The latest cancer prevention guidelines may change your typical backyard barbecue: Gone are the hot dogs and booze. In are veggie kebabs and maybe a swim or some badminton.
The American Cancer Society’s new cancer prevention recommendations suggest, among other things, adding more physical activity to your days. About 20 minutes a day is the minimum, but 40 minutes or more daily is even better.
The new guidelines also add emphasis on avoiding unhealthy foods, including red and processed meats, refined grains and alcohol.
“The new recommendations really increase emphasis on a few key areas [including healthy weight and diet, physical activity, and avoiding or limiting alcohol],” said Dr Laura Makaroff, senior vice president of prevention and early detection for the American Cancer Society (ACS).
Healthy choices a challenge
These factors accounted for up to 18% of cancer cases and 16% of cancer deaths in the United States, according to the new report.
Along with recommendations for individual lifestyle practices, the ACS also included guidance for communities to take action.
“In addition to recommendations for individual choices, ACS recognises that making healthy choices can be challenging for many people. We need to reduce barriers to living well and achieving a healthy lifestyle, and that will require working collaboratively at all levels to develop and implement policies to ensure access to healthy foods and opportunities for exercise,” Makaroff said.
Registered dietician Pat Talio, the clinical nutrition outpatient programme coordinator at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York, agreed.
“This has to be a community and a societal effort. Given Covid and the amount of money that’s been spent on that, it will be especially important to keep focusing on healthy lifestyle,” Talio said. “It won’t help overall health if communities reduce funding in schools by cutting out gym teachers and sports programmes.”
The biggest changes to the guidelines included:
Physical activity. In line with US government recommendations, the ACS guidelines say Americans should get between 150 and 300 minutes of moderate physical activity each week. If you up your activity level to vigorous activity, the ACS advises 75 to 150 minutes a week.
Alcohol. The ACS says your best bet is to skip alcohol altogether. If you chose to drink, limit your alcohol consumption to one drink a day for women or two a day for men.
Diet. The guidelines recommend not eating, or limiting, foods such as red or processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, refined grains and other highly processed foods. The ACS encourages a diet full of a variety of healthy foods, particularly 2.5 to 3 cups of vegetables and 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit each day. The ACS also recommends incorporating legumes and whole grains in your diet.
Along with these changes, the ACS also reconfirmed the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight. Nearly 11% of cancers in women and 5% in men have been linked to being overweight or obese. Only cigarette smoking accounts for a higher percentage of cancer, the guidelines said. Some cancers linked to excess weight include:
Breast
Ovary
Kidney
Oesophagus
Colon
Liver
Gallbladder
Pancreas
“There is no magic pill for preventing cancer,” Talio said. “People say that even though they’re not eating all their vegetables, they are taking a supplement. But that’s not the same. You have to eat well to get the right nutrients. Have a variety of vegetables and fruits – in all different colours. Concentrate on the vegetables.”
The new ACS guidelines are consistent with other government and major health organisation recommendations for preventing heart disease and diabetes.
The new guidelines were published on 9 June in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Genetics may explain why some women gain weight when using a popular method of birth control, researchers say.
“For years, women have said that birth control causes them to gain weight but many doctors failed to take them seriously,” said lead study author Dr Aaron Lazorwitz. He’s assistant professor of obstetrics/gynaecology and family planning at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Aurora.
“Now we have looked at the genetics and found that the way genes interact with some hormones in birth control could help explain why some women gain more weight than others,” Lazorwitz added in a university news release.
The etonogestrel contraceptive implant is inserted under the skin. It contains etonogestrel, a kind of progestin that inhibits ovulation, and is considered among the most effective types of birth control.
Individual genetic variation
For the study, the researchers reviewed the medical records of 276 women who received the implant. They found these women had a median weight gain of about 7lb (3.17kg) over an average of 27 months of use. Nearly three-quarters of the women gained weight.
Further investigation led the researchers to conclude that genetic variants in oestrogen receptor 1 (ESR1) among some of the women were associated with significant weight gain.
On average, women with two copies of the ESR1 rs9340799 variant gained over 30 pounds more while using the contraceptive implant than other women in the study.
Previous research has found links between ESR1 genetic variants and the workings of other types of medications, the study authors noted.
While this study focused on the etonogestrel contraceptive implant, other birth control drugs could have similar interactions with genes that cause weight gain, the researchers said.
