Science Friday - RSV Drug Shortage & Beech Leaf Disease

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

RSV has reached epidemic levels in the southern US. Also, beech leaf disease is spreading rapidly in Massachusetts.RSV Drug For Infants In Short SupplyRespiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a common illness that—for most—looks like a common cold. But for infants, it can be an intense illness, leading to hospitalization. That’s why it was a relief for parents and physicians when an immunization drug for all infants was approved in July.However, it’s become clear the demand for the drug is greater than the supply. This week, the CDC issued an alert about the drug’s limited availability, and recommended that only infants under 6 months and those with underlying health conditions receive it until further notice. An RSV spike in the southern US has reached seasonal epidemic levels, a sign that transmission will likely climb in other areas soon.Katherine J. Wu, science writer for The Atlantic, joins guest host Flora Lichtman to chat about this story as well as mouse mummies in the Andes, Hurricane Otis defying forecasts, a secret benefit of “Asian glow,” and other big news from the week.Beech Leaf Disease Is Spreading Rapidly in MassachusettsA new tree disease has spread in forests in Massachusetts, joining invasive pests and climate change as top priorities for foresters to address.The state has found beech leaf disease in more than 90 communities since it was first discovered in the state in 2020.“Lately this has been one of our biggest concerns and my team devotes a lot of time to it. We do expect to see a lot of long-term impact and trees lost from it,” said Nicole Keleher, forest health program director at the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.Beech leaf disease is caused by an unusual parasite: a nematode, which is a microscopic roundworm, that infects the leaves and buds. Researchers believe that it may be spread by birds, insects and wind. This makes it more difficult to treat than visible insects like the emerald ash borer that can be somewhat contained by asking people not to transport wood between forests, according to Keleher.Infected leaves can develop dark patches or stripes, and often will curl up. The infection causes the tree’s leaves to fall off and can eventually starve the tree, which can die within a few years.Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

There's a new tree disease and it's spreading across the country from the Midwest to the northeast. When you stand underneath a tree with the reflection of the light going through the leaf, you can see these kind of little rectangular patches. It's Friday, October 27th and today is Science Friday. I'm sci-fi producer Shoshana Bucksdown. Beach trees are facing a new threat to their survival, beach leaf disease. It was originally found in the Midwest, 8.000. decade ago, but now it's traveled to the northeast. It's caused by a microscopic nematode.

Scientists are still trying to figure out the basic questions about the disease and how to treat it. But first, we check in on some of the week's top science news with guest host, Floralickman. RSV. It's a common virus, but can be dangerous, especially for infants. So many parents breathed a sigh of relief back in July when an RSV shot for infants was approved. But here we are, with RSV season upon us and many babies still haven't gotten it. In part because the shot is hard to find. Demand has outpaced supply. And this week, the CDC issued an alert about the drugs limited availability.

Here to tell us about this and other science news from the week is my guest, Catherine Wu, staff writer for the Atlantic based in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome back to Science Friday. Always good to be here. Okay, so tell me about this RSV shot for infants. And I guess, first of all, I've heard some hedging around the last. language for what this shot is. Is it technically a vaccine? Great question. Love this question. It is technically not a vaccine, not in the traditional sense. It is a monoclonal antibody shot.

We got used to this idea during the height of the COVID pandemic, but basically this is another way to deliver protective antibodies to your body, except they are not made in-house as a vaccine would do. So wouldn't call this a vaccine, but totally fair to call it a shot. What kind of rationing is the CDC recommending for it? Right. So this is basically a prioritization recommendation. The CDC is saying that because supply is low, the infants at highest risk should be prioritized for this shot, which is called be for us.

And basically that means infants under the age of six months or older infants who have health conditions that would predispose them to a very severe case of RSV. The CDC is also saying that infants who, you are American Indian or Alaskan native should still be prioritized for the shot because rates of RSV are especially high in those communities. Why is the supply so limited? It frankly seems like the typical market situation where demand was just not anticipated. Essentially, Sinoffi, which is one of the companies that is behind Bay Fortis, is saying they didn't really see it coming. And they're currently ramping up production. But given what you just said, RSV season is already upon us. It's unclear,

they will be able to meet demand anytime soon. Let's move on to another big story from the week. Forecasters said that Hurricane Otis would be a category one before it made landfall in Mexico. And then it intensified way past what people predicted. What happened there? Another great question. The big issue here is, as you just alluded to, a serious miss by forecasters. And it is absolutely insane how quickly Otis intends.

Within about 24 hours, it went from a tropical storm all the way to a category five. I mean, that is kind of the hurricane equivalent of striking a match in your kitchen and seconds later seeing your entire neighborhood on fire. There was just no way I think forecasters were really able to predict that sort of intensification on such a short time span. For more perspective, this hurricane gathered more than 100 miles per hour of wind speed within just 24 hours. And so, of course, when forecasters were looking just a day out, they weren't that worried.

