Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions Expert OpinionTags :

Microbes Develop Resistance to Disinfectant Too, Warns UFS Professor

On By ModernMedia

News-Medical.Net interviewed Professor Robert Bragg of the University of the Free State on the topic of pathogens, particularly bacteria, developing resistance to common disinfectants.

Professor Robert Bragg said that the control of diseases rests on three pillars: 1) vaccinations and vaccines, 2) treatment options (such as antibiotics for bacterial diseases), and 3) biosecurity.

Proff Brage explained that 10 to 15 years ago, there was an assumption that bacteria would not evolve resistance against disinfectants, but the COVID pandemic prompted a rethink. Now, disinfectant resistance is being looked at in the same light as antibiotic resistance. Biosecurity, he said, is ensuring that individuals do not come into contact with the pathogens in the first place. This is easily seen in the COVID pandemic, where face masks are worn (with a protection against contracting the disease of up to 70%), social distancing is enforced and hands and surfaces are sanitised. Though Prof Bragg’s main area of research is not antibiotic resistance, he notes that, “There are resistance mechanisms that are shared between antibiotics and disinfectants and we are looking at how these mechanisms increase resistance to disinfectants.” 

The protection of antibiotics is something taken for granted, but although mostly easily treatable (for now), bacteria can spread much faster than viruses, which require cells to reproduce in and whose re[plication rate is measured in days. “A common well-known bacterium such as Escherichia coli has a doubling time of around 20 min under ideal conditions. In other words, it only takes just 20 minutes for a population of E. coli to go from 1 million to 2 million and another 20 mins to reach 4 million, and so on,” Prof Bragg said. In the post-antibiotic era, there would be some treatment options such as bacteriophages, but for livestock the best protection would be biosecurity. However, disinfectant resistance would reduce the effectiveness of that option.

His research team has conducted a number of studies into the mechanisms of bacterial disinfectant resistance. “My research team has been working on various aspects of efficacy and resistance to disinfectants for quite some time and we have various projects that are currently underway,” he said. “Recently we identified a highly resistant strain of a Serratia species of bacteria. This strain was substantially more resistant to many different disinfectants than the reference strain. This great difference in the levels of susceptibility has allowed us to investigate various possible research mechanisms and also to look for possible novel resistance mechanisms.”

One of his team’s discoveries was that this highly resistant bacteria strain could grow on disinfectant if it was the sole source of carbon. Other areas of research around the resistant strain include sequencing and analysis of its genome, the role of bacterial efflux pumps removing disinfectant, and the role of plasmids (vehicles of genetic transfer between bacteria) in resistance and whether they are transferrable.

With regard to viruses, there are two kinds of viruses, enveloped and naked, and disinfectant has different effects on them. Enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, have a lipid layer picked up from their host cell, and are easy to kill with simple disinfectants because they break up the lipid layer, killing the cell. Naked cells are much harder to kill, and the few disinfectants that work against them are thought to do so by somehow disrupting the virus’ receptors.

One sanitiser of concern is alcohol, where 70% is considered optimal. However, people believe that ‘more is better’, yet increasing the alcohol percentage actually makes it evaporate faster, reducing contact time and thus leaving more of the virus behind. Similarly, some sanitisers include low levels of other disinfectant substances which are below the minimum threshold to kill the pathogens. This can leave surviving bacteria to develop resistance against these other sanitisers.

Prof Bragg advised that the public should purchase and use sanitisers prudently, following their instructions for use appropriately, and preferably checking to see if they are registered. He also cautioned

Source: News-Medical.Net

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions Paediatrics VaccinesTags :

Researchers Say New Vaccines Needed for Childhood Pneumonia

On By ModernMedia


Research in Australia on new pneumonia vaccines show that while pneumonia in children is being suppressed,  empyaema is increased.

The research, which was led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), examined the impact of the new 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (13vPCV) on childhood pneumonia and empyaema.
Empyaema, which is the collection of pus in the lungs, occurs in about 1% of children with pneumonia. In children, empyaema is far less fatal than it is in adults, but it does extend hospitalisation, requiring antibiotics and surgery or installation of a drain.
The findings of the study showed that while 13vPCV resulted in a 21% drop in childhood pneumonia hospitalisations, there was a contemporaneous 25% rise in empyaema hospitalisations.

According to senior author Professor Adam Jaffe, Head of the School of Women’s and Children’s Health at UNSW Medicine & Health, said the findings suggested an emergence of non-vaccine serotypes—those which 13vPCV does not cover.