Non-hormonal birth control
“It is imperative to better understand how individual genetic variation may influence a woman’s risk of adverse weight gain” while using these medications, Lazorwitz said.
Currently, there is no way to identify who will gain weight when using such medications. Health care providers can provide counselling about potential weight gain or suggest non-hormonal forms of birth control such as copper intrauterine devices (IUDs), the study authors suggested.
“As our understanding of pharmacogenomics in women’s health expands, we can develop individualised counselling that may reduce the incidence of hormone-related adverse effects, improve patient satisfaction, and help prevent future health risks associated with weight gain,” Lazorwitz said.
The study was published recently in the journal Contraception.
A senior member of the Covid-19 Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) has accused the country’s health leadership of refusing to change its mass testing strategy in the face of serious resource constraints and a large testing backlog, even though scientists have repeatedly advised that an urgent rethink is needed.
Professor Francois Venter, head of the Ezintsha health unit at the University of the Witwatersrand and a member of the MAC, says he and other scientists cannot fathom why health authorities are sticking to a testing strategy which is not producing the necessary results.
Until now, the Covid-19 strategy – defended by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize in an interview on Friday – involves testing patients referred from a mass screening programme, which has seen more than 180 000 people referred for Covid-19 tests so far. According to Mkhize, this has enabled the department to identify hotspots which would now be targeted with more resources, including priority testing.
But Venter and others have for weeks argued that, due to severe resource constraints, leading to low turnaround times from sample collection to results, tests should be reserved for hospitalised patients and healthcare workers.
South Africa’s Covid-19 capital, the Western Cape, showed President Cyril Ramaphosa this month that obesity was one of the most prevalent comorbidities in its hundreds of deaths. Only diabetes, hypertension and HIV were more regularly cited as co-killers.
But obesity may be as dangerous as a pre-condition, because it is not only a risk in and of itself, but also a potential cause of diabetes and hypertension.
The Western Cape’s Department of Health told Ramaphosa that available data thus far showed that 65% of deaths were a result of two or more comorbidities. And a study of global reports suggests obesity is regularly among them.
An insider at one major hospital said the vast majority of Covid-19 patients they have admitted to their intensive care unit, were obese – “and this often goes hand in hand with diabetes”.
The Royal Agricultural showground in Pietermaritzburg has undergone a transformation and has now been launched as a Covid-19 field hospital.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala officially handed over the field hospital to the province’s health department on Sunday.
“This field hospital is giving us 254 isolation beds, which will service uMgungundlovu, Harry Gwala and uThukela districts. Another field hospital, the Durban Exhibition Centre, is being constructed on our behalf by the national Department of Health,” the premier said.
The premier said, over the past few months, KwaZulu-Natal had created 7 111 beds in the province through extensive renovation and repurposing of hospitals as well as the establishment of field hospitals.
The Ministry of Health says the motorbikes provided for health workers in the Eastern Cape are not meant to replace ambulances but are designed to bring healthcare closer to the people.
According to the health ministry, after it received backlash from the public and media queries, it had to clarify why the motorbikes were needed.
“One of the complaints that the Eastern Cape Department of Health has received from rural communities is that because of a lack of road infrastructure, especially in rural areas, ambulances do not reach people who are sick, especially the elderly,” said health ministry spokesperson Dr Lwazi Manzi.
“The members of the community end up having to put an individual in a wheelbarrow or walking a long distance whilst carrying a patient until they reach a road where the ambulance can go.”
A 70-year-old American man who nearly died of Covid-19 has been billed a heart-stopping $1.1 million (about R18 730 877 in today’s exchange rate) for his hospital expenses, media in the US has reported.
Michael Flor was admitted to a hospital in the northwestern city on 4 March, and stayed for 62 days – at one point coming so close to death that nurses held up the phone so his wife and children could say goodbye.
But he recovered and was discharged on 5 May to the cheers of nursing staff – only to receive a 181-page bill totalling $1 122 501.04, he told the newspaper.
That includes: $9 736 per day for the intensive care room, nearly $409 000 for its transformation into a sterile room for 42 days, $82 000 for the use of a ventilator for 29 days, and nearly $100 000 for two days when his prognosis was life-threatening.
Flor is covered by Medicare, a government insurance program for the elderly, and should not have to take out his wallet, according to the Times.
A district in Beijing said it was in “wartime emergency mode” after a cluster of novel coronavirus cases emerged at a major wholesale market.
