The study assessed the health records of 2776 women with a child diagnosed with congenital heart disease who were matched to 13 880 women whose children did not have this condition.
Investigators found that 4.4% of children with congenital heart disease and 2.8% of children with normal heart function had anaemia. After adjusting for potential influencing factors, the odds of giving birth to a child with congenital heart disease was 47% higher among anaemic mothers.
“We already know that the risk of congenital heart disease can be raised by a variety of factors, but these results develop our understanding of anaemia specifically and take it from lab studies to the clinic. Knowing that early maternal anaemia is so damaging could be a gamechanger worldwide,” said corresponding author Duncan B. Sparrow, PhD, of the University of Oxford. “Because iron deficiency is the root cause of many cases of anaemia, widespread iron supplementation for women—both when trying for a baby and when pregnant—could help prevent congenital heart disease in many newborns before it has developed.”
Getting a timely diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is a major challenge, but new research out of York University shows that how young adults, and potentially children, grasp objects could offer a simpler way to diagnose someone on the autism spectrum.
The team, part of an international collaboration, used machine learning to analyse naturalistic hand movements – specifically, finger motions during grasping – in autistic and non-autistic individuals. Surprisingly, none of the simpler measures, such as time to grasp (reported to be slower in autistic adults), proved to be a reliable predictor.
“Our models were able to classify autism with approximately 85 per cent accuracy, suggesting this approach could potentially offer simpler, scalable tools for diagnosis,” says lead author, Associate Professor Erez Freud of York’s Department of Psychology and the Centre for Vision Research.
“Autism currently affects about one in 50 Canadian children, and timely, accessible diagnosis remains a major challenge. Our findings add to the growing body of research suggesting that subtle motor patterns may provide valuable diagnostic signals – something not yet widely leveraged in clinical practice.”
In addition to social and communication challenges, autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder, can include motor abnormalities which often show up in early childhood. The researchers say testing for these motor movements early could lead to faster diagnoses and intervention.
“The main behaviours markers for diagnosis are focused on those with relatively late onset and the motor markers that can be captured very early in childhood may thus lower age of diagnosis,” says Professor Batsheva Hadad of the University of Haifa, an expert in autism research and a key collaborator in this study.
Autistic and non-autistic young adult participants were asked to use their thumbs and index fingers, which had tracking markers attached, to grasp different blocks of varying size, lift each one and replace it in the same spot, and put their hand back in the starting position. The researchers used machine learning to analyse the participants’ finger movements as they made grasping motions.
Both groups of participants had normal IQ and were matched on age and intelligence. Young adults were used instead of children to rule out any differences in the findings due to delayed development.
The research found that subtle motor control differences can be captured effectively with more than 84% accuracy. The study also showed there were distinct kinematic properties in the grasping movements between autistic and non-autistic participants.
Analysis of naturalistic precision grasping tasks has not typically been used in previous studies, says Freud. Machine learning, however, provides researchers with a powerful new tool to analyse motor patterns, opening new ways to use movement data in the assessment of autism spectrum disorder.
The findings, says Freud, could lead to the development of more accessible and reliable diagnostic tools as well as timely intervention and support that could improve outcomes for autistic individuals in the future.
Jorunn Pauline Cavanagh holds up a petri dish with the newly discovered bacterium.
In 2020, a research group at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø discovered a previously unknown bacterium. Named Staphylococcus borealis (S. borealis) after the Northern Lights, the researchers investigated whether this newly discovered bacterium was a potential threat. Their findings were published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.
33% Antibiotic Resistance
To investigate, researchers collected bacterial samples stored in freezers at several Norwegian hospitals.
The samples went as far back as 2014, and the researchers conducted new tests to see if they could identify the new bacterium in the old samples. Meanwhile, new samples arriving at the UiT lab from 2020 to 2024 were tested continuously. In total, the researchers collected and analysed 129 samples from seven Norwegian hospitals.
It turns out that S. borealis is resistant to more than three different classes of antibiotics in one-third of the cases where it was tested.
