Publications by authors named "B Biggerstaff"
Plague is a rare, potentially fatal flea-borne zoonosis endemic in the western United States. A previous model described interannual variation in human cases based on temperature and lagged precipitation. We recreated this model in northeastern Arizona (1960-1997) to evaluate its capacity to predict recent cases (1998-2022).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCache Valley virus (CVV), a mosquito-borne orthobunyavirus, causes epizootics in ruminants characterized by congenital malformations and fetal death in North America. Only seven human infections have been identified; limited information exists on its potential as a human teratogen. Diagnosis of CVV infections relies on the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT), which requires live virus, is time-consuming, and cannot differentiate between recent and past infections.
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- - COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) may be beneficial for immunocompromised patients, but the FDA's current threshold for qualifying plasma based on antibody levels might be too low.
- - A study evaluated antibody levels in blood donors with different infection and vaccination histories, revealing that those with hybrid immunity (infection followed by vaccination) had higher antibody levels and better neutralizing capabilities.
- - The research suggests establishing new test-based criteria for qualifying CCP, highlighting that plasma with high antibody levels could effectively neutralize various COVID-19 variants for several months after infection or vaccination.
Article Synopsis
- * A study involving 142,599 blood donors established a new, lower threshold for detecting past infections using the Ortho VITROS Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Total-N Antibody assay, which boosted detection sensitivity while keeping specificity above 98%.
- * The updated test showed a high sensitivity of 98.1% for unvaccinated individuals and 95.6% for those who were vaccinated, though sensitivity was influenced by factors like the virus variant, donor age,
Group testing is the process of testing items as an amalgamation, rather than separately, to determine the binary status for each item. Its use was especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic through testing specimens for SARS-CoV-2. The adoption of group testing for this and many other applications is because members of a negative testing group can be declared negative with potentially only one test.
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