The discovery came after a man who had visited the Xinfadi market in the southwest district of Fengtai on June 3, tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, according to Beijing’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chu Junwei, a Fengtai district official, said the area was in “wartime emergency mode” at a press briefing on Saturday. The district locked down 11 neighborhoods close to the market, which is the biggest meat and vegetable market in the capital city.
It prompted Beijing authorities to test and swab 1,940 workers in major supermarkets and other food markets in the Chinese capital.
Being overweight, and obesity, are major risk factors for several chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, stroke and heart diseases, and, more recently, severe Covid-19. In a paper published in the BMJ journal this week, researchers at the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) argued that the food industry shares the blame, not just for the obesity pandemic, but also for the severity of Covid-19 disease and its devastating consequences.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975, and 2016 statistics show that more than 1.9 billion adults, aged 18 and older, were overweight, and 650 million of this total were obese. Locally, 2016 statistics show that obesity rates in South Africa are also increasing rapidly, with almost 70% of women and 40% of men either overweight or obese, according to the Department of Health’s website.
The problem is also not limited to high-income countries anymore. Low- and middle-income countries are also seeing a dramatic rise in overweight and obesity cases, especially in urban areas. The causes of obesity are complex, but one of the key drivers is in the way we eat, something that has changed dramatically over the last 50 years.
As a result of changes in our environment, unhealthy, processed food has become more readily available (and affordable), and opportunities for physical activity are lacking. In their paper, the three researchers argue that the high number of obesity cases worldwide is the result of living in food environments that make it difficult not to overconsume calories, and mention the global food industry’s role in this.
• Maintain physical distancing – stay at least one metre away from somebody who is coughing or sneezing
• Practise frequent hand-washing, especially after direct contact with ill people or their environment
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, as your hands touch many surfaces and could potentially transfer the virus
• Practise respiratory hygiene – cover your mouth with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Remember to dispose the tissue immediately after use.
Unhealthy cravings affect almost everyone. The areas of your brain responsible for memory and pleasure are activated, making cravings practically impossible to resist.
Instead of cheese puffs, try cheese crisps. “They are low carbohydrates, high protein and often come in portioned bags,” says Sharon Richter, a registered dietician.
The trick is to replace foods high in sugar and carbohydrates for healthy options that will keep you satisfied for long.
Here are some healthy exchanges for some of the most commonly craved junk foods.
Harvard neuroscientists discovered high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the guts of fruit flies and mice that died from sleep deprivation
ROS can cause cell damage which leads to oxidative stress
Test subjects were able to survive sleep deprivation when ROS accumulation was prevented
It’s a universal fact that every creature in the animal kingdom – humans included – needs sleep to survive. Why exactly still eludes science, but a Harvard study by neuroscientists has pinpointed the probable cause of death when sleep deprivation occurs.
In humans, sleep deprivation tends to be a symptom of another disease rather than a disease in itself. According to the Department of Neurology at Columbia University, it can affect your memory, cause inattentiveness, make you weak against infections and more prone to mental health problems.
It can also increase your risk of mental illness, stroke, heart disease and cause hallucinations in extreme cases.
“When we think of sleep, we usually think of the brain because the nervous system generates sleep; we dream during this time and overwhelming mental fog follows even a single night of sleep restriction,” says one of the lead scientists in the study’s video abstract – Dragana Rogulja, assistant professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
“But can sleep really be all about the brain? We asked, what do sleep-deprived animals die from?”
Using fruit flies and mice, they exposed their test subjects to environments that would prevent sleep and then autopsied their organs to look for any changes. As the test subjects started dying from the lack of sleep, the scientists noticed a massive spike in reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the gut. These chemical substances cause cell damage that in turn causes oxidative stress, which could be a cause of the deaths.
In the fruit flies, they tried to “rescue” them with antioxidants that target the gut, which resulted in them living out their normal life-span despite the sleep deprivation. The ROS accumulation also decreased and damage cleared when the test subjects were allowed to sleep again.
The results of this study could help find another link between poor sleep and poor health. However, the scientists add that they need to find out more about what causes the spike in ROS accumulation in the gut, and if it might be triggered by the brain.
This isn’t the first study to link the gut to sleep. One study from Nova Southeastern University published last year in PLOS ONE found a link between good sleep and maintaining a healthy gut microbiome diversity. Our guts can influence our mental and physical health and vice versa, and thus poor sleep can be detrimental to the gut.