Moreover, the bacterium also appears to be highly adept at acquiring protective mechanisms from other bacterial species. This means it could potentially develop antibiotic resistance quickly, when attacked with the medicines currently available.
“We see the most resistance against the antibiotic classes fusidic acid, cephalosporins, penicillins, macrolides, and fluoroquinolones,” explains Jorunn Pauline Cavanagh, who led the work on bacterial analyses.
A Problem for the Elderly
S. borealis is a bacterium that lives on our skin, and researchers have found that it can become problematic when your immune system is weakened. This makes it particularly concerning for the elderly and for those who have had knee or hip replacements.
“This bacterium is an opportunist that can cause illness when your immune system is compromised. For example, we see that it can form what’s called biofilm around knee prostheses and cause infections that can be difficult to treat,” explains Jorunn Pauline Cavanagh.
Researchers are now working to determine which diseases this bacterium can cause. Preliminary findings suggest it may lead to urinary tract infections, as well as inflammation in areas where implants are present.
“We do know that it causes mastitis in dromedary camels. This is because we’ve published the bacterium’s genetic profile in international databases, which other researchers use to compare their own bacterial findings. So, more possibilities may emerge,” says Cavanagh.
Intermittent fasting is not only a useful tool for weight loss, it’s also shown to have many benefits for metabolic health – independent of weight loss. Yet many people may find intermittent fasting to be a challenge, especially if following the 5:2 version of the diet where calories are severely restricted two days a week.
But my latest study shows that you don’t need to severely restrict your calories to get the metabolic benefits of intermittent fasting. Even just restricting the number of carbs you eat twice a week may be enough to improve your metabolic health.
Intermittent fasting appears to be so beneficial for health because of the way it alters our metabolism.
After a meal, our body enters the postprandial state. While in this state, our metabolism pushes our cells to use carbohydrates for immediate energy, while storing some of these carbs as well as fat for later use. But after several hours without food, in the postabsorptive “fasted” state, our metabolism switches to using some of our fat stores for energy.
In this regard, intermittent fasting ensures a better balance between the sources it uses for energy. This leads to improved metabolic flexibility, which is linked with better cardiometabolic health. In other words, this means lower risk of cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
My colleagues and I previously ran a study to demonstrate the effects of a fast on the body. We observed that following a day of both total fasting or severe calorie restriction (eating around only 25% of each person’s daily calorie requirements), the body was better at clearing and burning the fat of a full English breakfast the next day. Fasting shifted the body from using carbs to using fat. This effect carried on both during the fast and the next day.
Our research has also compared the effects of intermittent fasting to a calorie-matched or calorie-restricted diet. Both groups followed the diet until they lost 5% of their body weight.
Despite both groups losing the same 5% of body weight, and at the same rate, the intermittent fasting group had greater improvements in their metabolic handling, similar to what we saw in the previous trial.
Other researchers who have compared the effects of the 5:2 variant of the intermittent fasting diet to a calorie-matched, calorie-restricted diet have also found fasting is beneficial for metabolic health.
For people who follow the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet, typical fasting days are, by their nature, very low in calories – equating to only a few hundred calories per day. Because people are consuming so few calories on fasting days, it also means they’re consuming very few carbohydrates. Given the postprandial state is governed by carbohydrate availability, this begged the question as to whether it’s the calorie restriction or the carbohydrate restriction that’s creating the metabolic effect when intermittent fasting.
We recruited 12 overweight and obese participants. Participants were first given a very low-carb diet one day. Another day, they were given a severely calorie-restricted diet (around 75% fewer calories than they’d normally eat). After each fasting day, we gave them a high-fat, high-sugar meal (similar to an English breakfast) to see how easily their bodies burned fat.
What we found was that the shift to fat burning and improved fat handling of the high-calorie meal were near identical following both the traditional calorie-restricted “fast” day and the low-carb day. In other words, restricting carbs can elicit the same favourable metabolic effects as fasting.
It will be important now for more studies to be conducted using a larger cohort of participants to confirm these findings.
