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Swine Flu Media Bulletin, Wales
- 1 confirmed case in Wales (a 31 year old male from the Caerphilly local authority area. He has had mild flu symptoms, has been offered antivirals and is recovering at home).

Study Finds That Tobacco Companies Changed Design Of Cigarettes Without Alerting Smokers
As President Obama prepares to sign a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of the tobacco industry, a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers shows that tobacco manufacturers have continually changed the ingredients and the design of their cigarettes over time, even if those changes have exceeded acceptable product variance guidelines. The result, say the researchers, is that consumers who buy the same brand of product are not made aware of how that product has been altered and what effect those alterations might have on their levels of addiction or harm.
News of the day
CDC Prioritizes H1N1 Vaccinations For Pregnant Women
When the H1N1 flu vaccine becomes available in the fall, pregnant women should be among the first groups vaccinated because of their high risk for serious complications, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert panel said on Wednesday, the Washington Post reports. The 15-member committee advises CDC on vaccine policy. The priority list also includes caretakers of infants, health care workers, children and young adults, and older people with chronic conditions. Anthony Fiore, a physician and epidemiologist at CDC, told the committee that about 6% of H1N1 deaths and hospitalizations are among pregnant women (Brown, Washington Post, 7/30). According to a CDC study published online Wednesday in the journal Lancet, pregnant women who contract the H1N1 virus -- also known as "swine flu" -- are at least four times more likely to be hospitalized than other people with the virus, the AP/Google reports. The study analyzed the first 34 U.S. cases, including six deaths, in pregnant women from April to mid-June of 2009. Although it is not clear if pregnant women are more susceptible to the virus, they have a higher risk of complications after becoming infected. The study"s authors said pregnant women suspected of having H1N1 should be administered Tamiflu as soon as possible, prior to the completion of diagnostic testing. CDC"s Denise Jamieson, the lead author of the study, said that Tamiflu appears relatively safe for pregnant women, despite limited safety data on its use in that population.Most pregnant women who contract H1N1 have mild flu symptoms like a cough or fever, according to the World Health Organization. Jamieson said that CDC does not recommend specific precautions for pregnant women but that doctors should act quickly -- preferably within 48 hours -- if a pregnant woman shows symptoms. She added that the pregnant women who died were basically healthy, and nearly all had viral pneumonia before experiencing acute respiratory problems prior to their death (Cheng, AP/Google, 7/29).CDC"s priority groups include about 159 million people out of a total U.S. population of more than 300 million, the Chicago Tribune reports. The agency expects to have about 120 million doses of the vaccine by the end of October. Officials are confident there will be enough for their target groups because only 20% to 50% of those recommended to receive seasonal flu vaccines seek them out. However, if supplies of the vaccine are unexpectedly restricted, the panel recommended that a smaller group -- about 41 million of the most susceptible to adverse side effects from infection or most likely to spread the virus -- be given priority for the vaccine. This smaller group also includes pregnant women (Maugh, Chicago Tribune, 7/30).
Diagnostics

The Right Messenger For A Healthy Immune Response

Researchers from the Molecular Immunology group at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany have now shown that Beta-Interferon also plays a crucial role during an immune response: without Beta-Interferon immune cells are unable to show "wanted posters" of pathogens to other cells. As a consequence, these cells will not recognize the pathogen and the immune response does not start properly. The group"s results have now been published in the current issue of the scientific magazine Journal of Immunology. During an infection, immune cells produce Beta-Inferferon. Interestingly, an immune response is even stronger when a low amount of Beta-Interferon has already been present before the infection occurs. Scientists call this behaviour "priming". A healthy basal level of Beta-Interferon facilitates a faster immune reaction against microbial and viral threads. Researchers from the HZI have now managed to show why this is the case: Beta-Interferon is a key regulator and of vital importance in enabling the immune system to display fragments of pathogens, so-called antigens. Immune cells present these antigens on their surface and in this way communicate with one another: antigens are the "wanted posters" of the virus or the bacterium which has to be destroyed. The researchers discovered the important role of Beta-Interferon in mice lacking the gene for Beta-Interferon. These mice displayed poor immune responses. "Without those knock-out mice we would not have been able to identify the impact of Beta-Interferon on the immune system," says Siegfried WeiĆ’, leader of the Molecular Immunology group at the HZI. His research assistant, the scientist Natalia Zietara, investigated what Beta-Interferon is doing in immune cells. She found a molecular factor that is pivotal in producing the pathogen"s profile and which is regulated by Beta-Interferon. The factor belongs to a group of proteins that is usually produced in conditions of stress. Without Beta-Interferon, no active stress protein - without stress protein, no wanted poster - without wanted poster, no immune response. "We now have a far better understanding of how immune responses start, but also how diseases like autoimmune diseases may develop," says WeiĆ’: without Beta-Interferon, the immune system may not be able to learn how to tolerate itself during the embryonic phase and that it should not fight against self-structures. "Our findings can help to develop or improve new therapeutics to combat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis or cancer." Article: Zietara N, Łyszkiewicz M, Gekara N, Puchałka J, Dos Santos VA, Hunt CR, Pandita TK, Lienenklaus S, Weiss S. Absence of IFN-beta impairs antigen presentation capacity of splenic dendritic cells via down-regulation of heat shock protein 70. J Immunol. 2009 Jul 15;183(2):1099-109. Hannes Schlender Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres


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