Friday, March 12, 2021

Humidity in breath makes cotton masks more effective at slowing the spread of COVID-19

Cotton fabrics become better filters when exposed to humid conditions; synthetic fabrics do not

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST)

Volume 90%

VIDEO: A SWATCH OF COTTON FABRIC THAT HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO HIGH HUMIDITY TYPICAL OF A PERSON'S EXHALED BREATH (LEFT) FILTERS OUT MORE DROPLETS THAN A SWATCH OF COTTON FABRIC THAT... view more

CREDIT: CREDIT: NIST

Researchers have come up with a better way to test which fabrics work best for masks that are meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. By testing those fabrics under conditions that mimic the humidity of a person's breath, the researchers have obtained measurements that more accurately reflect how the fabrics perform when worn by a living, breathing person.

The new measurements show that under humid conditions, the filtration efficiency -- a measure of how well a material captures particles -- increased by an average of 33% in cotton fabrics. Synthetic fabrics performed poorly relative to cotton, and their performance did not improve with humidity. The material from medical-procedure masks also did not improve with humidity, though it performed in roughly the same range as cottons.

This study, conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute, was published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

An earlier study by the same research team showed that dual-layer masks made of tightly woven cotton fabrics with a raised nap, such as flannels, are particularly effective at filtering breath. That study was conducted under relatively dry conditions in the lab, and its main finding still stands.

"Cotton fabrics are still a great choice," said NIST research scientist Christopher Zangmeister. "But this new study shows that cotton fabrics actually perform better in masks than we thought."

The researchers also tested whether humidity makes the fabrics harder to breathe through and found no change in breathability.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people wear masks to slow the spread of COVID-19. When worn correctly, those masks filter out some of the virus-filled droplets that an infected person exhales and also offer some protection to the wearer by filtering incoming air.

This study is one of several, conducted by NIST and other organizations, that contributed to the first standards for fabric masks meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. Those standards were recently released by the standards-developing organization ASTM International.

The filtration efficiency of cotton fabrics increases in humid conditions because cotton is hydrophilic, meaning it likes water. By absorbing small amounts of the water in a person's breath, cotton fibers create a moist environment inside the fabric. As microscopic particles pass through, they absorb some of this moisture and grow larger, which makes them more likely to get trapped.

[See more images of what's happening on a microscopic level inside your mask]

Most synthetic fabrics, on the other hand, are hydrophobic, meaning they dislike water. These fabrics do not absorb moisture, and their filtration efficiency does not change in humid conditions.

For this study, the team tested fabric swatches, not actual masks. First, they prepared dual-layer fabric swatches by placing them inside a small box where the air was maintained at 99% humidity -- roughly the same as a person's exhaled breath. For comparison, a second set of swatches were prepared at 55% humidity. After the fabrics reached an equilibrium with the humidified air, the researchers placed them in front of a pipe that emitted air at about the same velocity as exhaled breath. That air carried salt particles in a range of sizes typical of the droplets that a person exhales when breathing, speaking and coughing. This salt particle method is recommended by the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for measuring the filtration performance of mask-making materials.

The researchers calculated filtration efficiency by measuring the number of particles in the air before and after it passed through the fabric. They measured breathability by measuring the air pressure on both sides of the fabric as the air passed through it.

The researchers tested nine different types of cotton flannel, which under humid conditions increased their filtration efficiencies from 12% to 45%, with an average increase of 33%. They tested six types of synthetic fabric, including nylon, polyester and rayon. All performed poorly in comparison to cotton flannel regardless of humidity. Medical-procedure masks and N95 respirator masks provided the same filtration efficiency under both high and low humidity conditions.

While the change in performance for cotton flannels is large, they don't actually absorb very much water. Under humid conditions, a two-layer cotton flannel mask absorbs about 150 milligrams of water from human breath, the equivalent of just one or two drops. If fabric masks actually get wet in other ways, they may become difficult to breathe through, and the CDC advises that people not wear them for activities such as swimming. If masks become wet due to weather, they should be changed.

