PTE知識講堂開課啦
實時掌握當下流行詞彙快速掌握PTE最佳考點
開講第二課“有關病毒的閱讀題”
Hello同學們，學習了關於疾病類的內容，是不是覺得收穫滿滿？今天我們繼續為大家提供大量乾貨。
首先，我們還是從疫情的發展情況說起。
正常來說，要想控制住疫情的發展，除了確認傳播途徑（route of transmission）外，查找病毒的來源（source）也非常重要。
此次的新型冠狀肺炎的來源並沒有完全確定，只知道可能與野生動物（wildlife)相關，例如蝙蝠(bat)。因此，目前還沒有相關疫苗（vaccine）出現，治癒的病例主要還是依賴於自身的免疫系統（immune system）。
而隨著國家防控的提高，火神山雷神山醫院（makeshift hospital）、方艙醫院（mobile cabin hospitals）的建設，臨床診斷病例（clinically diagnosed cases)治癒情況在好轉。
最近，院方提出了新的血清療法（plasma therapy），經過不斷努力， 死亡人數（casualties）在不斷下降，肺炎患者的總體治癒率（cure rate）也在不斷提高。
今天，我們繼續進行PTE閱讀相關內容的總結練習。這幾篇疾病相關閱讀經常考，大家記得好好消化理解。
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RO部分
University of Otago center 100065
- University of Otago Center of International Health co-directors Professor Philip Hill and Professor John Crump share a view that global health is a multidisciplinary activity.
- In their work - from Tanzania to the Gambia, from Myanmar to Indonesia and beyond -they tap into a wide range of expertise from across the University, including clinicians, microbiologists and molecular microbiologists, public health experts, economists and mathematicians.
- They have also forged relationships and collaborations with research and aid agencies around the world.
- For the past seven years Professor Philip Hill has been part of a collaborative tuberculosis research project in Indonesia, with the University of Padjadjaran in Bandung, West Java, undertaking European Commission-funded research into the causative links between infectious and non-communicable diseases in this case tuberculosis (TB) and diabetes mellitus.
Embryonic Stem Cells 100068
- Embryonic stem cells are valued by scientists because the cells' descendant can turn into any other sort of body cell.
- These stem cells have been found in tissues such as the brain, bone marrow, blood, blood vessels, skeletal muscles, skin, and the liver.
- They might thus be used as treatments for diseases that require the replacement of a particular, lost cell type.
- Some example cited for a possible treatment using these cells are diabetes, motor neuron disease and Parkinson's disease.
FIB-R (拖拽)部分
110096
The fall of smallpox began with the realization that survivors of the disease were immune for the rest of their lives. This led to the practice of variolation- a process of exposing a healthy person to infected material from a person with smallpox in the hopes of producing a mild disease that provided immunity from further infection the first written account of variolation describes a Buddhist nun practicing around 1022 to 1063 AD. By the 1700s, this method of variolation was common practice in China, India, and Turkey. In the late 1700s European physicians used this and other methods of variolation, but reported “devastating” results in some cases. Overall, 2% to 3% of people who were variolated died of smallpox, but this practice decreased the total number of smallpox fatalities by 10-fold.
110219
DNA barcoding was invented by Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, in 2003. His idea was to generate a unique identification tag for each species based on a short stretch of DNA. Separating species would then be a simple task of sequencing this tiny bit of DNA. Dr Hebert proposed part of a gene called cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) as suitable to the task. All animals have it. It seems to vary enough, but not too much, to act as a reliable marker. And it is easily extracted, because it is one of a handful of genes found outside the cell nucleus, in structures called mitochondria. Barcoding has taken off rapidly since Dr Hebert invented it. When the idea was proposed, it was expected to be a boon to taxonomists trying to name the world's millions of species. It has, however, proved to have a far wider range of uses than the merely academic—most promisingly in the realm of public health.
One health-related project is the Mosquito Barcoding Initiative being run by Yvonne-Marie Linton of the Natural History Museum in London. This aims to barcode 80% of the world's mosquitoes within the next two years, to help control mosquito-borne diseases. Mosquitoes are responsible for half a billion malarial infections and 1m deaths every year.