13vPCV was introduced to cover the 13 most common serotypes that cause invasive pneumococcal infection, adding six more serotypes over the seven serotypes covered by its predecessor, 7cPCV.

Prof Jaffe said: “Although we found a substantial reduction in serotype 1, serotype 3 is now the predominant organism which causes childhood empyema—in 76% of cases—so, efforts must be made to create a vaccine which is more effective against serotype 3.

“In fact, Australia recently changed the vaccination dosage schedule to try and improve the effectiveness of 13vPCV against serotype 3, but we need to continue monitoring patients using molecular techniques to see if this change has had an impact.

“Childhood bacterial pneumonia and empyema are potentially preventable diseases through vaccination. So, if Australia can develop an effective vaccine, we could prevent children from being hospitalized with pneumonia and empyema.”

The researchers conducted a similar study over four years during the 7vPCV era.   

“Our new study had two parts,” Prof Jaffe said. “We analysed national hospitalisations for childhood empyaema and childhood pneumonia, then we conducted an enhanced surveillance study on children with empyaema.”

The first part of the research used publicly available hospitalisations data to find out if the introduction of 13vPCV changed how many children were admitted to hospital with pneumonia and empyaema.

The enhanced surveillance study involved the collection of blood and lung fluid samples from 401 children  with empyaema, followed by molecular testing on these samples and comparing the results to their previous study undertaken during the period of 7vPCV.

Prof Jaffe said research with a larger sample was ongoing, and 13vPCV monitoring was needed.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Roxanne Strachan et al. Assessing the impact of the 13 valent pneumococcal vaccine on childhood empyema in Australia, Thorax (2021). DOI: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-216032

Categories : CancerTags :

Iron is a ‘Double-edged Sword’ For Cancer Cells

On By ModernMedia

A grant by the American Cancer society will be used to investigate the treatment of certain neuroblastoma by forcing them to overloading on iron.

Neuroblastoma is a cancer that forms in nerve tissue, and most commonly in the glands around the kidneys. It is the most frequently occurring childhood cancer that occurs outside the cranium. MYCN is overexpressed in 20-25% of neuroblastoma, and these cancers contribute to a considerable portion of paediatric cancer-related deaths. Recent research has shown that the MYCN gene introduces a weakness to ferroptosis-inducing drugs because MYCN draws on a lot of iron to help the cancer grow.  

“Iron is a double-edged sword in a cancer cell. It can help the cancer grow and survive, but it also creates these toxic molecules within the cell called reactive oxygen species,” explained Anthony Faber, PhD.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are unstable molecules that react with other molecules, causing DNA damage and cell death. This recently discovered form of cell death, largely influenced by iron accumulation, is called ferroptosis. Little is known about ferroptosis, and even less about cancers which may be vulnerable to ferroptosis-inducing drugs. By boosting cellular toxin removal systems, MYCN produces so much iron that it also creates a vulnerability to drugs which prevent cells from eliminating ROS. Blocking these toxin removal systems causes death among MYCN-amplified cells. 

“As MYCN continues to be one of the most important targets in cancer therapeutics, this study highlights a new and clinically important strategy for treating MYCN-associated cancers,” Dr Faber said.

“Fortunately, the Cancer Mouse Models Core run by Jennifer Koblinski, PhD, and Bin Hu, PhD, at Massey is spectacular and will allow us to robustly test these FDA-approved drugs in both patient-derived models and orthotopic models, where the tumors grow atop the adrenal glands similar to the way they grow in patients,” Dr Faber said.

If these models show positive results for the testing of these drugs, they can move on to clinical trials. He added that this study may have far reaching implications, as in certain small cell lung cancers and triple negative breast cancer, whose growth is driven c-MYC, a similar protein .

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Konstantinos V. Floros et al, MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma is addicted to iron and vulnerable to inhibition of the system Xc-/glutathione axis, Cancer Research (2021). DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-20-1641

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Recent Mother With COVID to Have Life Support Withdrawn

On By ModernMedia

In the UK, a comatose woman with COVID who had recently delivered her son via caesarean section should be allowed to die, a judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Hayden said that doctors should cease the woman’s life support treatment as it was no longer preserving her life but rather dragging out her death.

He said that the situation was “a tragedy of an almost unimaginable dimension” and was told there was “zero” chance of the woman making any meaningful recovery.

The woman (whose identity is withheld) was rushed to hospital a month ago while 32 weeks pregnant, after falling ill with COVID at home.

