Researchers have helped isolate the Lloviu virus (LLOV), a close relative of Ebola virus, for the first time, showing that it could cross over into humans, highlighting the need for future research to ensure pandemic preparedness. The study is reported in Nature Communications.
LLOV is part of the filovirus family, which also includes the Ebola virus. While Ebola (and other filoviruses including the lethal Marburg virus) have only occurred naturally in Africa, Lloviu has been discovered in Europe. The filovirus LLOV, was genetically identified in 2002 in Schreiber’s bats in Spain and was subsequently detected in bats in Hungary.
As a zoonotic virus, LLOV is of public health interest to public health around the world due to our close relationship with animals in agriculture, as companions and in the natural environment. Increasing encroachment on the natural environment is creating more opportunities for zoonotic viruses to cross over into humans.
Dr Simon Scott, from the Viral Pseudotye Unit (VPU) at Medway School of Pharmacy were part of a team led by Dr Gábor Kemenesi from Pécs University/National Laboratory of Virology in Hungary. The VPU were involved in conducting all the antibody detection experiments using bat sera as part of the study, even before the virus itself was isolated. This isolation occurred in the Hungarian lab from the very last bat which tested LLOV positive.
The team discovered that Lloviu has the potential to both infect human cells and replicate, raising concerns about potential widespread transmission in Europe and urges immediate pathogenicity and antiviral studies. The VPU work also revealed no antibody cross-reactivity between LLOV and Ebola, suggesting that existing Ebola vaccines might not protect against Lloviu.
Dr Scott said that their research “is a smoking gun. It’s vital that we know both more about the distribution of this virus and that research is done in this area to assess the risks and to ensure we are prepared for potential epidemics and pandemics.”
The research revealed a considerable knowledge gap regarding the pathogenicity, animal hosts, and transmissibility of these newly discovered viruses. Dr Scott created a consortium of European bat virologists, harnessing expertise in the field, from ecology to virology, which is aiming to carry out essential further research across Europe into the risks of the Lloviu virus to humans.
In a questionnaire-based study published in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, nearly half of all nursing staff made at least one error within the last year when administering medications.
The aim of the study was to find out how often medication errors occur and whether they are related to training, quality assurance measures (use of the double-check principle (DCP)), and other structural conditions of home care services.
In the study, 41.6% of nurses reported medication errors within a 12-month period, and 14.8% did not provide an answer. Medication errors experienced by patients include taking the wrong dose or quantity of a particular drug, as well as omission of a drug or taking unlicensed drugs.
Nurses who had attended medication training within the last 2 years were less likely to make errors. Years of professional experience, patient numbers per shift, and full time versus part time work were not statistically significantly associated with reported medication errors.
“The study results underline the need for regularly recurring medication training for nurses to ensure a high level of patient safety – especially in the home care sector, as nurses are the only professional group on site,” said lead author Sandra Strube-Lahmann, RN, MSc, PhD, of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, in Germany.
Chocolate drops covered with candy nonpareils (left), a bowl of colourful candy nonpareils (centre), pharmaceutical caplets coated with nonpareils (right).
Credit: William Grover/UCR
During lockdown, UC Riverside bioengineering professor William Grover kept busy counting the colourful candy sprinkles perched on top of chocolate drops. In the process, he hit upon a simple way to prevent pharmaceutical fraud and detailed it in the journal Scientific Reports.
He calls the technique ‘CandyCode’ and uses tiny multi-coloured candy nonpareils commonly known as ‘hundreds and thousands’ in South Africa as a uniquely identifiable coating for pharmaceutical capsules and pills.
Millions of people are harmed by counterfeit or substandard medicine, a problem which costs an estimated $200 billion annually. One in 10 medical products in developing countries is fake, according to a WHO estimate.
Prof Grover’s lab has previously worked on simple, low-cost ways of verifying the authenticity of pharmaceuticals. Other researchers have tried putting unique codes onto pills, but these solutions have drawbacks.
“The inspiration for this came from the little colourful chocolate candies. Each candy has an average of 92 nonpareils attached randomly, and the nonpareils have eight different colours. I started wondering how many different patterns of coloured nonpareils were possible on these candies,” explained Prof Grover. “It turns out that the odds of a randomly generated candy pattern ever repeating itself are basically zero, so each of these candies is unique and will never be duplicated by chance.”
