Day: June 17, 2025

Categories : Medical IndustryTags :

Healthcare is Expensive – but There are Affordable Alternatives

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Access to affordable, quality healthcare in South Africa is a challenge for millions of people. Medical aid is out of reach for low-income earners, and while initiatives like the Low-Cost Benefit Option (LCBO) and the National Health Insurance (NHI) have been proposed, complexity has caused many delays in their implementation. As a result, the Demarcation Exemption Framework was introduced to help bridge the gap, which allows certain insurance products that technically fall under the definition of a medical scheme to operate outside of the Medical Schemes Act.

While it was originally set to expire on 31 March 2025, the Exemption Renewal Framework was recently extended for another two years to 31 March 2027. South Africans can continue to access cost-effective primary healthcare solutions, but in this shifting landscape, brokers play a vital role in guiding their clients toward the best solutions for their needs and budget.

Addressing the healthcare coverage gap

The proposed LCBO framework aims to provide affordable, regulated primary healthcare coverage to lower-income South Africans. It was designed to address the gap between expensive medical aid plans and basic healthcare needs so that more people have access to essential medical services. Unfortunately, it has faced continuous delays, partly because of challenges with integrating it into the NHI. At the same time, the NHI is still a work in progress, and there is no clear timeline for its implementation.

“While South Africa’s regulatory frameworks evolve and have the worthy goal of providing healthcare access to all, the reality is that people need access to affordable primary healthcare solutions today. The extension of the Demarcation Regulations is an important step. It means people can continue to receive the healthcare services they need, like GP consultations, chronic medication, basic health screenings and more, while the challenges with LCBO and NHI are resolved. It also means health insurance providers and brokers can carry on improving affordability and access with innovative product offerings,” says Reo Botes, Managing Executive of Essential Employee Benefits.

Solutions for the now

Under the Demarcation Exemption Framework there are many innovative primary healthcare insurance products that act as a bridge while LCBO and NHI are still being developed. They are by no means a replacement for medical schemes, but they play a very important role in helping people mitigate primary health risks.

“By giving you access to affordable and flexible cover for day-to-day medical expenses, healthcare insurance can provide protection from unexpected medical costs, giving you peace of mind to focus on your health, rather than worrying about bills,” says Len Deacon, head of the health division at Lion of Africa Life Assurance “These products also often cover preventative care, like vaccinations, screenings, and check-ups, which can help detect and prevent illnesses early on. The upshot is that they can improve health outcomes by allowing people to seek treatment without worrying about the financial impact, potentially preventing more serious problems down the line.”

Navigating the uncertainty

When or if LCBO will come to fruition is not clear, and the timeline for the implementation of the NHI remains uncertain. The role of brokers is more important than ever in helping clients to understand their options, simplify processes and find the right cover for their needs during these times. Brokers assess individual needs, compare plans, provide expert advice, and assist with ongoing support, claims, policy adjustments and more.

While we wait for industry reforms to take effect, primary healthcare insurance options offer exceptional value and a variety of products to protect financial and physical wellbeing. The expertise of brokers is invaluable in helping clients to secure affordable and effective primary healthcare that works for now and in navigating this changing landscape in the future.

Categories : Environmental EffectsTags :

How Microplastics Are Spreading from Soil to Salad to Humans

On By ModernMedia
Photo by FLY:D on Unsplash

A review from Murdoch University has stressed that agricultural soils now hold around 23 times more microplastics than oceans.

Amongst the revelations in the comprehensive evaluation is that plastics in soil may be exposed to up to 10 000 chemical additives, most of which are unregulated in agriculture.

“These microplastics are turning food-producing land into a plastic sink,” said PhD candidate Joseph Boctor, who led the study, which appears in Environmental Sciences Europe.

Both microplastics and nanoplastics have now been found in lettuce, wheat and carrot crops. This happens through various means, from plastic mulching, fertilisers and even through being dropped by clouds.

This is particularly concerning when combined with findings of these plastics in the human lungs, brain, heart, blood, and even placenta.

“And BPA-free does not equal risk free,” Mr Boctor said.

“Replacement chemicals like BPF and BPS show comparable or greater endocrine-disrupting activity.”

The challenge is that regulations are slower than science, and industry is faster than both.

In addition to this, assessing additive toxicity is often overlooked, Mr Boctor said, due to the lack of transparency in the plastic industry and large number of additives produced.