While this research provides useful information for people who wear face masks, it also holds lessons for scientists who are working to improve masks and measure their performance.

"To understand how these materials perform in the real world," Zangmeister said, "we need to study them under realistic conditions."

###

Paper: C.D. Zangmeister, J.G. Radney, M.E. Staymates, E.P. Vicenzi and J.L. Weaver. Hydration of Hydrophilic Cloth Facial Coverings Greatly Increases the Filtration Properties for Nanometer and Micron-sized Particles. ACS Applied Nano Materials. March 8, 2021. DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.0c03319

CAPTION

Scanning electron microscope images of cotton flannel (left) and polyester (right). Cotton fibers absorb moisture from breath, which increases filtration. Each segment of the image scale bars is 50 micrometers, or millionths of a meter -- roughly the width of a human hair.

CREDIT

Credit: E.P. Vicenzi/Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute and NIST

More evidence is urgently needed on opioid use in Black communities

PROVING THE CURRENT OPIOD CRISIS IS A WHITE PROBLEM

WOLTERS KLUWER HEALTH

Research News

March 9, 2021 - Although the prevalence of opioid use among Black people is comparatively low, the rate of opioid deaths has increased the sharpest and fastest among that population in recent years, according to an article in the March/April issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

The review by Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, of Yale University School of Medicine and colleagues stresses how important it is to develop much better evidence on how the opioid crisis has affected Black communities. "Focusing on the unique needs of Black people who use opioids is warranted to increase treatment initiation and adherence among a population less likely to engage with the traditional health care system," according to the authors.

Key themes in understanding and responding to the opioid crisis in Black communities

As the opioid epidemic has unfolded, most studies have focused on white populations, with limited inclusion of Black individuals. "Over the past decade, opioid overdose rates among Black people have been rising, resulting in an increasing need to obtain timely information," Dr. Jordan and coauthors write.

Dr. Jordan and coauthors performed a comprehensive review of the research literature to identify evidence relevant to opioid use among Black people. The researchers analyzed 42 studies providing up-to-date information on key themes, including:

Opioid use rates. National studies have reported relatively low rates of opioid use, especially prescription opoids, by Black individuals, compared to white individuals. However, those studies have often excluded or under-represented people with low incomes, those experiencing homelessness or unstable housing, and those who are incarcerated. All of these populations include disproportionately high numbers of Black people, due to the effects of structural racism.

"Thus, the prevalence of opioid use among Black people may be underestimated," Dr. Jordan and coauthors write. "It is also likely that the absence of culturally informed interview techniques could lead to underreporting of prescription opioid misuse in the Black community."

Overdose risk. Even though Black people are less likely to use opioids, those who start using are at higher risk of dying from an overdose than those from other races. Evidence also suggests that deaths due to synthetic opioids - particularly fentanyl - are rising rapidly among Black people.

Treatment for opioid use disorder. Research finds that Black people are less likely than white people to have access to opioid and other substance treatment options in their geographic communities and care networks. In one study, 15.5 percent of Black patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD) received treatment, compared to 21 percent of white patients. Evidence suggests that even after they receive care, Black patients have lower treatment completion rates, likely due to social determinants such as unemployment, access to transportation, and absence of culturally informed care.

Prescription opioid use. Black patients are less likely than their white counterparts to receive prescription opioid medication for pain. For Black patients who do receive opioids for treatment of non-cancer pain, there are persistent disparities in ongoing pain management, including lower daily doses and fewer days' supply of opioids, compared to white patients.

Social determinants of health. A handful of studies are beginning to document that social determinants of health - a wide range of conditions affecting many different behavioral or health outcomes - are the key drivers of opioid use and overdose risks among Black people. The authors note that more investigation needs to be undertaken to determine how social determinants of health, such as access to education, job training, food, transportation, and technology, can be harnessed to facilitate better access to opioid treatment for Black patients. The authors note that a better understanding of the social determinants of health affecting OUD among Black people is crucial for the development of "culturally acceptable treatment settings, where Black people are more likely to access care."

