Year: 2021

Categories : Medical Research & Technology Neurodegenerative DiseasesTags :

Scientists Develop AI Tool to Detect Parkinson’s Disease

On By ModernMedia

Researchers have developed an AI program that can assist physicians in performing a quantitative analysis when diagnosing Parkinson’s disease. 

As human populations continue to age due to improved medical care, there is an impending ‘Parkinson’s disease pandemic’ where numbers of individuals suffering this age-related neurodegenerative disease threaten to overwhelm healthcare systems. There is a need to distinguish between Parkinson’s and other diseases which have similar motor symptoms.
Assistant Professor Andrey Somov at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and colleagues developed a machine learning algorithm to analyse video recordings of patients performing certain tasks.

“As part of the research process, we had the opportunity to closely interact with doctors and medical personnel, who shared their ideas and experience. It was fascinating observing how two seemingly different disciplines came together to help people. We also had the opportunity to monitor all parts of the research, from designing the methodology to data analysis and machine learning,” Kovalenko said.

The advantages of the video analysis approach is that it is simple, objective, noninvasive, quick, inexpensive and versatile.

To develop the machine learning algorithm, the researchers recorded 83 patients with and without Parkinson’s performing 15 tasks that they had designed, such as filling a glass with water. These tasks were developed in a prior feasibility study using wearable sensors. The machine learning technology allows for objective analysis which picks up certain features of the disease which may not be visible to the naked eye.

Coauthor of the study Sklotech Assistant Professor Dmitry Dylov, and “Machine learning and computer vision methods we used in this research are already well established in a number of medical applications; they can be trusted, and the diagnostic exercises for Parkinson’s disease have been in development by neurologists for some time. What is truly new about this study is our quantitative ranking of these exercises according to their contribution to a precise and specific final diagnosis. This could only be achieved in collaboration between doctors, mathematicians and engineers.”

“This collaboration between doctors and scientists in data analysis allows for many important clinical nuances and details that help achieve the best results. We as doctors see great potential in this; apart from differential diagnosis, we need objective tools to assess motor fluctuation in patients with PD. These tools can provide a more personalized approach to therapy and help make decisions on neurosurgical interventions as well as assess the outcomes of surgery later,” noted coauthor of the paper, neurologist Ekaterina Bril.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Kovalenko, E., et al. (2021) Distinguishing Between Parkinson’s Disease and Essential Tremor Through Video Analytics Using Machine Learning: a Pilot Study. IEEE Sensors.doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2020.3035240.

Categories : NeurologyTags :

Geometric Model of Sherlock Episode Reveals How We Recall Events

On By ModernMedia

Using a TV episode and a geometrical model, researchers at Dartmouth have come up with a new way to understand how the brain evaluates which experiences to store as memories and which to discard.

The researchers based their study around participants’ recall of a BBC episode of Sherlock against a geometric model of the events that happened in it. Their results allowed new insights into how memories are stored and then related to others.

Senior author Jeremy R Manning, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, and director of the Contextual Dynamics Lab at Dartmouth, explained: “When we represent experiences and memories as shapes, we can use the tools provided by the field of geometry to explore how we remember our experiences, and to test theories of how we think, learn, remember, and communicate.

“When you experience something, its shape is like a fingerprint that reflects its unique meaning, and how you remember or conceptualise that experience can be turned into another shape. We can think of our memories like distorted versions of our original experiences. Through our research, we wanted to find out when and where those distortions happen (i.e. what do people get right and what do people get wrong), and examine how accurate our memories of experiences are.”

Using a public dataset of brain recordings from 17 participants who had viewed the same Sherlock episode and described what had happened. This dataset also contained detailed notes on what took place in that episode. They took these notes to create a list of 32 topics, which were then represented as a 32-dimensional model. Visualised in 2 dimensions, a dot-to-dot shape emerges, to which the shapes made by the participants’ recall of events can be compared.

Using the episode’s shape as a structure, they were able to see at what points the participants’ memories matched the episode, and what points they forgot or had distorted recollections. The shape also featured extraneous elements of fine detail, like architectural embellishments such as carvings, which reflected low-conceptual details. Some participants accurately recounted these low-conceptual details while others could only recall high-level plot points.

“One of our most intriguing findings was that, as people were watching the episode, we could use their brain activity patterns to predict the distorted shapes that their memories would take on when they recounted it later,” explained Manning. “This suggests that some of the details about our ongoing experiences get distorted in our brains from the moment they are stored as new memories. Even when two people experience the same physical event, their subjective experiences of that event start to diverge from the moment their brains start to make sense of what happened and distill that event into memories.”

