Raymond McBride, Author At Healthy News

Texas influencer Brittany Dawn Davis organizing faith retreats for women amid fitness scam allegations

Brittany Dawn Davis, a Texas social media influencer accused of scamming clients who purchased her online fitness and nutrition packages, is currently growing an all-female faith retreat program as she faces trial in Dallas.

The Brittany Dawn Fitness owner has adopted a more faith-based approach to her social media presence since she was accused of misleading clients who signed up to receive her customized fitness and nutrition packages before 2019.

Davis has since embarked on a new entrepreneurial journey as the founder of She Lives Freed – a team of 14 women who organize women’s faith retreats that cost $600 per person.

“She Lives Freed was founded by Brittany Dawn after the Lord radically changed her life in 2019, from darkness to light. Her mission is to share the gospel of Jesus, cultivate a community of sisters, and walk alongside women into freedom through the love of our Savior,” the She Lives Freed website states.

TEXAS FITNESS INFLUENCER BRITTANY DAWN ACCUSED OF SCAMMING CLIENTS VOWS TO ‘FIGHT BACK’

Texas influencer Brittany Dawn Davis organizing faith retreats for women amid fitness scam allegations

Brittany Dawn Davis is a former fitness influencer facing trial for allegedly scamming clients who purchased her online fitness and nutrition program. (Instagram/ RealBrittanyDawn)

The first women’s retreat took place in Austin in January 2021. Since then, the organization has hosted five more retreats, with the next one taking place in Oklahoma, according to the website.

FITNESS INFLUENCER UNDER FIRE FOR ALLEGEDLY SCAMMING CLIENTS

“[T]his will be a gospel centered weekend with other God-fearing women. [S]peakers will be sharing their hearts on preparing for difficult seasons, staying faithful on your walk with the Lord, and how our seasons of difficulty often lead to our Kingdom calling. [A]nd if you don’t know what your purpose is… you are coming to the right place,” the website states.

Brittany Dawn Davis is a Texas-based social media influencer and former fitness coach who has since made her Christian faith the focus of her blog. (Instagram/ @RealBrittanyDawn)

The lawsuit filed against Davis and her fitness company alleges Davis did not deliver on the personalized fitness packages, coaching and check-ins that she promised those who purchased one of her plans.

BEWARE OF RISE IN SHORT-TERM VACATION RENTAL SCAMS

“Beginning in 2014, Defendants profited from the sale of online fitness packages to thousands of consumers with the promise of personalized nutritional guidance and individualized fitness coaching. Specifically, Defendants’ online fitness packages offered ‘macro’ nutritional assessments and, depending on the plan purchased, daily or weekly email training and one-on-one coaching. Defendants’ online nutrition and fitness packages ranged from $92.00 for onetime macro consultation to $300.00 for three-months of personalized macros, trainings, and coaching,” the complaint against Davis states.

Brittany Dawn Davis offered fitness and nutrition packages ranging from $92 to $300. (Instagram/ @RealBrittanyDawn)

However, the packages for clients “were not individualized,” plaintiffs allege, and Davis “failed to provide the promised coaching and check-ins” to her clients.

“Defendants largely ignored consumer complaints or, if they did respond, offered only partial refunds. In 2019, consumers’ complaints on social media garnered media attention prompting Defendant Davis to make video apology posted to YouTube. Defendants promptly took the website down,” the lawsuit says.

Brittany Dawn Davis is accused of scamming clients who purchased her online fitness and nutrition packages. (Instagram/ @RealBrittanyDawn)

Court filings in the case further state that “the vast majority” of more than $1.5 million deposits to Davis’ Paypal account “derived from consumer payments through Defendants’ website,” but her legal team has apparently only handed over receipts for a total of $169,000 in payments. The state is arguing that they left thousands of clients out of their discovery.

Davis allegedly posted an apology video and then deleted it, according to prosecutors.

