimer

Pebblefur, a Windclan deputy who appears in Code of the Clans, was stated to have died from a “strange, agonizing lump in his belly”. Shellheart, a former Riverclan deputy and father to Crookedstar, was also stated to have a similar painful lump in his abdomen, which caused him to retire and is suspected to be the cause of his death. The medicine cat in Crookedstar’s Promise, Brambleberry, stated that she had seen this condition before and that cats who suffer from it never get better. Ravenpaw has this same condition in Ravenpaw’s Farewell, which leads to his death.

These cats are likely suffering from a form of gastrointestinal cancer, and the most common presentation of GI cancer in cats is small intestinal lymphoma. Signs of intestinal cancer include vomiting, inappetence, diarrhea, and weight loss. While vomiting and diarrhea were not mentioned in the books, Shellheart and Ravenpaw both appear to be suffering from pain and gradual weight loss. Intestinal tumors can also lead to perforation, which would cause death fairly rapidly. Most lymphomas are small cell, which is a low grade lymphoma, and has a slow onset and progression of clinical signs. This is consistent with the three cats in warriors who were seen to have cancer, as Shellheart and Ravenpaw both knew that they were dying as their pain slowly got worse. 

In a veterinary clinic or hospital, small intestinal lymphoma would be diagnosed with a combination of histopathology, immunohistochemistry, and PCR for Antigen Receptor Rearrangement. It would be treated with a combination of chlorambucil (a chemotherapy drug) and prednisolone (an anti-inflammatory). Expected survival time is about two years with treatment. Medicine cats would have no way to know what the cause of the symptoms was, and would have no treatments for it even if they did. The best that they can do is to provide supportive care and try and ease their pain until death.

In the novella Cloudstar’s Journey, Petalfall is described as having periodic seizures and progressive weakness after suffering from an illness. As the prey grows scarce in Skyclan, she eats less and becomes weaker and has more frequent seizures until she passes. It is possible that Petalfall could have had a tumor in her brain since they can cause seizures, but this is never confirmed. Since the seizures were noted to have started after Petalfall fell ill, she is more likely to be suffering from meningitis or encephalitis after the infection spread to her nervous system. This topic will be covered in the neurology section. 

Other common cancers in cats that are not seen in warriors include squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, skin, and nose, fibrosarcomas in skeletal muscles, and mammary tumors in intact females. All of these tumors could be visible in later stages without imaging or surgery, but none of them appear to be mentioned in the series. As stated before, medicine cats don’t have diagnostic or treatment options for any type of cancer. One explanation for this is that the warriors’ lifespans are shorter than most domestic cats and that many characters die of other causes before reaching an advanced age. However, since they live outside, have near constant sun exposure, and none of them are spayed or neutered, I would expect a much higher rate of squamous cell carcinoma (especially in pink skinned cats) and mammary gland tumors.

sources:

Gieger T. Alimentary lymphoma in cats and dogs. Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract. 2011 Mar;41(2):419-32. doi: 10.1016/j.cvsm.2011.02.001. PMID: 21486644

Withrow and MacEwen’s Small Animal Clinical Oncology

[silllypigeon]

love the ten hours til deadline rush to do an assignment. YEAH its all bullshit and YEAH i’ve given up BUT its the type of giving up where i let go of expectations which lets me actually FINISH THE FUCKING THING

YEAH i had a reading break last week and YEAH this assignment was given before that and YEAH the prof went over how much he recommends spending time and effort

time and effort can usually be exchanged tho and i am a silly guy with so much eyestrain now :3 but my assignment is in along with my pcr table and now i can do other things guilt free :,3

[covidsafehotties]

Published April 20, 2024

Small study with an interesting focus

Abstract

Obesity and type 2 diabetes (DM) are risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes, which disproportionately affect South Asian populations. This study aims to investigate the humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 in adult COVID-19 survivors with obesity and DM in Bangladesh. In this cross-sectional study, SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody and T cell responses were investigated in 63 healthy and 75 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 recovered individuals in Bangladesh, during the pre-vaccination first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In COVID-19 survivors, SARS-CoV-2 infection induced robust antibody and T cell responses, which correlated with disease severity. After adjusting for age, sex, DM status, disease severity, and time since onset of symptoms, obesity was associated with decreased neutralising antibody titers, and increased SARS-CoV-2 spike-specific IFN-γ response along with increased proliferation and IL-2 production by CD8+ T cells. In contrast, DM was not associated with SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody and T cell responses after adjustment for obesity and other confounders. Obesity is associated with lower neutralising antibody levels and higher T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 post COVID-19 recovery, while antibody or T cell responses remain unaltered in DM.

