had a commentary published in Nature today
 

Hey Friends, Wanted to share a couple of links about a probiotics trial in India that had amazing results in preventing sepsis in newborns. I wasn't involved in the trial, but Nature invited me to write a "News and View" about it, after I served as one of the peer-reviewers on the trial for them.

The Nature articles were published online today, and will appear in print within the next week or so:

Here's a link to the trial report in Nature: http://rdcu.be/u3lg

Here's a link to my commentary, also in Nature: http://rdcu.be/u3kO

If those are too nerdy, here's how The Atlantic covered the trial today: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...iotics/537093/

And here's the NPR report http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsand...adly-infection

Holy shit Dan, long time no see!

I fell into the habit of lurking. I'm on here all the time, but I hardly ever post. I struggle with two addictions, to sports teams, one that rewards my fandom with occasional excellence, 4 pennants and 2 World Series wins...the other a hateful beast that hasn't done much in 47 years beyond getting my hopes up, clogging my facebook.com feed and making me wonder why I'm so ridiculously loyal to them. ;)

Link to article?

Congratulations!

Damn, that's pretty cool for you.

Thanks! I placed links in the topic heading post. The much more important link is to the trial report by the trial investigators. I wasn't involved in this trial. I only peer-reviewed the trial report, which pales in comparison to what the investigators did. (In my job, I am on both sides of the process, either being one of the investigators or being one of the reviewers.) But I have to say that I'm proud of the work that my colleagues and I have made these past several years toward improving the quality of the science in probiotics and prebiotics research over the years. Also, it looks good on my curriculum vitae that Nature invited me to write a commentary for them, so that's nice, too. :) I'm stoked about the commentary because of the nearly 200 papers I've published, this one will probably be among the most read, given how many readers Nature attracts.

Missed it. Sorry. Thanks.

Hi

You seem nice. How's it going, Simply Red!?

Good how about you Dan?

Married huh?

Pretty good. The Royals pulled one out today. My happiness depends inordinately on their performance. I'm starting to get jaded about the Chiefs performance, at least in theory. I'm sure that when the regular season starts, they will be aggravating my blood pressure, too.

:) I better not touch that.

Oh always w/ the Chiefs. LMAO

Congrats!

Is sepsis a problem in India, or is this a first-world privilege thing to test it in India first?

That's awesome - congrats!

Infections and sepsis are huge problems in India and throughout the developing world.

There's a data visualization site for the Global Burden of Disease that you'll find very interesting, Rain Man. Here's a link to it:
https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/

Here's a graph I just now prepared from it that shows the years of lives lost per 100K lives due to neonatal sepsis, broken down by region of the world. You can see that the rates are so much higher in South Asian than in the high-income regions. This graph is for a rigorous definition of sepsis. To make it approximate the definition of clinical sepsis used in the Nature articles, you'd also have to count lower respiratory tract infections and a few other things.


http://ihmeuw.org/4667

Here's another chart that shows the amazing improvements that have been made in the past twenty five years or so in reducing child mortality.
http://ihmeuw.org/4669

There's been a lot of progress. We still have a ways to go, though, but we should recognize that a lot of progress has come from efforts to give every newborn the best chance to survive and thrive. The progress in that regard has outpaced the gains in income that have occurred in many developing world countries. (Those gains in income are another source of good news, as the percentage of folks in extreme poverty nowadays is much less than it was when the Chiefs last won a Super Bowl.) One of the causes of death and disease where progress has been slower than for most other causes has been with neonatal sepsis, so finding ways to cut those down is important.

Here's a chart showing changes in the share of the world's population living in extreme poverty.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...ata_-_2015.png

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...ata_-_2015.png

That's pretty impressive.

I remember reading a while back that obesity is now deemed a greater world problem than hunger. That goes against a lot of doomsday observations.

That chart also offers a partial explanation for why the Chiefs Redwood Forest Defense was able to be World Champs in 1970 (http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1...ikings-23-to-7). Back then, half of the world was in extreme poverty. Nowadays, it's only about 10 percent. The Chiefs don't have a chance! :)

Exhibit A that you are indeed around this site with regularity.

Except that I'm not exactly sure what that phrase means and how it came about. Back in the day, I could keep up with all the memes, but now I'm a bit distracted with other responsibilities. I know that Simply Red is one of the most amazingly generous folks and that he has a great spirit about how to handle life's hills and valleys. But I'm not sure if that phrase is always meant in a good way or if it has some sarcasm associated with it. :shrug:

Just a quick update. My article came out in the print edition of Nature this week. Here's a shareable link to the PDF. http://rdcu.be/vfbb

Pretty exciting week for me to see the coverage of the trial. Among other news outlets, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and the New York Times all covered Dr. Panigrahi's trial (link to the Nature article on the trial report is here: http://rdcu.be/veTE). The first and last of them also quoted my commentary. I came away from the experience with a lot of respect for the editors at Nature, who did a great job trying to make the writing clear.

Impressive article

Today, I was able to buy at the town news stand a copy of the Nature issue with my little piece in it. Pretty cool to have a physical copy and be able to get it without a special order. I think Nature is also going sending me a copy the real slow way.