BEWARE OF RISE IN SHORT-TERM VACATION RENTAL SCAMS

Fox News Digital has reached out to Davis and her attorneys for comment.

Court filings in the case further state that “the vast majority” of more than $1.5 million deposits to Brittany Dawn Davis’ PayPayl account “derived from consumer payments through Defendants’ website.” (U.S. District Court)

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In a Monday Instagram post, Davis said her “time to fight back is here.”

Her trial was scheduled to begin on March 6 but was postponed indefinitely.

Audrey Conklin is a digital reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business. Email tips to audrey.conklin@fox.com or on Twitter at @audpants.

Siemens Healthineers plans to supply medical devices to IISc-associated hospitals: Staudinger

Germany’s Siemens Healthineers has tied up with the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru on clinical research projects and plans to supply medical devices to the upcoming hospitals and medical schools associated with the institute. The two parties signed a related memorandum of understanding on Tuesday, according to Elisabeth Staudinger, a managing board member at the German firm. In a conversation with DH’s Dhanya Skariachan and two other reporters, she shed light on the German medical device maker’s plans for India. Edited excerpts.

How important is India in your larger scheme of things?

India is a very important location as well as market. In terms of location, it – especially Bengaluru – is the hub where we have (an) almost 3500-people strong software development team, where we also over the years have started building a manufacturing base. And we are now in this transition of further elevating the role of the team here in Bengaluru to become one of the key nodes in our global innovation network. So we are really moving to making Bengaluru one of the key places where we also innovate and work on the future for Siemens Healthineers, both in India as well as globally.

Also Read: Protecting families from ruinous healthcare costs

Does India have the potential to become a manufacturing hub for medical devices?

Already today, we have a first product which was entirely designed, developed, engineered and … built in India. We originally created this product to address the specific needs of the market in India. But in the meantime, we have started exporting that product. To me, this is a real success story and a good example of how by starting from kind of a focus on the specific needs of the market here in India, we can create global success stories.

Has India become a meaningful manufacturing hub for you already?

For India to be a meaningful manufacturing base, it’s extremely important to have a strong supplier ecosystem around you. If you ship all the parts here and assemble them here, it’s not really meaningful. It doesn’t bring a lot of cost savings. On the contrary, it may even increase cost and it also doesn’t create jobs for people in India. So it’s not a win-win type of setup and you can really create a win-win type of setup if, in addition to locating your own production manufacturing here in India, you also make sure you have as many parts that you need from your local supply base. And this is something which takes some time. This doesn’t happen overnight. But, step by step, we are building that ecosystem around us, which will allow us over time to further expand.

What fuels your optimism tied to the Indian market?

If you look at the metro areas in India, you have very good hospitals. Very, I mean, maybe sometimes difficult to afford for some patients, but the quality of care is excellent. If you go to more rural areas, yeah, even basic things sometimes are not there. And this is why we believe there is still a significant need to provide better access to care to people in India. And this also makes us very optimistic about the future market development here in the country.

Also Read: Gender inequalities, inequities in healthcare, clinical research are alive!

How will you make healthcare services more accessible and affordable in India?

I’m actually quite confident here that we have very meaningful value products available, which can make a difference in these places. However, spending the money on putting a piece of equipment somewhere…is not really enough to be able to offer services to patients which make a difference. In order to do this, you need qualified staff, you need physicians, you need nurses, you need people who know how to diagnose a disease and to recommend them and follow up on a treatment. And this is where digitalisation really can make a difference. You can leverage digitalisation in many different ways. It starts from training people. It can be about providing the scanning service from a metro location (such) that you don’t need the specialised personnel on the ground here, which sometimes may be very difficult. So you can do things remotely. If you look at diagnostic information, be it lab results or imaging tests, the doctor who looks at the images can sit anywhere, right? If you use digital tools, you can send this information to wherever the expert is and send the diagnosis back. So digitalisation is a key enabler when it comes to providing better access to care.

