Vitamins

The road not taken

When discussing the problem of inducing allergy by rickets prophylaxis I have argumented earlier that there are many alternatives:

  • abandon daily oral prophylaxis in the general population (attn risk of t1d, rickets, pneumonia)
  • reduce daily oral dose with on demand therapy
  • use only 1-3 single oral shots as in former East Germany
  • exchange water-soluble by oily form
  • use chemically modified isomeres
  • co-application with “physiological” substances also in liver cod oil like Ca2+, P, vitamin A…
  • co-application with “non-physiological” Cpg ODN…
  • switch to parenteral application

There is even another option that I missed so far  – the parental application. Supplementation of the mother might work if given ~6000 IU/die to the mother as been nicely shown in a new study.routeb.png

The principle is not very new – probably known since 1927. RCTs are urgently needed comparing all these treatment options while a direct oral exposure of the gut mucosa by allergen and vitamin D should be avoided.

BTW “The road not taken” is a by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

 

3/9/2007

Rolf Zinkernagel made an interesting proposal last Saturday here in Munich – desenzitiation not by intradermal injection but by ultrasound directed lymphnode application.


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Genetics

Just so stories

The recent ATS congress in San Francisco had a nice session of “Just so stories“. The stories written by Rudyard Kipling three years after the death of his six year old child from pneumonia these are still some of the best questions ever asked. Answers at the ATS were by provided (by Powel) “How the birds got air sacs”, (by Loring) “How the elephant lost his pleural space” and (by Sieck) “How the diphragm got its dome”. The best session at the ATS!, yea, yea.


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Vitamins

Enlightening

A new study reports a rather expected finding – young Finnish men in a military base ;-)

… conditions with respect to physical activity, nutrition, clohting, living quarters, and exposure to sunlight were homgenous

had twice as many respiratory infections if having serum vitamin D concentrations <40 nmol/L. The discussion, however, misses the point that there are many studies showing the same effect in children with rickets (references 82-86) eventually leading to pneumonia leading to death. “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day” (Thomas Jefferson?)


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Philosophy

German science

The German portal academics has a rather long narrative about the failure of German science – and an excerpt from “Richard Münch, Die akademische Elite. Zur sozialen Konstruktion wissenschaftlicher Exzellenz, Frankfurt a.M.: Edition Suhrkamp, 2007”. Continue reading German science →


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Vitamins

Time to give Blackley the credit he deserves

I am currently doing some historical studies if the vitamin hypothesis fits also the temporal relationship of allergy prevalence. While ordering RKI files for my next trip to the Berlin document center, I found that farming and lower allergy sensitization is known much longer than I anticipated. Continue reading Time to give Blackley the credit he deserves →


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Joke

In consideration of

In case you have never read at full consciousness the copyright statements that some journals want to you to sign, here is one:

In consideration of the expenses of editing and publishing and the professional benefits relating to publication of my article or other written work, as specified above, I assign exclusively to the XXXX Society all right, title, and interest to my article or other written work, as specified above, and any ….

In consideration of the cumbersome training of a MD/PhD student I want 50% of their future salary ;-) yea, yea.


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Allergy, Genetics, Software

Castrated data

Nature had some good recommendations —

… there are challenges to making data on individual research participants available to other investigators, every effort should be made to provide researchers with an opportunity to reproduce the reported results and to investigate new hypotheses and methods.

accompanied by a bullet list

* Statement on availability of results and data so that, as far as possible, others can analyse them independently

The new expression paper published 3 days ago, however, ignores that largely Continue reading Castrated data →


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