Bluetongue and probiotics

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:48:48 -0000, "Pat Gardiner"
wrote:

Pat's Note: A juxtaposition that caused me to chuckle and note the perils of
not taking Dutch science seriously. The WWW changes everything.

I seemed to know about the probiotics problem from Dutch research before
some of the experts in the NHS and acted to remove anything remotely similar
from my diet. I put a warning here a while back, when as usual my health was
being discussed, probably to spin the completely false allegation that I was
mentally ill. Tut. The lengths lobbyists in a panic will go to.

And the Bluetongue article reminds us that our medical people do read about
animals disease. They will get to the link between pigs and MRSA eventually.
There are a lot of medics too. Far too many for Defra's spinning wheel to
handle.

Defra are going to get a public spanking from a sore handed NHS of massive
proportions. Sit back and enjoy.

We are far too interested in spinning and lobbying in Britain. You have to
get down to raw facts and take them on board. To do anything else makes you
a hostage to fortune.

http://www.onmedica.com/BlogView.asp...9-fa2c82b2e074

Probiotics lethal in pancreatitis?

The health-giving effects of probiotic bacteria are currently much-touted.
But they do not appear to extend to acute pancreatitis, where according to a
paper in the Lancet, they actually make things worse. Patients presenting
with a first attack of acute pancreatitis that was predicted to become
severe were given the probiotic preparation prophylactically, in the hope of
reducing infectious complications. In fact, infectious complications were
unchanged, but mortality in the probiotic group was more than twice that in
the placebo group, mostly because of bowel ischaemia. The reasons why remain
rather mysterious.

Bluetongue
Unless you are a farmer in your spare time, you've probably forgotten about
bluetongue, which arrived in Britain for the first time last summer. An
article in the London Review of Books explains what an interesting disease
it is. It's caused by an orbivirus, which is transmitted by midges of the
genus Culicoides, and it probably arrived in England when infected insects
were blown across the North Sea from Belgium and the Netherlands. It only
affects ruminants, but is often lethal to sheep. The virus replicates in
endothelial cells causing oedema and necrosis, which in turn leads to
ischaemia and infarction, so in some cases the sheep's tongue goes blue not
long before death.