Could you shed some light on your collaboration with IISc?

This morning, we had a meeting with the Indian Institute of Science, where we are also entering into closer collaborations to really capture this idea of creating an innovation hub here in Bengaluru. And in that context, there are also certain discussions around corporate social responsibility in the collaboration with IISc here in Karnataka, so it’s a bit of a different angle. But it’s also a way where we bring our expertise together with people here in the ecosystem who then multiply the impact together with us.
(IISc’s upcoming hospital on campus) will focus on not only training doctors, but it will also focus on this aspect of bringing science into medicine. So they want to develop programs where you have training as a medical doctor together with a PhD. And this is something which fits very well with who we are and how we work. So because we are the partners, to a certain extent, on the technological side. (We are) helping them with, kind of, building a strong research base, to go a bit beyond just providing medical services, but really look for pioneering healthcare.

How does India compare with China w.r.t. its position on the global healthcare map?

China may be a bit further down the road when it comes to really providing good access to healthcare to their populations. We are very optimistic about India. We do believe that the dynamics here in India, both in the economy, but also when it comes to providing better health care services will be positive over the next years to come. And this is also why we are now focusing here in India, investing here in India, building a manufacturing base, moving up the food chain, also in the software development work to becoming an innovation hub, because we believe that India, I mean, already today, it’s not small, but it will become an even more important element in our global network going forward.

What are the cutting-edge technologies you are heavily invested in right now?

There’s three pillars which make us unique. The first is what we call patient twinning. So this is our ability based on imaging, based on the blood testing, to enable a very early, very precise diagnosis, which then helps guide treatment. And this is extremely important. For the treatment to be effective, the better the diagnosis, the earlier the diagnosis, the cheaper it is to be treated, and the more effective the treatment will be. Then we have strengths when it comes to precision therapy. And this revolves around leveraging robotics, to guide therapy and make therapy ultra precise, which again, has significant benefits for patients. One really good example is in cancer therapy, where we provide the equipment that destroys tumours in the body. You use a very high energy radiation to do this. And this is harmful. You want to make sure that you only and very precisely only expose this part of the body which you want to treat, and that you spare everything else. So this is one area where we have absolute strengths and where we keep innovating because there is still a lot which can be improved. And these two pillars are all founded in our ability to work with digitalisation data, and artificial intelligence. And especially that pillar is enabled here by the work we do here in Bengaluru.

In 2020, you unveiled plans to invest ₹1,300 crore in an innovation hub in Bengaluru. Could you give us an update on where things stand now?

Tomorrow’s the groundbreaking ceremony for the investment we’re making here. The state-of-the-art facility, which is something we are really excited about, will bring together all the different disciplines we have in the company. We have our strong software development team, the innovation centre, the manufacturing footprint as well as our headquarters for India. So the people who work with customers here in India, who service our installed base in the country, everybody will be co located here in Bengaluru. And we believe that this will be a very interesting space, which can also drive innovation.

Are you planning to hire more people in India?

We have about 7000 employees in India, about half of those are based out of Bengaluru. We expect that we will add another 1800 people in the years to come. The building will be ready by 2025. Then, we will have the facilities to then, over time, add this additional headcount.

Virgo Horoscope Today, March 14, 2023: Maintain a healthy lifestyle | Astrology

VIRGO (Aug 24-Sept 23)

As a Virgo, your daily horoscope indicates that your family relationships may be strong and supportive. Daily astrological prediction says depending on the situation, you may seek advice from elder members or make decisions independently. Your focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle may contribute to your overall well-being. Your finances may be steady. You may have taken steps to secure your financial future through life insurance and other measures. Your romantic relationship may be stable, and you may strive to overcome past challenges or differences. Your professional life may present challenges, but you are likely to be proactive in seeking solutions. This could mean taking on part-time work or exploring new career opportunities. Your travel experiences introduce you to some new cuisines or new destinations. Your property may benefit from background verification, and other aspects of your life, such as academics and miscellaneous, may involve managing time and maintaining positive relationships with neighbours.

