Month: May 2019

Peer review of a scientific journal is necessary and also pretty elaborate. The reason for peer reviews is it gives the manuscript several pairs of fresh eyes–eyes that understand the topic– and gives notes to the authors to make the manuscript better. The author begins by sending in their work, then the editor, if accepted, sends out the manuscript to several peer reviewers. The peer reviewers do know who the author is, but the author usually does not know who the reviewers are. This could potentially lead to some biases perhaps due to competition within that scientific field, or perhaps the reviewers find the particular subject boring… reviewers seem to have a pretty strong hand in what happens to the manuscript, so it is an intense process that may lead to some credibility issues if there are personal biases. The reviewers chosen are considered people in the field related to the work, and have usually been published themselves… therefore, they understand the tedious process.

Once the reviewers add in their revisions, it is sent back to the editor to accept the manuscript or decline it. If accepted, the manuscript gets sent back to the authors once they fix the things the reviewers noted, they send it back in and the review process is replicated until the paper deems fit.

Although it is a tedious process, and perhaps there is room for biases, it is a necessary process in order to make research/the manuscript the most understandable, and the most relatable in that scientific field due to the experts’ edits and advising.

Reflect on the peer-review process with you as the reviewer. How did it feel to read and critique someone else’s writing? What did you learn that you can apply to your own writing as you revise your final essay?

I always feel a sense of stress when reviewing someone else’s work. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but at the same time, I know for my work I love and appreciate when people help my writing be better.

I believe I may have had an international student’s paper and that was kind of hard to gauge because it isn’t the grammar or sentence structure that we’re used to, but I also can’t imagine how hard it would be to write a 2000 word essay in a non-native language. I hope I gave good advice to them.

It made me want to go back and reread my entire paper to make sure my grammar and sentence structure made sense, and that my ideas flowed. I think it’s easy to read your own paper and think it makes sense, when in reality there are fragments and ideas that don’t quite flow when a reader is reviewing it for the first time.

List and describe as many changes in human behaviors as you can think of that contribute to decreased exposure to microbes:

Increased handwashing and with antibiotic soap [1]

Increased cleaning/cleaning products

Kids not playing outside

Kids not playing with other kids

Increased antibiotics [1]

Hand sanitizer

Smaller families (less children) [1]

More C-sections [1]

Less breast feeding [1]

More antibiotics during pregnancy [1]

It was also mentioned that we may have a loss of ancestral microbes (1)

Blaser M, Falkow S. 2009. What are the consequences of the disappearing human microbiota? Nature Reviews Microbiology 7:887–894.

 

Writing for 5 minutes on what I’ve found most interesting/want to learn more about:

I think the most interesting topics we’ve covered are how different compositions of the microbiota are correlated with certain diseases... we’ve talked about obesity, asthma, now stuff with the heart, and I think that the disease component on the microbiota is really interesting. I also thought this week’s information regarding pregnancy and infants and development of the child was pretty crazy. It makes sense that we get our bacteria from somewhere, so it’s cool to see that it’s literally caused by the environment and things we interact with. It reminds me of that movie boy in the bubble or whatever it’s called. What else… probiotics and antibiotics are of course really interesting and so prevalent with society today. I hear about antibiotic resistance all of the time, so it’d be cool to delve into that more— especially because I feel like I focused mostly on the probiotic portion of that module and didn’t get to learn too much about the antibiotic portion.

Step 2: Underline

Step 3: Write bout what you bolded

Antibiotic resistance: I hear about this all of the time, and it is scary. I remember doing research on it and it said something like 30% (I think) of antibiotics prescribed are unnecessary. I think this is a huge problem, and it’s really relevant in the field I’m persuing– medicine. I remember learning about plasmids in microbiology class and this class talked about how plasmids can actually transfer antibiotic resistance, so it was really cool to relate the two classes.

Diseases and the microbiota. I think that there is probably so much information on this topic. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least a small correlation between almost every disease with the microbiota. I think this is super interesting because I think if doctors were to educate their patients and look more into the gut microbiota, it could help a lot of people with things such as weight loss. After learning about how different the gut microbiota differs for obese people, it scared me into wanting to eat healthier and lose some weight. Obesity leads to bigger issues such as health problems, etc, and I wonder if this is partly to do with the microbiota as well and not just the visceral fat.

