Integrated Biomedical Sciences terms

What is Utilitarianism?

Maximizes well-being for the greatest number

What is Liberalism/Human rights?

Liberty + equality of individuals

Communitarianism

Common values can justify limits on freedom, and prioritize community over individual rights.

Utilitarianism vs Liberalism

Liberals believe that utilitarians focus to little on the individual and go to far in curbing individual rights and freedoms to increase overall happiness.

Liberalism vs Communitarianism

Communitarians argue that liberals also focus too much on the individual (and the market) and there has lost track of human dignity and communal values.

Utilitarianism vs Communitarianism

Communitarians argue that Utilitarians reduce everything to a single measure of value (happiness) and that their rational moral calculus does not do justice to the multiplicity of human values.

Koch’s postulate

1. Microorganism must be found in all organisms suffering from the disease, and not in healthy individual 

2. Microorganism must be isolated and grown in culture 

3. Cultured organism needs to cause disease when introduced to a healthy organism 

4. Microorganism must be isolated again from newly infected organism and identified as being identical to the original disease causing microorganism 

Reductionism

A whole organism is ‘nothing more‘ than the sum of it’s parts

Disciplinary research

The complex total of knowledge, beliefs, values, habits, practices that determine how groups interpret the world 

What does a scientific discipline have?

• Ontology, the art of being, the 'properties' of things 

• Epistemology, the art of knowing, the way in which we are able to know, how do we perceive reality 

• Conceptology, the art of understanding, the meaning of definitions 

Complex adaptive system

Species will develop themselves based on what is given to them. We are constantly adapting. We cannot understand something if we only know the parts. Many things have impact on general socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions;

Multidisciplinary

You work with multiple people, but everyone has a different answer 

Interdisciplinarity

The integration of different disciplinary perspectives. You work on the same complex problem/topic. 

Objectivism

Reality exists independently of human perception, with knowledge discovered through observation and rational analysis.

Constructivism

Scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world.

TLR 1, 2, 6, 4, 5 & 11

On the cell surface, recognize lipids, carbohydrates and proteins

TLR 3, 7, 8, & 9

Endosomal, recognize DNA and RNA

Chemogenetics

give a receptor to activate the neuron

Optogenetics

external stimuli to activate the neuron

Virus characteristics

• DNA/RNA

• Protein shell with or without envelope

• Limited number of PAMP’s

Bacteria characteristics

• Prokaryotic

• Better at adapting to environment

• Transcription and translation are coupled

Protozoa characteristics

• Eukaryotic

• Yeast, Fungi, Parasitic Worms

Obligate

Completely dependant on host machinery to survive (Viruses, and some bacteria & protozoa)

Facultative

Can live somewhere else, like water systems or animals (Fungi and some bacteria & protozoa)

R0

• An epidemiologic metric used to describe the contagiousness or transmissibility 

• R1: as soon as its above 1, the infection spreads, if below, it will die out

• Based on 3 factors; infectiousness, susceptibility & relevant contacts 

Prevention of infection

Hygiene, vaccinations, antibiotics, treatment of viral infections, antibody therapy

Subsets of memory T cells

• Tcm = Central memory (CCR7+, stay in lymphoid tissues, stem cell like, can be activated by antigens and cytokines)

• Tem = Effector memory (CCR7-, circulate in non-lymphoid tissues, already differentiated)

• Trm = Tissue resident memory

Measles characteristics

• Very infectious!

• Can kill your memory B and T cells (binds to CD150/SLAM)

• Can cause fatal neuroinflammation (Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis)

• Included in BMR vaccine

cDNA library

• To help discover receptor responsible for infection

• cDNA lacks introns and represents genes expressed in the original cells

Transposon mutagenisis

• ‘Jumping genes‘

• Will integrated in genome almost randomly and can move from one location to the other 

• Advantages: gene disruption, every clone contains a single mutation, easy to identify mutation

Incidence

Counts new cases occurring in a population over a defined time period

Prevalence

All existing cases (new and old) at a specific point or period in time

Equity

Equality of outcome, so people get what they need to get to the same outcome 

Isolation

We are aware the individual is a danger is society

Quarantine

The individual is suspected of being a danger 

What type of outbreak is this?

Single source, non-human source (e.g. infected birthday cake at party)

What type of outbreak is this?

Continuous source, bit more stabilized peaks (e.g. infected milk in store)

What type of outbreak is this?