[secretcircuit]

has anyone dealt with a stomach bug type thing recently? my gf is trying to figure out at what point shes no longer contagious (she isn't actively sick anymore & hasnt had a fever since sunday night). she took a pcr test saturday (started showing symptoms on friday night) and it was negative, so we're working under the assumption that it isnt covid, but it's kind of nebulous and weird lol

[mariebenz]

Trained Scent Dogs Can Quickly and Accurately Detect Covid-19

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Tommy Dickey Ph.D. Distinguished Professor Emeritus Geography Department University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response:  I became interested in dog's sense of smell several years ago while doing therapy dog demonstrations at the California Science Center in Los Angeles during a special traveling exhibit "Dogs! A Science Tail." (Now at the Orlando Science Center).  I did a lot of research on this topic and taught children about it through the Los Angeles Public Library using my Great Pyrenees therapy dogs. Then, COVID broke out and I expanded my research into any work being done to possibly utilize scent dogs for screening and testing for COVID.  I found only a few such studies.  However, I fortuitously met Heather Junqueira of BioScent, Inc. (in Florida) online and she was beginning to successfully teach her beagles to detect COVID-related odors.  She agreed to co-author a peer-reviewed review paper with me.  That led to our first paper - Dickey, T, Junqueira, H. Toward the use of medical scent dogs for COVID-19 screening. J Osteopath Med 2021;1(2): 141-148. https://doi.org/10.1515/jom-2020-0222 When the COVID pandemic began to wane at the beginning of this year, I felt that it would be the perfect time to do this comprehensive follow-up review to see how far COVID scent dog research had progressed. To our amazement, research efforts had increased by almost tenfold and involved over 400 scientists using over 31,000 samples (including sniffings) from over 30 countries and that 29 peer reviewed papers had been published. Heather’s inspiration for doing scent dog work came when her father contracted cancer and she wanted to find better diagnostics.  She has since been successful in detecting non-small cell lung cancer with her trained beagles as well as COVID. MedicalResearch.com: Would you tell us a little about the type and/or breeding of the dogs? Response:  In the peer-reviewed studies, the number of different breeds and mixed breeds was 19.   Typical training periods dedicated to COVID scent detection were a few weeks. Labrador Retrievers and Belgian Malinois were most commonly used (nearly 100 times). These breeds were chosen because they have been used extensively in scent detection work for several purposes.  Other breeds, such as Heather’s beagles, have been used quite successfully as well. No obvious preference based on performance has been noted by breed, age, gender, age or even previous training for scent work. Interestingly, most of the dogs were not specifically bred to do COVID detection.  In fact, previously untrained dogs have the advantage that they are not as prone to indicating on scents other than the COVID-19 associated scent. Heather is one of the few scientists who actually breeds her dogs to be single purpose scent dogs (i.e., for COVID or other diseases). MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? 1)    Our review has shown that it safe to utilize scent dogs to directly screen and test individuals who may be infected with the COVID-19. 2)    The accuracy of the trained scent dog method is comparable to or in some cases superior to the real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test and the antigen (RAG) test. 3)    Trained scent dogs can be effectively used to provide quick (seconds to minutes), non-intrusive, and accurate results in public settings and thus reduce the spread of COVID. MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report? - Medical scent dogs deserve their place as a serious diagnostic methodology that could be particularly useful during pandemics, potentially as part of rapid health screenings in public spaces. We are confident that scent dogs will be useful in detecting a wide variety of diseases in the future. - We feel that the impressive international COVID scent dog research described in our paper, perhaps for the first time, demonstrates that medical scent dogs are ready for mainstream medical applications.  MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a results of this study? 1)    More studies utilizing more dogs would be beneficial 2)    More work in developing target samples is needed 3)    More research is needed in different public settings. MedicalResearch.com: Is there anything else you would like to add? Any disclosures? - More trained dogs will be needed for wide-spread, large-scale scent dog screening and testing.   The training and field use of scent dogs may benefit from the recruitment of dog owners who are already involved in recreational scent work under the auspices of the American Kennel Club and other organizations worldwide. - Is the use of scent dogs cost effective?  Much of the research in this review was in fact motivated by the need for rapid, inexpensive, and lower technological testing in developing nations.  More research into the economics is needed. - Perhaps the greatest challenge to the use of medical scent dogs is the implementation of wide-spread, large-scale programs, which will require funding and development of infrastructure that is responsible for certification, protocol standards, and deployments. This may be more of a challenge in the U.S. for a variety of bureaucratic reasons. Other nations face a variety of obstacles, but the large number of scent dogs already used in practical applications (seen in our paper’s References and Tables) suggests that their governments are quite supportive of the common use of medical scent dogs and may not place as many governmental barriers. Citation: Dickey, Tommy and Junqueira, Heather. "COVID-19 scent dog research highlights and synthesis during the pandemic of December 2019−April 2023" Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/jom-2023-0104 The information on MedicalResearch.com is provided for educational purposes only, and is in no way intended to diagnose, cure, or treat any medical or other condition. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health and ask your doctor any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. In addition to all other limitations and disclaimers in this agreement, service provider and its third party providers disclaim any liability or loss in connection with the content provided on this website.     Read the full article