Dr. Jordan and colleagues see "great opportunity" for new research to understand and respond to the impact of the opioid crisis in Black communities. Priorities must include increased funding specifically earmarked by governmental agencies for research that addresses racial disparities in OUD. Dr. Jordan and colleagues conclude, "Building on the information presented here will promote better care of this population, with the hope of improving health outcomes."

###

Click here to read "An Evaluation of Opioid Use in Black Communities: A Rapid Review of the Literature."

DOI: 10.1097/HRP.0000000000000285

About the Harvard Review of Psychiatry

The Harvard Review of Psychiatry is the authoritative source for scholarly reviews and perspectives on a diverse range of important topics in psychiatry. Founded by the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry, the journal is peer reviewed and not industry sponsored. It is the property of Harvard University and is affiliated with all of the Departments of Psychiatry at the Harvard teaching hospitals. Articles encompass major issues in contemporary psychiatry, including neuroscience, epidemiology, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, history of psychiatry, and ethics.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2019 annual revenues of €4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students with advanced clinical decision support, learning and research and clinical intelligence. For more information about our solutions, visit https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.

For more information, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Researchers see need for warnings about long-range wildfire smoke

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: THE CAMERON PEAK AND EAST TROUBLESOME WILDFIRES LEAVE A HEAVY SMOKE PLUME OVER FORT COLLINS IN OCT. 2020. view more
CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY

Smoke from local wildfires can affect the health of Colorado residents, in addition to smoke from fires in forests as far away as California and the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers at Colorado State University, curious about the health effects from smoke from large wildfires across the Western United States, analyzed six years of hospitalization data and death records for the cities along the Front Range, which reaches deep into central Colorado from southern Wyoming.

They found that wildfire smoke was associated with increased hospitalizations for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and some cardiovascular health outcomes. They also discovered that wildfire smoke was associated with deaths from asthma and cardiovascular disease, but that there was a difference in the effects of smoke from local fires and that from distant ones.

Long-range smoke was associated with expected increases in hospitalizations and increased risk of death from cardiovascular outcomes.

But when the research team separated out health effects of smoke from local wildfires in early summer 2012 from long-range smoke from late summer 2012 and summer 2015, they found that local wildfires were associated with meaningful decreases in hospitalizations, especially for asthma.

The study, "Differential Cardiopulmonary Health Impacts of Local and Long?Range Transport of Wildfire Smoke," was recently published in GeoHealth, a journal from the American Geophysical Union.

Residents protect themselves from local fires

Sheryl Magzamen, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at CSU, said the team believes that evacuation efforts and related media coverage of local wildfires may have helped protect residents from adverse health effects of smoke exposure as well as direct impacts of the fires.

"There's a lack of communication about smoke from distant wildfires," said Magzamen. "Generally when there are local fires, there are advisories in the news that are associated with evacuations and local fire conditions. Due to the presence of the fire, people take measures to protect themselves. This could be why we see this lower risk of health effects from smoke associated with local fires."

Researchers described the long-range wildfire smoke as resembling fog, which is what Magzamen said she noticed in Fort Collins in August 2015. At the time, she was collaborating on a project with Jeff Pierce, associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science.

"I thought it was weird to see fog on that day," she explained. "Jeff said, 'That's actually smoke.' We all took a step back."

Smoke changes with age

Pierce, a co-author on this study, said researchers don't really know how harmful smoke is as it gets older, or becomes long-range smoke.

"In Fort Collins, about half the time we had smoke in late August or September 2020, this was smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire," he explained. "This smoke was only a couple hours old when it got here. At other times, we were getting smoke from California, and the smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire was either going over our heads or further south."

The Cameron Peak Fire was reported on Aug. 13, 2020, and burned into October, consuming 208,913 acres on the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in Larimer and Jackson Counties and Rocky Mountain National Park. It was the first wildfire in Colorado history to burn more than 200,000 acres.

The average person would not notice a difference in wildfire smoke, Pierce said.

