Developing countries pay steep economic & health costs because of high car air pollution

Some of the world's most vulnerable cities suffer disproportionate economic losses because of the health consequences of in-car air pollution, finds a new study.

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

Research News

 

In an international study published by the journal Environment International, the University of Surrey led an international team of air pollution experts in monitoring pollution hotspots in 10 global cities: Dhaka (Bangladesh); São Paulo (Brazil); Guangzhou (China); Medellín (Colombia); Cairo (Egypt); Addis Ababa (Ethiopia); Chennai (India); Sulaymaniyah (Iraq); Blantyre (Malawi); and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania).

Surrey's Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) set out to investigate whether the amount of fine air pollution particles (PM2.5) drivers inhaled is connected to the duration drivers spend in pollution hotspots and socio-economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP).

Across all the cities in the study, researchers found that drivers only needed to spend a short amount of time in high-pollution hotspots to inhale a significant amount of PM2.5 particles. For example, drivers in Guangzhou and Addis Ababa spent 26 and 28 per cent of their commute in hotspot areas, which contributed to 54 and 56 per cent of the total amount of air pollution inhaled on their trip.

The researchers found that the cities where drivers were exposed to the highest levels of PM2.5 pollution - Dar-es-Salaam, Blantyre and Dhaka - also experienced higher death rates per 100,000 commuting car population per year. The low PM2.5 levels in Medellín, São Paulo and Sulaymaniyah corresponded with very low death rates.

The international study assessed economic losses by measuring a city's death rate caused by PM2.5 car exposure against its GDP per capita. It found that, for most cities, lower GDP linked directly to more significant economic losses caused by in-car PM2.5 exposure - with Cairo and Dar-es-Salaam being impacted the most (losses of 8.9 and 10.2 million US dollars per year, respectively).

The team also found that, except for Guangzhou, cities with higher GDP per capita have less hotspot areas during an average route trip, thus decreasing the risk to drivers.

Professor Prashant Kumar, Principal Investigator of CArE-Cities Project, Associate Dean (International) and Founding Director of GCARE at the University of Surrey, said: "Our global collaborative project has confirmed that air pollution disproportionately affects developing countries. Many countries are caught in a vicious cycle where their low GDP leads to higher pollution exposure rate for drivers, which leads to poorer health outcomes, which further damages the economy of those cities. This is discouraging news - but it should galvanise the international community to find and deploy measures that mitigate the health risks faced by the world's most vulnerable drivers."

Professor Shi-Jie Cao, a collaborative partner from the Southeast University, said: "If we are ever to make a world where clean air is available to all, it will take a truly global collaborative effort - such as CArE-Cities. We hope to continue to work closely with Surrey and other global partners, sharing knowledge and expertise that will make a cleaner future a reality."

Professor Adamson Muula, a collaborative partner from formerly University of Malawi and now Head of Public Health at the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHeS), said: "If developing countries are to not be left behind in the struggle against air pollution and climate change, it is important that we build the capacity and knowledge to gather on-the-ground data. This project is a small but a significant step in the right direction for Malawians; a direction which will lead to better decisions and cleaner air for Malawi."

###

Note to editors

The study was part of the Clean Air Engineering for Cities (CArE-Cities) project and builds upon our previous work around car exposure. CArE-Cities is a seed funding project awarded by the University of Surrey under the Research England's Global Challenge Research Funds. CArE-Cities involves 11 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) listed countries and aspires to bring cleaner air to cities by building a knowledge exchange platform. Its activities include joint workshops, researchers exchange and pilot studies to address urban development and health impact assessment agendas in ODA countries.

Reference

Kumar, P., Hama, S., Abbass, R. A., Nogueira, T., Brand, V. S., Abhijith, K. V., de Fatima Andrade, M., Asfaw, A., Aziz, K. H., Cao, S. J., El-Gendy, A., Khare, M., Muula, A. S., Nagendra, S. M. S., Ngowi, A. V., Omer, K., Olaya, Y., Salam, A., 2021. Potential health risks due to in-car aerosol exposure across ten global cities. Environment International 155, 106688. Online link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106688

 

Can biodegradable polymers live up to the hype?