The judge was told that she had Addison’s disease, an acquired primary adrenal insufficiency from bilateral autoimmune damage to the adrenal cortex. The woman’s pancreas had ceased to function and one of her lungs had “died”, with a specialist saying that she had “essentially no normal lung function”.

The woman, who is of the Muslim faith, has a husband and a three year old son. Her husband and sister opposed the decision to withdraw life support as it was against their beliefs.

“To unplug the machine, this is for us like asking someone to kill us,” the woman’s sister said. “When God has written our death, that is when we will die.”

In an urgent court application, the judge took the case in a virtual hearing held late on Tuesday. The judge concluded that ending the woman’s life was in her best interests, adding that doctors had prepared a palliative care plan.

“This family is seeking a miracle,” he said. “This is a very young mother in circumstances of almost unspeakable sadness.”

Source: The Guardian

Categories : COVIDTags :

Ghana Receives First Vaccines from Covax

On By ModernMedia

Wednesday was a day to celebrate in Ghana as the country took delivery of the first 600 000 vaccines from the Covax inoculation scheme for poorer countries. According to the AFP, some 217 million people have been inoculated so far. 

The Covax scheme, which is led by Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations , is seeking to ensure low and middle-income countries equitably receive vaccines. head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cheered on the first delivery of the Covax vaccines with an enthusiastic tweet.

“At last!” he wrote. “A day to celebrate, but it’s just the first step.”

Healthcare experts had long been warning that global access to vaccines was necessary to put an end to the pandemic. Thus far, some 112 million people (and likely more, especially in Africa) have been infected with COVID and 2.4 million people have died from the disease. The recession has caused millions of job losses, and set back development in many areas.

The delivery of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines was broadcast live on Ghanian TV, and will be administered in Ghanaian cities from Tuesday. About two billion doses are expected to be distributed this year under the Covax scheme, although it is unclear if this goal will be met, given the difficulty many advanced nations have experienced in getting vaccines. The European Union, for example, has suffered setbacks in deliveries from AstraZeneca and Pfizer. EU member nation Hungary has meanwhile decided to forge ahead with its own vaccine acquisition, ordering five million doses from Chinese firm Sinopharm, and this week began its first vaccinations.

The Ivory Coast is set to receive the next batch from Covax later this week. 

Source: Eyewitness News

Categories : Mental HealthTags :

Researchers Describe Extremist ‘Psychological Signature’

On By ModernMedia

Researchers at Cambridge University have laid out a ‘psychological signature’ for extremist behaviour.
These extremist behaviours  support violence in the name of ideology, and encompass social, political or religious attitudes. The researchers say that particular behavioural traits and unconscious cognition in the brain make certain individuals more susceptible to extremist behaviour.

These mental factors include poorer working memory and slower “perceptual strategies” (the unconscious processing of changing stimuli, eg shape and colour), and also tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation seeking.

The researchers found that social conservatism is linked to slower but more accurate unconscious decision-making, whereas liberal thinking is linked to faster but less accurate ‘perceptual strategies’.
More dogmatic people are prone to impulsivity but are slower in processing perceptual evidence.
Previous approaches to identifying radicalisation and extremism involved screening individuals by age and gender. 
“I’m interested in the role that hidden cognitive functions play in sculpting ideological thinking,” said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

“Many people will know those in their communities who have become radicalised or adopted increasingly extreme political views, whether on the left or right. We want to know why particular individuals are more susceptible.”
“By examining ‘hot’ emotional cognition alongside the ‘cold’ unconscious cognition of basic information processing we can see a psychological signature for those at risk of engaging with an ideology in an extreme way,” Zmigrod said.

“Subtle difficulties with complex mental processing may subconsciously push people towards extreme doctrines that provide clearer, more defined explanations of the world, making them susceptible to toxic forms of dogmatic and authoritarian ideologies.”

 Added Zmigrod: “There appear to be hidden similarities in the minds of those most willing to take extreme measures to support their ideological doctrines. Understanding this could help us to support those individuals vulnerable to extremism, and foster social understanding across ideological divides.”
This research revisited 334 participants from a previous study where participants performed 37 cognitive tasks and were assessed on 22 personality traits. They added a further 16 tests
Demographics only weakly predicted extremist behaviour. For example, dogmatism was associated with slower perceptual ‘evidence accumulation’, and lower social risk-taking and agreeableness but greater impulsivity and ethical risk-taking. Adding the psychological signatures to demographics increased the predictive power for dogmatism from 1.53% to 23.6%. 
Political conservatism and nationalism was linked to ‘caution’ in unconscious decision-making, as well as when rewards are less valuable later, and slightly reduced strategic information processing. Personality traits for conservatism and nationalism included greater goal-directedness, impulsivity and reward sensitivity, and lower social risk-taking. For these ideologies, demographics only had a predictive power of less than 8%, but including the psychological signature boosted it to 32.5%.