"If the smoke is even two days old, things happen chemically, which changes the smoke a lot," he explained. "If it didn't smell like wood burning, it was long-range smoke from California."

Magzamen said that the team is working to better understand these chemical changes.

"As the small particles found in wildfire smoke age, they can cause more oxidative stress and more respiratory health effects," she said. "But wildfire smoke itself is a mixture of particles and gases. Teasing apart the effects of all the components of smoke and what happens to the mixture across space and time - and how those changes impact health - is an enormous scientific challenge."

Better air quality monitoring

Magzamen said the gap in understanding the source of wildfire smoke is because it historically has been measured by land-based sensors, which are primarily located in large urban areas and sparsely located in other regions, even along the Front Range.

"Even over the last five years, our air quality monitoring networks have been enhanced with new technologies and better measurements of real-time smoke effects," she said.

CSU researchers are now collaborating with local government officials on messaging related to the different types of wildfire smoke, with a specific aim to reach the most vulnerable populations. This includes caretakers of young children, people experiencing homelessness and others who can't shelter safely in place during wildfire season.

"We want people to be smoke-aware," she said. "On the Front Range, we have wildfire smoke every summer. We may not get Cameron Peak-size type of fires every year, but we are downwind for pretty much the entire Western United States," she said. "It's critical that we keep people healthy and safe."

###

Additional co-authors on this study include Ryan Gan and Jingyang Liu (CSU Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences); Katelyn O'Dell, Research Scientist Bonne Ford and Associate Professor Emily Fischer (CSU Department of Atmospheric Science); Kevin Berg and Kurt Bol (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment) and Assistant Professor Ander Wilson (CSU Department of Statistics).

Floral probiotics reduce apple disease

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Research News

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS APPLYING PROBIOTIC SPRAYS TO BLOOMING APPLE TREES AT THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. view more
CREDIT: ZHOUQI CUI, REGAN B. HUNTLEY, NEIL P. SCHULTES, BLAIRE STEVEN, AND QUAN ZENG

While many celebrate apple blossoms as classic signs of spring, they are also welcoming entry gates for pathogens. Full of nutrients to lure pollinators and promote pollen germination, flowers also attract bacteria like Erwinia amylavora, a pathogen that causes a damaging disease called fire blight. However, recent work by scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station suggests that these flowery infection sites might also be perfect targets for applying microbial fire blight biocontrol measures.

In a paper recently published in Phytobiomes Journal, researchers Zhouqi Cui, Regan Huntley, Neil Schultes, Blaire Steven, and Quan Zeng found that treating apple flowers with a probiotic spray reduced incidence of fire blight. They sprayed blooming trees with different strains of bacteria isolated from apple flowers and then exposed the same blooms to the fire blight pathogen. After this inoculation, they sampled the floral microbiomes and observed the development of fire blight symptoms.

They found flowers treated with Pantoea spp. bacteria developed distinct microbiomes and exhibited fire blight symptoms 35 to 45 percent less frequently than flowers treated with just water. These results suggest that Pantoea spp. structure floral microbiomes in a way that reduces infection and could be an effective probiotic biocontrol for fire blight. Flowers may be a particularly promising system in which growers can actively influence microbiomes--compared to roots and leaves, flowers are short-lived, which could make reshaping their microbiomes both more technically feasible and biologically impactful.

This research underscores the importance of studying apple flower ecology in the field. While many researchers simply screen bacterial isolates in the laboratory, Cui and colleagues studied how these natural strains altered flower microbiomes and disease rates in the field. This step was crucial as the bacterial strain that suppressed the fire blight pathogen most strongly in the lab failed to substantially reduce infections in the field while Pantoea spp., the strain with the promising fire blight reduction in the field, did not directly suppress pathogen growth in the lab.

The authors suggest that the ineffectiveness of biocontrol agents in field settings may be due to the products' incompatibility with natural plant microbiomes. "Typical studies...often fail to even test if the applied strain effectively colonizes the flower" the authors note. As evidenced in their study, laboratory results can sometimes show false promise, but in some incidences--as with the case of Pantoea, may allow promising biocontrol agents to be overlooked.