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

 

As consumers and corporations alike become more environmentally conscious, the chemical industry is working to find solutions to the plastic waste crisis. One idea is to use biodegradable polymers known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) as replacements for traditional plastic packaging and other materials. A feature article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, explores the possibilities and pitfalls of PHA.

PHA is not a new human invention; this class of polymers can be found in nature and is used to store cellular energy, writes Senior Editor Alex Tullo. Commercially, it is manufactured through the industrial fermentation of sugars or lipids. As cities around the world ban single-use plastic products, such as straws and bags, companies are working to commercialize PHA as a viable alternative. The main selling point is rapid biodegradability in a variety of environments. Demand has increased for PHA in recent years, with several companies opening or planning commercial plants in the U.S. and beyond. In addition, major food and beverage brands are planning to switch their packaging to PHA-based materials soon.

Despite its much-touted promise, there's reason to believe PHA might be too good to be true. Several companies have tried and failed to bring it to market in recent years, and PHA is much more expensive than its traditional plastic counterparts. Beyond that, some experts have published findings saying the biodegradability of PHA is overstated, and that the rapid degradation time is based on optimized laboratory conditions rather than real-world ones. However, PHA's boosters say that it's still a better alternative to non-biodegradable plastics, and that the industry may be on the cusp of a breakthrough.

###

The article, "Will the biodegradable plastic PHA finally deliver?," is freely available here.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS' mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world's scientific knowledge. ACS' main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

 

Sex differences in COVID-19 outcomes

MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC./GENETIC ENGINEERING NEWS

Research News

 

IMAGE: DEDICATED TO THE DISEASES AND CONDITIONS THAT HOLD GREATER RISK FOR OR ARE MORE PREVALENT AMONG WOMEN, AS WELL AS DISEASES THAT PRESENT DIFFERENTLY IN WOMEN. view more 

CREDIT: MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC., PUBLISHERS

In a study of more than 10,600 adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19, women had significantly lower odds than men of in-hospital mortality. They also had fewer admissions to the intensive care unit and less need for mechanical ventilation. Women also had significantly lower odds of major adverse events, including acute cardiac injury, acute kidney injury, and venous thromboembolism, according to an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women's Health. Click here to read the article now.

"This comprehensive analysis is the largest study to date that directly assesses the impact of sex on COVID-19 outcomes," stated Rachel-Maria Brown, MD, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and coauthors. "Our study strongly demonstrates female sex to be associated with lower odds of in-hospital outcomes, major adverse effects and all-cause mortality as compared to male sex after controlling for confounding variables." The authors propose some of the protective factors that may contribute to these findings.

In the accompanying editorial entitled "Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Sex Disparities," Annabelle Santos Volgman, MD, Rush University Medical Center, and coauthors, suggest various mechanisms by which female sex may confer a protective advantage against COVID-19 infection. One advantage may be the extra X chromosome, which carries multiple genes responsible for innate and adaptive immunity.

Volgman and coauthors emphasize that "although women have less mortality risk with COVID-19, we need to exercise caution not to send a message to deliver subpar care to women with COVID-19 or decrease measures to prevent their infection. Our evolving knowledge should not reduce attention paid to women admitted for COVID-19."

###

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R24AG064191, R01LM012836, R01 NR018443. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About the Journal

Journal of Women's Health, published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women. Led by Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, the Journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women's healthcare issues. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Women's Health website. Journal of Women's Health is the official journal of the Society for Women's Health Research.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research. 

 

Commercial video games could help treat mental illness

Playing video games may provide low-cost, easy access, effective and stigma-free support

LERO

Research News

 

Ireland, June 17 2021: Popular video games have the potential to provide low-cost, easy access, effective and stigma-free support for some mental health issues, researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, have found.

The team at Lero, a world leader in connected-health research, said video games could be used where conventional therapies are not available because of cost or location, or as an addition to traditional therapeutic treatments for depression or anxiety.

Lero researcher Dr Mark Campbell said there is mounting scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of commercial video games to improve mental health outcomes after the team reviewed existing academic research on the impact of video games on mental health issues, particularly depression and anxiety.

