School is in Session and So Too Are Germs

While many parents don’t remember much algebra or calculus, most know all too well that school + kids = sick days.

And with more than 200 cold viruses identified,  it’s no wonder parents feel like they are fighting a losing battle when it comes to keeping their kids healthy.

“Kids will be exposed to germs and inevitably get colds, even with the best preventive measures, and that’s OK,” said Jessica McIntyre, MD, family physician at Loyola University Health System and assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

According to McIntyre, young children will get between 7 and 8 colds a year and school-age children will average 5-6 colds a year. Kids tend to get more colds during the school year because they are in an enclosed classroom surrounded by other children who are sharing these very common viruses.

“Parents sometimes worry that they have done something wrong to cause frequent colds, or that their child is not healthy. Actually, cold viruses help build a child’s immune system and are an unavoidable part of growing up,” McIntyre said.

Nevertheless, we bring you some tips to help keep your child’s sick days to a minimum

1. You’ve taught your kids their ABCs –  now teach them their CCCs?
   a. Clean – wash your hands and make sure your kids wash their hands frequently
   b. Cover – cover your cough and sneeze, preferably with a tissue, but if one is not available, cough or sneeze into your elbow
   c. Contain – stay at home if you are sick; germs are one thing that aren’t good to share
2. Family flu vaccines. Everyone who is 6 months or older should be vaccinated. Talk to your physician about which type of vaccine is right for your family members.
3. Have your children wash their hands as soon as they get home from school.
4. Change into “home clothes and shoes.”  It helps keep germs, allergens and dirt out of the house making it easier to keep clean. Plus, you won’t be searching the house for shoes that were kicked off under the couch.This is especially beneficial if you have a young infant at home
5. Wash their lunch box daily. Lunch boxes carry more than veggies and fruit to and from school. They also carry A LOT of germs. If they’re dishwasher safe, run them through the sanitizing cycle at the end of each day. If not, spray them down with vinegar and water and wipe them clean before packing a new lunch
6. Backpacks are another huge germ culprit. They make their way onto tables, beds and desks and can transfer nasty germs to all of these surfaces. Wash backpacks once a week to minimize the spread of germs.
7. Reduce consumption of sugary foods before and during school. Consuming just a teaspoon of sugar weakens the immune system for up to 4 hours. To help the body fight germs, make sure to offer a low sugar breakfast and low sugar lunch. Avoid processed foods as much as possible. They are generally loaded with sugars.

And if you’d still like to do more to keep your little darlings safe, there is some evidence that certain  products can be effective in cold prevention if taken regularly:
(i) Probiotics: 1 gram mixed with milk twice daily
(ii) Vitamin C: 1 gram daily
(iii) Zinc sulfate: 15 mg syrup or 10 mg tablet daily

Despite all that, if they do develop a cold, don’t stress about it!  Everyone gets sick sometimes. And while we all hate to see  kids feeling bad, just remember, when they get sick their bodies are building up their ability to fight future infections.

Radioactive Bacteria:1 – Pancreatic Cancer:0

Years ago, when I was just starting my healthcare career, I worked with a team specializing in the management of patients with pancreatic cancer.  Despite the dedication and compassion of our team, revolutionary surgical techniques, and top-notch palliative care, all too often our patients died. Even today, some 30 years later, pancreatic cancer has a poor prognosis. It’s seldom detected in its early stages, and often spreads rapidly. Signs and symptoms frequently don’t appear until the disease is advanced and surgical removal isn’t possible.

Pancreatic cancer touches so many people. It killed my childhood mentor and one of my best friends. It’s taken the lives of many household names, from astronauts to actors, entrepreneurs to opera singers.  For example, Patrick Swayze, Randy Pausch, Luciano Pavarotti, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Michael Landon, Joan Crawford, Sally Ride and of course, Apple CEO – Steve Jobs.

So, I was excited to hear about new research into a targeted anti-cancer therapy that promised limited side effects. The study, published April 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that treating mice with an attenuated, radioactively labeled bacteria –  Listeria monocytogenes – drastically reduced the number of metastases, while leaving normal tissue unscathed.

The notion of using bacteria to attack tumors is not new. Robert Hoffman, a cancer biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the current study, has shown that Salmonella can kill mouse cancer cells, including metastases of pancreatic cancer.

Other research has shown that a Listeria strain known as CRS-207 has the ability to stimulate an immune response in Phase 1 and 2 trials.

In the new study, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have paired this technique with a radioactive isotope to selectively kill tumor cells, focusing on the metastatic cells that so often elude current treatment regimens.

It’s this combination of approaches that synergistically target metastases, that’s new. Claudia Gravekamp, an immunologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who led the study with nuclear medicine researcher Ekaterina Dadachova had previously demonstrated that an attenuated strain of Listeria monocytogenes, a type of bacterium that penetrates host cells during infection, selectively killed breast cancer cells without damaging normal tissue. The bacteria’s ability to target only diseased cells raised the possibility that it could be used to treat metastatic cancer by both directly killing cells and by carrying anti-tumor therapies—like radiation—to cancer cells.

Gravekamp and Dadachova tested the bacteria against highly metastatic pancreatic cancer in mice. First, they demonstrated that the bacteria proliferated well in the animals’ metastases, but poorly in the primary tumor, and not at all in normal tissues like spleen, suggesting the bacteria would be good candidates for delivering a therapy to far-flung metastases.

Then, the researchers armed the Listeria with the Rhenium-188, a radionuclide that kills cells by releasing DNA-damaging. Sure enough, regular injections of the Rhenium-188 labeled bacteria decreased metastases by 90% versus controls.

While this implies that bacteria have to potential to be used to deliver therapeutic radiation doses to metastases, the bacteria were administered before metastases were established, notes Donald Buchsbaum, a radiation biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who was not involved in the study.  “So to some extent it’s a prevention model.”

Future work will need to focus on targeting established metastases, possibly by exploring other radioisotope options.  Gravekamp and Dadachova are currently refining their protocol and examining alternative radioisotopes to achieve a 100% reduction of metastases, but have high hopes for their bacteria.

Though primary tumors are often removed surgically, even small pieces left behind can produce new metastases. It might be possible that one day radioactive Listeria could be part of an “early second-line treatment after surgery to prevent further metastases,” says Gravekamp.

Which is great news in the war against cancer and not a bad deal for the Listeria bacteria which normally gets a bad rap for causing the infection listeriosis  – the leading cause of death among food-borne bacterial pathogens – responsible for approximately 2,500 illnesses and 500 fatalities annually in the United States.

Exciting stuff!