###

To learn more about this research, read the original article published in Phytobiomes Journal: "Inoculation of Stigma-Colonizing Microbes to Apple Stigmas Alters Microbiome Structure and Reduces the Occurrence of Fire Blight Disease."

The lead researcher on this project, Dr. Zhouqi Cui (@CuiZhouqi), is interested in the dynamic interactions between the plant microbiome and plant pathogens on agricultural crops. She is currently a postdoctoral scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (@CT_CAES) and is looking for a permanent research position in the near future. Dr. Blaire Steven, a co-PI on this project is a microbial ecologist with broad interests in how microbial communities are acquired and assembled. His work includes the microbial ecology of permafrost, desert and agricultural soils, the mosquito microbiome, as well as the work on the apple flower phytobiome. Dr. Quan Zeng (@oldkayak), the corresponding author, is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and graduate faculty at the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut. His research interests include plant-associated microbiomes and their impact on plant diseases, and bacterial plant pathogens and diseases.

Author Bio: Dr. Mia Howard (@mia_how) is an assistant feature editor for Phytobiomes Journal and a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Jen Lau's lab at Indiana University. She is fascinated by how plants--often with help from microbes--protect themselves from herbivores with toxic chemicals.

Microscopic wormholes possible in theory

German physicists explore the possibility of tunnels in spacetime

UNIVERSITY OF OLDENBURG

Research News

Wormholes play a key role in many science fiction films - often as a shortcut between two distant points in space. In physics, however, these tunnels in spacetime have remained purely hypothetical. An international team led by Dr. Jose Luis Blázquez-Salcedo of the University of Oldenburg has now presented a new theoretical model in the science journal Physical Review Letters that makes microscopic wormholes seem less far-fetched than in previous theories.

Wormholes, like black holes, appear in the equations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published in 1916. An important postulate of Einstein's theory is that the universe has four dimensions - three spatial dimensions and time as the fourth dimension. Together they form what is known as spacetime, and spacetime can be stretched and curved by massive objects such as stars, much as a rubber sheet would be curved by a metal ball sinking into it. The curvature of spacetime determines the way objects like spaceships and planets, but also light, move within it. "In theory, spacetime could also be bent and curved without massive objects," says Blázquez-Salcedo, who has since transferred to the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain. In this scenario, a wormhole would be an extremely curved region in spacetime that resembles two interconnected funnels and connects two distant points in space, like a tunnel. "From a mathematical perspective such a shortcut would be possible, but no one has ever observed a real wormhole," the physicist explains.

Moreover, such a wormhole would be unstable. If for example a spaceship were to fly into one, it would instantly collapse into a black hole - an object in which matter disappears, never to be seen again. The connection it provided to other places in the universe would be cut off. Previous models suggest that the only way to keep the wormhole open is with an exotic form of matter that has a negative mass, or in other words weighs less than nothing, and which only exists in theory. However, Blázquez-Salcedo and his colleagues Dr. Christian Knoll from the University of Oldenburg and Eugen Radu from the Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal demonstrate in their model that wormholes could also be traversable without such matter. The researchers chose a comparatively simple "semiclassical" approach. They combined elements of relativity theory with elements of quantum theory and classic electrodynamics theory. In their model they consider certain elementary particles such as electrons and their electric charge as the matter that is to pass through the wormhole. As a mathematical description, they chose the Dirac equation, a formula that describes the probability density function of a particle according to quantum theory and relativity as a so-called Dirac field.

As the physicists report in their study, it is the inclusion of the Dirac field into their model that permits the existence of a wormhole traversable by matter, provided that the ratio between the electric charge and the mass of the wormhole exceeds a certain limit. In addition to matter, signals - for example electromagnetic waves - could also traverse the tiny tunnels in spacetime. The microscopic wormholes postulated by the team would probably not be suitable for interstellar travel. Moreover, the model would have to be further refined to find out whether such unusual structures could actually exist. "We think that wormholes can also exist in a complete model," says Blázquez-Salcedo.