And so when Otis made landfall, it was absolutely devastating. It wasn't just that the prediction had been miscalibrated, but locals had no time to prepare or evacuate. Is this an example of the storm just being like a total fluke and strange? Or is this an indication that the forecasting system really doesn't work or needs some tweaks? Well, maybe a little bit of both. This is certainly a rare occasion. This kind of intensification absolutely is not typical, but it might be getting more typical. The current understanding is that the intensification happened in part because the oceans have just been so warm this year. Remember that heat is energy, and that is energy that a hurricane can feed off of. It's basically

drawing heat from the ocean to fuel its own winds. And so the more heat is packed into an ocean, the more fodder there is going to be for a hurricane like this. And if oceans are expected to be warmer in future years, as climate change suggests they certainly will, that probably means a lot more intensification of this magnitude is in our future. At the same time, it definitely would help to have more monitoring. But when things are this unpredictable, it's hard to completely solve for that problem. Let's move on to a story you reported for the Atlantic. It's about your complicated relationship with Happy Hour.

That is a great way of sweating it. So I will out myself here. I am not at all a habitual drinker. Whenever I do imbibe alcohol, my face goes insanely red. I get really fleshed. I look like I'm just either very embarrassed or about to make myself sick. There is no way for me to drink without advertising it to the entire world. I am one of the 500 million people around the world who experiences what's called either Asian glow or alcohol flush. And there's always been this huge question. Why are there so many of us? It is no fun for us to drink. And we have a bunch of other health risks. We are at higher risk of esophageal cancer and heart disease and a bunch of other things. This is just not a great genetic mutation to have. So it's a genetic mutation that causes it. Right. So basically, we don't

produce functional copies of an enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase. And this is necessary to break down the toxic components of alcohol. Without it, alcohol basically allows poison to build up a ton in our bodies causing all of these side effects when we drink. And then, of course, the health risks because alohydes can also appear in our body just through normal metabolism. What was the new finding this week? Right. So maybe there is actually an explanation for why this genetic mutation is so prevalent. And the possibility here is that infectious disease may be to blame. Maybe when infectious diseases were even more prevalent than they are today and plagues were wiping out populations around the world, having this mutation was actually protective. It's actually not

that big of a logical leap. Remember that this mutation allows poison to build up in the body. That's certainly potentially bad for ourselves, but it could be pretty harmful to any microbe that's trying to invade us as well. And so scientists now know that these aldehydes that build up in the body can actually be quite harmful to bacteria such as tuberculosis. So if you don't break them down, maybe these aldehydes that are in the body can do some of this antimicrobial work for you? Right. So basically, it's this idea of leveraging poison that already happens to be hanging around in the body and leveraging it for self-defense. And I should quickly caveat here that this is not an endorsement of drinking to cure your diseases. It's actually just the idea that having

the mutation at all could be beneficial. Let's go to our next story. It's about tiny furry mummies. Tell me more. Yes. So let me take you to one of the highest, most extreme environments on planet Earth. So high up in the Andes Mountains, it is a very, very, very harsh place to survive. It's, you know, tens of thousands of feet above sea level. The temperatures are always freezing. It's super dry, and the oxygen content in the air is about half what it is at sea level. It's just not anywhere that I would want to be for a long period of time, and frankly, I would probably die if I tried to do that without a lot of equipment with me. But the reason that this place has become so interesting to scientists is because it's actually a decent simulation of conditions on Mars. You know, a super

harsh environment without wet oxygen certainly sounds extraterrestrial to us. And what is fascinating is now scientists have found exactly, as you said, some tiny furry mummies up there. These are dead bodies of leaf-eared mice, which is a possible indication that there are mammals happily living up there in this ultra-harsh, Mars-like environment. Do the scientists have a sense of how these mice survived up there? That is the next big question, you know. So all they have done so far is provide a decent bit of evidence that these mice aren't just tourists or passers-by or that, you know, maybe humans were dropping them off up

there. They're finding mice of all ages, multiple sexes. It seems that they actually can happily live up there. But they don't yet know how. Just finding evidence that it's possible, though, really opens up a bunch of questions. You know, if we're able to figure out how the mice are managing this, it could help us better understand how to colonize other planets potentially and just maybe opens up new questions about what has been in Mars's past. What might have survived up there? What sort of life has eaged out a living?

Let's go to our last story. New research suggests that wild chimpanzees go through menopause, just like us, Why is this news? Is this unusual? This is definitely weird. And I think let's take a step back and just think about how weird menopause is, at least from an evolutionary perspective. I mean, it does seem like a little bit of a waste in a sense. Why not stay fertile for your entire lifetime? You know, why give up your fertility early? Or, you know, flip that question around, what is keeping animals alive past their prime reproductive years. You know, it can be super important for cultural things for humans, but technically it's not adding on to future generations. And so this has been a huge pressing question for scientists for a very long time. And humans are very clearly, so the only mammals that do