In all of the ideologies examined, ‘extreme pro-group action’, including violence against others, had a similar psychological signature.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information:Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0424

Categories : Metabolic Disorders PaediatricsTags :

Regular Sleep Patterns in Toddlers Important for BMI

On By ModernMedia

Although getting regular sleep patterns in toddlers has long been a priority for parents, researchers have shown it is important for toddlers’ BMI.

The researchers, led by Lauren Covington, an assistant professor in the University of Delaware School of Nursing, investigated the link between poverty, regular sleep patterns and BMI in toddlers. According to The National Sleep Foundation, toddlers 1- to 3-years-old should have 12 to 14 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.

“We’ve known for a while that physical activity and diet quality are very strong predictors of weight and BMI,” said Prof Covington, the lead author of the article. “I think it’s really highlighting that sleep may be playing a bigger role here than it’s been given credit for.”

The researchers aimed to investigate the relationship between poverty and BMI in toddlers, and wanted to see whether sleep behaviour, activity or food intake could provide the explanation.

Using data from families in an obesity prevention trial, 70% of whom were below the poverty line, and all eligible for nutritional supplementation grants, Toddlers were given accelerometers to wear to measure physical activity and parents filled out food diaries.

The researchers found that children from households with greater poverty were more likely to have greater inconsistent bedtimes, and those with more inconsistent bedtimes had higher BMI percentages.

Prof Covington said this is likely to be a bidirectional relationship. “There’s a lot of teasing out the relationships of the mechanisms that are at play here, which is really difficult to do because I think they’re all influencing each other,” she said.

Having consistent bedtimes where children go to bed within one hour of the normal time is a recommended guideline, but for families in poverty this may be impossible for a variety of reasons. Single parent households and juggling multiple jobs are part of the challenges they face.

“Implementing a consistent bedtime could be one behavioural change that a family could potentially do,” said Prof Covington. “It’s more attainable than maybe getting healthy food at the grocery store or playing outside on the playground, especially now with the cold weather. Just having a consistent bedtime can help provide some sense of structure, but then maybe have better implications for health and BMI as well.”

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Lauren Covington et al. Longitudinal Associations Among Diet Quality, Physical Activity and Sleep Onset Consistency With Body Mass Index z-Score Among Toddlers in Low-income Families, Annals of Behavioral Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1093/abm/kaaa100

Categories : COVID ImmunologyTags :

COVID Tracking in Space Company Employees Yields Antibody Clues

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SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturing company currently providing satellite launch services as well as transport of crew  to the International Space Station, collaborated with researchers from MIT to monitor the spread of COVID amongst its employees. 

Unusually, the paper included SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as a byline author. The technology entrepreneur is known to be quite hands-on in his company’s projects. However, he has also courted controversy by openly questioning COVID tests and saying he and his family would not take COVID vaccines, saying that achieving herd immunity naturally was a better strategy.

SpaceX was seeking data-driven methods to safeguard its essential workforce. The collaboration allowed the researchers to track the emergence of mild and asymptomatic cases in a cohort of adults as early as April, when data for such cases were rare.

“Essentially, this study indicates that it’s not simply the presence or absence of antibodies that matter; rather, the amount and type of antibodies may play a defining role in the development of a protective immune response,” said Professor Galit Alter, Harvard Medical School and Immunologist, Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital. 

The study was originally aimed at measuring antibody levels over time, but when reinfections began to be reported, the team realised their samples had some valuable information.

“In early spring, we weren’t sure if asymptomatic infection could drive long-lived antibodies,” said Prof Alter, “nor whether they possessed the capability to neutralise or kill the virus.”

The researchers knew that 120 participants had mild or asymptomatic COVID infections, resulting in their bodies producing antibodies. Using sophisticated techniques to analyse those antibodies, they found that individuals with stronger symptoms in mild COVID, had a larger number of antibodies and developed immune functions associated with natural immune protection. 

The study found that although the presence of antibodies was sufficient to determine whether an individual had experienced a COVID infection, they did not automatically mean that individual is protected against the virus in the long term.

