Vitamin D and microbiome, Mpox and brain things

The odd Alternate Interval Data Analysis (AIDA)

You may have forgotten, but AIDA stands for Alternate Interval Data Analysis, a tricky acronym for a scientific news round-up that I randomly write when many articles just don’t fit one specific theme. These are more direct rather than complex breakdowns.

Before going any further and a late addition, the following paper.

High Dose Intramuscular Vitamin D3 Supplementation Impacts the Gut Microbiota of Patients With Clostridioides Difficile Infection

Results

The alpha diversity of the gut microbiota in the recovery state was significantly higher than that in the CDI state. Analysis of bacterial relative abundance showed significantly lower Proteobacteria and higher Lachnospiraceae, Ruminococcaceae, Akkermansiaceae, and Bifidobacteriaceae in the recovery state. When comparing the control and vitamin D treatment groups after eight weeks, increase in alpha diversity and, abundance of Lachnospiraceae, and Ruminococcaceae exhibited the same trend in both groups. A significant increase in Bifidobacteriaceae and Christensenellaceae was observed in the vitamin D group; Proteobacteria abundance was significantly lower in the vitamin D treatment group after eight weeks than that in the control group.

Conclusion

Our study confirmed that the increase in the abundance of beneficial bacteria such as Bifidobacteriaceae, and Christensenellaceae were prominently evident during recovery after administration of a high dose of cholecalciferol. These findings indicate that vitamin D administration may be useful in patients with CDI, and further studies with larger sample sizes are required.

If your concern is Bifidobacteria lowering, vanishing, or otherwise drastic changes in your gut, especially if vaccinated, perhaps one should consider the proposed supplementation above. Another one of many reasons.

The first one is for my own amusement, but also a piece of information you can use against most people pushing one of, if not the most destructive form of global policy there is, the “Green” anything.

The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans

As AI systems proliferate, their greenhouse gas emissions are an increasingly important concern for human societies. In this article, we present a comparative analysis of the carbon emissions associated with AI systems (ChatGPT, BLOOM, DALL-E2, Midjourney) and human individuals performing equivalent writing and illustrating tasks. Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writers, while AI illustration systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human counterparts. Emissions analyses do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.

In a hilarious turn of events, given how data centers that enable AI are energy-intense and water hogs of a colossal scale, turns out that generating art in seconds, and (although repetitive) texts in minutes emit much less carbon than its human counterpart. Most people interpret using the wrong frame, as in “killing forms of art”, but the biggest pushers of almost every single inhuman policy in the last 4 years (more like 120 years really) are academics, NGOs, and artists, all severely inclined towards the most radical form of a specific ideology.

The next is more of an open-ended question rather than a “scientific-based troll”… back in 2022, suddenly we had MonkeyPox exploding in certain places in very specific demographics (mostly, and in majority homosexuals, especially ones with multiple partners). The MPox trend was memory holed from the media for political reasons but it remained a threat in that community, mostly in Africa. But at the time even experts stated that strain had all the hallmarks of “accelerated evolution”.

The open question is now because Nurgle’s ecclesiastical priest, Dr. Fauci had more secrets. Fauci’s institute concealed plans to engineer a pandemic-capable monkeypox virus with a case fatality of up to 15%.

In June 2015, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases received formal approval from the National Institutes of Health’s Institutional Review Board for experiments expected to engineer an mpox virus with high transmissibility and moderate mortality.

The gain-of-function project proposed by NIAID virologist Bernard Moss would splice genes conferring high pathogenicity from the clade I virus into the more transmissible clade II virus. The new “chimeric” (combined) virus could have retained up to a 15 percent fatality rate and a 2.4 reproductive number, a measure of transmissibility indicating every sick person could infect up to 2.4 people on average, giving it pandemic potential.

Perhaps it was incredibly misguided or moronic of me to judge Fauci as merely a “bureaucratic middleman” that facilitates Gain of Function research. The man may himself be a cog in the BioDefense machine. Well, here is the oddity. Recently a group of researchers investigated the evolutionary patterns of this uncharacteristic Monkeypox clade. In very simplistic terms and from my own interpretation, basically, they state the virus “traded” pathogenicity for transmissibility, but can’t discard other variables and confounders.

The question of why the virus accelerated only in 2022, and why it went through these changes is still to be found. Many pathogens experienced the same in 2022, which begs the question of SARS-CoV-2, plus all the mix and match of vaccines led to a seismic global immunological shift as proposed in 2022 by Daoyu, me, and my mentor-friend.

And while writing this article, a friend sent me this recent paper. Have you wondered if you infected domestic pigs with monkeypox they would be able to transmit the virus to other animals ? Well, wonder no more.

Furthermore, all principal-infected and sentinel control animals enrolled in the study seroconverted. In conclusion, we provide the first evidence that domestic pigs are susceptible to experimental MPXV infection and can transmit the virus to contact animals.