[excalculus]

Here we are, heading into another COVID winter.  The fucker’s still here and sadly we aren’t likely to get rid of it any time soon.  You kill diseases by cutting off transmission and slowly strangling them to death.  We tried that.  We locked down the whole world and it didn’t work.

I won’t deny that things look really ugly right now, especially with other respiratory diseases coming back.  But as the sequencing results keep coming in, it’s really starting to look like something incredible happened.

Sure, the lockdowns didn’t succeed in killing COVID.  That doesn’t mean they killed nothing.

Hey, I wonder how the influenza viruses are holding up?

There are two types of influenza that cause the epidemics we get every winter: A and B.  (C and D don’t really get up to the same level of mischief so let’s ignore them for now.)  Type A infects both animals and people, and includes things like the H1N1 bird flu pandemic strain, swine flu, et al.  The H[number]N[number] format points out which subtype of two important viral proteins it has, and usually strains are reported with that code, what animal they jumped into humans from, and where they were first sequenced.  Type B only affects humans, especially children.  It doesn’t have subtypes like Type A.  Instead it has two distinct lineages: B/Victoria and B/Yamagata. 

Today’s best flu vaccines are called “quadrivalent” because they target B/Victoria, B/Yamagata, and our best guess at which two Type A’s are going to blow up this year.  The guess is based on global sequencing of flu infections, so we have at least a decent idea of both past and current circulation logged in databases like GISAID and the WHO’s FluNet. 

Cases went way down during the lockdowns - masking and social distancing pushed spread down to a fraction of what it usually is.  Influenza in general is now back in force as people go back to their normal behavior.  There’s plenty of Type A flying around.  There’s been B/Victoria.

B/Yamagata has not been conclusively identified since March of 2020.

As early as 2021, flu researchers noticed the lack of new B/Yamagata sequences coming in and started to suspect something was fishy.  Look at this graph of GISAID flu data by lineage:

[GISAID] [paper]

Let’s, uh, check FluNet maybe?  That shows that in a typical year you see tens of thousands of cases of B/Yamagata on PCR tests.  2017 had 30,552; 2018 had 51,524.  Then... 3,464 in 2019.  364 in 2020 in only 9 countries.  It does seem like there are still signs of life in 2021 with 8 hits, but keep in mind these detections are based on simple PCR tests like what we do for COVID.  PCR tests are exquisitely sensitive, to the point where it’s been shown that giving flu vaccines and then later using the same room to give flu tests can throw a weak positive by picking up viral RNA from the vaccine.  More specifically, as of March 2022 there’s been a case of this exact thing happening with what looked like a B/Yamagata detection.  So it’s going to be more reliable to look at only the results from full sequencing, where you can yeet anything that matches the vaccine ingredients and only look at wild viruses. 

[paper]

Zero.  Nothing.  All signs point to we shot at COVID and blew up an entire flu lineage as collateral damage!  What the fuck!  We’re probably going to have to change how we do flu vaccines because fully a quarter of what they aim at looks to be gone from the face of the earth!

True, influenza B/Yamagata could still be out there somewhere that hasn’t been sequenced.  Proving absence is hard.  But the fact that Type A and its sibling B/Victoria are back and easy to find really does suggest it’s gone, or stomped down so far it’s near impossible to find.  Time to watch and wait and feed every sample we can into the sequencers, but if we keep not finding it...

A disease is considered eradicated when we’re sure there’s no more transmission “in the wild”.  For smallpox, which was also wildly contagious and also had no nonhuman reservoir, that was three years from the last known case. 

Clock’s ticking.