So, having a regular sleep schedule with an average of seven to eight hours of shuteye a night is just another part of maintaining a healthy body and mind.
In a panel discussion about schools opening, experts emphasised the low-risk of children under 19 when it comes to contracting and spreading the coronavirus
Even children with comorbidities like asthma and diabetes – with their condition under control – are deemed to be low-risk
Leading paediatric allergologist Professor Eugene Weinberg noted that only 1% of kids who contract Covid-19 have severe symptoms
South African children have slowly started to return to school this week, with many parents still wondering how safe it is in the face of Covid-19.
Experts, however, stand behind the opening of schools, citing that children under the age of 19 are highly unlikely to contract Covid-19 or transmit it.
In a News24 Frontline panel discussion on Wednesday, Professor Eugene Weinberg – a paediatric allergologist – and Professor Heather Zar – a paediatric pulmonologist – weighed in on the health risks to children going back to school.
“Getting the flu is a higher risk than getting Covid-19 for kids,” says Zar, including dying from it. Children have a strong immunity to it, even those with comorbidities like asthma and diabetes – as long as the condition is well-medicated and under control.
And if children with comorbidities do catch it, symptoms remain mild or kids may even remain asymptomatic.
She also added that the coronavirus is far more like to spread in an office or grocery store than a school, and if a child catches it they are more likely to have caught it from their parents.
For those who do contract the virus, only 1% have severe symptoms according to Weinberg, the rest having mild or no symptoms. They are also unlikely to spread it.
He says many paediatric associations have put their weight behind sending children to school, including for their mental and social well-being.
“It’s unusual for a child to die from Covid-19, but the ‘What if I’m the statistic?’ is the concern for many parents,” says Weinberg.
Around the world, studies have shown resilience in children regarding Covid-19. According to research, less than 2% of reported infections in China, Italy and the US have been in people under the age of 18.
There is, however, one study that suggested that obesity seemed to have had some influence in cases where children develop severe symptoms from Covid-19.
The most important thing that both Zar and Weinberg encourage is for parents and teachers to be strict with children wearing masks as the best defence.
It’s something that can be done by everyone – unlike physical distancing and handwashing that can be difficult in certain situations.
Zar added that with smaller kids where mask-wearing can be problematic, opt for visors as an alternative, but notes that they are far less effective than masks.
It is difficult to say when exactly the cigarette ban will be lifted, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in response to a written parliamentary question.
DA MP Annette Steyn asked what empirical evidence the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) relied on to “collectively ban” the sale of tobacco products during the national lockdown and to contradict Ramaphosa’s initial announcement on 23 April that the sale of tobacco products would be permitted during Level 4 of the government’s risk adjusted strategy.
She also asked on what date it’s envisaged that the ban on the sale of tobacco products would be lifted.
Ramaphosa’s response read: “At this stage, it is difficult to determine when the ban on the sale of tobacco and related products will be lifted. This will depend on such factors as the progression of the disease in South Africa, the readiness of our health systems and evolving knowledge on the nature and impact of the virus itself.”
Ramaphosa said the decision to promulgate the Disaster Management Regulations, including regulation 27 which prohibits the sale of tobacco products “was taken after careful consideration, not only of the submissions received, but also the relevant medical literature focusing inter alia on the effects of smoking on public and individual health, especially in the face of a respiratory illness such as Covid-19”.
The Beer Association of South Africa (BASA) has called on South Africans to refrain from peddling fake news, following rumours the ban on the sale of alcohol will be reinstituted as it is not only a criminal offence, but can also lead to panic buying.
On Monday, News24 reported on WhatsApp voice notes and messages that were circulating which claimed a decision had been taken to re-impose the prohibition on the sale of alcohol.
Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs spokesperson Lungi Mtshali said a statement would be issued, but he confirmed the rumours were nothing more than misinformation.
“The Cabinet has not even met since the regulations came into effect, so there hasn’t even been a discussion on the matter,” Mtshali added.
In a statement, crafted alongside South African Breweries (SAB) and others in the alcohol industry, the BASA reiterated liquor sales would not be suspended this week.
“We call on all South Africans to refrain from spreading fake news,” it said.
People with TB and HIV have a two to three-fold increased risk of dying of Covid-19, according to data released by the Western Cape health department today. Although the data shows an increased risk, the risk is lower than what researchers expected.