These findings could be used as the basis for research into improving educational delivery, as well as patients’ understanding of matters explained to them by their doctors.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Geometric models reveal behavioural and neural signatures of transforming experiences into memories, Nature Human Behavior (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01051-6

Categories : COVIDTags :

SA to Expedite 80 000 Doses of J&J Vaccine

On By ModernMedia

South Africa will accelerate the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, it has been reported.

SA has secured orders for 9 million doses of the vaccine, of which the first 80 000 are expected to arrive in the country next week. Since immunity with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is achieved with a single dose, this will be enough for 9 million people in South Africa, barring some inevitable wastage. Results from clinical trials in South Africa show that the vaccine has an effectiveness of 57%, 28 days after vaccination.

Professor Linda-Gail Bekker at the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre, University of Cape Town, who was involved in a South African trial last year, explained that there is a delay between the results of a clinical trial and the licence being granted for commercial use. She has urged the need for rapid vaccine rollout, and had also tested positive for COVID herself along with her family during the festive season. As a stopgap measure, an interim vaccination plan with 80 000 doses will be put into action at 32 locations around the country.

Explaining the programme, Prof Bekker said: “Can we together bring this expedited plan forward so that we can make sure we, as quickly as possible, rollout phase one recipients – mainly healthcare workers – into a kind of emergency programme.”

Prof Bekker describes the expedited rollout as being different to a clinical trial.

She continued, “This is not clinical research in the clinical trial concept; it really is programme evaluation, and many eyes are on it at the moment to make sure that we have covered all aspects – ethical, safety and scientific. We will not move without those approvals.”

Source: Eyewitness News

Categories : Neurology PaediatricsTags :

No Evidence for Strep Exacerbating Chronic Tics in Kids

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A new study has found that children with chronic tic disorders, mainly Tourette syndrome, do not have tic exacerbations when exposed to group A Streptococcus.

No significant association with tic exacerbations emerged across four definitions of pharyngeal strep exposure with a mean follow-up of 16 months, though a weak link was observed in trend, reported Davide Martino, MD, PhD, of the University of Calgary, and co-authors.

Strep was however significantly associated with longitudinal changes in hyperactivity-impulsivity symptom severity of 17% to 21%.
“The link between Streptococcus and tics in children is still a matter of intense debate,” Martino stated. “We wanted to look at that question, as well as a possible link between strep and behavioral symptoms like obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“While our findings suggest that strep is not likely to be one of the main triggers for making tics worse, more research is needed into other possible explanations. For example, the social stress of having this disorder could be implicated in making tics worse more than infections. It’s also possible another pathogen might be triggering an immune response associated with tic worsening.”

In an invited editorial, Andrea Cavanna, MD, PhD, of the University of Birmingham, and Keith Coffman, MD, of Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, observed that group A Streptococcus had been posited as a potential environmental factor in tic disorders for the past two decades.

The editorialists noted that, on the basis of isolated clinical observations, tic disorders should be included as a collateral feature in conditions which are known as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with Streptococcus (PANDAS) infections. However, the results of longitudinal clinical studies were inconclusive, with a case control study even arguing against the association.

Drawing data from the EMTICS study, recruiting children with chronic tic disorders from 2013 to 2016, one arm of the study prospectively examined associations between new group A Streptococcus throat exposures and tic exacerbations, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms.

Four definitions of strep exposure were used: new definite (newly positive throat swab regardless of serological results), new possible (elevated anti-streptolysin O [ASOT] or anti-DNAseB [ADB] titers with negative or no throat swab), ongoing definite, and ongoing possible.

Initially, 59 children had a positive throat swab; as the study progressed, 103 children had new definite strep exposure. During follow-up, 308 children (43%) had tic exacerbations. The proportion of exacerbations temporally associated with strep exposure ranged from 5.5% to 12.9%, depending on exposure definition. No association between OCD symptoms and strep exposure was seen.

“Our study of the largest prospective cohort of youth with chronic tic disorders ever documented to date provides evidence against a temporal association between group A Streptococcus exposure and clinically relevant tic exacerbations,” the researchers wrote.

“This result indicates that specific diagnostic work-up or active management of group A Streptococcus infections in the context of worsening of tic severity in patients with chronic tic disorders is not warranted,” the researchers added.

The researchers noted that limitations included the data being collected from specialist centres in different countries, and that some cases of strep may have been missed.

Source: MedPage Today

Journal information (article): Martino D, et al “Association of Group A Streptococcus Exposure and Exacerbations of Chronic Tic Disorders: A Multinational Prospective Cohort Study” Neurology 2021; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000011610.

