It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
New clean energy tech extracts twice the power from ocean waves
Schematic showing the key operational features of the prototype technology. Credit: RMIT University
Researchers have developed prototype technology that can double the power harvested from ocean waves, in an advance that could finally make wave energy a viable renewable alternative.
The untapped potential of ocean wave energy is vast—it has been estimated that the power of coastal waves around the world each year is equivalent to annual global electricity production.
But the challenges of developing technologies that can efficiently extract that natural power and withstand the harsh ocean environment have kept wave energy stuck at experimental stage.
Now a research team led by RMIT University has created a wave energy converter that is twice as efficient at harvesting power as any similar technologies developed to date.
The innovation, published in the journal Applied Energy, relies on a world-first, dual-turbine design.
Lead researcher Professor Xu Wang said wave energy was one of the most promising sources of clean, reliable and renewable power.
"While wind and solar dominate the renewable market, they are available only 20-30% of the time," Wang said.
"Wave energy is available 90% of the time on average and the potential power contained in offshore waves is immense.
"Our prototype technology overcomes some of the key technical challenges that have been holding back the wave energy industry from large-scale deployment.
"With further development, we hope this technology could be the foundation for a thriving new renewable energy industry delivering massive environmental and economic benefits."
How the wave energy convertor works
One of the most popular experimental approaches is to harvest wave energy through a buoy-type converter known as a "point absorber", which is ideal for offshore locations.
The prototype dual-turbine wave energy conversion technology. Credit: RMIT University
This technology, which harvests energy from the up and down movement of waves, is generally cost-effective to manufacture and install.
But it needs to be precisely synchronized with incoming wave movement to efficiently harvest the energy. This usually involves an array of sensors, actuators and control processors, adding complexity to the system that can cause underperformance, as well as reliability and maintenance issues.
The RMIT-created prototype needs no special synching tech, as the device naturally floats up and down with the swell of the wave.
"By always staying in sync with the movement of the waves, we can maximize the energy that's harvested," Wang said.
"Combined with our unique counter-rotating dual turbine wheels, this prototype can double the output power harvested from ocean waves, compared with other experimental point absorber technologies."
The simple and economical device has been developed by RMIT engineering researchers in collaboration with researchers from Beihang University in China.
Two turbine wheels, which are stacked on top of each other and rotate in opposite directions, are connected to a generator through shafts and a belt-pulley driven transmission system.
The generator is placed inside a buoy above the waterline to keep it out of corrosive seawater and extend the lifespan of the device.
The prototype has been successfully tested at lab scale and the research team is keen to collaborate with industry partners to test a full-scale model, and work towards commercial viability.
"We know it works in our labs, so the next steps are to scale this technology up and test it in a tank or in real-life ocean conditions," Wang said.
"Tapping into our wave energy resource could not only help us cut carbon emissions and create new green energy jobs, it also has great potential for addressing other environmental problems."
"For example, as the frequency of drought increases, wave energy could be used to power carbon-neutral desalination plants and supply fresh water for the agriculture industry—a smart adaptation to the challenge of a changing climate."
More information:Han Xiao et al, Study of a novel rotational speed amplified dual turbine wheel wave energy converter,Applied Energy(2021).DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117423
By Hannah Stevens and Karen Nikos-Rose | August 17, 2021
While a life-altering pandemic has caused a substantial uptick in anxiety and depression symptoms among adults and children alike, LGBTQ+ youth have turned to peers in anonymous online discussion forums for support. New research from the University of California, Davis, suggests these LGBTQ+ teenagers — who already experience disproportionate levels of psychological adversity — exhibited increased anxiety on the popular r/LGBTeens subreddit throughout 2020 and the start of 2021.
With physical isolation leading to an increase in reliance on digital communication, LGBTQ+ youth used this forum to express emotional distress related to LGBTQ+ discrimination, personal struggles with sexuality, romantic relationships and more.
“While researchers and mental health professionals have closely monitored the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health conditions, few have taken a deep dive into the LGBTQ+ youth population specifically,” said Hannah Stevens, a doctoral student in communication and lead author of the paper. It was published today published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance.
Researchers in the Department of Communication analyzed nearly 40,000 subreddit posts — a forum dedicated to a specific topic on the website Reddit — from LGBTQ+ youth. They uncovered trends in anxiety, sadness and anger communicated within the messages.
This research revealed that while anger and sadness remained consistent following the start of the pandemic, anxiety increased significantly. Further analysis linked this trend to 10 key conversation topics: attraction to a friend, coming out, coming out to family, discrimination, education, exploring sexuality, gender pronouns, love and relationship advice, starting a new relationship, and struggling with mental health.
Stevens said the combination of these factors, and limited in-person social interactions outside of the home, have resulted in LGBTQ+ youth turning to online support over the past 18 months. “The raw, emotional messages analyzed through this research reveal eye-opening insights into the most prevalent concerns in their daily lives.”
The study compared the evolution of conversation topics in the r/LGBTeens subreddit to conversations among the larger population of teenagers. Researchers also plotted the changes in LGBTQ+ emotions over time, which found an unprecedented increase in overall negative emotion during the 2020-21 time period.