As part of its analysis, the Western Cape reviewed 12 987 Covid-19 cases in its public sector, including 435 deaths. The department found that just over half of Covid-19 deaths were due to diabetes.
In contrast, about one in 10 fatalities from the new coronavirus was due to being HIV positive and 2% were due to having active TB, departmental public health medicine specialist Mary-Ann Davies announced during a Bhekisisa and Aurum Institute webinar on Wednesday.
“[Until now] we haven’t known whether we should consider people with HIV as being at higher risk [for Covid-19] or not,” said Davies. “So we should consider them as a risk group, both people with HIV and TB, but that increased risk is relatively small.”
Davies highlighted that people living with HIV tend to be younger and the risk of developing serious Covid-19 illness for young people is very low. But she added that many deaths among people living with HIV occurred in those with other underlying health conditions, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
Here are the most prevalent accomplices which conspire with Covid-19 to kill, according to Western Cape data: diabetes and hypertension.
Since the global pandemic arrived on South African shores, health authorities have warned that certain “comorbidities” are most-often prevalent.
Now, data compiled by the Western Cape government on deaths has broken down which comorbidities were prevalent by age, and has also given more insight into the impact of HIV and TB.
Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa was briefed on the most life-threatening, as he visited the embattled province which leads the country by cases.
The top five are diabetes, hypertension, HIV, obesity and asthma/chronic respiratory disease. This was part of an exhaustive 68-page presentation to the first citizen by the Western Cape government on Friday.
But it was not just single illnesses to which Covid-19-infected succumbed: A full 65% of the patients cited had more than one comorbidity. And two out of five had three or more.
When epidemiologists talked about “flattening the curve,” they probably didn’t mean it this way: the US hit its peak coronavirus caseload in April, but since that time the graph has been on a seemingly unending plateau.
That’s unlike several other hard-hit countries which have successfully pushed down their numbers of new cases, including Spain and Italy, which now have bell-shaped curves.
Experts say the prolonged nature of the US epidemic is the result of the cumulative impact of regional outbreaks, as the virus that started out primarily on the coasts and in major cities moves inward.
Layered on top of that are the effects of lifting lockdowns in parts of the country that are experiencing rising cases, as well as a lapse in compliance with social distancing guidelines because of economic hardship, and in some cases a belief that the threat is overstated.
“The US is a large country both in geography and population, and the virus is at very different stages in different parts of the country,” Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told AFP.
High blood pressure, medically known as hypertension, is a serious medical condition that affects an estimated 1.13 billion people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – most of them in low- and middle-income countries.
According to new research published this month in the European Heart Journal, patients with this condition have a double risk of dying from Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, than patients without it.
The study was carried out by researchers in China and Ireland who looked at data from 2 866 patients with Covid-19. The patients were admitted to Huo Shen Shan hospital in Wuhan, China, earlier this year. Out of these patients, 850 presented with a medical history of high blood pressure.
The researchers found that 34 out of 850 patients (4%) with Covid-19 died, compared to 22 out of 2 027 (1.1%) patients without hypertension. This was after they took into account factors that may have affected the results, such as age, sex and other medical conditions.
As the world grapples with the pandemic, social distancing and lockdown measures have widely been implemented on the basis that many carriers might not know that they have the coronavirus, with mild or no symptoms to prompt getting tested.
During a briefing on Monday, a top World Health Organisation official a made a startling statement on asymptomatic carriers of the virus, prompting backlash.
Dr Maria van Kerkhove – head of WHO’s Emerging Diseases and Zoonosis Unit – said that it would seem that it’s rare that asymptomatic people spread Covid-19.
“We have a number of reports from countries that are doing very detailed contact tracing. They are following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts and they’re not finding secondary transmission onward – it’s very rare and not much of that is published in the literature,” said Van Kerkhove in the conference.
On 29 May 2020 Health24 published an article on the possible repercussions that false negatives for coronavirus could have in containing the spread of Covid-19.
According to the latest research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the odds of a false negative through RT-PCR, the most commonly used test, is one in five.
Now, further research from the Geisel Medical School of Dartmouth suggests that even more emphasis should be placed on addressing these inaccuracies, as testing is crucial to containing the pandemic.
