I wonder if Tryptase affects Avian flu as well. Anyone know?
I'd also argue my partner and I got Avian flu one Xmas from eating free range eggs when there was an Avian flu pandemic up the road from them in Norfolk and the British Govt ordered culls.
Tryptase:
"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5728160/
"Influenza A viruses are negative-stranded RNA viruses. Like many other enveloped viruses, they code for a surface glycoprotein that must be cleaved by cellular proteases for activation. HA, a major influenza surface glycoprotein, is translated as a single protein, HA0. For viral activation, HA0 (assembled as trimers) must be cleaved by a trypsin-like serine endoprotease at a specific site, normally coded for by a single basic amino acid (usually arginine) between the HA1 and HA2 domains of the protein. After cleavage, the two disulfide-bonded protein domains produce the mature form of the protein subunits as a prerequisite for the conformational change necessary for fusion and hence viral infectivity" [2]
Huh. I don’t know if I’m picking up what they’re putting down here, but it kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
Fever helps against all kinds of illnesses but it can also be deadly, so having fever reducting medicine around is a smart precaution IMO. If you're otherwise healthy and are dealing with a mild seasonal infection and have got something important going on, I can see why people would choose to reduce symptoms at the cost of taking longer to recover.
Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
> Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
This is not specific to America; it's a thing in the entire Western world, and probably beyond. Because it's not like we have any other choice.
There is no slack in the system. Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year, and they prefer to save those up for when painkillers and cough medicine don't cut it anymore. Same with children, because a sick child staying home is usually equivalent to the parent taking a sick day themselves - either way, they're not at work.
We can talk about media or people going overboard once it becomes acceptable to skip work for a week because of sick kid, or in order to not get everyone in the office sick too.
> like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick.
Basically how I grew up. I took painkillers and throat lozenges in my backpack to school.
Due to a condition I was born with, I was raised the opposite. No over the counter medication my entire life, with some exceptions. I usually decline pain management in ER, for things like broken bones, but for surgeries and stuff of course I have no choice as I go under.
I will take what the doctor orders though, to treat illness and conditions though thankfully at this stage there hasn't been many instances. Usually that's antibiotics.
Broken bones? A broken femur or a shin is hell.
Copying Google AI's response here as it's at least as good as what I was going to recall:
> Fever is a key part of the innate immune system, acting as a protective response to infection by raising the body's temperature. This increase in temperature inhibits the growth of many pathogens, enhances the activity of immune cells like leukocytes, and improves the effectiveness of the adaptive immune response.
My Vietnamese in-laws commonly make a sweat tent to shorten the duration of sickness. I can't say if it works, but it's something I intend to try next time I'm sick.
When I feel like I have a virus I usually put on my hoody which I only wear when I feel ill and a scarf and before going to bed I drink a lot of herb or ginger tea (like two cans)
this is will heat up your body and you get some night sweats, this usually helps reducing the sick time.
I can't say if it actually helps, but its become a ritual for that occasion
Well, yes?
Very simplified... It is a suppressor of symptoms like pain and fever which are the bodies way of letting you know something is damaged and killing off unknown foreign bodies respectively.
Suppressing symptoms does not remove the cause and is not a cure.
I think what they're saying here is that you're not just suppressing a symptom, you're suppressing a sickness fighting mechanism.
He said that.
Fever isn't just a symptom. It's a defense mechanism. The idea is that use of antipyretic drugs may make the infection worse.
The sentence is constructed, weirdly, but it's meant to say that fever is "killing off unknown foreign bodies"
Pain being a way to let you know that something is damaged is close to true--close enough not to quibble with. But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
It is, as others have pointed out.
Although, we’re very unusual humans in the grand scheme of things. So using medication might be reasonable. The brain might start taking damage around 104F. That was probably a good tradeoff for a peasant farmer (our ancestors, on average). Most of us nowadays just think for a living, not such a good tradeoff for us. Take the fever suppressant, what’s the worst that’ll happen if you miss an extra day of work?
It's a fairly common notion to "sweat out" a flu. Stay in bed, wrap yourself up in lots of blankets and just sweat the damn thing out. High body heat kills the virus.
So it would make sense that drugs like tylenol/paracetamol would make you feel better, but would keep the flu alive in you for longer.
Anecdotally, I have used this technique many times, also drinking hot tea besides being wrapped in blankets, and at least for me it has worked much better than when taking any kind of antipyretics.
There are cases when the fever is dangerously high and antipyretics are necessary. But when the fever is supportable it certainly accelerates the healing.
Our pediatrician didn’t want us to give Tylenol unless the fever was over 99.5 and not to bring them in unless it was over 101 with Tylenol.
