Bisphosphonates (2023 Update)

(Why do webpages so rarely have clear dates on them? It would be so helpful.)

This is an article about a new class of vaccine adjuncts that the author thinks could be helpful for many types of vaccine. It does not appear to be a revolution or a game-changer - vaccines almost always use adjuncts already, and there are many existing types. If this one is more effective, less likely to risk side-effects, cheaper, and doesn't involve killing endangered shark species, then that is great. The more effective the adjunct, the less of the actual vaccine you need, and perhaps fewer boosters for similar long-term benefits.

However, nowhere in the article does it hint that bisphosphonates could be helpful /without/ vaccines. They are an /adjunct/ - that is, a helper agent that is given along with the vaccine to make the body respond faster and more effectively to the vaccine. The page title refers to "a new vaccine adjunct", and throughout the article it is stressed repeatedly that they can boost a vaccine's efficiency.

There's nothing wrong with the article - but there is a massive flaw in your summary of it. Did you read the article at all?

Actually the summary is *****RIGHT*****

If you track down the article in CELL, authored by a bunch of collaborating researchers in addition to von Andrian (mostly European) , you'll find an exhaustive process of elimination across dozens of experiments to track down the interdependencies of this drug and the many different immune system components in addition to the B-cells. Part of that experimentation was administration of bisphosphonate post-challenge by a viral pathogen, and the effect was to accelerate the immune response to what it would have been had the animal been vaccinated. Which was exactly what I was looking for in my original search. The mutations are defeating monoclonal antibody therapy, they're too specific. Some Italian research group in Turin (?) announced a super cocktail of over 450 mAbs they think will take care of it. My thought was why bother when you can hit the mutant infection with a powerful adjuvant antibody acceleration and there you have your custom made and highly effective antibody. The infection itself is all the antigen you need, and since the bisphosphonates seem to hang around forever, you have long term protection against even more mutation.

LOL- you know what they say about assumptions.

Against that particular whole virus.

At least some modern vaccines present just the spike protein, and provoke antibodies that target that on it's own.

But probably not the best antigen.

You've got to generate a new antibody against the mutant, so it's not quite the long term protection that stops you getting infected and getting enough viral load to let you infect other people.

Why does fundamental research ave to be slow?

Fundamental research rarely interest people who are buying and selling shares. You can put put and dump propaganda anywhere where it will be read by by who might buy and sell the shares.

isn't an academic journal, but rather a university newspaper. It will be rather more open to that kind of manipulation than a peer-reviewed journal with an impact factor they want to keep high

As in Fred's assumptions that he knows what he is talking about, or that he gets the right message from the articles he thinks that he has read?

No, it was /wrong/.

The article is about a potential new vaccine adjunct. It works with a vaccine - it makes no sense to talk about an adjunct /without/ a vaccine.

It does not matter what other articles may say about the use of bisphosphonates for treatment or prevention of Covid, or anything else - that is not what the article discussed, and therefore cannot be part of a correct summary of it. (And any articles discussing other uses of bisphosphonates would not be talking about its qualities as an adjunct.)

It also does not matter what /you/ speculate might happen if bisphosphonates are taken by a patient who has a mutated Covid infection. You are not a Harvard professor of medicine. You are welcome to speculate and guess, and you may even be right - but your guesses don't fit in a summary of the article. Make a clear distinction between what the articles says, and what /you/ guess. When you post your own ideas that are totally unsupported by the article, and then try to attach the article's academic weight to them, you are /wrong/.

And if you don't like the word "wrong" here, the best alternative would be "deceitful". I'd rather accuse you of making a mistake than of deliberately lying.

Yes. I didn't make any assumptions here.

You're not a scientist, definitely not a research scientist, and you never were, so stop pretending that you are. It's been demonstrated time and again you're too stupid to read the literature. You've been proven wrong time and time again, you're just too stupid to realize it. Go back to your park bench or wherever it is you find people stupid enough to be impressed by your specious act.

Apparently you're too dim to pick up the title of the post was bisphosphonates and not the Harvard Gazette summary article. And the word is *adjuvant* not *adjunct*.