According to lead author, Prof Steve Woloshin from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical practice, there are two ways in which the current diagnostic tests, which involve a swab from the nasal passage, can be inaccurate:
“A false-positive result mistakenly labels a person infected, with consequences including unnecessary quarantine and contact tracing. [Secondly], false-negative results are far more consequential because infected persons who might be asymptomatic may not be isolated and can infect others,” he stated in a news release.
Scientist across the world became interested in the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine after an in vitro study (done in a lab) in China in February showed promising results in combatting Covid-19.
The drug which has anti-inflammatory and anti-viral properties, also showed promising signs in animal studies and in some small clinical studies done early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Soon the rush was on and countries like Australia and the US began stockpiling the drug previously best known as a treatment for malaria.
Hydroxychloroquine has however to date not been proven effective to treat Covid-19 in humans, especially in placebo-controlled, randomised controlled clinical trials, considered the gold standard for medical evidence.
While low-dose chloroquine has an extensive safety track record of long-term use for malaria prevention and treatment of auto-immune disorders like lupus, higher doses of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine can be toxic and, among others, cause heart problems. Hydroxychloroquine is a less toxic version of its close cousin chloroquine.
• Maintain physical distancing – stay at least one metre away from somebody who is coughing or sneezing
• Practise frequent hand-washing, especially after direct contact with ill people or their environment
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, as your hands touch many surfaces and could potentially transfer the virus
• Practise respiratory hygiene – cover your mouth with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Remember to dispose the tissue immediately after use.
NYU researchers created an app to detect the severity of Covid-19 cases
This may help hospitals prioritise care and resources
A research team aims to roll out the app globally within weeks
Numerous innovative mobile apps are playing a big role in helping with the Covid-19 response, for example for self-screening or contact tracing. One of the latest apps, created by NYU College of Dentistry, can determine how severe Covid-19 cases are.
Research assessing the app through studying patients was published in the journal Lab on a Chip.
How it works
The app uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assess a person’s risk factors and key biomarkers from blood tests. It then produces a severity score which can determine how sick a Covid-positive patient is or may become – something that current diagnostic tests to detect whether someone is infected by the virus cannot do.
In their paper, the team of 15 researchers wrote about the need for a Covid-19 disease severity test that can help to prioritise care and resources for patients at higher risk of death.
“Identifying and monitoring those at risk of severe complications is critical for both resource planning and prognostication.
“Likewise, ruling out and/or reducing the admission of patients with very low risk of complications who can be safely managed through self-quarantine would conserve precious medical resources during a surge of new cases in an outbreak,” they wrote.
Developing the severity score
Data from a total of 160 hospitalised Covid-19 patients in Wuhan, China, was evaluated, and the researchers identified four biomarkers measured in the patients’ blood tests that were significantly higher in patients who died, versus patients who recovered from the disease.
What these biomarkers do is indicate complications linked to Covid-19, such as lower respiratory tract infections, poor cardiovascular health, and acute inflammation.
Using the biomarkers as well as two risk factors, i.e. age and sex, the researchers built a model and trained this model using a machine-learning algorithm (a type of AI) to analyse the patterns of Covid-19, which ended up being able to predict its level of severity.
Once a patient’s biomarkers and risk factors are entered into the model, a numerical Covid-19 severity score, ranging from 0 (mild or moderate) to 100 (critical) is produced. To validate the model, data from 12 hospitalised Covid-19 patients were used. The results confirmed the accuracy of the process.
The model was validated using data from 12 hospitalised Covid-19 patients from Shenzhen, China, which confirmed that the model’s severity scores were significantly higher for the patients that died versus those who were eventually discharged. These findings are published in Lab on a Chip.
The team wanted to further validate the model and therefore ended up using data from more than 1 000 New York city Covid-19 patients. The helpful tool later became available as a mobile app to clinicians.
Aim to roll out app nationwide
With global coronavirus cases increasing at a fast pace, Forbes reports, the researchers have spent time optimising the clinical utility of the app at the Family Health Centers at NYU Langone last month, and intend to roll it out nationwide within the coming weeks.
“An experienced team and established translation partnerships are both in place to move these systems into real-world practice in a timely manner. Further, the release of an app for immediate impact on Covid-19 patient management in the next few weeks is anticipated,” the authors wrote, adding that there may be a few promising additions to the app:
“Future work may also involve developing a test on the same platform for population-based Covid-19 community surveillance in clinical settings (ambulances, hospitals, clinics, laboratories) and for public settings that are at risk for community spread (businesses, schools, airports, train stations).”