"It is worth considering commercial video games as a potential alternative option for the improvement of various aspects of mental health globally," he added.

Dr Campbell led a team attached to University of Limerick's Health Research Institute and Physical Education & Sport Sciences department to publish their latest research paper Gaming your mental health: A narrative review on mitigating depression and anxiety symptoms via commercial video games in academic journal JMIR Serious Games.

Dr Campbell said commercial video games are freely available or available for a one-time relative low cost and there are an estimated 2.7 billion video gamers worldwide.

"The overall accessibility and pervasiveness of commercial video games within modern society positions them as an invaluable means of reaching individuals with mental health disorders, irrespective of age and sex, and with limited access to mental health care, particularly relevant during the current COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

Lead author on the paper Magdalena Kowal of Lero and UL said their research was in the context of the financial and healthcare service burden of mental illness, affecting more than 14% of the world's population, with a significant proportion of people with mental health problems not receiving treatment.

"There is a heightened demand for accessible and cost-effective methods that prevent and facilitate coping with mental health illness. This demand has become exacerbated following the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent increase in mental health disorders, depression and anxiety in particular," she said.

Magdalena Kowal said commercially available Virtual Reality (VR) video games have great potential in treating mental health issues also.

"These are well-suited for the implementation of cognitive behavioural techniques for the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders in the future. Given the immersive nature of VR technology and the controllability of the virtual environment, it could be particularly well-suited for use in exposure therapy," she added.

Pandemic adolescent mental health study reveals turnaround finding

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Young people with poor mental health took a turn for the better during the pandemic but those with good mental health saw a considerable decline, new research reveals.

The first nationally representative evidence regarding the diverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health in the UK was led by researchers at Lancaster University working with the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Adolescents (aged 10 to 16) with better than average mental health before the pandemic experienced an increase in their emotional and conduct problems, hyperactivity, and problems interacting with their peers and friends, but a decrease in their prosocial tendencies such as being caring and willing to share and help others during the pandemic.

In contrast, adolescents with lower than average mental health pre-pandemic experienced opposite changes, possibly, says the research, because more time at home under parental supervision prevented behaviour such as fighting or bullying.

Published today in the 'Journal of Adolescent Health', the official journal of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, the study also flags considerable disparities in the impact across social, demographic, and economic groups.

Young people from vulnerable one-parent, one-child, and less well-off families experienced a much greater mental health decline during COVID than before.

And those living in one-parent households experienced a sharper decline in social wellbeing which was reflected in a greater increase in problems interacting with peers and friends as well as feeling lonely.

The presence of other children in the household helped protect the teenagers from the pandemic's adverse impact on their emotional and social wellbeing.

The pandemic's impact on adolescent mental health also varied with parents' socioeconomic positions. Young people with high-earning parents experienced a bigger reduction in conduct problems and a smaller increase in hyperactivity and problems interacting with their peers and friends, compared with those in low-income families.

The research also found, while adolescents are unlikely to contract COVID-19 or become severely ill as a result of catching the coronavirus, family members' COVID-19 symptoms and illness took their toll on adolescents' social wellbeing.

The study suggests the linked self-isolation, social distancing and stigmas might make them susceptible to being bullied and socially marginalised.

The findings, says the study, underline the need to go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and adopt tailored mental health support for adolescents and targeted measures to mitigate inequalities in the mental health impact of the pandemic.

The research 'COVID-19 and Adolescent Mental Health in the UK' was carried out by Sociologists Dr Yang Hu, of Lancaster University, and Dr Yue Qian at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

They analysed data from the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Understanding Society COVID-19 Survey--a sample comprising 886 adolescents aged 10 to 16, who were surveyed both before and during the pandemic.

The research fills a gap in research examining adolescents' mental health compared with growing research on the impact of adults' mental health.

"Adolescents are at a critical stage of their lives and the detrimental impact of the pandemic on their mental health can undermine their immediate wellbeing and harm their long-term development," said Dr Hu.

"It is clear from our findings that efforts should be made to mitigate the mental health impact of the pandemic on children and adolescents - an issue that has not yet been featured in key public health and policy conversations."