Then you state "It does not matter what other articles may say about the use of bisphosphonates for treatment or prevention of Covid, or anything else - that is not what the article discussed," Well you happen to be WRONG about that when their CELL research report is in fact referenced in the article and is therefore a part of the article and it does matter very much. Awww, they didn't annotate the reference for you- well maybe it wasn't written for the likes of you so they didn't bother. You seem obsessed with accusing someone of being WRONG when you're probably one of the more ignorant people around. You come across as being stupid by insinuating someone is guessing or wrong about what they read when you didn't even look at the research results of the original author.

You are obviously correct on my spelling mistake (spell chequers don't always help) - thanks for that correction.

You wrote a post with a link, a summary of the article except for one crucial point which was completely wrong - your post was all about the article and nothing else. Now you expect us to believe you added a point in the middle of the summary that referred to completely different, unrelated work, with no explanation or reference? Don't be silly. You got it wrong. If it was unintentional, admit it and let's move on. If it was intentional, then by all means keep on digging yourself into a hole.

I'm pretty sure I know better what information I was conveying than you do. My summary is exactly right. I linked the non-scientific H-G article as an intro. Anyone with a serious interest can then find the nitty gritty scientific study results- of that exact same work and of which the H-G interviewee is a co-author. My statement was the bisphosphonates administered post-infection, in an infection naïve individual, induces the same antibody response in time and magnitude as can be expected from a vaccinated individual. And that happens to be true. If you ever find the nitty-gritty report, you will find it there. In order for your belief to have any sanity at all, the scientific report of their work does not exist. Your criticism are about your reading comprehension shortcomings and lack of imagination more than about me.

I got a Ph.D. in experimental science, and that is a research degree. I've published several paper in the peer-reviewed literature. One of them has now got 24 citation, so I'm in.

You are the kind of twit who can look at clear evidence, jump to the wrong conclusion and them assert that everybody else has got it wrong until the cows come home

To your satisfaction. Which is to say that I can look at the same paper as you do and work out what it actually means, rather than what you've decided it has to mean.

Actually I've done that to Fred Bloggs quite often - he still seems to think that "highly conserved" means "not mutating" when it actually means "most of the mutations get selected out before we get any chance to see them". Quite why he is too stupid to get the message is his problem, not mine.

I could point out that you ought to take your own advice, but you are clearly too far gone to be able to rescue what mght be left of your credibility

Fred might know what information he thought that he was trying to convey, but he isn't great at extracting information in the first place.

He always thinks that. He's frequently wrong.

It's usually not going to be the same antibody that a vaccine would induce. There might be the same number of antibodies, but different antibodies can be more and less effective. It's an ill-founded claim.

Since Fred has been parading his reading comprehension problems here for months now, it is really is all about him, his problems, and his enthusiasm for denying that he's got any kind of problem at all (which is a bit pathetic).

You might have received a degree from the International School of Circus Clowns for all the good it did you.

Says the idiot who's too dull to get the story on symptomatic/ asymptomatic completely wrong, as just one of numerous examples.

You can't work out anything at all, and this even after numerous corrections. When you finally do realize your mistake, you go silent and slither away like an insect.

Just not interested in your fantasies and misinterpretations.

Apparently it's escaped your crippled powers of observation that the great majority of people who become infected clear the disease from their body with antibodies induced by the.... wait for it.... the virus!

Do you see what I mean by how stupid you are...

Which bit of the virus induces the antibodies varies from person to person. Everybody has their own idiosyncratic repertoire of potential antibodies.

The Pfizer vaccine gives you just the spike protein to react to, which narrows down the range of antibodies it's likely to induce.

The stupidity is all yours.

As far as I know they aren't a degree-granting organisation. You may know more about them

Or so you think. Your own incapacity to understand that "highly conserved" doesn't mean "not mutating" but rather "most mutations in highly conserved regions happen to be lethal" means that you own ideas about what might be right or wrong aren't entirely reliable.

You do like to make this claim. You may even be silly enough to believe.

Snakes slither. Insects mostly scuttle. Since your ideas on a symptomatic/asymptomatic are too silly to be taken seriously, you seem to have misinterpreted the reaction.

Of course you aren't. You are no more willing than John Larkin to admit to yourself (or anybody else) that you've been stupid, no matter how fatuous your mistake.

There are barbarians who put croutons in salads. John Doe seems to be one of them