The development and distribution of an affordable and portable smart sensor technology that can be widely distributed within months promise to be a significant solution for the management of the current health crisis, the researchers said, as well as a tool that can be adapted to fight any future viral or biological threats.
Love to cuddle up? It might bring a ‘mind meld’ too, new research shows.
People in close physical contact appear to have synchronised brain patterns, a revolutionary new MRI technique has revealed.
A functional MRI scan of two people cuddling under a blanket showed that their brains appeared to be falling into similar patterns of action and response, as they took turns gently tapping the other’s lips, a Finnish research team reports.
“In general terms, it shows how the brains of two individuals become ‘tuned in’ together during this kind of elementary human interaction,” said senior researcher Lauri Nummenmaa, head of the Human Emotion Systems laboratory at the University of Turku in Finland.
Synchronised brain responses
Research of this sort could be valuable in dealing with conditions where people have trouble with social interactions, he said.
“Such processes are disrupted in numerous conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder, and understanding the elementary mechanisms of sociability will help us in understanding these conditions better,” Nummenmaa said.
It’s not surprising that the 10 couples in the study – either friends or romantic partners – appeared to have had synchronised brain responses, said Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami.
“There’s this intimacy that generates similar patterns of physiological and biochemical responses, and this is a good demonstration of that,” she said. “That’s been shown in everything from heart rates to brain waves, and other measures like cortisol levels.”
For example, prior studies have shown blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol differ in partners when they are working and not together much, but fall into synch on the weekends when they’re hanging out all day with each other, Field said.
“I expect that if they pursue these studies, they’re going to find very similar regions of the brain are being activated at similar times as these people are cuddling or wrapped around each other,” she said.
Experimental MRI
But Field added that the real value of this initial study lies in the fact that two human brains were scanned at the same time using a single MRI machine.
“This establishes you can take MRIs in two people at the same time,” Field said. “It shows the technology is possible.”
In this experimental MRI, the head coil used for regular brain scans was split into two separate coils, allowing for simultaneous scanning of two brains when people are positioned close together inside the machine.
“The main goal of this study was to benchmark the new two-person brain imaging setup,” Nummenmaa said.
“We found that our setup could reliably pick brain signals from both participants, and we saw a clear alteration in the motor (in the person who was doing the touching) and somatosensory (in the person who was feeling the touching) cortices in the subjects,” Nummenmaa said. “However, both cortical sites were always activated to some extent in both participants.”
Brain functions become linked
The research team said there are countless ways to use this technology to investigate how the brain processes social interaction, now that the MRI technique has been shown to work.
“For example, during a conversation or problem solving, people’s brain functions become flexibly linked with each other,” said researcher Riitta Hari, a retired professor of neuroscience at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland.
“However, we cannot understand the brain basis of real-time social interaction if we cannot simultaneously scan the brain functions of both persons involved in social interaction,” Hari explained in a university news release.
The new study was published online on 28 April in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.
A testosterone-lowering drug can reduce male paedophiles’ risk of sexually abusing children, according to a new Swedish study.
The drug, called degarelix, is used to treat prostate cancer and turns off production of testosterone. It’s given by injection every three months and can lower testosterone levels within hours, according to researchers.
The study included 52 male paedophiles in Sweden who received either degarelix or a placebo. Treatment with degarelix reduced high sexual desire and sexual attraction to children – two major risk factors for committing child sexual abuse. These effects were noticeable within two weeks, the study found.
Many of the men who received the drug said they developed an inner calm, that thoughts of sex were no longer dominant, and that they lost their sexual interest in children.
Rates continue to rise
A majority who received the drug wanted to continue taking it after the trial, according to the study published online recently in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
“It’s important to be able to offer a relatively fast-acting treatment, and the patients’ own experiences of the drug were overall positive,” said study leader Dr Christoffer Rahm, a researcher in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
“This study is an important step towards an evidence-based treatment for paedophilic disorder,” he said in an institute news release. “We’re now planning a new study to assay the longer-term effects of the drug and to compare them with psychotherapy.”
About one in 10 girls and one in 20 boys are sexually abused, primarily by male paedophiles, according to the Swedish team, though statistics have been reported higher in the United States. Despite law enforcement and prevention initiatives, the rates continue to rise, according to Rahm and his colleagues.
They said there is an urgent need for effective and scientifically proven treatments for people at risk of committing child sexual abuse.
