writing exercise #4

Anne Vrieze, Pieter F. de Groot, Ruud S. Kootte, Els van Nood, Max Nieuwdorp in their summary article entitled “Fecal Transplat: A Safe and Sustainable Clinical Therapy for Restoring Intestinal Microbial Balance in Human Disease?”(2013) discusses how specific human diseases are related to microbiota composition. Vrieze et. al provide different human diseases and separate them into their own sections and focus on their relationship with microbiota. The purpose of this article is to educate those in the scientific community about how the different relationships may be used to determine if altering the composition may cure or worsen a patients case. The authors create a relationship with the scientific community, such as doctors and researchers who are curious about this relationship.

writing exercise #3

There are a ton of different behaviors that can impact the microbial community…

  1. Vaginal vs Caesarean: When babies are born through the vagina, they are exposed to many microbes that are beneficial to them. Babies who are born through caesarean miss out on that. This isn’t something we control, but it is something that effects your microbial community very early on. Usually more beneficial than detrimental.
  2. Fermented Foods: Kombucha is one of the first ones that comes into my mind when I think about gut health. Many people associate this drink with creating a healthy gut environment. By drinking this, you are directly taking this and moving it into your gut. This could cause a beneficial impact in your gut.
  3. Ingesting Pre or Probiotics: this can promote bacteria activity to create a healthy environment. Promoting these healthy bacteria is beneficial impact on an individual’s health.
  4. Diet: depending on what you eat, that can cause the bad bacteria to grow and over power your healthy ones or vice versa. For your diet, it could really go anyway. Depending on what you eat and how much of it, it could cause a positive or negative outcome, or maybe even nothing at all.

writing exercise #2

After reading the article from last week, I think based off of what we know I’d probably choose to create a vaccine that covers HPV 31 or 45 or if it’s possible that these are closely related by DNA (I’m not exactly sure how this all works, BUT in an ideal work if they were related close enough then one vaccine might be able to protect against the both of them). The article states that there are already vaccines that can protect against HPV 16 and 18 which help limit the spread. I chose 31 or 45 and not the others because these in addition to HPV 16 and 18 account for 80% of cervical cancer. Just like how HPV 16 and 18 are given to woman within a certain time period whether they are sexually active or not, creating a vaccine for either of those should follow the same guidelines. I think depending on how the vaccine is made, that would determine the period in which it should be administered. Ideally I would say that people should get vaccinated as soon as possible, especially in this case before they become sexually active since HPV is passed through sexual contact (whether that be intercourse or orally). Cervical cancer usually occurs in middle aged women, however it is totally possible for women who are younger to get it. This vaccine could allow someone to have a healthy pregnancy because they were protected from HPV when they were younger. Also, in the article, the other HPV forms (not to say that they aren’t important), but they are considered to be “possibly carcinogenic and “probably carcinogenic to humans” according to the article. Also by doing proper math, the other types would account for 20% of potentially causes of cervical cancer in comparison to HPV 16 ,18, 31 and 45 which make up about 80%, as stated before.

writing exercise #1

Here are a few human non-infectious diseases that I could find that are influenced by microorganisms are different kinds of cancers, diabetes mellitus, Alzheimers, and cardiovascular diseases. For some reason, this was more challenging for me than I thought it was going to be. It’s easy to name non-infectious diseases, but then I had to really sit and think “well which of these diseases are influenced by microorganism” or “what even counts as a microorganism”? Thinking of microorganisms that cause infectious diseases is slightly easier in my opinion because I think that correlation just makes more sense in my head. I’m also curious to see how this relationship works in terms of non-chronic and chronic diseases. In my other class we’ve started talking about blood and its components. I’m curious to know more about how these microorganisms may affect the blood cells specifically in certain diseases.