undergo menopause. For us, there were some ideas about, you know, maybe this is important for humans in particular. Our babies have these big brains. They're so vulnerable for, such a long time. Maybe it's useful to have older generations around to care for these infants, keep teaching them, provide whatever extra supplementary care they can. This whole idea of it takes a village and grandmothers are awesome. But the weird thing is, now that scientists have found potentially several other mammals, including these chimpanzees that seem to undergo menopause as well, that theory might be breaking down. Chimps are, of course, are closest primate relatives. And if they're undergoing menopause, that suggests, well, what if we had

a common ancestor that was undergoing this? And what if it's not because of giant brains and needing grandmothers around? Could it be something else? What could it be? So that is the next question. This is another case in which, you know, they have sort of documented the phenomenon, but the big question of why is still unanswered. What's really intriguing is scientists are now possibly looking to some evidence in whales to answer the why question with chimpanzees. So there are a few species of whales that also undergo menopause, but for them it doesn't seem to be necessarily a benefit of having grandmothers around to raise their children. And I actually love this other reason because it is just about benefits of having older individuals around. Older females aren't just useful because they can

contribute to the raising of children. Women are more than their childbearing capacity, in other words. Maybe these older individuals are around because they just help their species survive. They have more life experience. They can teach others around them to just be better at being chimps or whales or humans. Yes, that is the kind of older woman I want to be. Same. That's all the time we have for now. I'd like to thank my guest.

Catherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic based in Boston, Massachusetts. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. You've probably heard about the Emerald Ashbor, or maybe Dutch Elm disease. Well, let me add another to the list. Beach Leaf disease is also felling trees. It was first identified in 2012 in Ohio, and now the disease is popping up in beach trees across the country. And scientists are still trying to figure out how to treat it.

Joining me now to talk more about her reporting on Beach Leaf Disease and how it's affected Massachusetts Beach Trees is my guest, Paola Mara, Climate and Environment Reporter at WBUR, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Paolo, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. So I just introduced you with your official title, but I heard you have another job these days? Yeah, today my job is beach. For beach trees? Yes, for beach trees.

Just like naturalist Kendall. Yes. So what causes beech leaf disease? Yeah, so it's caused by a microscopic nematode, which is a warm. When you think of a warm, you think they live in the soil, right? But this one leaves in the leaf and leaf buds. Scientists believe it may be spread by birds, insect, and wind. What does it look like when a tree is infected with the disease?

The leaves can get a dark stripe or become curled. The leaves also fall off. So the canopy, you can see, it doesn't provide shadow as it used to do. I joined a group of volunteers that spotted a tree with beech leaf disease in the park. in Massachusetts, near Boston. And I spoke with Claire O'Neill, who is with the conservation non-profit earthwise aware.

When you stand underneath a tree with the reflection of the light going through the leaf, you can see these kind of little rectangular patches of very dark color. This is, you know, what is a sign of the leaf disease. How long does it take for this to do really serious damage to the tree or to kill the tree? The trees usually die.

in a few years. Wow. How fast is it spreading? Yeah, it was first identified in Ohio in 2012, and now it has spread over a dozen states. It was identified in Massachusetts for the first time in 2020, and it was identified in three communities, and now it has spread over 90 communities.

Wow. Yeah, it's very fast. Is there a way to treat trees infected with the disease? So researchers say finding treatments will take more time. They've just begun studying this disease. For example, it took five years just to confirm that the infection was caused by a nematode. But the most promising treatment so far comes from a chemical typically used as a fertilizer. When they've treated trees with the fertilizer, they found that those trees seem to be healthier.

More of the buds survive and thrive with the nematode. on it and the leaves too. And some trees seem to be resistant on their own. Researchers in Ohio are studying these specimens in hopes that they could breed them and use them in reforestation. But the study is still ongoing, so they don't know if the trees have some genetic resistance or if there are other factors that are helping the trees. How does climate change factor into all of this? There might be some good news here. In general, beach trees have been more resilient to extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, like heat and drought in comparison to other trees here in the Northeast.

I spoke to Pamela Templar, a professor at Boston University. She says it's too early to know the impact of climate change in relation to the disease. A really important thing to understand is how climate change might be making these trees vulnerable to this pest, but I think it's too early to say. It took five years just to confirm the infection was caused by a nematode, so finding a treatment will take more time. The researchers you talk to, do you get the sense that they're concerned about this? Here in Massachusetts, Beach Leaf disease raised to one of the top concerns for the state Forest Health Program. And I spoke to the director, Nicole Callagher, and she said she expects to see.

a lot of tree deaths and I could tell like everyone is concerned and really want to find the treatment that would help. Thank you for sharing your reporting with us, Paola. Thank you for having me. Paola Mara, Climate and Environment Reporter at WBUR based in Boston, Massachusetts. If you want to learn more about how to tell if a tree is infected by Beach Leaf disease and how scientists are trying to treat it, go to Science Friday.com slash leaf. And that's it for today. Lots of folks help put the show together, including Beth Rami, Santiago Flores, Diana Plasker, John Dan Koski, Robin Casmer. On Monday, a conversation with writer Walter Isaacson about his biography of the controversial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Thanks for listening. I'm Shoshana Bucksbaum. We'll see you next week on Science Friday.