This gave Prof Grover the idea that the nonpareils could be applied as a coating to each pill, giving it a unique pattern that could be stored by the manufacturer in a database. Consumers could upload a smartphone photograph of a pill and if its CandyCode matches one in the database, the consumer could be confident that the pill is genuine. If not, it is potentially fraudulent.
To test this idea, Prof Grover stuck nonpareils onto Tylenol (acetaminophen) capsules and developed an algorithm that converts a photo of a CandyCoded pill into text which could be stored on a database and accessed by consumers. Using this algorithm to analyse a set of CandyCode photos, he found they serve as universally unique identifiers, even after subjecting the CandyCoded pills to physical abuse that simulates the wear-and-tear of shipping.
“Using a computer simulation of even larger CandyCode libraries, I found that a company could produce 1017 CandyCoded pills – enough for 41 million pills for each person on earth – and still be able to uniquely identify each CandyCoded pill,” Grover said.
More colours and different shapes of nonpareils could generate even more unique CandyCodes. CandyCoded capsules or tablets have an unexpected benefit for the consumer as well.
“Anecdotally, I found that CandyCoded caplets were more pleasant to swallow than plain caplets, confirming Mary Poppins’ classic observation about the relationship between sugar and medicine,” Prof Grover remarked.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID pandemic (described as “excess mortality”) was approximately 14.9 million, with a range of 13.3 million to 16.6 million.
“These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “WHO is committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.”
Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on data from earlier years.
Excess mortality includes deaths directly associated with COVID (due to the disease) or indirectly (due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems and society). Deaths linked indirectly to COVID are attributable to other health conditions for which people were unable to access prevention and treatment because health systems were overburdened by the pandemic. Excess death numbers can be influenced also by deaths averted during the pandemic due to lower risks of certain events, such as car accidents or occupational injuries.
The estimate for a 24-month period (2020 and 2021) finds that the excess deaths (84%) are largely concentrated in South-East Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Some 68% of excess deaths are concentrated in just 10 countries globally. Middle-income countries account for 81% of the 14.9 million excess deaths (53% in lower-middle-income countries and 28% in upper-middle-income countries) over the 24-month period, with high-income and low-income countries each accounting for 15% and 4%, respectively.
The estimates confirm that the global death toll was higher for men than for women (57% male, 43% female) and higher among older adults. A better picture of COVID mortality data comes from excess deaths per 100 000 instead of mortality counts, which can seem skewed due to population size.
“Measurement of excess mortality is an essential component to understand the impact of the pandemic. Shifts in mortality trends provide decision-makers information to guide policies to reduce mortality and effectively prevent future crises. Because of limited investments in data systems in many countries, the true extent of excess mortality often remains hidden,” said Dr Samira Asma, Assistant Director-General for Data, Analytics and Delivery at WHO. “These new estimates use the best available data and have been produced using a robust methodology and a completely transparent approach.”
The world’s first malaria vaccine will soon be available across sub-Saharan Africa, according to PATH, partners of the vaccine developers, as positive results from the pioneering jab pile up.
The vaccine, known as RTS,S/AS01E and commercialised under the brand name Mosquirix, targets children as over three quarters of malaria deaths occur in under-five-year olds, according to the latest report from the WHO.
Findings from a WHO pilot held in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, showed that the pioneering vaccine caused a significant reduction in severe malaria and hospitalisation among vaccinated children.
It means more countries in sub-Saharan Africa will soon receive the vaccine, says John Bawa, Africa lead for vaccine implementation at Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH).
These findings pave the way for an expanded distribution scheme that will see countries like Mozambique, Nigeria and Zambia receive the vaccines, said Bawa during a webinar held in commemoration of World Malaria Day.
“The next is to deploy the vaccine to other endemic countries. Countries that are interested in the vaccine are expected to apply to GAVI from June to September,” he said at the webinar organised by the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN), PATH and Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC).
“Countries like Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia and Nigeria have already written officially to express interest for the vaccine,” Bawa said.
He said malaria vaccine coverage in Malawi was at 88% in 2020 and 93% in 2021. In Ghana, it was 71% in 2020 and 76% in 2021 and in Kenya, it was 69% in 2020 and 83% in 2021.