Virgo Finance Today

Finances may remain steady, with a focus on budgeting and saving for the future. Investment opportunities can be pursued for long-term growth. However, impulsive spending or unexpected expenses can sometimes disrupt financial stability.

Virgo Family Today

Family relationships may remain strong and supportive. However, there may be tension or disagreement regarding some hasty decisions. Seek advice from elder members to maintain peace. Regular family gatherings and open communication help to keep a positive and harmonious dynamic.

Virgo Career Today

The professional front may face difficulties with a lack of job security or career growth opportunities. Some individuals may turn to part-time jobs or freelancing to supplement their income. Others may search for a new job or career path that aligns with their skills and interests.

Virgo Health Today

A healthy lifestyle is a top priority, focusing on eating nutritious food, consuming green vegetables, and engaging in regular physical activity. A positive mindset and stress management techniques should be incorporated for overall well-being.

Virgo Love Life Today

Make efforts to maintain a strong bond and keep the spark alive. However, past differences or old flames may sometimes create challenges. Communication and compromise will be key to overcoming these challenges and maintaining a healthy and happy relationship.

Lucky Number: 4

Lucky Colour: Red

By: Manisha Koushik, Dr Prem Kumar Sharma

(Astrologer, Palmist, Numerologist & Vastu Consultant)

Email: support@askmanisha.com, psharma@premastrologer.com

Url: www.askmanisha.com, www.premastrologer.com

Contact: Panchkula: +91-172-2562832, 2572874

Delhi: +91-11-47033152, 40532026

How Healthy Is Vegan Meat, Actually?

Veganuary is far behind us, but it’s never too late to explore a vegan diet. It’s easier than ever before, in fact, thanks to the numerous vegan meat alternatives available today. From Impossible and Beyond Meat burgers to Gardein Chick’n and Tofurky, plant-based meat is just about everywhere.

It’s not just in the grocery store, either. With more and more plant-based meal delivery services and vegan options at dine-in and fast food restaurants, going vegan is getting less difficult by the day.

All of this said, there’s one big question about vegan meat that a lot of people are just starting to ask: Is it healthy?

What are plant-based meats made of?

That, of course, depends on the meat alternative. Some plant-based meat options are nutrient-dense and primarily consist of minimally processed whole foods. But a lot of the most popular options on the market — and especially the ones that look and taste like real meat — aren’t so great for you.

Generally, vegan meat consists primarily of ingredients including:

Soy
Legumes
Vegetables like peas or broccoli
Fruits like jackfruit

That all sounds good, right? So why are we having a conversation about unhealthy plant-based meat? It’s all about what happens to those base ingredients.

To make things look and taste like meat, food manufacturers add filler ingredients such as wheat gluten, plenty of salt and artificial colors. In other words, when you choose a meat alternative that seems pretty darn similar to actual meat, it’s probably because that “meat” has been heavily processed.

This isn’t to say that all vegan meat options are just as bad for your health as processed meat. But yes, that vegan hot dog is probably just as unhealthy as a regular hot dog.

Plant-based meat can certainly go a long way toward mitigating the burden on the environment, supporting animal welfare and saving you money. But if you’re making the swap for health reasons, be conscientious about which meat alternative you choose.

Vegan meat health concerns

Closeup of hand picking up plant-based meat at grocery store. — Chaay_Tee/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Let’s run down some of the biggest risks associated with unhealthy plant-based meat.

Highly processed

As we’ve mentioned before, to take something that isn’t meat and make it taste and look like real meat requires quite a bit of processing. Foods are more processed if they contain artificial ingredients or “natural flavors.” In meat substitutes specifically, ingredients such as soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate and textured vegetable protein are processed ingredients.