Antibody effector functions (on the ‘long arm’ of the antibody) linked to long-term protection, such as T cell activation and virus neutralisation were only seen in certain immune responses. These involved high levels of antibodies targetting a part of the virus known as the receptor binding domain.

“Once you hit a certain threshold of these antibodies, it’s like a switch turns on and we can observe antibody effector functions,” said first author Yannic Bartsch, PhD. “These functions were not observed in individuals with lower antibody binding titers, and the level of protection from reinfections is uncertain in these individuals.”

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Bartsch, Y. C., et al. (2021) Discrete SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers track with functional humoral stability. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21336-8.

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and ConditionsTags :

Russia Reports Bird Flu Transmission to Humans

On By ModernMedia

On Saturday, Russia announced that it had detected the first case of the H5N8 strain of bird flu in humans.

The head of Russia’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, made the announcement in televised remarks. Scientists at the Vektor laboratory had identified the strain in seven workers at a Southern Russia poultry farm which had experienced an outbreak among the birds in December. No serious health consequences among the workers had been reported, and they are believed to have contracted the virus from the birds on the farm. The World Health Organization had already been alerted to the situation soon before the announcement.

Humans can contract bird flu A(H5N1) and A(H7N9) and swine flu subtypes such as A(H1N1). The bird flu subtype H5N1 is particularly dangerous as it has a 60% mortality rate in humans. According to the WHO, direct transmission between humans of such diseases is limited, and that most transmission comes when humans are in close contact with animals.

Influenza viruses are known to evolve “quite quickly” said Gwenael Vourc’h, head of research at France’s National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment.

She added that there were likely cases outside Russia, saying to the FTP that this “is probably the tip of the iceberg.”

However, Francois Renaud, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), said that he was “not particularly worried” at this stage as the COVID pandemic had taught countries to react quickly, and that “draconian measures” will be taken to curb the outbreak.

He added that the coronavirus pandemic had taught countries to react quickly to potential health threats. “Draconian measures will be taken to immediately stop the outbreak,” he said.

Avian flu has raged in several European countries including France, where hundreds of thousands of birds have been culled to stop the infection.

The Vektor State Virology and Biotechnology Centre, which picked up the transmission to the poultry farm workers, also developed one of Russia’s coronavirus vaccines. The lab once conducted secret bioweapons research in the Soviet era, and still maintains stockpiles of viruses ranging from Ebola to smallpox.

Vektor chief Rinat Maksyutov said the lab was ready to begin the development of test kits to detect H5N8 in humans, and also to commence working on a vaccine.

Source: Medical Xpress

Categories : Paediatrics TransplantsTags :

Novel Transplant Technique Yields More Donor Hearts for Children

On By ModernMedia

Two hospitals in the UK have reported great success in a new heart transplant technique, resulting in a record number of children receiving heart transplants in 2020.

Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) have collaborated on a new procedure which has enabled a much larger supply of donor hearts for children, who have had to wait two and a half times as long as adults for a donation.

Royal Papworth Hospital was the first in Europe to harvest non-beating hearts from adult patients whose life support had been withdrawn, and then been restarted for transplantation, instead of waiting for brain death with a still-beating heart.

By using a special device called the organ care system, surgeons can effectively restart the heart and keep it healthy until transplantation. The first non-beating heart transplant was performed in Australia in 2014. Since February last year, the two hospitals have been offering the service to children.

The use of non-beating hearts had previously been ruled out for transplantation until recently, due to tissue damage from lack of oxygen. The new organ care system, which supplies the heart with oxygenated blood and nutrients, can be used to keep the heart alive and pumping outside the body for up to 12 hours. This is long enough for checks to be performed prior to the transplant procedure, or even transferred to another hospital.

GOSH and Freeman Hospital are the only two centres in the UK with paediatric heart transplant units. In the past five years, 39 children died while waiting for donors.

“Some patients will just not survive the wait,” said Jacob Simmonds, a transplant surgeon at GOSH. “There is also a risk that while waiting they could damage other organs, particularly the lungs.” 

Last year, six paediatric heart transplants were carried out in the UK using the new procedure, and only four elsewhere in the world. The organs came from adult donors, as the organ care system is designed to accommodate hearts from people weighing over 50kg. Development is being carried out on a system which could allow harvesting organs from children. This would increase the available transplants for infants and babies, who have a critical lack of donors.

Source: BBC News