Journal information (editorial): Cavanna A, Coffman K “Streptococcus and Tics: Another Brick in the Wall?” Neurology 2021. DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000011608.

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Chinatowns around the World Battle COVID and Xenophobia

On By ModernMedia

The BBC explores how the various Chinatowns around the world have been battling loss of business caused by COVID lockdowns, along with fear and xenophobia.

Sam Wo’s, a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, had been hit hard by COVID just like other businesses there.

The lockdowns had not yet happened but anti-Asian sentiment kept customers away. “All the Italian restaurants in North Beach were still busy and packed and then you went through the tunnel to Union Square and those guys had lines waiting to get in. And then you drive around Chinatown and it’s completely empty,”  Sam Wo’s co-owner Steven Lee told the BBC.

“So we know that xenophobia was affecting small businesses. Why would other districts be busy and we’re not?”

In the 12 months since, it has been forced to cut its staff numbers from 23 to three due to a lack of customers.

“People wouldn’t show up, they were just scared,” Mr Lee tells the BBC. “We had to rally and tell people to fight the virus, not the people and all this kind of stuff – but it didn’t help much.”

In the Japanese city of Yokohama, this went beyond mere avoidance; anti-Chinese notes were left on the doors of restaurants in March. Sales had plummeted to 10% of what they were the year before. The mayor of Yokohama railed against these notes, and locals voiced their support for their Chinatown, telling businesses to “hang in there” and promising to visit again.

In many Chinatowns, the lockdowns then worsened an already dire situation. 

“I know many businesses in Chinatown have closed. It’s terrifying,” Ying Hou, who runs Shandong MaMa in the Australian city of Melbourne, told the BBC. “There are gift houses where tourists come to buy souvenirs – most of them didn’t make it and have closed down.”

Ms Ying says her business is down 50%, but fortunately the shop is the only one in Chinatown to sell fish dumplings. Melbourne gave rent relief to many businesses, but this is now coming to an end. And now Melbourne is about to be plunged into a new five day lockdown surrounding the Australian Open. 

However, many are finding new answers to the problems posed by COVID. In New York, after Chinatown turned into a “ghost town” with the lockdowns closing down even essential businesses by May, Karho Leung took a page out of Hong Kong barber shops’ reactions to COVID and installed dividers and other measures. He advertised these safety enhancements, which went viral and resulted in a surge of business from pent-up demand.

Mr Leung added to his business and others that were struggling by embracing social media and online delivery companies such as Uber Eats. 
Organisations made up of ordinary citizens are also helping to keep their cities’ Chinatowns afloat as well. Send Chinatown Love is helping Chinatown businesses there with their online and social media presence to help generate business, creating “food crawls” to drum up foot traffic.

“Everything started happening around January, February of last year, which is the most lucrative and joyous and festive times for Chinatown. They took a hit with that business and lost most of it,” said Louise Palmer, who is a representative for the group. “So they ended up going into lockdown in March at a deficit, which kind of set a really terrible precedent for what the rest of the year would look like.”

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, in a hopeful development, business is picking up again since outdoor dining became allowed. Mr Lee said that Chinatown is booming again, and is planning to open a nightclub.

“We’re the oldest Chinatown in the country. We’re the tourist attraction that everybody comes to when they come to San Francisco. So we have to preserve it,” Mr Lee said.

Source: BBC News

Categories : Diet and Nutrition Skeletal SystemTags :

Plant-based Protein Increases Bone Turnover

On By ModernMedia

A Finnish study has found that increasing the share of dietary protein from plant versus animal sources leads to increased bone turnover and possible fracture risk.

The 136 adult participants followed one of three diets for a period of three weeks. One of them was modelled on the typical Finnish diet where 70% of protein came from animal sources and the rest from cereals. The second had half the protein come from animal sources and the other half from plants, and the third had 70% of protein from plants and the rest from animal sources

Dairy milk, which is fortified with vitamin D in Finland, was substituted with unfortified plant-based milk, which may have been a confounding variable. There was a marked increase in bone formation and resorption markers, which in the long term could indicate bone loss. These findings are in line with the Oxford-EPIC study, which followed participants for 18 years and found a higher rate of fractures in vegetarians compared to those on an omnivorous diet.

“The results could be different if fluid dairy products had been replaced with plant-based drinks fortified with vitamin D and calcium,” said Docent Suvi Itkonen, Department of Food and Nutrition, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki. “Then again, the average vitamin D intake was also below the recommended level in the group where subjects consumed the animal protein-rich diet, but not to the same extent as in the other groups.”