You want your immune system to simmer, not to boil.
It may go further than that:
> Fever is used by organisms as diverse as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals (see for reference Basu and Srivastava, 2003). Since fever is metabolically expensive, it must provide substantial advantage to the host. Surprisingly little is known about immunological effects mediated by fever, a lack of understanding that might be attributable in part to the common ignorance in clinical practice with respect to benefits fever might provide. Post-operative infections can be prolong survival: patients developing empyema after lung cancer surgery have improved 5-year survival (50% (n = 18) vs 22% (n = 411)) (Ruckdeschel et al, 1972). In this light, it seems unfortunate that fever is usually suppressed in hospital routine.
> The phenomenon of spontaneous regression and remission from cancer has been observed by many physicians and was described in hundreds of publications. However, suggestive clues on cause or trigger are sparse and not substantiated by much experimental evidence. [...] At least in a larger fraction of cases a hefty feverish infection is linked with spontaneous regression in time and is investigated as putative trigger.
> Professor Busch in 1868 introduced the infection of cancer patients by purpose as a novel strategy to treat cancer. He achieved a dramatic regression with his first patient using live Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the pathogen leading to erysipelas, published in the German Journal ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift’ (Busch, 1868). Beginning in 1891, this strategy was exploited by Coley, who had some reading knowledge of German (Hall, 1998). Coley systematically applied Streptococcus pyogenes extracts – later called ‘Coley’s toxin’ – to cancer patients and achieved a remarkable rate of regressions. A retrospective compilation of cases considered inoperable at the time of treatment between 1891 and 1936, which was conducted by Wiemann and Starnes (1994, Table 2), determined a remission rate of 64% (108/170) and a 5-year survival rate of larger than 44%. Coley used to inject his extract once or twice a week over a period ranging from a few weeks to several months. His method became quite famous and was tested on hundreds of patients by him and contemporary physicians, but overshadowed by the development of X-ray treatment which was regarded to be much more powerful and of broader applicability.
> Since cancer is usually a slowly progressing disease with occasionally long periods of dormancy, putative beneficial fever effects should also precipitate as preventive efficacy. This can indeed be found. In a cohort of 603 melanoma patients compared to 627 population controls, an inverse correlation was found between melanoma risk and number of recorded infections on the one hand and between melanoma risk and fever height on the other hand, leading to a combined reduction of melanoma risk of about 40% for people with a history of three or more infections with high fever above 38.51C (Koelmel et al, 1999). Mastrangelo et al (1998) report a striking inverse correlation between the number of infections and mortality from tumours in Italy in the period 1890 –1960: every 2% reduction in the number of infectious diseases was followed by a 2% increase in tumours about 10 years later.
I know someone who doesn't get fever. When he gets sick with regular cold or fly it's much longer and worse than for anyone else I know.
You usually don't get a fever from a cold (except in Japanese anime), if there's a significant fever it's more likely to be a flu. Or, these days, could be Covid.
Most people don't get a significant fever when infected with most common cold viruses.
The reasoning behind this is that birds have higher body temperature in our fever range.
They put mice infected with a flu virus modified to have the bird variant of a gene in an oven and the virus indeed didn't degrade as much compared to the unmodified control.
Well, most humans (unlike me) take Tylenol even with a "fever" of just 38°C/100.5°F, so what difference does it make?
Unlike us, the virus will replicate much more quickly in their bodies. It wont kill them, but will likely make the infection last longer.
Havent had a fever in many years, since taking flu and covid shots each year.
Well, if you let your innate immune system do its job, fever can actually kill many pathogens and also ramp up your immune system response. It's fascinating that human cells can survive at slightly higher temperatures than most pathogens, giving us an advantage. It's not comfortable to have a high fever, and there's a slight chance of kids getting febrile seizures (although most are not actually that bad), but we do more harm ot ourselves for little comfort or a complete lack of soicism.
I get headaches sometimes. I know 200mg of ibuprofen can help me, but I chose not to. Pain is part of reality. If we mask it, we have little incentive to address the root cause.
I had COVID-19 in August this year. I had a 39.5°C fever for 2 days, then it subsided for 7-8 more days - I didn't take any antipyretic. You know, you can actually tolerate it if you accept it as something normal. And it's also a great experience to actually learn to know when you have a fever - you don't need a thermometer even.
Pyrotherapy. The idea of fighting untreatable (at the time) illnesses by inducing a fever in the patient. There's actually a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy As in deliberately infect a syphilis patient with malaria, which can give you a very high fever. The first time I heard about that one was in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, turns out it was one of the non-fictional parts of the books (which were a mix of historical facts and fiction).