Step 4: Reflection

I definitely want to write on diseases and the microbiota. I think I might even emphasize on obesity. I’m going to start my research tomorrow and see if it’d be too much information to talk about several diseases, and if it is, I’ll focus solely on obesity.

List and describe potential factors that the mother or the infant could be exposed to that could influence the colonization of the microbial community in the newborn infant (in positive or negative ways).

It is known that infants start becoming exposed to many different bacteria and by the moment they’re born, they are diversifying their microbiota. Being born , either vaginally or through C-section, both introduce new microbes to the infant. If born via C-section, it’s shown that those babies have more antibiotic resistant bacteria, and this could be a cause for MRSA in infants  (64-82% of the infants with MRSA were delivered via C-section) (1). Several diseases may have a higher relevance rate with C section babies such as celiac disease, asthma, and obesity. However, this is just an association rather than factual correlations.

Breast milk vs. formula as well as weaning period influence changes in the gut and oral microbiota, and differences are found in milk vs. formula babies. For milk babies, they show more Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus, and Bacteroide species which aid in absorbing more nutrients. However, long term effects are not known (1).

The child’s environment, immune system and genes all help determine which microbes can stay and which ones won’t be able to colonize (2).

Things the mother ingests could affect the infant through breast milk, the cleanliness of the mother, the amount of things the mother let’s the baby suck on, the binky… These could all introduce positive and negative microbes.

The infant’s microbiota is almost at the same point as an adult’s microbiota by the young age of 3. Therefore, the infant’s microbiota is changing rapidly through their environment and the new things they’re introduced to, whether positive or negative.

References:

Nuriel-Ohayon M, Neuman H, Koren O. 2016. Microbial changes during pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy. Frontiers in Microbiology 7:1-13.

lecture 6b notes: Obstetrics and Infant Microbiota Development. Obtained from: https://courses.ecampus.oregonstate.edu/bhs323/6b/

Describe your personal philosophy about how and when you have taken, or would take, antibiotics. What experiences or prior knowledge do you have that shaped that personal philosophy?

Before coming to college, I would take antibiotics whenever they were recommended or prescribed by the doctor. Growing up, I would get strep throat all of the time and so I ingested a lot of antibiotics growing up. I remember once in a while if I had a sore throat and my strep test came back negative, they would still prescribe me antibiotics just in case.

Fast forward to my first year of college… I had pretty severe acne and so I went to see a dermatologist. The first thing she recommended was getting me on an antibiotic. Trusting my doctor, I agreed to take it. I was on it for 2 years without seeing results. After taking a few science classes I quit taking the antibiotics since I wasn’t seeing results anyway. To this day, I’m surprised at how long she wanted me to take them– I definitely don’t think that was healthy. Fast forward to this year (my last year of college) and I went in to the doctor for what I thought was extreme allergies. He said he thought it was a sinus infection and gave me  an antibiotic. Due to my misery, I took it. It did not help unfortunately, and the antibiotics gave me terrible side effects.

I’m a lot more conscientious now about what I put into my body regarding medication (especially antibiotics) due to the rising awareness of antibiotic resistance due to gene sharing and selection. While researching for the discussion post this week I found on the CDC that 30% of antibiotics prescribed are actually unnecessary, and this was definitely an “AHA” moment that I’ll keep with me for future reference (https://www.cdc.gov/features/antibioticuse/index.html).

“What choices do you make in terms of food/nutrition/product use and consumption that may have an impact on your microbial communities? Consider choices that are intentional, and choices that are perhaps non-intentional”

I have never really thought about my microbial community on a day to day basis before taking this course. After reading the past few weeks, however, I’m definitely going to be more careful in my regular diet. The only times I’ve been conscientious about my gut health is when I’m on antibiotics–my mom always told me that I should eat yogurt and drink kefir. I’m assuming now it’s because the antibiotics go in and can kill off some of your good bacteria, so it’s good to replenish it a bit by supplementation. I don’t like yogurt and never eat it– or really any dairy for that matter. However, I think it’s probably a good idea to start because of some of the probiotics benefits. Some of these benefits as heard in the lecture video this week include increasing the short chain fatty acids that aid in gut cells absorbing nutrients more efficiently as well as aiding against pathogens.