That’s bad news because ultraprocessed foods increase your risk of:

Obesity
Dementia
High blood pressure
Type 2 diabetes
Decreased life expectancy

Missing key nutrients

Beef, pork and poultry all give your body a complete protein, which means they contain all nine amino acids you need but can’t make on your own.

A lot of plant-based meat comes from ingredients that aren’t complete proteins on their own, like legumes and vegetables. If you’re opting for vegan meat, figure out which nutrients it doesn’t contain so you can supplement them. You should also know about plant-based complete protein options, like quinoa, tofu and tempeh.

Less protein

Most adults should be getting 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram you weigh, plus more if you’re active. The US Department of Agriculture has a handy calculator to figure out how much you should be getting.

Some vegan meat contains less protein than real meat, although this has gotten better in recent years. Ultimately, to maintain a whole, healthy diet, you’ll probably want to supplement with vegan high-protein food such as legumes and nuts.

High in sodium and saturated fats

One of the biggest problems with plant-based meat comes from its sodium content. Just like processed animal meat, most vegan meat contains a fair measure of salt. Most of the sodium in our diets comes from processed foods. Read the label and specifically check the sodium level before you assume a meat alternative is a healthy swap.

This is particularly true if you have high blood pressure or other heart health problems.

Meat alternatives also commonly contain saturated fats due to the type of oils used, specifically coconut oil. Saturated fats are unhealthy fats that can increase the risk of heart disease and high cholesterol.

Bottom line

A lot of vegan meat alternatives that are highly processed are not great for you. However, not all meat substitutes are unhealthy. If you know how to read labels and choose healthier plant-based meat options, you will be able to find vegan meat made with organic ingredients sourced from whole foods that are lower in sodium and higher in both fiber and iron.

A plant-based diet can be incredibly healthy — plus cheaper and more environmentally and animal-friendly — as long as you stick with whole foods. Stocking your kitchen with the right tools to prep nourishing meals with minimally processed ingredients can help you feel your best. Homemade vegan meat made from veggies and legumes is ideal, but tofu, tempeh, and seitan are less-processed, high-protein meat alternatives.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

‘The People’s Hospital’ doctor treats Houston’s uninsured and undocumented : Shots

Paramedics at Ben Taub General Hospital speed a patient with a gunshot wound to the trauma team for further care. Ben Taub is the largest safety-net hospital in Houston.

Gregory Smith/Corbis via Getty Images

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Gregory Smith/Corbis via Getty Images

Paramedics at Ben Taub General Hospital speed a patient with a gunshot wound to the trauma team for further care. Ben Taub is the largest safety-net hospital in Houston.

Gregory Smith/Corbis via Getty Images

As a doctor in a so-called “safety-net” hospital, Ricardo Nuila’s daily practice looks quite different from that of his colleagues who work in private or not-for-profit hospitals. That’s because safety-net hospitals treat everyone who walks in the doors — regardless of insurance status.

Many of Nuila’s patients at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital are dealing with serious illnesses as a result of not being able to get access to basic preventive care. “What we see is that patients’ lack of health care has meant that the disease has been able to grow within their bodies,” he says. “Their cancer is widespread, or we find that they have an infection that has not been treated or discovered.”

In his new book, The People’s Hospital, Nuila writes about his experiences at Ben Taub, which is the largest safety-net hospital in Houston. He says despite the hospital’s budget constraints, the doctors and nurses there still manage to provide quality health care. By limiting the number of patients a practitioner can see in a day, Ben Taub allows physicians to spend more time with their patients than is typical.

“My cap is 15 patients in one day,” Nuila says. “That’s compared to some of my colleagues in the private world, who I’ve heard admit up to 24 patients in one night, or don’t carry a cap.”

Because resources are tight at Ben Taub, there is an emphasis on using them mindfully, Nuila says. Instead of ordering an MRI with the push of a button, for instance, he might talk to the radiologist directly, to find out if extra imaging is really called for. “There are benefits to further discussion between medical professionals about emergencies and how to deal with these emergencies,” he says.