“These numbers indicate strong community demand and capacity of childhood vaccination platforms to effectively deliver the vaccine to children,” said Bawa.
Currently, 1 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have received at least one dose of the first malaria vaccine.
These vaccines were distributed in a pilot scheme organized by WHO. The organisation has now recommended the vaccine for use among children in areas with moderate to high transmission rate of malaria.
“This vaccine is not just a scientific breakthrough, it is life-changing for families across Africa. It demonstrates the power of science and innovation for health,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Vaccine procurement
In an arrangement to boost vaccine supply and coverage, GlaxoSmithKline, producers of the RTS,S vaccine, will transfer technology and patent to Bharat Biotech in India to manufacture the vaccines.
The WHO, in a press release, said more than US$155 million has been secured from to support the introduction, procurement and delivery of the malaria vaccine for Gavi-eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The organisation said it would provide guidance for countries that are considering the use of vaccines for the reduction childhood illnesses and deaths from malaria.
“For some countries, Gavi is paying about 80% [of the] cost of the vaccine, while it is expected that the country’s government would pay the [remaining] 20%,” Bawa said.
Wellington Oyibo, director of the Centre for Malaria Diagnosis, Research, Capacity Building and Policy at the University of Lagos, urged African leaders to ensure that their counterpart funds are available to purchase the vaccine.
He said the Nigerian government and the Prince Ned Nwoko Foundation malaria eradication project have applied to purchase the vaccine for Nigerian children.
Oyibo said while the initial rollout of the vaccine may not go around the country, the Nigerian government selected states with the highest malaria burden to begin with.
A Monash University-led research team has developed a risk score based on individuals’ genetic data to predict their likelihood of needing hip or knee replacement surgery for osteoarthritis. The team validated the score’s predictive ability in a study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.
The score incorporates 10 genetic sequence variants for predicting a person’s risk of needing knee replacement surgery and 37 genetic sequence variants for predicting the risk of needing hip replacement surgery.
Among 12093 individuals of European genetic descent aged 70 years or older, 1422 (11.8%) had knee replacements and 1,297 (10.7%) had hip replacements. Participants with high risk scores had a 1.44-times higher odds of knee replacement and a 1.88-times higher odds of hip replacement, compared with those with low risk scores.
“Genetic scores, such as the one we developed, do not change over a person’s life. They provide an individual with further information about their risk of severe osteoarthritis in later life and have the potential to improve prevention of severe knee and hip osteoarthritis by identifying those who may benefit from early intervention,” said senior author Flavia Cicuttini, PhD, of Monash University.
The Eastern Cape Department of Health has served more than 200 paramedics with letters of intention to dismiss them for embarking on a strike.
Long-standing problems with access to ambulances in parts of the Eastern Cape have worsened over the last three weeks as paramedics have stopped work in Buffalo City Municipality, Amahlathi and Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality. The paramedics are demanding fully equipped ambulances, with valid licence discs, and cellphones.
They want electrocardiography (ECG ) monitors, batteries, spine boards, blankets, head blocks, cervical collars, and baby cribs.
The workers are members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) which maintains that the paramedics are not on strike but are exercising their right to safety at work. The paramedics come to work everyday in full uniform and wait at their work places until their shifts are over.
One of the workers, who has been a paramedic for six years, told GroundUp: “The service we offer to the public is very poor. Our ambulances have no equipment. There are no machines to check diabetes and high blood pressure. Our radios don’t function because we work in deep rural areas where there is a network problem. We use our cellphones to respond to the calls and communicate with our control room.”
“These issues have been raised for many years with the department but it has always been empty promises. If we transport a patient in an ambulance which is not fully equipped the department shifts the blame on us if something wrong happens to the patient. We are not on strike, because we come daily to work.”
“The Department is threatening to fire us but it’s fully aware that it is failing its workers and patients.”
When GroundUp visited Fort Beaufort Provincial Hospital on Tuesday, we found patients being transported in private vehicles.
Thando Ntsume from Hillside dropped a patient in casualty with his private vehicle. “I could see that she was in severe pain and battling to breathe. Her family had been calling for an ambulance since the morning but it never arrived.”