Dr Qian said: "Our findings urge policymakers to mitigate disparities in the pandemic's impact on adolescent mental health, interrogate how these disparities are rooted in pre-pandemic socioeconomic inequalities, and intervene in future inequalities that may arise."

###

AI system-on-chip runs on solar power

SWISS CENTER FOR ELECTRONICS AND MICROTECHNOLOGY - CSEM

 VIDEO: CSEM ENGINEERS HAVE DEVELOPED AN INTEGRATED CIRCUIT THAT CAN CARRY OUT COMPLICATED ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS LIKE FACE, VOICE AND GESTURE RECOGNITION AND CARDIAC MONITORING. POWERED BY EITHER A TINY BATTERY OR... view more 

CREDIT: CSEM

AI is used in an array of extremely useful applications, such as predicting a machine's lifetime through its vibrations, monitoring the cardiac activity of patients and incorporating facial recognition capabilities into video surveillance systems. The downside is that AI-based technology generally requires a lot of power and, in most cases, must be permanently connected to the cloud, raising issues related to data protection, IT security and energy use.

CSEM engineers may have found a way to get around those issues, thanks to a new system-on-chip they have developed. It runs on a tiny battery or a small solar cell and executes AI operations at the edge - i.e., locally on the chip rather than in the cloud. What's more, their system is fully modular and can be tailored to any application where real-time signal and image processing is required, especially when sensitive data are involved. The engineers will present their device at the prestigious 2021 VLSI Circuits Symposium in Kyoto this June.

The CSEM system-on-chip works through an entirely new signal processing architecture that minimizes the amount of power needed. It consists of an ASIC chip with a RISC-V processor (also developed at CSEM) and two tightly coupled machine-learning accelerators: one for face detection, for example, and one for classification. The first is a binary decision tree (BDT) engine that can perform simple tasks but cannot carry out recognition operations.

"When our system is used in facial recognition applications, for example, the first accelerator will answer preliminary questions like: Are there people in the images? And if so, are their faces visible?" says Stéphane Emery, head of system-on-chip research at CSEM. "If our system is used in voice recognition, the first accelerator will determine whether noise is present and if that noise corresponds to human voices. But it can't make out specific voices or words - that's where the second accelerator comes in."

CAPTION

the system runs on a tiny battery or a small solar cell and executes AI operations at the edge - i.e., locally on the chip rather than in the cloud.

CREDIT

CSEM

The second accelerator is a convolutional neural network (CNN) engine that can perform these more complicated tasks - recognizing individual faces and detecting specific words - but it also consumes more energy. This two-tiered data processing approach drastically reduces the system's power requirement, since most of the time only the first accelerator is running.

As part of their research, the engineers enhanced the performance of the accelerators themselves, making them adaptable to any application where time-based signal and image processing is needed. "Our system works in basically the same way regardless of the application," says Emery. "We just have to reconfigure the various layers of our CNN engine."

The CSEM innovation opens the door to an entirely new generation of devices with processors that can run independently for over a year. It also sharply reduces the installation and maintenance costs for such devices, and enables them to be used in places where it would be hard to change the battery.

CAPTION

the integrated circuit can carry out complicated artificial-intelligence operations like face, voice and gesture recognition and cardiac monitoring.

CREDIT

CSEM

 

Simple urine test may help early detection of brain tumors

NAGOYA UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: NANOWIRE SCAFFOLDS FOR THE SCREENING OF MICRORNAS FROM PATIENT-DERIVED TUMOR-ORGANOID AND URINE IN PATIENTS WITH CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM TUMORS view more 

CREDIT: TAKAO YASUI & ATSUSHI NATSUME

A recent study by Nagoya University researchers revealed that microRNAs in urine could be a promising biomarker to diagnose brain tumors. Their findings, published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, have indicated that regular urine tests could help early detection and treatment of brain tumors, possibly leading to improved patient survival.

Early diagnosis of brain tumors is often difficult, partly because most people undergo a brain CT or MRI scan only after the onset of neurological deficits, such as immobility of limbs, and incapability of speech. When brain tumors are detected by CT or MRI, in many cases, they have already grown too large to be fully removed, which could lower patients' survival rate. From this perspective, accurate, easy, and inexpensive methods of early brain tumor detection are strongly desired.

