instruction:
Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
question:
Paragraph: Homebred beef cattle are seen at a local cattle market in Hongseong, about 170 km (106 miles) south of Seoul July 29, 2008. A rare genetic mutation may underlie some cases of mad cow disease in cattle and its discovery may help shed light on where the epidemic started, U.S. researchers reported on Friday. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won The mutation, in an Alabama cow that tested positive in 2006 for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is identical to one that causes a related brain-wasting disease in humans. This suggests BSE may sometimes arise spontaneously in cattle. Jurgen Richt of Kansas State University said cattle producers must never let down their guard against BSE because cattle anywhere, at any time, can develop the disease. The finding may support a 2005 theory that the BSE epidemic in cattle could be traced to feed contaminated with cattle remains from India, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens. BSE or mad cow disease swept through British dairy herds in the 1980s, forcing the destruction of millions of animals. No one ever found where it came from but most experts thought at the time it came from cattle feed that contained the remains of sheep infected with a similar disease called scrapie. Cattle were never known to develop BSE before the epidemic, but some experts have argued they may have. This report lends credence to that idea. BSE, scrapie and a human version called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, are brain-destroying illnesses called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. In some cases, animals or people that eat brain and nervous system material from victims of these diseases can develop them, too. They are passed along by misfolded infectious protein fragments called prions. A very rare disease called variant CJD has been found in people who ate infected beef products. Fatal and incurable, it has affected just 167 people so far. Most countries now ban the use of meat and other parts from mammals in food for cattle. They also ban the use of potentially infectious tissues such as brain and spinal cord in human food. “There are tendencies around the world, now that the feed-borne epidemic has gone down, to relax these rules and regulations,” Richt said in a telephone interview. “So if we have these genetic cases popping up here and there and we don’t have our mitigations in place, we will have another epidemic somewhere.”   He suggested breeding the gene out of cattle. “We can clean the world cattle herd of that mutation,” Richt said. CJD is also known to pop up spontaneously in the human population. A genetic mutation causes the disease in one in a million people globally. Richt and colleagues tested the brain of the Alabama cow and found a mutation identical to the prion gene mutation that causes some cases of CJD. It is probably rare in cattle, found in fewer than one in 2,000, they said in the report, published here  But the animal passed along its mutation to its heifer, which suggests it is inherited. Claim: Gene mutation underlies some mad cow disease: study.
answer:
A rare genetic mutation may underlie some cases of mad cow disease in cattle and its discovery may help shed light on where the epidemic started, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.


question:
Paragraph: There’s no discussion of cost, even to mention that statins are relatively inexpensive these days and are mostly generically available. To its credit, the article does mention the cost of a calcium scan. We learn that “anywhere from 50 to 200 healthy people need to take a statin daily to prevent a single heart attack for five years.” That’s helpful information. It also notes that the observed benefit is less for older patients. The story could have added that even those numbers might disputed by some experts who perceive no meaningful benefit. For example, one review found being on a statin does not help people with low risk for heart disease live longer. The story does a service by highlighting the harms of statins. It explains: “The most common side effect of these drugs is muscle pain, which usually goes away if patients stop taking the medicines. People taking statins are also at a higher risk of developing diabetes, which is harder to reverse.” It also mentions the potential for overtreatment with the use of coronary calcium scans. However, we wish it had included absolute numbers. The story says harms are “uncommon,” but provides no data to back that up. Rates of adverse effects with statins have been measured at 1 to 10%, which makes them “common” in the definition of the European Medicines Agency. Also noteworthy is that some contend that adverse effects of statins have not been reliably reported. The story doesn’t explain the quality of the study, or of studies on which current guidelines are based. We don’t explicitly learn that this is a modelling study. In other words, this study consisted mostly of reinterpretations of math, not re-evaluations of real-life patients. The researchers said they were unable to obtain enough data on all possible harms and age-specific data on some harm outcomes, “so the risk thresholds we determined may still be too low.” There is no disease-mongering here. This story includes sources that weren’t involved in the study. The study’s authors reported no conflicts of interest. The story could have acknowledged the influence of pharmaceutical companies in creating guidelines for statin use. The alternative of not taking a statin was the key message here, and that’s laudable. However, we have a couple of concerns. First, we learn that “some statins were more effective than others, with atorvastatin (the generic name for Lipitor) being the best of the bunch.”  However, the story doesn’t explain on what basis some statins are “more effective.” In fact, some statins may be more effective at lower cholesterol, but the study found that no statin rises above others when it comes to the outcomes that counts most to patients — reducing cardiovascular deaths. Also, the story doesn’t mention lifestyle interventions — diet and exercise. The story makes it clear that statins are widely prescribed. The story states this an attempt to better weigh the benefits and harms of statin use. There was a good range of interviewees with no reliance on a news release Claim: Before Starting A Statin, Talk It Over With Your Doctor
answer:
The story reports on a study that re-assessed who benefits from taking a statin to prevent heart disease, with different risk thresholds based on sex, age group, and statin type. It reports the view that current guidelines “haven’t adequately considered” the harms from taking these widely used drugs. The story laudably focuses attention on potential adverse events and a need for balanced decision-making. It also incorporated a variety of sources. In our view, the story could done a better job in discussing costs, the quality of evidence, and alternative strategies to prevent heart disease. Statins are among the most widely prescribed drugs, with their use encouraged under guidelines such as those of the American Heart Association of the American College of Cardiology. However, data isn’t crystal clear on the benefits and harms of statins for people who don’t already have heart disease. As a result, there’s concern that they are being overused. It’s laudable that some news organizations — including CNN as well as NPR — highlighted research that explores these complexities and points out the need for patients and physicians to weigh benefits and harms. The headline of this story is, in our view, a winner.