“I know from my own experience that there are no ambulances available in this hospital. Three months ago I was stabbed and admitted to this hospital. Doctors transferred me to Cecilia Makiwane Hospital but they told me I should find my own transport because ambulances are not available. My brother had to take me with his car to East London.”
Patients outside the Fort Beaufort Provincial Hospital casualty department complain about the lack of ambulances. Photo: Mkhuseli Sizani
Mihlali Matshoba says the ambulance crisis has been going on for a long time. “On 7 October I gave birth at home because ambulances are not available here in Fort Beaufort. Sometimes they are hours late or we are told there is only one ambulance operating.”
Nolly Oliphant had to borrow money to put fuel in her car to take her son to Cecilia Makiwane Hospital after he injured his hand.
“I drove with him to Fort Beaufort Provincial Hospital. The doctors treated him and told me that I should take him with my own transport to Cecilia Makiwane Hospital. “I had to borrow R1,200 for fuel because ambulances are not available.”
“The strike has been devastating,” said one of the Fort Beaufort doctors. “We had to ventilate a patient in Fort Beaufort for over 24 hours because of the strike. Eventually we managed to get a private ambulance to come. The hospitals have been using their bakkies to transport patients.”
Regional NEHAWU coordinator Mzamane Mgwantashe says the workers are not on strike. “Over 200 workers are coming everyday to work. But they cannot perform their duties because ambulances are faulty and not fully equipped. In February, ambulances were fully equipped by the Department in order to obtain service compliance certificates. The same day after the assessment was done the equipment was stripped by the Department. We don’t know why that was done and we don’t know where that equipment was taken.”
He said workers had been told cellphones had been bought for them, but they had never received them. “Instead the Department bought ‘push-to-talk’ devices without consulting the workers.”
Mkhululi Ndamase, spokesperson for Health MEC Nomakhosazana Meth, confirmed the notices to dismiss over 200 workers who had embarked on an unprotected strike. He said the department had addressed the issues raised by the union.
“All vehicles are licensed annually and a certificate of fitness is issued before a vehicle is put on the road. We are in agreement that if a vehicle does not carry the valid licence and/or the certificate of fitness displayed, it should not be used. There are more than enough vehicles in the pool even while vehicles may be grounded whilst being repaired. The rough terrain of our predominantly rural areas and high volume usage does make them vulnerable to breakdowns.”
He said the vehicles were replaced every 300,000 km.
On the issue of cellphones, he said the department had issued “push-to-talk devices” earlier this year and most paramedics had accepted them. Responding to the complaint about equipment being put in the ambulances just to get licence approval, Ndamase said this was being investigated.
“None of these issues are considered valid reasons to suspend services to the communities we serve.”
The department was using private ambulances to respond to emergency calls, which was costly. Two of these ambulances had been stoned, he said.
Ndamase said a rule of no work no pay would apply.
South Africa’s COVID vaccine production plant, the first of its kind in Africa is at risk of closure after failing to secure a single according to a report from Reuters. President Cyril Ramaphosa is reported to be in talks with three other African nations in effort to save the venture.
The World Health Organization had called the licensing deal between Johnson & Johnson and Aspen Pharmacare to manufacture the Aspenovax COVID vaccine, a “transformative moment” in the pursuit of equitable access to vaccines. The vaccine is the J&J adenovirus vector vaccine sold under the Aspen brand.
However, after initial vaccine delivery shortfalls, the African continent is now well stocked with vaccines, while the poor infrastructure hampers vaccine distribution.
“There’ve been no orders received for Aspenovax,” Reuters reported, citing a phone conversation with Aspen senior director Stavros Nicolaou.
“If we don’t get orders, we would have to repurpose these lines back into other things that we were previously doing,” he told CapeTalk.
There are several other such vaccine plants in various stages, as the African Union aims at 60% of locally produced vaccines for continent locally by 2040, up from the current 1%.
“If Aspen doesn’t get production, what chance is there for any of the other initiatives?” Nicolaou remarked.
Regarding possible options, he said: “We are exploring various options. It is our medium-to-long-term objective to look at providing a sterile [processing] platform and solutions for the continent but the short-term needs to be sorted out.”
Moderna announced an agreement with Kenya to set up its first mRNA manufacturing facility in Africa with the aim of producing up to 500 million doses a year.