As a diagnostic biomarker of cancerous tumors, microRNAs (tiny molecules of nucleic acid) have recently received considerable attention. MicroRNAs are secreted from various cells, and exist in a stable and undamaged condition within extracellular vesicles in biological fluids like blood and urine. Nagoya University researchers focused on microRNAs in urine as a biomarker of brain tumors. "Urine can be collected easily without putting a burden on the human body," says Nagoya University Associate Professor Atsushi Natsume, a corresponding author of the study.

"Urine-based liquid biopsy hadn't been fully investigated for patients with brain tumors, because none of the conventional methodologies can extract microRNAs from urine efficiently in terms of varieties and quantities. So, we decided to develop a device capable of doing it."

The new device they developed is equipped with 100 million zinc oxide nanowires, which can be sterilized and mass-produced, and is therefore suitable for actual medical use. The device can extract a significantly greater variety and quantity of microRNAs from only a milliliter of urine compared to conventional methods.

Their analysis of microRNAs collected using the device from the urine of patients with brain tumors and non-cancer individuals revealed that many microRNAs derived from brain tumors actually exist in urine in a stable condition.

Next, the researchers examined whether urinary microRNAs can serve as a biomarker of brain tumors, using their diagnostic model based on the expression of microRNAs in urine samples from patients with brain tumors and non-cancer individuals. The results showed that the model can distinguish the patients from non-cancer individuals at a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 97%, regardless of the malignancy and size of tumors. The researchers thus concluded that microRNAs in urine is a promising biomarker of brain tumors.

The researchers hope that their findings will contribute to early diagnosis of aggressive types of brain cancer, like glioblastomas, as well as other types of cancer. Dr. Natsume says, "In the future, by a combination of artificial intelligence and telemedicine, people will be able to know the presence of cancer, whereas doctors will be able to know the status of cancer patients just with a small amount of their daily urine."

###

The study, " Urinary MicroRNA-based Diagnostic Model for Central Nervous System Tumors Using Nanowire Scaffolds," was published online in the journal ACS applied Materials & Interfaces on April 1, 2021 at DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c01754.

About Nagoya University, Japan

Nagoya University has a history of about 150 years, with its roots in a temporary medical school and hospital established in 1871, and was formally instituted as the last Imperial University of Japan in 1939. Although modest in size compared to the largest universities in Japan, Nagoya University has been pursuing excellence since its founding. Six of the 18 Japanese Nobel Prize-winners since 2000 did all or part of their Nobel Prize-winning work at Nagoya University: four in Physics - Toshihide Maskawa and Makoto Kobayashi in 2008, and Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano in 2014; and two in Chemistry - Ryoji Noyori in 2001 and Osamu Shimomura in 2008. In mathematics, Shigefumi Mori did his Fields Medal-winning work at the University. A number of other important discoveries have also been made at the University, including the Okazaki DNA Fragments by Reiji and Tsuneko Okazaki in the 1960s; and depletion forces by Sho Asakura and Fumio Oosawa in 1954.

Website: http://en.nagoya-u.ac.jp/

Red meat consumption may promote DNA damage-assoc. mutation in colorectal cancer patients

Study provides mechanistic link between red meat consumption and colorectal cancer development

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANCER RESEARCH

Research News

 

Bottom Line: Genetic mutations indicative of DNA damage were associated with high red meat consumption and increased cancer-related mortality in patients with colorectal cancer.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research

Author: Marios Giannakis, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Background: "We have known for some time that consumption of processed meat and red meat is a risk factor for colorectal cancer," said Giannakis. The International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that processed meat was carcinogenic and that red meat was probably carcinogenic to humans in 2015.

Experiments in preclinical models have suggested that red meat consumption may promote the formation of carcinogenic compounds in the colon, but a direct molecular link to colorectal cancer development in patients has not been shown, Giannakis explained. "What is missing is a demonstration that colorectal cancers from patients have a specific pattern of mutations that can be attributed to red meat," he said. "Identifying these molecular changes in colon cells that can cause cancer would not only support the role of red meat in colorectal cancer development but would also provide novel avenues for cancer prevention and treatment."