###

The scientists conducted the research for their paper within the Research Training Group "Models of Gravity" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It is headed by Oldenburg physicist Prof. Dr. Jutta Kunz together with Prof. Dr. Claus Lämmerzahl from the Centre of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen. In addition to the University of Oldenburg, several other universities and research institutions are also involved in the programme.

Perspectives of US youth during the initial month of the COVID-19 pandemic

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

According to two national surveys by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School, US teens and young adults are engaged in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with most being knowledgeable about the disease, concerned about its impacts on others, and practicing social distancing. On March 6, 2020, 70 percent reported knowledge of the pandemic, with 46 percent noting they got information from news sources. By March 20, 2020, nearly all respondents, 95 percent, reported impact. Worry about the pandemic increased from 25 to 51 percent. For some young people who weren't worried early on about the pandemic, staying at home and engaging in other preventive public health guidelines made them feel safer. Between the two surveys, pandemic preparation seemed to shift. Initially, respondents primarily reported doing nothing (36 percent), but by March 20th, 50 percent reported practicing social distancing. The authors recommend that, as public health planning evolves, it will be important to acknowledge young people's concern for others as a driver of their behavior and to create programs that are informed by their beliefs and perspectives.

###

Perspectives of US Youth During Initial Month of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Eric Waselewski, MD, et al
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan
https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/2/141

Bonus: https://umich.app.box.com/s/yi9wfqt49gm4sav2eruv6sdm5n9dp4od

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible

Perspectives of US youth during the initial month of the COVID-19 pandemic

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

###

Perspectives of US Youth During Initial Month of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Eric Waselewski, MD, et al
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan
https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/2/141

Bonus: https://umich.app.box.com/s/yi9wfqt49gm4sav2eruv6sdm5n9dp4od

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible

How the South African COVID-19 variant was found

UC Riverside biomedical scientists were part of an international team that identified the coronavirus strain

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

Research News

IMAGE: ADAM GODZIK IS A PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES AT UC RIVERSIDE. view more
CREDIT: STAN LIM, UC RIVERSIDE.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Variants of the coronavirus are appearing in different parts of the world, many of them spreading with alarming speed. One contagious variant is the South African, or SA, variant, identified by an international team of researchers, including biomedical scientists from the University of California, Riverside.

"The new COVID-19 variants are the next new frontier," said Adam Godzik, a professor of biomedical sciences in the UC Riverside School of Medicine and a member of the research team that made the discovery. "Of these, the SA and Brazil strains are most worrying. They have mutations that make them resistant to antibodies we generate with existing vaccines. It is commonly believed we are in a tight race: Unless we vaccinate people quickly and squash the pandemic, new variants would dominate to the point that all our COVID-19 vaccines would be ineffective."

Godzik and Arghavan Alisoltani-Dehkordi, a postdoctoral researcher who joined his lab two years ago, helped characterize the new SA variant by providing its spike protein structure using computer simulations.

Study results appear today in Nature.

Alisoltani-Dehkordi, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town in South Africa before she joined UCR, mentioned that research teams at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and the University of Cape Town discovered the new lineage -- or variant -- of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, from samples collected between Oct. 15 and Nov. 25, 2020, in three South African provinces. By early November, this variant rapidly became the dominant variant in samples from two provinces.

"Each SARS-CoV-2 variant has specific mutations defining it," Alisoltani-Dehkordi said. "Professor Godzik and I used computer modeling to suggest possible structural and functional consequences of spike protein mutations in the SA lineage. Our analysis, confirmed also by several other research groups, shows that some of the mutations potentially result in a higher transmissibility of the virus and a weaker immune response."

The SA variant has been detected in at least 40 countries, including the United States.

"This variant is probably spreading in areas where it has not been sequenced and is, therefore, not identifiable," Godzik said. "In the U.S., sequencing is still a slow process. In many parts of the country, including Riverside, we have no information whatsoever about variants."

Initial research on the SA variant suggested it could be resistant to antibodies, which could reduce the efficacy of vaccines.