They also transmit devastating diseases such as yellow fever, West Nile fever and dengue. However, efforts to control them are consistently undermined by the difficulty and expense of identifying mosquitoes—of which there are at least 3,500 species, many of them hard to tell apart.
Fib-RW(下拉)部分
120070
According to the literature, the history of vaccination can be traced back to as early as the 7th century when the monks in India tried to immunize themselves by drinking snake venom. The first vaccination was inoculation with human smallpox, a practice widely carried out in ancient India, Arabia, and China. This method of vaccination consisted of collecting pus from a patient suffering from a mild form of smallpox virus infection and inoculating the sample to a healthy human, which later led to a minor infection. This method was first introduced in England by a Greek named E. Timmons. However, this method had a risk of spreading smallpox in the community and even worsening the health condition of the person who received the inoculation. While the use of human smallpox vaccine was controversial, E. Jenner came up with bovine smallpox vaccine in 1796; this new method also faced controversy but continued to be universalized. Smallpox became a preventable disease by injecting pus extracted from a human infected with cowpox virus. Jenner named the substance "vaccine" after the Latin word "vacca" which means "cow," and thus the process of giving vaccine became "vaccination".
120101
While Florey researchers have also created a genetic test for PD (10% of PD cases are caused by genetic factors), this new test has a broader application by screening for many different types of PD and monitoring treatment, as well as measuring the effectiveness of drugs being developed to treat the disease.
Dr Qiao-Xin Li and colleagues from The University of Melbourne and The Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria, along with Prof Malcolm Horne from the Howard Florey Institute, found people with PD had low levels of the brain-secreted protein ‘alpha-synuclein' in their blood, while people without PD had high levels of the protein.
Prof Horne said the test they developed measured alpha-synuclein levels in blood. “Currently there is no specific PD diagnostic test so doctors rely on their observations to make a diagnosis, which means some patients may not be prescribed the most suitable medication and around 15% of those diagnosed may actually be suffering from something else,” Prof Horne said.
Further studies are required to establish whether this test can distinguish between people who are responsive to treatment and those who are not,” he said. The researchers are now conducting a large-scale study to determine the effectiveness of the test, to discover whether it is applicable for all types of PD, and to find out if it can measure the rate of progression and severity of the disease
120103
2.Allergies are abnormal immune system reactions to things that are typically harmless to most people. When you’re allergic to something, your immune system mistakenly believes that this substance is harmful to your body. Substances that cause allergic reactions — such as certain foods, dust, plant pollen, or medicines — are known as allergens. In an attempt to protect the body, the immune system produces IgE antibodies to that allergen. Those antibodies then cause certain cells in the body to release chemicals into the bloodstream, one of which is histamine. The histamine then acts on a person's eyes, nose, throat, lungs, skin, or gastrointestinal tract and causes the symptoms of the allergic reaction. Future exposure to that same allergen will trigger this antibody response again. This means that every time you come into contact with that allergen, you'll have an allergic reaction.
120257
1.Zika is more pernicious than public health officials anticipated. At present, it is circulating in more than 50 countries. And as of mid-May, seven countries or territories have reported cases of microcephaly or other serious birth defects linked to the virus, which is transmitted by mosquito bite, blood transfusion or sexual contact with an infected human. It can also be passed from mother to fetus during pregnancy. Despite Zika's narrow vast range over almost 70 years, there is little genetic difference among the various strains, according to an analysis by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. For example, the strain currently in the Americas and another previously detected in French Polynesia are practically indistinguishable from each other (group in white box). If the virus has changed so little over time, why is it rearing its ugly head now? Scientists are not sure yet, but new experimental work in mosquitoes suggests that the virus was capable of causing detrimental health effects and outbreaks all along. Therefore, it is unlikely mutations enabled new abilities. Instead, public health officials probably did not understand Zika's potential because the virus circulated mostly in remote locations until recently.
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