question:
Paragraph: In October 2019, we received multiple inquiries from readers about the accuracy of reports that claimed a 22-year-old woman had contracted the HIV virus during a manicure. During that month, social media users widely shared a 2015 article published on the Filipino website TheAsianParent, with the headline “22-Year-Old Woman May Have Contracted HIV During a Manicure.” The article reported that: According to New York Daily News, a 22-year-old Brazilian woman was diagnosed with HIV after getting a manicure using shared equipment. Doctors say the case, which was first reported in the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses last year, highlights a “new form of transmission for the virus.” She had none of the usual risk factors…The journal article says that when the woman was first diagnosed, she was found to have advanced HIV. However, she didn’t have any of the normal risk factors associated with contracting the virus, such as having sex without a condom, or sharing infected needles. When medical professionals probed further, they discovered that the woman had shared “manicure instruments years before with a cousin who was later found to be HIV-positive.” Blood analysis also suggested that the woman had first got the virus around 10 years ago. The article was originally published on TheAsianParent’s sister website in Singapore, on Nov. 2, 2015. The case attracted widespread media attention in 2014, including articles by Fox News and the New York Daily News. It’s not clear why it began to trend once again online in October 2019. The report is based on a November 2014 paper entitled “An HIV-1 Transmission Case Possibly Associated With Manicure Care,” which was published in the journal Aids Research and Human Retroviruses. That paper can be read in full here. It was written by researchers from the Santo André Aids Program, the Adolfo Lutz Institute, and the University of São Paulo, all located in São Paulo, Brazil. As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains, HIV is typically transmitted through the exchange of certain bodily fluids during sexual contact or sharing syringes. Other modes of transmission exist, but they are less common. It is rare for HIV to be contracted through inanimate objects (an inanimate object that transmits an infectious disease is known as a “fomite”). However, the CDC notes: “It’s possible to get HIV from tattooing or body piercing if the equipment used for these procedures has someone else’s blood in it or if the ink is shared. The risk of getting HIV this way is very low …” The 2014 paper described a case involving a Brazilian woman suspected of having contracted HIV a decade earlier, when she was 12 years old, by using cuticle scissors and other manicure implements that had also been used by her cousin, a manicurist. The researchers came to the conclusion that this was probably (though not certainly) the way in which she contracted the disease, after performing what’s known as phylogenetic analysis of each woman’s strain of HIV. The following is a good explanation of how phylogenetic analysis works, from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health: “When a person becomes infected with HIV, their virus is similar to the virus of the person who infected them. Because HIV mutates quickly, each infected person’s virus evolves differently over time … HIV phylogenetics is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among transmitted viruses. A phylogenetic tree is an illustration of those relationships and HIV transmission dynamics.” After conducting phylogenetic analysis, the São Paulo researchers were able to conclude that the 22-year-old woman probably contracted HIV from her older cousin about 10.81 years earlier. At that time, the older woman knew she had HIV, but her family did not, and she had stopped taking zidovudine and lamivudine, a combination of antiretroviral drugs that can lower the risk of transmitting HIV. The woman at the center of the case denied any sexual abuse by a third party (an account corroborated by her family), and based on interviews with both women, the only remaining plausible method of transmission was their shared use of manicure implements while the younger woman was around 12 years old. The researchers summarized their findings as follows: A recently diagnosed 22-year-old female with no history of transmission risk factors prompted a thorough investigation of possible alternative risk factors. As the patient had evidence of advanced disease and laboratory data compatible with long-standing infection, past events were reviewed. About 10 years ago the patient shared manicure utensils with an older cousin, later known to be HIV infected; this prompted the phylogenetic analysis of the HIV sequences of both patients. Phylogenetic analyses of partial HIV-1 polymerase and envelope sequences from both patients revealed highly related sequences, with an estimated common ancestor date (about 11 years ago) that coincided with the putative sharing of manicure instruments, during a time in which the cousin was not virally suppressed. Taken together, the information about the infection of this patient suggests the use of shared manicure instruments as an alternative route of fomite HIV-1 transmission. Although the woman and her cousin shared manicure implements, the woman did not exactly contract HIV “during a manicure,” a description used by TheAsianParent that has engendered a degree of fear or concern, among some social media users, about visiting nail salons. Those fears appear to be largely unwarranted. The Brazilian case was scientifically notable precisely because it appears to be the first ever documented case of HIV transmission via manicure implements, and the already very low risk of transmission will diminish even further if members of the public visit properly licensed nail salons whose staff thoroughly sanitize all implements. Although TheAsianParent rightly stated that the woman “may have” contracted HIV from the manicure implements, reflecting the probability (rather than certainty) asserted by the researchers, other websites omitted that nuance in their headlines, with Fox News, for example, writing “Woman Contracts HIV Through Shared Manicure Equipment.” Claim: A woman in Brazil contracted HIV during a manicure.
answer:

"What's true: According to a paper written by researchers in São Paulo, a woman likely contracted HIV from her cousin by sharing manicure equipment. What's false: However, the researchers did not assert that method of transmission as a certainty, and the woman did not contract the disease ""during a manicure"" as such — a description that caused largely unwarranted fears about visiting nail salons."