In the next piece of news, here the researchers compared the brain function of Huntington's Disease patients, both before and after symptoms appeared, with healthy individuals, they measured how well oxygen is transported in the brain using near-infrared light and monitored both heart and breathing rates. The following are the main findings.

• Blood Flow Issues: Both early (presymptomatic) and symptomatic HD patients showed reduced coordination between blood flow and brain activity, especially around a frequency of 0.1 Hz. Meaning the blood vessels are less effective at supporting brain function.

• Oxygenation Patterns: In presymptomatic HD patients, the oscillations in brain oxygen levels were weaker compared to healthy people. This issue worsened in symptomatic patients, where these oxygenation patterns were also less synchronized across different brain regions.

• Brain Activity: EEG results showed reduced synchronization of brain waves, particularly in the alpha band, in both early and symptomatic stages, with more severe reductions in symptomatic patients.

• Microvascular Changes: The study discovered significant microvascular changes in both presymptomatic and symptomatic HD patients. Specifically, the small blood vessels in the brain showed a reduced ability to properly regulate blood flow. This suggests early vascular remodeling, likely as a compensatory mechanism, which indicates that the disease begins affecting the brain's blood supply before more noticeable symptoms appear.

Before any symptoms from HD ever surfaced, there were already microvascular structural changes, leading to changes in blood flow that incidentally change brain activity, the oxygen and nutrients transported to the brain. This can enable the discovery and creation of methods to detect HD very early and treat it. And since we are talking about nervous system/brain issues.

In the paper titled Early detection of dementia with default-mode network effective connectivity, the authors used public image data based on magnetic resonance tests and created a Machine Learning model that can accurately predict Alzheimer’s disease 9 years before diagnosis.

This is fantastic, since Alzheimer’s class of diseases is one of the trickiest diseases to properly diagnose even at the early stages, let alone a decade before. It is possible, but one a handful of experts would be capable of doing it, accurately globally. Getting an early diagnosis before even the first symptom ever occurs is great because any early intervention has a higher chance of achieving greater symptom relief, perhaps soon stopping the progression of the disease.

Lastly, months ago I shared a paper on the impact of TikTok on the brain of young people. The authors found that TikTok or rather any short-form video content and context switching too fast (doom scroll) impair the user’s ability to remember and execute planned actions, and memory too. Newer research broadens the horizons from just TikTok (which one could argue is algorithmic-induced brain rot, rather than short video content) to internet addiction to internet addiction in adolescents.

Functional connectivity changes in the brain of adolescents with internet addiction: A systematic literature review of imaging studies

Internet usage has seen a stark global rise over the last few decades, particularly among adolescents and young people, who have also been diagnosed increasingly with internet addiction (IA). IA impacts several neural networks that influence an adolescent’s behaviour and development. This article issued a literature review on the resting-state and task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to inspect the consequences of IA on the functional connectivity (FC) in the adolescent brain and its subsequent effects on their behaviour and development. A systematic search was conducted from two databases, PubMed and PsycINFO, to select eligible articles according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eligibility criteria was especially stringent regarding the adolescent age range (10–19) and formal diagnosis of IA. Bias and quality of individual studies were evaluated. The fMRI results from 12 articles demonstrated that the effects of IA were seen throughout multiple neural networks: a mix of increases/decreases in FC in the default mode network; an overall decrease in FC in the executive control network; and no clear increase or decrease in FC within the salience network and reward pathway. The FC changes led to addictive behaviour and tendencies in adolescents. The subsequent behavioural changes are associated with the mechanisms relating to the areas of cognitive control, reward valuation, motor coordination, and the developing adolescent brain. Our results presented the FC alterations in numerous brain regions of adolescents with IA leading to the behavioural and developmental changes. Research on this topic had a low frequency with adolescent samples and were primarily produced in Asian countries. Future research studies of comparing results from Western adolescent samples provide more insight on therapeutic intervention.

Internet addiction in adolescents significantly impacts their brain connectivity, since their brain is very prone to synaptic reorganization, or how the body changes how it connects itself, this ends up leading to developmental and behavioral consequences. Changes in motor coordination and reward valuation are the most drastic to me, implicating more than just behavioral changes, and can lead to long-term consequences.

From my own experience, the internet can be an incredible, unparalleled learning tool, in all manner, both to understand the past, and the classics and also to prepare your kids for the future, but clearly without planning, supervision, or… well, properly raising the kids up, or some mild restriction to induce some focus, it can be very damaging.

From my own perspective a distinct characteristic between younger people who use the internet for a variety of growth, be it intellectual, academic, or otherwise, and the associated with negative changes is curiosity. Engaging in fun projects, or keeping that kindling of curiosity always burning can pay dividends later in life.

I will now focus on the SARS-CoV-2 persistence, and perhaps publish a single article either on SARS-CoV-2 and Natural Killer cells or Galectin-9 and Long Covid.

I am really grateful for your support !

Sunset in Tokyo