Disseminating, human source (e.g. measles outbreak)

Dutch Public Health Act (WGP)

• Contains measures GGD may take to control infectious diseases 

• Contains lists of notifiable diseases (A1, A2, B1, B2 & C)

  • A1 & A2 —> pandemic threat / immediate reporting

  • B1 & B2 —> all measures except quarantine of contacts & immediate reporting after suspected case / only exclusion from work & report in 1 day

  • C —> only advice, no measures enforceable on patient 

Actor/Stakeholder

Any individual/community/group/organization with an interest in the outcome of an event/programme/project either as a result of being affected by it positively or negatively, or by being able to influence the activity in a positive or negative way 

ESBL (Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamases)

Production of beta-lactamase, enzyme that hydrolyses the B-lactam ring of an antibiotic which inactivates it. The beta lactam ring is important for inhibiting the build of the bacterial cell wall. 

Drivers of AMR (Anti-Microbial Resistance)

• Irrational use 

• Cattle receive antibiotics in a prophylactic matter 

• Antibiotics end up in sewage system 

• Plant and crop production 

• Lack of hygiene  

Experimental study design, what does it have?

• Control arm

• Intervention arm

• Randomization

Confounder

Correlation is not always causation

Descriptive

• Summarize data of the sample 

• Identify patterns 

• Generate hypothesis

Inferential

• Draw conclusion about the population 

• Distinguish true differences from random variation 

• Allows for hypothesis testing 

Type I error

False positive (reject H0, while H0 is true)

Type II error

False negative (assume H0, while H0 is false)

Eroom’s law

Drug Discovery becomes slower and more expensive over time

Patent law

Gives patentee exclusive rights to commercially use an invention in a certain country 

4 pillars of knowledge valorisation

1. Knowledge for knowledge --> scientific, curiosity driven 

2. Knowledge for culture --> dissemination to and involvement for the general public 

3. Knowledge for welfare --> products and services 

4. Knowledge for wellbeing --> policy advice, guidelines 

Why are ethics important

• Fundamental rights 

• Power imbalance 

• Vulnerability 

• Benefit/community  

Placebo’s, when is it an acceptable part of methodology?

In general, the more severe the consequences or symptoms of the illness under study, the harder it is to justify the use of placebos 

Article 12

Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system 

• When a country detects a dangerous pathogen, it rapidly shares pathogen material and/or sequencing information, enabling researchers and companies to develop vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, with the resulting benefits to be shared equally. 

Principles of biomedical ethics

• Autonomy --> information, consent, withdrawal, no explanation needed for quitting, privacy, confidentiality, adequate storage of data 

• Non-maleficence --> stop the study if harmful, watch out with sensitive topics, balance of principles 

• Beneficence --> cure people, benefits ratio, who benefits, act in the best interest of the patient 

• Justice --> the greater good of people, limited use of placebo 

 

Dissemination

Science transmitted from experts to audiences

Dialogue

Science communicated between scientists and other groups (mutual understanding enriches and improves knowledge exchange) 

Participation

Communication about science takes place between diverse groups on the basis that all can contribute, and that all have a stake in the outcome of the deliberations and discussions (scientist and audience co-create knowledge) 

Specificity

The probability of obtaining a negative test result when the disease is not present

Sensitivity

The probability of obtaining a positive test result when the disease is present

Cohort study

• Determine incidence 

• Exposure --> outcome 

• Very expensive 

• Not optimal for rare exposure studies 

Case-control study

• Recruit people based on their disease 

• Exposure <-- outcome 

• Mostly retrospective 

• Good for rare disease studies 

Cross-sectional

• To measure prevalence and associations 

• Exposure <--> outcome 

• Cannot establish causality 

Case report

description of a single patients clinical presentation 

Case series

descriptive summary of multiple similar cases with the same disease 

Internal validity

How well is your study structured so that you get error free results, what is the degree of confidence that the relationship being tested in trustworthy and not influenced by other unintended factors 

External validity

Is the data generalizable, can it be applied to other situations/groups/events 

Systematic error

error is avoidable

Random error

nature, unavoidable

Ways of transmission

Vectors, direct, ingestion, air, droplets, arthropods

SSPE

Subacute Sclerotic Panencephalitis

Educated guess

Make direct mutations with e.g. plasmids/CRISPR-Cas

Genetic screen

Random mutagenesis with e.g. transposons, NGS

Deontology

• What we ought to do 

• Consequences don't matter --> Motive matters, the personal duties, rules, the principles 

Virtue ethics

• Emphasises a person's character 

• Not perse about right or wrong acts, but rather, how can practical wisdom guide me to do good 

Sender —> receiver effect

Over simplistic, it assumes; mass media reaches everyone, direct relation between message & effect