“This makes the plastic crisis unchecked, and human health exposed,” he said.

“This review tries to bring this creeping danger under the radar and shine a flashlight on regulators.”

Alongside endocrine disruptors, the review pinpointed other additives in soil such as Phthalates (linked to reproductive issues), and PBDEs (neurotoxic flame retardants).

These additives have been linked with neurodegenerative disease, increased risks of stroke and heart attack and early death.

“These are not distant possibilities – they are unfolding within biological systems – silently and systematically,” Mr Boctor said.

To address this crisis, Mr Boctor is working alongside his colleagues at the Bioplastics Innovation Hub to create a type of plastic that is not only safe, but also decomposes in soil, land and water, leaving behind no legacy.

One innovation currently under development is the Smart Sprays Project – which will demonstrate and test a non-toxic, bioplastic-based spray for soil which forms a water barrier to harvest rainfall and reduce evaporation that can be easily applied with existing farm equipment.

The hope is that through the Hub’s work, they will introduce a green plastic to the market that will minimise and eventually negate the need for non-sustainable plastic production worldwide.

“This review highlights the urgent need for coordinated scientific and regulatory efforts,” Joseph said.

“Regulators, scientists and industry must collaborate to close the loopholes before plastic pollution further entrenches itself in the global food chain.”

Source: Murdoch University

Categories : Ageing Environmental EffectsTags :

Intense Heat Changes Biology and Can Accelerate Ageing

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Amanda María on Unsplash
By Rongbin Xu

Heat takes it out of you. After a long, hot day, we feel tired and grumpy.

But sustained periods of heat do more than that – they age us faster. Cumulative heat stress changes our epigenetics – how our cells turn on or off gene switches in response to environmental pressure.

Now, new research from the United States explores the pressing question of how extreme heat affects humans. The findings are concerning. The more days of intense heat a participant endured, the faster they aged. Longer periods of extreme heat accelerated ageing in older people by more than two years.

As the climate heats up, humans will be exposed to more and more heat – and our bodies will respond to these stresses by ageing faster. These findings are especially pertinent to Australia, where heatwaves are expected to become more frequent and intense in a warmer world.

How, exactly, does heat age us?

Ageing is natural. But the rate of ageing varies from human to human. As we go through life, our bodies are affected by stresses and shocks. For instance, if we don’t get enough sleep over a long period, we will age faster.

While heat can directly sicken or kill us, it also has a long tail. Sustained heat stresses our bodies and make them less efficient at doing the many jobs needed to stay alive. This is what we mean when we say it accelerates biological ageing. This deterioration is likely to precede the later development of diseases and disabilities.

What does that look like on a genetic level? You might think your genes don’t change over your life, and this is mostly true (apart from random mutations).

But what does change is how your genes are expressed. That is, while your DNA stays the same, your cells can switch some of its thousands of genes off or on in response to stresses. At any one time, only a fraction of the genes in any cell are turned on – meaning they’re busy making proteins.

This is known as epigenetics. The most common and best-understood pathway here is called DNA methylation (DNAm). Methylation here refers to a chemical our cells can use to block a DNA sequence from activating and producing proteins with various functions.

Cellular changes in DNAm can lead to proteins being produced more or less, which in turn can flow on to affect physiological functions and our health status. This can be both bad or good.

Heat stress can alter the pattern of which genes are turned off or on, which in turn can affect our rate of ageing.

Severe heat stress can be remembered in cells, leading them to change their DNAm patterns over time. In laboratory testing, the effect is pronounced in fish, chickens, guinea pigs, and mice.

To date, much research on how heat affects epigenetics has focused on animals and plants. Here, the evidence is clear – even a single episode of extreme heat has been shown to have a long-lasting effect on mice.

But only a couple of studies have been carried out involving humans, and they have been limited. This is the gap this new research is intended to help fill.

Sustained heat changes how our cells express genes – accelerating ageing. Photo: aleks333/Shutterstock

What did the study find?

The study by researchers at the University of Southern California involved almost 3700 people, with an average age of 68 years.

Heat affects older people more than younger people. Our ability to control our body temperature drops as we age, and we are less resilient to outside stresses and shocks. We also know periods of extreme heat trigger a wave of illness and death, especially among older people.

The study set out to better-understand what happens to human bodies at a biological level when they’re exposed to intense heat over the short, medium, and longer term.