"That's when it received a high level of interest," Godzik said. "Subsequent research confirmed it is resistant to vaccines and is spreading. South Africa is doing a good job, however, at controlling the variant through quarantining and other measures."

All the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, and California show common mutational signatures. But each of these variants also has a unique set of mutations. For example, the SA and Brazil variants have two unique mutations on spike proteins K417N and E484K, respectively.

"Our preliminary findings indicate that some of the spike mutations may be associated with increased transmissibility of the SA variant," Alisoltani-Dehkordi said. "The full significance of spike and other genome mutations in this new lineage, however, is yet to be determined. It needs to be stressed that we do not have enough evidence confirming the higher disease progression, severity, or mortality rate associated with the SA lineage compared to other lineages. But the high transmissibility and unusual divergence of the SA lineage and other recently emerged lineages compared to the wild type creates a high demand for the systematic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 strains and early detection of variants before they turn into outbreaks."

Godzik explained there is no single COVID-19 virus. Instead, a population of viruses exists that constantly evolve. Variants, which also evolve, acquire mutations and could undergo viral escape at any time.

"It is hard to say there is only one SA variant," he said. "One way to understand this is to imagine that this variant is the major branch of a tree, which has many smaller branches. Some of these smaller ones may grow faster than others and assume more importance. This dynamic process is hard to predict."

Godzik predicts COVID-19 will be a constant presence in our lives, much like the flu.

"It takes six months to develop a flu vaccine," he said. "Models predict the evolution of the flu virus and vaccines are produced before the variants show up. If the predictions are good, the vaccines work. If they miss, a heavy flu season follows. This is how COVID-19 will likely behave. A lot of effort will be invested in predicting what will happen the following year, vaccines would then be updated, and people will need to get a booster shot."

CAPTION

Positions of the mutations identified in the new SA variant shown in red on the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (PDB: 7a94). N-terminal domain and receptor binding domain of the spike are shown in shades of blue and green respectively. The remaining part of the spike protein and human ACE2 receptor are in grey and black, respectively.

CREDIT

Godzik lab, UC Riverside.

The research paper is titled "Emergence of a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern with mutations in spike glycoprotein."

The University of California, Riverside (http://www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 25,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of almost $2 billion. To learn more, email news@ucr.edu.

Big shift seen in high-risk older adults' attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination

Poll shows double-digit jumps since autumn in percentage of Black, Hispanic and chronically ill older adults who say they'll get vaccinated -- or already have

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Research News

IMAGE: CHANGES IN COVID VACCINATION ATTITUDES AMONG ADULTS AGE 50-80 BETWEEN OCTOBER 2020 AND LATE JANUARY 2021. view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Last fall, nearly half of older adults were on the fence about COVID-19 vaccination - or at least taking a wait-and-see attitude, according to a University of Michigan poll taken at the time.

But a new follow-up poll shows that 71% of people in their 50s, 60s and 70s are now ready to get vaccinated against COVID-19 when a dose becomes available to them, or had already gotten vaccinated by the time they were polled in late January. That's up from 58% in October.

Three groups of older adults with especially high risk of severe COVID-19 -- Blacks, Hispanics and people in fair or poor health - had even bigger jumps in vaccine receptiveness between October and late January.

The poll shows a 20-point jump in just four months in the percentage of Black respondents who said they would likely get vaccinated, and an 18-point jump for Hispanic older adults. The jump for white respondents in that time was 9 points.

People who said their health was fair or poor - likely including many with chronic conditions that can increase their risk of serious illness if they catch the coronavirus - had an 11-point jump in likelihood of getting vaccinated. However, they were still less likely to want to get vaccinated than those in better health.

By late January, 60% of Black respondents, 69% of Hispanic respondents, and 62% of those in fair or poor health said they were very likely or somewhat likely to get vaccinated, or had already gotten at least one dose. Among all white respondents regardless of health status, it was 72%.

The data come from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, based at U-M's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center. In November 2020, the poll published a full report based on data from a poll conducted in October. The new data come from a question asked in late January and are being issued as an update to the previous poll.