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Itkonen, S. T., et al. (2021) Partial Replacement of Animal Proteins with Plant Proteins for 12 Weeks Accelerates Bone Turnover Among Healthy Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial. The Journal of Nutrition.doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxaa264.

Categories : GeneticsTags :

African Genetic Data Needed to Complete the DNA Picture

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A $4.5 billion initiative to gather genomic data from African populations has been put forward to help fill the gaps in understanding the human genome.

Genome Wide Assay Studies (GWAS) have yielded a huge amount of insight into genetic associations with disease and roles in bodily function, transforming medicine. But the picture is still incomplete, and there are large gaps remaining.

While the genomes of Europeans and Americans has been well mapped, the genomes of Africans remain virtually a blank state despite having far more genetic diversity than any other region. Genome mapping has come a long way in the two decades since the first genome was sequenced, falling in cost from $3 billion to around $1000.

“Most genomic research on the African continent over the last two decades has largely been driven by agendas defined more by European and American investigators,” Ambroise Wonkam, a medical genetics professor and deputy dean of research at the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Health Sciences, told AFP.

“The Three Million African Genomes (3MAG) project would require sequencing individuals carefully selected across Africa to cover ethnolinguistic, regional and other groups,” Prof Wonkam said. A similar study to map the genomes of 100 000 Asian people is underway. 

The continent’s enormous genetic diversity no doubt holds a great number of surprises and important discoveries. Making his case in a comment in Nature, Prof Wonkam said that having access to such a diverse database would make it much easier to track down mutations.

“The aim is to capture the full scope of Africa’s genetic variation—for the benefit of all human populations and to ensure equitable access to genetic medicine.”

For example, a variant of the PCSK9 gene that is correlated with dyslipidaemia only came to light because it was 200 times more common in African Americans than Europeans.

Citing another example, Prof Wonkam said, “The inclusions of even a small number of black Americans in control cohorts probably would have prevented the misclassification of benign variants as causing cardiomyopathy.”

The relatively few GWAS of African populations that have been done also revealed a genetic susceptibility to type-2 diabetes that had previously gone unreported, and up to half of African populations have a gene variant associated with severe side effects to the HIV drug efavirenz.

When the genomes of 910 people of African descent were sequenced, it revealed large gaps in the ‘reference genome’ used by researchers around the world, Jesse Gillis, a researcher at the Stanley Institute for Cognitive Genomics in New York, noted in a study in BMC.

“Approximately 10 percent of DNA sequences—some 300 million base pairs—from these genomes were ‘missing’,” he stated.

Prof Wonkam has said that the study should mostly be funded by African governments, but international organisations should help foot the bill too. 

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Comment: Sequence three million genomes across Africa, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-00313-7 , www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00313-7

Categories : GeneticsTags :

Study Reveals the Genetics of Daytime Napping

On By ModernMedia

Genes play a role in how often, if at all, people take daytime naps, research has revealed.

Identifying dozens of genetic regions associated with napping, a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the University of Murcia in Spain conducted the largest study of its kind. Additionally, they discovered genetic links to cardiometabolic health. 

“Napping is somewhat controversial,” said Hassan Saeed Dashti, PhD, RD, of the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, co-lead author of the report. Dashti noted that some countries (such as Spain) which featured daytime napping in their culture now discourage it. Conversely, some companies in the United States now promote napping as a productivity. “It was important to try to disentangle the biological pathways that contribute to why we nap,” said Dashti.

In a Genome-Wide Association Study, the MGH researchers used genomic data obtained from the UK Biobank, which holds the genomes of 452 633 people. They replicated their findings using data from the company 23andMe which has obtained data from 541 333 people. The participants had rated their daytime napping habits, and a subset wore accelerometers to provide objective verification of resting behaviour. A number of the genes analysed were also already known to be associated with sleep.

The GWAS identified 123 genetic areas associated with napping. On further investigation, the researchers identified three factors which promote napping:

Sleep propensity: Some people require more sleep than others.
Disrupted sleep: Daytime napping can make up for poor sleep the previous night.
Early morning awakening: People who wake up too early can ‘get back’ some sleeping` time.

“This tells us that daytime napping is biologically driven and not just an environmental or behavioural choice,” said Dashti. Some of these subtypes were linked to cardiometabolic health concerns, such as waist circumference.

“Future work may help to develop personalised recommendations for siesta,” concluded Garaulet.