How the Study was Conducted: To identify genetic changes associated with red meat intake, Giannakis and colleagues sequenced DNA from matched normal and colorectal tumor tissues from 900 patients with colorectal cancer who had participated in one of three nationwide prospective cohort studies, namely the Nurses' Health Studies and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. All patients had previously provided information on their diets, lifestyles, and other factors over the course of several years prior to their colorectal cancer diagnoses.

Results: Analysis of DNA sequencing data revealed the presence of several mutational signatures in normal and cancerous colon tissue, including a signature indicative of alkylation, a form of DNA damage. The alkylating signature was significantly associated with pre-diagnosis intake of processed or unprocessed red meat, but not with pre-diagnosis intake of poultry or fish or with other lifestyle factors. Red meat consumption was not associated with any of the other mutational signatures identified in this study. In line with prior studies linking red meat consumption with cancer incidence in the distal colon, Giannakis and colleagues found that normal and cancerous tissue from the distal colon had significantly higher alkylating damage than tissue from the proximal colon.

Using a predictive model, the researchers identified the KRAS and PIK3CA genes as potential targets of alkylation-induced mutation. Consistent with this prediction, they found that colorectal tumors harboring KRAS G12D, KRAS G13D, or PIK3CA E545K driver mutations, which are commonly observed in colorectal cancer, had greater enrichment of the alkylating signature compared to tumors without these mutations. The alkylating signature was also associated with patient survival: Patients whose tumors had the highest levels of alkylating damage had a 47 percent greater risk of colorectal cancer-specific death compared to patients with lower levels of damage.

Author's Comments: "Our study identified for the first time an alkylating mutational signature in colon cells and linked it to red meat consumption and cancer driver mutations," said Giannakis. "These findings suggest that red meat consumption may cause alkylating damage that leads to cancer-causing mutations in KRAS and PIK3CA, thereby promoting colorectal cancer development. Our data further support red meat intake as a risk factor for colorectal cancer and also provide opportunities to prevent, detect, and treat this disease."

Giannakis explained that if physicians could identify individuals who are genetically predisposed to accumulating alkylating damage, these individuals could be counseled to limit red meat intake as a form of precision prevention. In addition, the alkylating mutational signature could be used as a biomarker to identify patients at greater risk of developing colorectal cancer or to detect cancer at an early stage. Because of its association with patient survival, the alkylating signature may also have potential as a prognostic biomarker. However, future studies are needed to explore these possibilities, Giannakis noted.

Study Limitations: A limitation of the study is the potential selection bias of study participants, as tissue specimens could not be retrieved from all incident colorectal cancer cases in the cohort studies. Current studies from Giannakis and his colleagues are exploring the potential role of red meat intake and alkylating damage in diverse groups of patients.

Funding & Disclosures: The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Stand Up To Cancer Colorectal Cancer Dream Team Translational Research Grant (co-administered by the AACR), the Project P Fund, the Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge Award, the Nodal Award from the Dana-Farber Harvard Cancer Center, the Friends of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Bennett Family Fund, and the Entertainment Industry Foundation through the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance and Stand Up To Cancer.

Giannakis has received research funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Servier, and Janssen unrelated to this study.

###

About the American Association for Cancer Research

Founded in 1907, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is the world's first and largest professional organization dedicated to advancing cancer research and its mission to prevent and cure cancer. AACR membership includes 48,000?laboratory, translational, and clinical researchers; population scientists; other health care professionals; and patient advocates residing in 127 countries. The AACR marshals the full spectrum of expertise of the cancer community to accelerate progress in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer by annually convening more than 30 conferences and educational workshops--the largest of which is the AACR Annual Meeting, with more than 74,000 attendees for the 2020 virtual meetings and more than 22,500 attendees for past in-person meetings. In addition, the AACR publishes nine prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals and a magazine for cancer survivors, patients, and their caregivers. The AACR funds meritorious research directly as well as in cooperation with numerous cancer organizations. As the Scientific Partner of Stand Up To Cancer, the AACR provides expert peer review, grants administration, and scientific oversight of team science and individual investigator grants in cancer research that have the potential for near-term patient benefit. The AACR actively communicates with legislators and other policymakers about the value of cancer research and related biomedical science in saving lives from cancer. For more information about the AACR, visit?http://www.AACR.org.