Quote: "In general, the body temperature was maintained at 41 °C (105 °F).[1] Many diseases were treated by this method in the first half of the 20th century."
The malaria variant was not the common variant, that was saved for extreme cases, apparently (e.g. Syphilis). Mostly it was hot baths and the like.
I, for one, will stick to my near-daily sauna sessions.
Unlike you?
I don't take any antipyretics, nor have I given to my kids, unless the fever is 39-39.5°C and climbing. Otherwise, you're sabotaging your own innate immune system!
He is not like the others
I agree - stoicism is almost fully extinct. Modern people are a bunch of whiners.
There is a vaccine though.
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-prepares-five-million-vaccine-...
That's a vaccine for one strain: H5N1. I'm sure birds have many more strains and variants of virus. I'm sure a proper virologist can dive in here ...
I think people assume that a fever is caused by an infection but my understanding is that a fever is a response to the infection. The body raises its temperature deliberately to destroy a viral infection, even though it is unpleasant, as well as deploying the other defenses.
It seems, according to this article, that these bird 'flu infections are resistant to being cooked by a fever and that makes them more dangerous - we've lost a defense strategy.
Not a proper virologist, but H5N5 killed a person in Washington state recently.
There will likely be some cross protection on the H5 antigen, just as some regular flu shots provide cross protection against the N1 antigen of H5N1. (The H5 and N1 subtypes won't be completely matched, respectively, but you don't always need complete matching for some protection.)
Kurzgesagt's fever video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZOUcpiOxY
Edit: This video asserts that the heat shock protein excess is what reveals an infected cell to the immune system.
Everyone pops a Tylenol/advil when they get a fever. Can’t be that bad.
I'd imagine that in the event of a Bird Flu pandemic, a vaccine would be developed and dispatched quite quickly, unlike with COVID, where during the early days experts were saying it was possible we'd never get a vaccine.
If COVID demonstrated anything it is exactly the contrary, that we should not count on readily available vaccines, and rather should have *systemic* responses ready to be implemented when needed (including vaccine development, but not only). Every new virus is a new challenge and a vaccine may take time to develop. Meanwhile isolation protocols, masks etc. are all sensible actions. Prevention and prior investments into a wide range of measures, from education, to health protocols development and to vaccine technology research are all necessary to have these systemic responses ready in place.
The reason they said it wasn't possible wasn't that making a vaccine was physically impossible. They said a vaccine might never arrive because vaccines have such a poor track record against respiratory viruses. The assumption the (cough) experts were making was that nobody would roll out a useless vaccine.
But they would! The COVID vaccine was advertised as 95% effective after two shots and done, and within months it was at negative effectiveness and people were being told to take infinity boosters. That's the exact scenario originally anticipated. The only mistake was assuming the regulators wouldn't sign off on a useless vaccine backed by dodgy trials. We were told to take our medicine anyway and then the vaccine boosters tried to gaslight everyone into thinking it was a great success even as millions of people saw friends and family who'd taken five shots come down with Omicron for the third time in six months.
It doesn't work because respiratory viruses mutate very quickly. They evolve around both natural immunity and vaccines very fast, but vaccination triggers population lock so the effect is worse than just letting people fight it off naturally where you get more natural variability in defenses.
That's why if you look carefully at the data for flu shots they don't work. They're reported as effective because the original specific virus goes away, but people still get flu and die at the same rate because "flu" is more than just one very specific virus. End effect on mortality is zero.
Any source on these claims?
The US has antivaxxers in charge of health policy now, and they have specifically targeted mRNA vaccines with funding cuts. They seem likely to hinder rather than help any near future vaccines development program in response to a pandemic.
But the current administration is antivax so…
Something I love to point out to Trump supporters is that he is the one who fast tracked the “clot shot”.
So was the one during COVID-19
Only after it made the vax.
Maybe it'd then be a good idea to have labs secretly funded by a joint venture half-US, half-Chinese, in China, doing gain-of-function research on these?
And then maybe that if some shit hits the fan, it'd then be a great idea to ask someone neck and tie deep in that funding and in that research to act as the "expert" to tell us if we should put masks on or not once it leaks?
Can we simply remove fever and coughing somehow… super annoying and more dangerous than the virus themselves sometimes.
> Can we simply remove fever and coughing somehow… super annoying and more dangerous than the virus themselves sometimes.
You're basically asking to become a bat
So we can also fly? Sign me up!
And echolocation! Time to form a queue.
> Teach Yourself to Echolocate A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound.
Fruitbat!