A number of the genes related to napping were already associated with orexin, a neuropeptide involved in wakefulness, as well as a number of other areas such as mood and feeding behaviour. This pathway is known to be associated with narcolepsy, but the findings suggested that smaller perturbations seem to be associated with napping.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Dashti, H.S., Daghlas, I., Lane, J.M. et al. Genetic determinants of daytime napping and effects on cardiometabolic health. Nat Commun 12, 900 (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20585-3 , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20585-3

Categories : Addiction COVIDTags :

Opioid Overdoses in US Increasing due to COVID

On By ModernMedia

The COVID pandemic has not seen a drop in the United States’ opioid crisis, rather there has been an exacerbation of the problem.

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry examined the impact that the COVID pandemic had on the US opioid crisis. 

Opioid misuse and addiction is an ongoing and increasing problem in the US, making up two thirds of overdoses. Some three million Americans have suffered opioid use disorder at some point. With approximately 100 million Americans living with chronic or acute pain, the situation is seemingly intractable. In 2019, there were 70 000 deaths from opioid overdoses, making it a top priority in public health, academic, and political debates. When the COVID pandemic hit, it did not displace the opioid crisis through distraction or somehow preventing access to opioids, it fanned the flames of it. 

Researchers analysed 190 million ED visits, and over March to October 2020. they observed an increase of  up to 45% in weekly opioid overdose admissions over the same period in 2019. Overall, ED visits for opioid overdoses had increased 28.8% compared to the previous year.

In September, the CDC warned that deaths from opioid overdoses were up by 38.4% in the first half of the year. The many stresses of the pandemic, such as its associated lockdowns and job losses and losing loved ones, has fuelled the opioid abuse. The same study also found that visits to the ED for mental health conditions, domestic violence, and child abuse and neglect increased over the same period of time, along with suicide attempts. 

Source: ABC News

Journal information: Holland KM, Jones C, Vivolo-Kantor AM, et al. Trends in US Emergency Department Visits for Mental Health, Overdose, and Violence Outcomes Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online February 03, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.4402

Categories : Cancer Diet and NutritionTags :

Decreasing Cancer Deaths with Population-wide Vitamin D

On By ModernMedia

Supplementation Scientists have estimated that supplementing the over-50 population in Germany with sufficient vitamin D would save 30 000 lives which would otherwise be lost to cancer, gaining some 300 000 extra years of life, all while reducing healthcare costs.

Vitamin D is created in the body through the interaction of UV-B radiation with dehydrocholesterol, which is produced in the skin, into vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). In many countries, populations have chronically low vitamin D levels due to more time being spent indoors. Vitamin D supplementation is associated with the prevention and treatment of nutritional rickets and osteomalacia, but it is important for other aspects of health such as prevention of respiratory tract infections and asthma. In countries such as Germany, low sunlight levels for much of the year combined with more time spent indoors results in much of the population having inadequate vitamin D levels. 

Three large meta-analyses had indicated that mortality due to cancer is reduced by 13% with vitamin D supplementation.

“In many countries around the world, the age-adjusted rate of cancer mortality has fortunately declined over the past decade,” said Hermann Brenner, epidemiologist at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ).  However, given the often considerable costs of many new cancer drugs, this success has often come at a high price. Vitamin D, on the other hand, is comparatively inexpensive in the usual daily doses.”

To get their figures, the scientists used a daily administration of 1000 international units of vitamin D, costing 25 Euros per person per year. Since about 36 million people over the age of 50 live in Germany, this results in an annual cost of 900 million Euros.

The researchers calculated the number of years lost to cancer death, and also did not account for testing of vitamin D levels, as the proposed 1000 international units were far short of an overdose danger. The study estimated that if the entire German population over the age 50 were given sufficient supplements to achieve the recommended levels of vitamin D, 30 000 cancers deaths annually would be prevented.

“In view of the potentially significant positive effects on cancer mortality – additionally combined with a possible cost-saving – we should look for new ways to reduce the widespread vitamin D deficiency in the elderly population in Germany. In some countries, foods have even been enriched with vitamin D for many years – for example, in Finland, where cancer mortality rates are about 20 percent lower than in Germany. Not to mention that there is mounting evidence of other positive health effects of adequate vitamin D supply, such as in lung disease mortality rates,” said Brenner, adding, “Finally, we consider vitamin D supplementation so safe that we even recommend it for newborn babies to develop healthy bones.”

Spending about 12 minutes two to three times a week in the sun, with face, hands and parts of the arms and legs all uncovered and without sunscreen is sufficient to provide enough vitamin D.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Niedermaier, T., et al. (2021) Vitamin D supplementation to the older adult population in Germany has the cost‐saving potential of preventing almost 30,000 cancer deaths per year. Molecular Oncology. doi.org/10.1002/1878-0261.12924.