Interesting fact #3 -Autism

So, last week I attended a seminar on autism and epigenetics. Though I probably understand only 20% of the entire seminar because it involves a lot of genetics (which was bluerggh!), I jot down few interesting facts about autism.

Autism is characterized by the followings :

1. Impairment in social communication and interaction
2. Impairment in language
3. Restrictive and repetitive behavior.

It appears usually in the first three years of life and apparently, male has increased risk to get autism which is 4:1. And the risk is greater if your sibling has autism compared to general population (ratio 50:1)

The speaker also pointed out that consuming FOLIC ACID before you get pregnant could actually reduce the risk of your child developing autism. And getting rubella injection WHILE you are pregnant increase the risk of your child developing autism.

I attended another talk about autism when I was in my first year and they talked about one of the mechanism of how autism might have developed ie: the maternal (mother) antibody actually the one that attacks the fetus' brain and contribute to the development of autism. I know there are now many ongoing research on autism especially in UC Davis itself, and the research were mostly done in monkeys. They actually videotaped the monkeys to observe their social skills and behavior, like for example, giving them toys and observe how the monkey that has autism play with toys and compare it to normal monkey. I wish I have the video but I don't, but if I have more facts on autism, I'll be very happy to share with you guys in the future.

Interesting fact #2

Have you been vaccinated?

I bet 99.9% of you had been vaccinated probably during your early age. Well, do you know what is in the vaccine preparation?  for eg: H1N1 vaccine contains attenuated H1N1 virus so that upon vaccination, your body will developed an immune response against the virus. So, besides attenuated virus, vaccine usually contains adjuvant. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, an adjuvant is a substance (as one added to a vaccine) enhancing the immune response to an antigen (virus). Generally, adjuvant that has been used in human vaccine such as aluminium salts (alum) could provide better response than the vaccine without an adjuvant.

Researchers are still trying to find a strong adjuvant that could boost an effective immune response and at the same time, does not have a toxic effect on human. So, the talk I went last week was investigating a protein from bacteria known as flagellin that has a potential to be used as an adjuvant. Flagella are long-thread like structure on a bacteria that help with their movement. Their studies showed that flagella could boost a really efficient immune response by inducing certain type of signals. They are also in the process of developing cocaine-flagella based vaccine for drug addicts! How interesting huh? You can stop an addiction by vaccinating people, hope we will achieved it someday :)

Interesting fact #1

In order to be fully equipped with weapon of knowledge for my big exam, I planned to attend as many seminars as I could possibly related to the field of Immunology. Just so my thinking ability could be stimulated more often :)

Therefore, to sum up the knowledge I gained through all the seminars, I will post interesting fact (which won't be so complicated) in this blog.

So, from my Virology class today, I learnt that :

• You need 10-40 times of exposure to HIV before you could actually contract the disease ie: if the method of transmission is through sexual contact, you need to have sex for 10-40 times with people who has HIV before you could actually get the disease.
• The virus is highly efficient in infecting cells during the first few months.But over time, they became unefficient in infecting cells, therefore if you have sexual contact/blood transmission from HIV patient during those first few months, your chance to get HIV is higher than during the later stage. 
• Women is highly susceptible to HIV than men. Reason? Most probably because women has larger mucosal surface area (ie: VJJ vs penis)
• The chances to get HIV through fellatio is 1:16. What is fellatio? Oral sex. But the teaching assistant that taught this subject chose to use the word 'b*** job' to explain the meaning. How inappropriate!