Such findings may help us address some of the practical problems we face with intermittent fasting and traditional low-carb diets.
The other limitation of both intermittent fasting and continuous carb restriction is that weight loss is a likely outcome. Hence these approaches are not universally beneficial for those who need to improve their health without losing weight or those looking to maintain their weight.
We are now testing the feasibility of an intermittent carb restriction diet, or a low-carb 5:2. So instead of restricting calories two days a week, you would restrict the number of carbs you consume twice a week. If this is proven to be beneficial, it would offer the benefits of fasting without restricting calories on “fast” days.
Sex workers in Vosloorus, Johannesburg and Springs talked to GroundUp about their struggle to access health services, particularly antiretroviral treatment, since the closures of US funded clinics. Photos: Kimberly Mutandiro
It’s afternoon on Boundary Road in Vosloorus. Sex worker Simangele (not her real name) hopes to secure her next client.
Making enough money to pay rent has always been a concern for Simangele. But now she has a new worry: how to keep up with her antiretroviral treatment.
Two months ago the closure of a mobile clinic — where Simangele and other sex workers in Vosloorus went for checkups and to collect their treatment — left her without access to the life-saving medication.
The mobile clinic was run by the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (WITS RHI) which heavily relied on US funding. The institute has been providing critical sexual and reproductive health services since 2018. The programme was one of many health facilities forced to halt services at the end of January in the wake of US funding cuts for global aid.
Speaking to GroundUp, Simangele says she ran out of antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) over a month ago and has resorted to borrowing a few tablets from a friend. “I don’t know what I will do because the tablets my friend gets give me side effects,” she says. (Antiretrovirals treat HIV. They have to be taken daily for life.)
She says the clinic closed without any warning or before they could give them transfer letters to public healthcare facilities. She is now dreading having to go to a public facility where she says sex workers are frequently discriminated against, particularly those who are undocumented.
We spoke to a dozen other sex workers in Joburg and in Springs who are worried about defaulting on their antiretroviral treatment following the closure of the Wits RHI clinics. The clinics also provided pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) (to prevent HIV-negative people contracting HIV), and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, TB, sexual reproductive health services, and counselling.
A sex worker shows the last few ARVs she has left.
Another sex worker said, “The minute we go to public clinics, they will need documents, which some of us do not have … Wits made time to listen to our problems as sex workers. Even when we faced challenges with clients, they never judged us.”
Sisi (not her real name), who rents rooms and assists sex workers in Vosloorus, said she’s aware of several sex workers who have defaulted and no longer have access to condoms, lubricants, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. “The Wits clinic did not discriminate against people without documents and would sometimes provide food, branded T-shirts, caps, and even jobs,” she said.
“Many of us will die”
We visited Zig Zag Road in Springs, where several sex workers said they were out or almost out of ARVs. When asked why they didn’t just go to a local clinic, they told GroundUp about instances where they experienced stigma while trying to access treatment at public clinics.
“I used to receive PrEP to help prevent HIV (from the Wits clinic). We would also receive birth control services. Now I can’t go to a public clinic because we are mocked for being sex workers,” said Siphesihle.
Ntombi, who waits for clients along End Street, attended one of the Wits clinics in Hillbrow which closed down. She said those on PrEP were given transfer letters before the clinic closed.
Other workers nearby told GroundUp that they now pay up to R250 for PrEP, which is more than they can afford.
Sisonke calls for urgent response to crisis
The Sisonke National Movement, which advocates for the rights of sex workers, has been raising the alarm since the closure of US-funded facilities. Before the closures, Sisonke was in talks with National Department of Health through the South African National AIDS Council about the provision of services to sex workers and other vulnerable groups, said the organisation’s spokesperson Yonela Sinqu.
She said that the department never answered activists when they asked what would happen should donor funds no longer be available for these facilities.
She said the plea for assistance without referral letters is made to all provinces, not only Gauteng. However, Gauteng is the only province that has approached us with the crisis of people without referrals, she said.
Department of Health spokesperson Foster Mohale has not responded to requests for comment.