Overall, Nuila says, working at a safety-net hospital allows him to keep his focus on medicine: “I like that I have the time to be able to hear my patients’ stories, that I don’t have to think about billing all the time, that I can sit with them and hear about why they came to the hospital and learn about their lives — and that, no matter what, we are going to be thinking about how best to help them, regardless of whether they have insurance or not.”

Interview highlights

On treating undocumented people at the hospital

It’s not considered illegal. … The law EMTALA — the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act — that was passed in the 1980s, that states that anybody in the United States, whether you’re a resident or not, whether you have health insurance or not, can go to a hospital and receive an exam and stabilizing treatment. So that’s a right that everybody in the United States has, regardless of citizenship. What’s different about the safety-net hospital is that we have clinics and we have chronic care also — and that was under question by certain politicians, who ultimately found that it didn’t make any sense to question that. Because when you get in the way of preventive care, when you get in the way of primary care, those patients end up coming to the emergency room and they become much more expensive. … So, [the politicians] decided that the financial gains were more important [than limiting care].

On explaining the American health care system to uninsured patients

California Is 1st State To Offer Health Benefits To Adult Undocumented Immigrants

The patients are all so different — some have had multiple family members in the United States before, so they understand the landscape a little bit better. But yeah, it can feel very, very contradictory when I tell patients that, well, “You need health insurance for that.” And they will say sometimes, “Well, in Mexico or in Guatemala (or whatever), I don’t necessarily.” And it’s hard to explain that in the richest country in the world, there’s little available for people without health care insurance.

Now, I’m happy that in Harris County [in Texas], where I work at Harris Health, we can provide a robust set of services. But somebody who lives outside of the county doesn’t have availability for those services. And that’s one of the things that I’ve argued, is that the line between Mexico and the United States is not as important as the line between Harris County and Fort Bend County, for instance, in some of the treatments that we give to patients.

On speaking Spanish with patients

That’s one of the reasons that I love my job and I love the hospital where I work — I can speak Spanish. … The people are so happy to hear somebody attempt to speak their language, and not just on a translation basis, but the flavor of the language and also thinking about the locations [they come from]. For instance, when I ask somebody where they’re from and they say Mexico or El Salvador, it’s never enough for me to hear just a country. I need to ask a region so I can situate it in my mind, the map, and draw a relationship that I have with that region. And so I think it helps a lot for building trust with patients.

On his reaction when very sick patients put their faith in God

I don’t dismiss it. Because I feel that science and medicine, we don’t know everything. There’s a lot of mystery in this world and I think faith is important. I’m not saying that faith in one particular religion is important, but faithfulness is important. I think that in my experience, when people demonstrate faith, whether it’s in their God or whether it’s in the treatment, they do better. It’s not my job to take away that person’s faith. What I tell people is that I’m just doing my job, which is [that] I’m a human being, and I need to tell you … the recommendation from doctor human beings for this illness and for the treatment, but that I’m just a person and I don’t know. And that’s the truth – we don’t know everything. We have very good ideas. When somebody is close to death, we can prognosticate quite accurately if that person’s going to die or not. But I can not tell exactly when that is going to happen. And I don’t want to rob somebody of their faithfulness.

On struggling with thoughts of suicide after the suicide of a friend and colleague

Reach out and listen: How to help someone at risk of suicide

I think everything was a struggle. And I think that seeing somebody like Dave, who I admired so much, who was a friend, my best friend in the hospital, who I could speak with and who was so knowledgeable and intelligent — just to know that that is a risk for me as I grow older. Dave was also a very good father and it’s something that I’ve struggled with, parenting.