Advising people to take a week-long social media break could lead to significant improvements in their wellbeing, depression and anxiety and could become a recommended part of maintaining mental health, according to the authors of a study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.
University of Bath researchers studied the mental health effects of a week-long social media break. Some participants were able to free up 9 hours a week of time otherwise spent scrolling Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.
Their results suggest that just one week off social media improved individuals’ overall level of well-being, as well as reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.
For the study, the researchers randomly allocated 154 individuals aged 18 to 72 who used social media every day into either an intervention group, where they were asked to stop using all social media for one-week or a control group, where they could continue scrolling as normal. At the beginning of the study, baseline scores for anxiety, depression and wellbeing were taken.
At the start of the study, average time spend on social media was 8 hours per week. After one week, the participants who were asked to take the one-week break had significant improvements in wellbeing, depression, and anxiety than those who continued to use social media, suggesting a short-term benefit.
Participants asked to take a one-week break reported using social media for an average of 21 minutes’ use compared to seven hours for the control group, with screen usage stats used to confirm adherence to the break. Lead researcher from Bath’s Department for Health, Dr Jeff Lambert explained: “Scrolling social media is so ubiquitous that many of us do it almost without thinking from the moment we wake up to when we close our eyes at night.
“We know that social media usage is huge and that there are increasing concerns about its mental health effects, so with this study, we wanted to see whether simply asking people to take a week’s break could yield mental health benefits.
“Many of our participants reported positive effects from being off social media with improved mood and less anxiety overall. This suggests that even just a small break can have an impact.
“Of course, social media is a part of life and for many people, it’s an indispensable part of who they are and how they interact with others. But if you are spending hours each week scrolling and you feel it is negatively impacting you, it could be worth cutting down on your usage to see if it helps.”
The team’s next steps include investigating short breaks in different populations (eg younger people) and to increase follow up time. If benefits persist, they speculate that this could help in mental health management.
Over the past 15 years, social media has undergone explosive growth. In the UK the number of adults using social media increased from 45% in 2011 to 71% in 2021. As many as 97% of 16 to 44-year-olds use social media, with scrolling being most frequent online activity.
Feeling ‘low’ and losing pleasure are core characteristics of depression, whereas anxiety is characterised by excessive and out of control worry. Wellbeing refers to an individual’s level of positive affect, life satisfaction and sense of purpose. According to the UK mental health organisation Mind, one in six people experience a common mental health problem like anxiety and depression in any given week.
Some physical traits that differ between sexes are known to be linked to certain single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) outside the X and Y chromosomes. New research now suggests that many of these ‘sex-heterogenous’ SNPs also contribute to a person’s risk for a variety of diseases. Michela Traglia and colleagues at the University of California San Francisco presented their findings in PLOS Genetics.
Millions of SNPs are in each genome, with each SNP representing a difference in a certain DNA building block in a particular stretch of DNA. Many associations have been uncovered between certain SNPs and people’s distinct traits. Understanding SNPs has a number of applications, such as predicting individual treatment effectiveness or disease risks.
Traglia and colleagues previously found that SNPs associated with certain differences in physical traits between men and women, such as waist-hip ratio and basal metabolic rate, may also affect the biology of autism spectrum disorder and other complex diseases. Building on this work with two large genomic datasets, the identified an updated list of 2320 sex-heterogeneous SNPs.
Analysis of these SNPs revealed that they are also associated with a variety of health-related traits and diseases, some with strong sex bias and some without, including schizophrenia, type 2 diabetes, anorexia, heart failure, and ADHD.
These SNPs are located in stretches of DNA that are either within or near genes involved in skeletal and muscle development in a growing embryo. In addition, these SNPs appear to play a role in regulating gene expression and DNA methylation, which are fundamental processes by which a person’s DNA is translated into their distinct biology and traits.
Overall, the researchers conclude that the identified SNPs play a role in early-life biological processes shaping sex-distinct traits and which also affect health and disease risk later in life. More work is needed to understand the mechanisms behind these sex-heterogeneous SNPs.
“We found that genetic alleles with differing effects on measured physical traits in men and women also play an outsized role in health risks,” remarked study co-author Lauren Weiss. “We hope this work helps us to understand the genetic underpinnings of sexual dimorphism and its relationship with both early development and later disease risk.”