 

Disadvantaged neighborhoods see more COVID-19 infections and deaths

Neighborhood-level COVID-19 inequality index created to analyze disparities

THE MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL / MOUNT SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Research News

 

NEW YORK (June 17, 2021)--New York City neighborhoods that had higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage experienced more COVID-19 infections and deaths, according to Mount Sinai scientists who created a neighborhood-level COVID-19 inequity index.

The index measured factors that fueled inequities in the residents' lives, such as employment and commuting patterns, population density of their neighborhood, food access, socioeconomic status, and access to health care. This allowed the scientists to compare between neighborhoods the contributions of these social factors in facilitating disease transmission during the first wave of the pandemic in a study published in Nature Communications in June.

"Much of the early rhetoric around COVID-19 disparities centered on comorbidities which, due to health disparities, may have explained why communities of color were suffering higher mortality. But we were seeing more people of color getting infected in the first place," said Daniel Carrión, PhD, MPH, first author and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Our research team wanted to add to the literature outlining how structural racism is related to neighborhood disadvantage, and how that disadvantage is related to increased COVID-19 infections and mortality."

The COVID-19 inequity index showed that the disparities were considerably worse based on neighborhood racial and ethnic composition; Black neighborhoods had the highest average inequity index, followed by Latinx communities, while white neighborhoods had the lowest. The authors believe one of the reasons for these disparities is the diminished capacity to socially isolate based on where someone lives.

This study showed that areas with higher COVID-19 inequity indices had higher subway ridership after New York State introduced stay-at-home orders. This implies that the residents had less capacity to socially distance, the researchers said, possibly due to their jobs as essential workers or because they lived in denser housing.

The researchers believe their approach to identifying social factors that are associated with viral spread may be useful throughout the United States to pinpoint potential areas for targeted public health intervention.

"The social factors in the COVID-19 inequity index are upstream neighborhood characteristics--they were already in place before the pandemic," said Allan Just, PhD, senior author on the study and Assistant Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at Icahn Mount Sinai. "In the near term, this speaks to the importance of place-based interventions in Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities to reduce disease incidence and mortality, such as improved and targeted vaccine availability for these communities. This also supports the need to look at social factors in pandemic preparedness."

The team analyzed many forms of publicly available data, including census, New York City subway ridership, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene infections and mortality data, and other datasets available through New York City's and New York State's open data portals.

Many neighborhood-level social variables are closely related; for example, median income can be strongly associated with education or even food access. This can be a challenge for traditional statistical approaches, so the team employed a new statistical framework designed to deal with these challenges, developed by co-author Elena Colicino, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at Icahn Mount Sinai.

The COVID-19 inequity index included neighborhood-level characteristics, but specifically excluded race and ethnicity as input variables. "Past literature shows that structural racism operates by historically sorting BIPOC people into neighborhoods that do not have the same resources and may facilitate infectious disease transmission," said Dr. Carrión. "We wanted to see if our index reconstructed those racial disparities."

###

The research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health grants UL1TR001433, P30ES023515, and T32HD049311.

Additional authors include Nicolo Foppa Pedretti, MS, Kodi B. Arfer, PhD, Johnathan Rush, MA, and Nicholas DeFelice, PhD, in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at Icahn School Mount Sinai.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest academic medical system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai is a national and international source of unrivaled education, translational research and discovery, and collaborative clinical leadership ensuring that we deliver the highest quality care--from prevention to treatment of the most serious and complex human diseases. The Health System includes more than 7,200 physicians and features a robust and continually expanding network of multispecialty services, including more than 400 ambulatory practice locations throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, and Long Island. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 14 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of the Top 20 Best Hospitals in the country and the Icahn School of Medicine as one of the Top 20 Best Medical Schools in country. Mount Sinai Health System hospitals are consistently ranked regionally by specialty and our physicians in the top 1% of all physicians nationally by U.S. News & World Report.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

New study finds fast-food companies spending more on ads, targeting Black and Hispanic youth

Industry spent $5 billion on advertising in 2019, and Black youth viewed 75% more ads than their White peers

UCONN RUDD CENTER FOR FOOD POLICY AND OBESITY

Research News

 

The fast-food industry spent $5 billion on advertising in 2019, and the advertisements disproportionately targeted Black and Hispanic youth, according to new research published today by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. The new report, Fast Food FACTS 2021, finds that the industry's annual ad spending in 2019 increased by over $400 million since 2012, and that children and teens were viewing on average more than two fast food TV ads per day.