It felt so much like a pressure of trying to be a good father while trying to be a good doctor, while trying to be a good writer. They can work together, but there are moments where they feel like they can just implode on themselves. And I think that knowing that that had happened to my friend weighed on me and made me think, Is this going to be me? Is this the fate that so many of us who care a lot that we face? …

Therapy helped. I found a therapist who was very attuned to people who were creative types. … That listening really helped. My relationships improved. When I was at my lowest, I could look at my relationships with the people who were around me, who I valued the most, and I can see that at that moment they weren’t great relationships. And somehow over time, those relationships started to improve and that helped immensely. I think that writing also helped me too, at the end of the day.

On hospital staff losing their sense of meaning with their job because of burnout

Health workers know what good care is. Pandemic burnout is getting in the way

For me that just demonstrates a real fundamental problem with how health care is administered in this country. If something like medicine, where you are helping people on a daily basis, if you can’t see the meaning behind that, that’s a bad omen. Whenever a patient tells me, “I’m thirsty” and I go get them ice water, I feel really good that day. Something as simple as that. With my Spanish-speaking patients, they can say one phrase to me and I will feel satisfied for that day — when they say, “Que amable,” which means you were very kind in the way you said that. And I feel that that gives me a lot of meaning for the day. But I feel that the pressures and the mechanism by which health care operates right now obfuscates that for so many people. And that’s sad to me. Now, I take a little bit of heart in that the medical field is really taking this seriously and is trying to do something about this. There is an added emphasis now on bringing in the arts and humanities into medicine.

Audio interview produced and edited by: Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner. Audio interview adapted for NPR.org by: Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Deborah Franklin.

Ancient DNA as a tool for medical research

The simplest model used to study human susceptibility to infection is genetic predisposition to infectious diseases through inborn errors of immunity — mutations that increase the risk of severe infections⁶. The most successful approach has been to study people who are extremely susceptible to infections, as they have the highest odds of carrying highly penetrant genetic lesions. The main advantage of this approach is that causality between genotype and phenotype follows naturally from the study of an in vivo (human) model, although its implementation requires the extensive genetic screening of severely ill patients.

An alternative approach is to study the effects of natural selection from pathogenic pressure on human genome variability⁷. These two frameworks are comparable in that both involve the identification of variants that increase the risk of a given infectious disease in natura. However, they differ in that inborn errors of immunity usually operate at the scale of a single generation, whereas gradual pathogenic pressure operates at the scale of many generations, which makes it possible to identify genetic variants with effect sizes that differ by several orders of magnitude.

Recent studies have highlighted the value of using ancient genomes from different epochs, known as aDNA time series, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of immune disorders and past epidemics (Fig. 1). One recent proof-of-concept study of more than 1,000 genomes dated to within the last 10,000 years of European history showed that a tuberculosis risk variant, TYK2 P1104A, present in around 3{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f} of people of European ancestry, has evolved under strong negative selection over the past two millennia⁸. This finding, probably reflective of the pressure imposed by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, would have been very difficult to achieve through studies of modern DNA. Indeed, most methods for detecting natural selection in modern DNA data are underpowered for low-frequency variants.

**Fig. 1: Ancient DNA can identify genetic variants associated with disease risk.**

The evolutionary history of the pathogen itself can also provide insight into the dynamics of past epidemics, but this was difficult to characterize until samples from ancient pathogens became available. In the context of tuberculosis, studies of ancient mycobacteria have dated the most recent common ancestor of the pathogen to only 6,000 years ago, which contrasts markedly with the estimates of more than 70,000 years ago that were obtained from studies of modern strains of M. tuberculosis⁹. Medical practitioners may find aDNA studies similarly helpful for pinpointing genetic variants of microorganisms, as their evolutionary history can reveal their deleteriousness to human health.

aDNA time series at the scale of the entire human genome can identify variants under negative selection, which is useful for the detection of new genetic factors associated with immune disorders, as described in a recent study¹⁰. Paleogenomics therefore appears to be a powerful approach, complementary to epidemiological and clinical genetics studies, that can be used to confirm and expand on genetic variants associated with disease risk.