Dr Bowdish’s solo storytelling/scicom presentation recives a 5N review from Next Magazine! Read the full review here: https://nextmag.ca/fringe-review-the-perils-of-being-born-in-the-fall-provides-laughter-tears-and-scientific-history/
Born in September? This professor has got bad news for you. Spend an hour of edu-tainment touring through the wackiness of early 19th century psychiatry, stealth mid-century reproductive rights activism, the climate/pregnancy connection, and learn why cold & flu season has an outsize impact on mental health. Didn’t think science could be funny? Come check out the only show in this year’s Fringe put on by a PhD scientist – you might laugh, but you’ll definitely learn. Tickets are “Pay What You Can” and available for as little as $4! Suitable for ages 13+ (PG). Content warning: brief mention of suicidality, mentions of mental health, abortion and reproductive sex.
Show times are:
2nd July 5:00pm
4th July 8:15pm
5th July 1:00pm
7th July 4:45pm
8th July 2:30pm
10th July 4:15pm
12th July 10:15pm
Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse
79 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3L8
For details and tickets: https://fringetoronto.com/fringe/show/perils-being-born-fall
Link to publication here.
Link to Bluesky “Skeetorial” here and reproduced below without images:
New paper! “Minimal Impact of Prior Common Cold Coronavirus Exposure on Immune Responses to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Vaccination or Infection Risk in Older Adults in Congregate Care”. For those of you who follow our #COVID work, read on for the story behind the story. 1/n
Remember reports like this one from the beginning of the pandemic? How could some older adults show such resilience to COVID compared to their peers? Some thought that they might have cross reactive immunity due to exposure to the related ‘seasonal’ or ‘common cold’ coronaviruses. 2/n
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/102-year-old-woman-recovers-from-covid-19-1.5567189
After all, our @mcmasteru.bsky.social colleagues, Dr. Mark Loeb & team had shown years earlier that seasonal/common cold coronaviruses caused a lots of infections in long-term care and others had investigated whether these might protect kids from COVID…. 3/n
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108481
….while others have shown that can be very deadly in residents of long-term care (reminding us that words matter and calling them ‘common colds’ minimizes risk – common viruses can still make people very sick, but that is rant for another day). So could pre-existing immunity be protective? 4/n
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(23)00018-1/fulltext
Alternatively, maybe older adults got so sick because a life of exposure to these viruses ‘used up’ all the immune cells that could be used to respond to SARS-CoV-2 or COVID vaccines(i.e. ‘immune imprinting’, a phrase I came to hate along with ‘original antigenic sin’ as it was so misused) 5/n
To find out we tested whether antibody levels for the coronaviruses OC43, HL63, and 229E were higher/lower in people whose first COVID infection was an early Omicron variant and found they were not. Therefore it is unlikely these are either protective or problematic 6/n
What about pre-existing anti-coronavirus T cells? We looked at memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells against the M & N proteins (indicates prev infections) and Spike (vaccine and infections). No evidence that these differed between those who did/did not get an infection (7/n)
What was a correlate of protection? Anti-RBD-IgG & neutralizing antibodies to the ancestral virus (which is all the residents would have been vaccinated to at that point). Unlike others we didn’t find that (serum) IgA was a correlate of protection. 8/n
Pre-existing immunity to common cold coronaviruses didn’t protect against SARS-CoV-2/COVID but might our vaccines and immunity alter immune responses to seasonal coronaviruses? Antibodies to other coronaviruses increased a bit (‘back-boosting’) after COVID infection or vaccination…. 9/n
But I doubt this will have much effect on the prevalence of other coronaviruses who follow a pretty consistent yearly/biennial or big wave/small wave pattern in the Northern hemisphere. We don’t know why but we do know that immunity doesn’t last long so a small boost from COVID infection/vaccination is not likely to make a difference 10/n
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1083-1
Caveats: Only measured peoples first infections in the early Omicron era, only older adults living in LTC and retirement homes, vaccines would have been against the ancestral virus – things might be different in other populations/variants/vaccines. 11/n
Huge shout out to Braeden Cowborough for doing all those titres – that’s a lot of plates – and to Dr Jessica Breznik (former @miramcmaster.bsky.social currently @mcmasternexus.bsky.social PDF) for analytic skills. Thanks to the rest of the COVID-in-LTC team @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social
The Bowdish lab has received funding from the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) to study immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infections and vaccinations in older adults including those living in long-term care. The applicant will use over 10,000 biobanked saliva, PBMCs, and serum from over 500 participants in addition to participant metadata and detailed infection records to;
The successful applicant will have significant leeway to develop an independent research project based on their interests and expertise. The applicant will work closely with an experienced technician and a graduate student, external collaborators, and will have access to biostatistics expertise. If interested, there will be opportunities to teach undergraduate courses.