Frequent and widespread exposure to fast-food marketing increases young people's preferences for, and consumption of fast-food, which is largely high in calories, sugar, fat and sodium. Fast-food represents 40% of all food and beverage marketing expenditures targeted at children and teens (aged 2-17). Using 2019 Nielsen data, the study found that children aged 2-5 viewed an average of 830 TV ads for fast food over the course of the year, while children aged 6-11 viewed 787 ads, and teens and tweens aged 12-17 viewed 775 ads.

Nearly all of these ads promoted full-calorie regular menu items or the restaurants in general, while just 1% of ads viewed promoted restaurants' healthier menu items. Moreover, only 10% of ads viewed by children appeared during children's TV programming and fewer than 10% of ads promoted kids' meals. Further, many of the restaurants promoted their mobile apps or websites for digital orders in TV ads.

The study also shows that disparities in racial and ethnic targeted advertising are widening. Fast-food ad spending on Spanish-language television spiked, with a 33% increase from 2012 levels. Black youth viewed 75% more fast food ads than their White peers, up from a 60% difference found in 2012, even as TV viewership among all youth is down. On both Spanish-language and Black-targeted TV programming, restaurants advertised their low-cost large-portion value menu items and meal deals disproportionately more than on other types of programming, and no healthy menu items were advertised on Spanish-language TV.

"Fast-food consumption by children and teens has increased over the past decade, and fast-food advertising definitely plays a role in that rise," said Dr. Jennifer Harris, Senior Research Advisor for Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center and a co-author of the study. "Our findings show that these advertisements disproportionately target Black and Hispanic youth, groups who already face greater risk for obesity and other diet-related diseases. Moreover, many fast-food companies tout recent introductions of healthier menu items as evidence of their commitment to improving nutrition, but they rarely promote these items in their advertising."

More than 1 in 3 children eat fast-food on a given day in the United States. Fast-food restaurants have pledged to introduce healthier items on their regular menus and healthier drinks and sides to their kids' meals, but another recent study from the Rudd Center found that these voluntary policies have had little effect on purchases of kids' meals over regular menu items and selection of healthier kids' beverages. This new study shows that these purchasing patterns mirror the ads children see, with the vast majority of ads viewed by children promoting less healthy and higher portion items on their regular menus.

"Less time in front of TV screens is not protecting kids from fast-food TV ads," said Dr. Frances Fleming-Milici, Director of Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center and a co-author of the study. "Now more than ever parents need support in raising healthy children, and consistent exposure to ads featuring burgers, fries and pizza sabotages their best efforts. Media companies, policymakers and advocates can play a vital role in demanding an end to irresponsible advertising."

The study analyzed 2019 Nielsen data covering advertising spending and TV advertising exposure for 274 fast-food restaurants, including detailed analyses of the 27 top fast-food advertisers with the highest annual advertising spending and/or that targeted TV advertising to children, Hispanic, and/or Black consumers. The Rudd Center produces annual FACTS reports on the state of food and beverage advertising aimed at children, teens and Black and Hispanic youth. This study is a follow up to the Rudd Center's 2013 Fast-Food FACTS report.

The authors of the study make recommendations on concrete steps fast-food restaurants can take to limit such marketing, such as expanding voluntary industry self-regulation to restrict unhealthy food advertising to children up to age 14 at a minimum, discontinuing ads for regular menu items on children's TV channels and ending disproportionately high marketing to Hispanic and Black youth. They also offer suggestions for actions that federal, state and local governments can take such as creating nutrition standards for kids' meals and eliminating unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children as a tax-deductible expense. Lastly, their recommendations include how public health advocates and practitioners can push for changes to these marketing practices.

###