To do this, the researchers took blood samples and measured epigenetic changes at thousands of sites across the genome, which were used to calculate three clocks measuring biological age, named PcPhenoAge, PCGrimAge, and DunedinPACE.

Ageing is natural, but the speed at which we age can change. Photo: Bricolage/Shutterstock

Then, they looked at the levels of heat each participant would have been exposed to in their geographic areas over the preceding six years, which was 2010-16. They used the US heat index to assess heat, from caution (days up to 32°C), extreme caution (32–39°C), and danger (39–51°C). They used regression modelling to see how much faster people were ageing over the normal rate of ageing.

The effect of heat was clear in the three biological clocks. Longer-term exposure to intense heat increased biological age by 2.48 years over the six-year period of the study, according to PCPhenoAge; 1.09 years, according to PCGrimAge; and 0.05 years, according to DunedinPACE.

Over the period of the study, the effect was up to 2.48 years faster than normal ageing, where one calendar year equals one biological year of ageing. That is, rather than their bodies ageing the equivalent of six years over a six-year period, heat could have aged their bodies up to 8.48 years.

Importantly, the biological clocks differ quite substantially, and we don’t yet know why. The authors suggest the PCPhenoAge clock may capture a broader spectrum of biological ageing, covering both short-term and longer-term heat stress, while the other two may be more sensitive to long-term heat exposure.

The way these researchers have conducted their study gives us confidence in their findings – the study sample was large and representative, and the use of the heat index rather than air temperature is an improvement over previous studies.

However, the findings don’t account for whether the participants had airconditioning in their homes or spent much time outside.

We need to know more

Perhaps surprisingly, there’s been little research done to date on what heat does to human epigenetics.

In 2020, we conducted a systemic review of the science of how environment affects human epigenetics. We found only seven studies, with most focused on the effect of cold rather than heat.

Now we have this new research that sheds light on the extent to which heat ages us.

As we face a warmer future, our epigenetics will change in response. There’s still a lot of work to do to see how we can adapt to these changes – or if we even can, in some parts of the world.
The Conversation
This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and was co-authored with Shuai Li, University of Melbourne.

This article was first published on Monash Lens. Read the original article

Categories : Surgeries & ProceduresTags :

Blood Conservation Technique Does Not Reduce Need for Transfusions, New Study Finds

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Charliehelen Robinson on Pexels

An international study published in the New England Journal of Medicine sheds light on acute normovolaemic haemodilution, also known as ANH, a blood conservation technique. ANH involves removing a patient’s blood before the patient goes on heart-lung bypass, and then reinfusing it toward the end of heart surgery. Long debated for its effectiveness, ANH does not appear to reduce the need for red blood cell transfusion, according to results of the global clinical trial.

Nevertheless, study co-author Kenichi Tanaka, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, said the outcomes necessitate further scrutiny and may not be applicable to US patients.

More than 2 million patients worldwide undergo heart surgery annually, and about 35% require at least one unit of red blood cells. Blood transfusions can lead to complications, are costly, and are sometimes affected by shortages. Previous retrospective studies and meta-analyses have shown mixed results about whether ANH reduces the need for blood transfusions in heart surgery.

Although the study did not show that ANH decreased infusions, several factors should be taken into consideration, said Kenichi Tanaka, MD, who co-led the United States’ participation in the trial along with researchers from the University of Virginia. Altogether, the study recruited 2010 patients from 11 countries in Europe, Asia, South America and North America.

“This trial may reduce the interest in doing another large, randomised study, but I think it does not exclude the possibility that ANH could help some patients,” he said.

Tanaka pointed to several aspects that may make the study less applicable to the U.S., where about 20% of medical centers use ANH:

  • US centres did not begin enrolling patients in the study until at least half of all participants had been enrolled. He estimates that less than 5% of participants are from the United States.
  • US patients are typically larger than patients from other countries and, paradoxically, larger body size is protective against surgical bleeding and the need for transfusions.
  • Smaller patients have less blood to give during ANH. This means a smaller volume is available to treat anaemia and bleeding that can occur while the patient is on a heart-lung bypass machine.
  • There was no standardised protocol for ANH or transfusion in the trial. Countries like the United States are more likely to use special clotting factor concentrates in combination with ANH, which has been shown to reduce the need for transfusions.
  • In supplemental information not included in the study, patients receiving ANH showed a slight trend toward better overall survival rates compared to those who received transfusions only.