The initial
contract will be for one year, with the possibility of extending for more
years, depending on productivity. The position is funded, but the applicant
will also apply for internal and external funding sources.
The Bowdish Lab is situated at Canada’s most research-intensive university, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario Canada. We are a diverse group of undergraduate students, graduate students, technicians and post-doctoral fellows committed to uncovering how the aging immune system changes and understanding why this alters immune responses to vaccination and respiratory infection. For more details on our lab’s philosophy see http://www.bowdish.ca/lab/lab-philosophy/ . We emphasize teamwork, career development, and leadership. Many of our former PDFs have gone on to independent faculty positions in Canada and abroad.
| Must have;Passion for discovery & evidence of leadership in the form of first-author publications in a relevant field.Team-player with history of collaboration and mentorshipFlow cytometry experienceDeep knowledge of immunity | Nice to have;Experience in human immunology/vaccinologyExperience in antibody quantitation and functional antibody assays (e.g., ADCC, ADP)Experience in intracellular cytokine staining or Experience in science communication with vulnerable populations. |
Please send Dr. Bowdish (bowdish@mcmaster.ca);
Thank you for your interest in our lab. Unfortunately we have received over 200 applications for 2 thesis positions and so we have no stopped accepting applications. Interviews will occur in January and if you have not heard from us, you have not been selected for an interview. This is not a reflection on the quality of your application or your credentials but simply the sheer volume of applications. Dr. Bowdish will not be able to respond to your emails directly. Very best of luck with your search.
Serosurveillance describes using blood samples to determine what percentage of the population has been exposed to a pathogen or has been vaccinated by measuring the presence or absence of antibodies to the pathogen or vaccination. During the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Bowdish and team built a network of long-term care homes to measure vaccine responses and infection rates, but this infrastructure could have been used to measure virtually any infection or any antibody response. The Hema-Net community came together February 14-16 to present data and share experiences using serosurveillance and published this report. Unfortunately, no funds were made available to continue Dr. Bowdish’s or others serosurveillance networks.
See the CITF website here.
See the English report here.
See the French Report here.
Missed the first run of ‘The Perils of Being Born in the Fall’ at the 2024 Hamilton Fringe Festival? Fear not, there is a repeat performance as part of the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging’s “Sage Conversations” series (and there’s free popcorn, drinks & parking – what’s not to love!)
What’s the show about? Well if you are born in September, Dr. Dawn Bowdish has got bad news for you.
Tour through the wackiness of early 19th century psychiatry, stealth mid-century reproductive rights activism and the climate/pregnancy connection; in the end you’ll learn why cold & flu season has an outsize impact on mental health.
You might laugh, but you’ll definitely learn.
Reserve a spot by clicking here
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/sage-conversations-see-a-one-woman-show-featuring-dawn-bowdish-tickets-1016877456847
Also see other events in this series….
Dr. Bowdish presented “Ageism, infections & vaccinations: Lessons learned from the pandemic” at the 2024 Innovation Nation Conference & Student Innovation Showcase.
To download the slides from the talk, click here http://www.bowdish.ca/lab/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2024-10-27-Ageism-infections-vaccinations-Lessons-learned-from-the-pandemic.pptx