"This is incredibly encouraging, given the amount of hesitancy we saw in our poll from late fall," says Preeti Malani, M.D., the poll's director and a professor of infectious diseases at U-M. "But these new data still reveal gaps in attitudes about COVID-19 vaccination between racial and ethnic groups. We hope this new knowledge will help the various groups doing education and outreach tailor their approach so they can address questions, concerns and reasons for vaccine hesitancy."

In both outings, the poll asked older adults the question, "Assuming no cost to you, when a COVID vaccine is available, how likely are you to get it?" Respondents in January had the additional option to answer that they had already been vaccinated.

The percentage of all respondents who were most enthusiastic about vaccination - those who said they were 'very likely' to get the vaccine - jumped 20 percentage points, from 33% in October to 53% in January.

As states like Michigan open up vaccination eligibility to people over 50, the poll reveals that this group may need a bit more persuading than those 65 and up. The younger half of the poll group had an 11-point rise in likelihood of vaccination, compared with 14-point rise in the older group.

As in October, the new poll shows that individuals who have higher household incomes or more education were also more likely to report they would get a COVID vaccine.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging results are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a wide range of questions online; the October poll included 1,553 respondents, and the January one included 2,022 respondents. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have them.

A full report of the findings and methodology of the October report is available at http://www.healthyagingpoll.org, along with past National Poll on Healthy Aging reports.

Electrochemistry opens ways for the sustainable production of sulfonamides

Researchers at Mainz University developed a new procedure for the quick, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly production of essential substances required by the pharmaceutical industry

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ

Research News

A research team at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany has developed a completely new, environmentally-friendly electrochemical procedure for producing sulfonamides rapidly and inexpensively. Sulfonamides are used in many drugs including antibiotics and Viagra as well as in agrochemicals and dyes, which makes them an important class of molecules for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. While to date it has been necessary to use corrosive chemicals, high temperatures, and expensive metal catalysts to produce sulfonamides, the new method requires only cheaper starting materials, electrical current, and largely safe solvents. The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal "Angewandte Chemie International Edition". "The conventional procedure requires three reaction stages, with each stage driving up manufacturing costs by a factor of two to five. With the new method, just one reaction stage is needed. That makes it readily scalable and it can thus be applied on a technical scale," said Professor Siegfried Waldvogel, head of the research team and spokesperson for JGU's cutting-edge SusInnoScience - Sustainable Chemistry as the Key to Innovation in Resource-efficient Science in the Anthropocene research initiative.

The starting materials for the new reaction are molecules in the substance classes amines and aromatics as well as the pollutant sulfur dioxide, which is a waste product of many industrial processes. In effect, the new method makes it possible to convert this unwanted material into valuable products: The amines react with the sulfur dioxide in solution, producing amidosulfinate as an intermediate product. This makes oxygen and sulfur available to react with the aromatic molecules that have already been oxidized using an electrical current. However, it is necessary to prevent the bond formation of the oxygen during this process. "We do this by using a suitable solvent - and that is the really clever bit," Waldvogel pointed out. The solvent forms strong hydrogen bonds with the oxygen atoms, thereby rendering them inactive - and clearing the way for the formation of the desired sulfur-carbon bonds. After the reaction, the solvent can be redistilled and used again. "Our technique of electrochemical production of sulfonamides represents a completely new approach in chemistry that can now be applied to a number of other reactions. In a sense, we opened a door and found a variety of new possibilities," concluded Waldvogel, who is one of the world's leading scientists working in the field of electrosynthesis.

###

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Friday, March 12, 2021

CAPTION

CREDIT

More evidence is urgently needed on opioid use in Black communities

PROVING THE CURRENT OPIOD CRISIS IS A WHITE PROBLEM

Microscopic wormholes possible in theory

Perspectives of US youth during the initial month of the COVID-19 pandemic

How the South African COVID-19 variant was found

CAPTION

CREDIT

Electrochemistry opens ways for the sustainable production of sulfonamides

About Me