Hepatitis B

As we all know Hepatitis B virus is no joke. It is transmissible through blood to bodily fluid contact which puts anyone in healthcare at risk. The virus itself is quite interesting however. It is a DNA virus which sets it apart from the other heptatitis viruses which are RNA viruses. Its DNA is strange since it is circular and incompletely double stranded. It is the goth kid of viruses, it just has to be different.



Just like this douchebag, you have to be a rebel HepB.

The virus assembles itself into an ironically named Dane particle. Just like Dane Cook, this is grossly annoying and not funny.



NOT FUNNY!!!!

The virus can establish either an acute infection which resolves and never recur. It can also establish itself a chronic asymptomatic infection. This is just like listening to Dane Cook's jokes. They infuriate in the beginning and then a few months later come back as traumatic flashbacks.

His genome may be similar to this

The capsule of the virus will create IgM antibodies (jokes on "Dr. McCoy" aside), but never IgG. This is like using ear plugs to sit through a Dane Cook routine, it will dull it but not help too much. Long term immunity comes from IgG to HbS antigen. This is the equivalent of having a lobotomy to block out the trauma of listening to those irritating, horrible jokes. I left Hepatitis C out of this to spare Pamela Anderson -- hooray!!

News

I know I have not written in almost 2 weeks. Regretfully I have been studying. School decided that the best time to teach us first year biochem would be during the midpoint of our second year. Better late than never I guess. The result however of this sudden rise in actual substance in our classes has forced me to change who my favorite professors are.

My old top 3:

1) Dr Awesomo
2) Dr McCoy
3) Cheesy

My new top 3:

1) Awesomo
2) Mumra
3) Twitchy Micro guy

Since we have been doing biochem, our genetics professor Mumra gave some lectures and they have been spot-on perfect. Her lectures on protein metabolism and hemochromatosis are fluff-free and works of art. Dr Awesomo, our physiology professor has this rhythmic wheeze and geometric drawings for notes. The content of said notes is perfect as well. He does continually apologize for Microsoft Word changing that square labelled "metabolism" to a circle. Dr McCoy taught us immunology and just like the Dr McCoy on Star Trek he also had a catch phrase. "Don't let some <medical specialty> tell you it's <medical condition> , it's <immunogloulin or complement factor> mediated". He as shown above has been displaced. The #3 spot is the least important here and I decided to give the Twitchy Micro Guy a chance to take someone else out of a higher spot. He gives incredibly dense notes, but they are informative. He also drinks more Coke than legally allowed. Cheesy was that anatomy professor who told everything the way it was supposed to be. He quit and found a better job after last year.

Back from the dead

I last posted about how I had closed this blog until I figured out something useful to do with it. I now have figured out what useful to do with it. I have decided to use this blog to post school related things and other medical related news and notes. This will leave my other blog which is now "underground" open for me to post anything else on it.

My story so far -- I finished 1 and a half years of med school and now am faced with the COMLEX and USMLE. I have been blowing off school's tests in order to study for it. Needless to say I am not a crammer so it has landed me in a few retakes. I have heard plenty of people tell me how it is up to me to learn on my own. I doubt many of them practice what they preach.

Story of my school so far -- Our original dean was fired after first year because of the gross inadequacies of our curriculum and the deterioration of our pass rate on the COMLEX. The new dean, who is technically only the interim dean, apparently has a plan to correct these problems. If it happens I will not be around to see it.

This seems like a fairly good introduction. We will see how this proceeds.