Tanaka is preparing to publish a retrospective study showing that ANH reduced the need for transfusions in a US population.

“I plan to continue practising ANH,” he said. “It is also an option for Jehovah’s Witness patients whose beliefs stipulate they cannot receive blood transfusions (from donor blood). At the least, the study proved that there is no downside for ANH. I believe ANH can be part of a multi-pronged blood conservation strategy in the US, where blood product costs are very high.”

Source: University of Oklohoma

Categories : Implants and Prostheses Neurodegenerative DiseasesTags :

First-of-its-kind Technology Helps Man with ALS ‘Speak’ in Real Time

On By ModernMedia
An investigational brain-computer interface (BCI) allows the study participant to communicate through a computer. Credit: UC Davis

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed an investigational brain-computer interface that holds promise for restoring the ability to hold real-time conversations to people who have lost the ability to speak due to neurological conditions.

In a new study published in the scientific journal Nature, the researchers demonstrate how this new technology can instantaneously translate brain activity into voice as a person tries to speak – effectively creating a digital vocal tract with no detectable delay.

The system allowed the study participant, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), to “speak” through a computer with his family in real time, change his intonation and “sing” simple melodies.

“Translating neural activity into text, which is how our previous speech brain-computer interface works, is akin to text messaging. It’s a big improvement compared to standard assistive technologies, but it still leads to delayed conversation. By comparison, this new real-time voice synthesis is more like a voice call,” said Sergey Stavisky, senior author of the paper and an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurological Surgery. Stavisky co-directs the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab.

“With instantaneous voice synthesis, neuroprosthesis users will be able to be more included in a conversation. For example, they can interrupt, and people are less likely to interrupt them accidentally,” Stavisky said.

Decoding brain signals at heart of new technology

The man is enrolled in the BrainGate2 clinical trial at UC Davis Health. His ability to communicate through a computer has been made possible with an investigational brain-computer interface (BCI). It consists of four microelectrode arrays surgically implanted into the region of the brain responsible for producing speech.

These devices record the activity of neurons in the brain and send it to computers that interpret the signals to reconstruct voice.

“The main barrier to synthesising voice in real-time was not knowing exactly when and how the person with speech loss is trying to speak,” said Maitreyee Wairagkar, first author of the study and project scientist in the Neuroprosthetics Lab at UC Davis. “Our algorithms map neural activity to intended sounds at each moment of time. This makes it possible to synthesise nuances in speech and give the participant control over the cadence of his BCI-voice.”

Instantaneous, expressive speech with BCI shows promise

The brain-computer interface was able to translate the study participant’s neural signals into audible speech played through a speaker very quickly – one-fortieth of a second. This short delay is similar to the delay a person experiences when they speak and hear the sound of their own voice.

The technology also allowed the participant to say new words (words not already known to the system) and to make interjections. He was able to modulate the intonation of his generated computer voice to ask a question or emphasize specific words in a sentence.

The participant also took steps toward varying pitch by singing simple, short melodies.

His BCI-synthesized voice was often intelligible: Listeners could understand almost 60% of the synthesized words correctly (as opposed to 4% when he was not using the BCI).

Real-time speech helped by algorithms

The process of instantaneously translating brain activity into synthesized speech is helped by advanced artificial intelligence algorithms.

The algorithms for the new system were trained with data collected while the participant was asked to try to speak sentences shown to him on a computer screen. This gave the researchers information about what he was trying to say.

The electrodes measured the firing patterns of hundreds of neurons. The researchers aligned those patterns with the speech sounds the participant was trying to produce at that moment in time. This helped the algorithm learn to accurately reconstruct the participant’s voice from just his neural signals.

Clinical trial offers hope

“Our voice is part of what makes us who we are. Losing the ability to speak is devastating for people living with neurological conditions,” said David Brandman, co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab and the neurosurgeon who performed the participant’s implant.

“The results of this research provide hope for people who want to talk but can’t. We showed how a paralyzed man was empowered to speak with a synthesized version of his voice. This kind of technology could be transformative for people living with paralysis.”

Brandman is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery and is the site-responsible principal investigator of the BrainGate2 clinical trial.

Limitations

The researchers note that although the findings are promising, brain-to-voice neuroprostheses remain in an early phase. A key limitation is that the research was performed with a single participant with ALS. It will be crucial to replicate these results with more participants, including those who have speech loss from other causes, such as stroke.