“By understanding the root causes of anxiety in LGBTQ+ youth, mental health professionals can better tailor the intervention tactics they employ,” Stevens said. “Ultimately, this will result in better mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ youth.”
###
Co-authors of the paper are Irena Acic and Sofia Rhea, doctoral students in the Department of Communication.
JOURNAL
JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Natural Language Processing Insight into LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Content Analysis of Anxiety-Provoking Topics and Trends in Emotion in LGBTeens Microcommunity Subreddit
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Aug-2021
POLYAMOURY IS NATURAL & PRODUCTIVE
Sharing the love helps male acorn woodpeckers father more chicks
Males in polygamous breeding groups with one or two other male woodpeckers sire significantly more chicks over their lifetimes
IMAGE: ACORN WOODPECKERS DOING THE SPREAD-WING DISPLAY. RESEARCHERS HAD LONG ASSUMED THAT ACORN WOODPECKERS OPTING FOR A RARE FORM OF POLYGAMY, IN WHICH CO-BREEDING SIBLINGS ARE FORCED TO COMPETE TO MATE, WERE MAKING AN EVOLUTIONARY COMPROMISE. TO RESEARCHERS, THIS SIBLING RIVALRY SEEMED LIKELY TO RESULT IN INDIVIDUAL WOODPECKERS LEAVING BEHIND FEWER OFFSPRING EACH YEAR THAN IF THEY HAD OPTED FOR A MORE TRADITIONAL COUPLED PAIRING WITH A GUARANTEED OPPORTUNITY TO MATE. TO BALANCE OUT THIS SHORT-TERM LOSS OF EVOLUTIONARY FITNESS, RESEARCHERS HYPOTHESIZED THAT THE WOODPECKERS’ POLYGAMY MUST CONFER SOME INDIRECT OR LONG-TERM ADVANTAGES BUT QUANTIFYING THOSE BENEFITS IN WILD POPULATIONS BEFORE THIS STUDY HAD PROVEN EXTREMELY CHALLENGING. BUT NOW, A NEW STUDY PUBLISHED TODAY IN THE JOURNAL PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B SUGGESTS THAT EVEN COMPLEX COOPERATIVE BREEDING STRATEGIES MAY OFFER DIRECT EVOLUTIONARY BENEFITS OVER AN ANIMAL’S LIFETIME, AND PERHAPS OFFERS CLUES INTO HOW SOCIAL BEHAVIOR FIRST EVOLVED IN HUMANS AND OTHER ANIMALS. THE STUDY FINDS THAT MALE ACORN WOODPECKERS BREEDING POLYGAMOUSLY IN DUOS OR TRIOS OF MALES ACTUALLY FATHERED MORE OFFSPRING THAN MALES BREEDING ALONE WITH A SINGLE FEMALE, CONTRARY TO CONVENTIONAL THINKING AMONG BIOLOGISTS THAT MONOGAMOUS MALES NECESSARILY PRODUCE MORE OFFSPRING THAN THOSE IN POLYGAMOUS GROUPS.view more
CREDIT: COPYRIGHT STEVE ZAMEK
A new long-term study led by Sahas Barve, a Peter Buck Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, finds that male acorn woodpeckers breeding polygamously in duos or trios of males actually fathered more offspring than males breeding alone with a single female, contrary to conventional thinking among biologists that monogamous males necessarily produce more offspring than those in polygamous groups. For females, polygamy is less of a slam dunk but co-breeding duos left behind the same number of offspring as the birds that coupled up, while female trios left behind fewer offspring than either group.
The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that even complex cooperative breeding strategies may offer direct evolutionary benefits over an animal’s lifetime, and perhaps offers clues into how social behavior first evolved in humans and other animals.
The love life of the typical acorn woodpecker is a complex, polygamous affair. A common arrangement for a male of this species, which inhabits oak savannas from Oregon to Colombia, might be ruling over a patch of woodland alongside two of his brothers and a pair of sisters from another family that the brothers all mate and raise chicks with. Some of the group’s offspring may even hang around their childhood territory for years, not to breed with their parents or aunts and uncles, but to help raise the next generation before striking out to become breeders in other groups.
Researchers had long assumed that the woodpeckers opting for this rare form of polygamy, in which co-breeding siblings are forced to compete to mate, were making an evolutionary compromise. To researchers, this sibling rivalry seemed likely to result in individual woodpeckers leaving behind fewer offspring each year than if they had opted for a more traditional coupled pairing with a guaranteed opportunity to mate. To balance out this short-term loss of evolutionary fitness, researchers hypothesized that the woodpeckers’ polygamy must confer some indirect or long-term advantages, but quantifying those benefits in wild populations before this study had proven extremely challenging.
“For the longest time we have thought polygamous breeding was a compromise, and breeding as couples was considered the gold standard for leaving behind the highest number of chicks,” Barve said. “But you can’t really test that without super-detailed, long-term data. Fortunately, that’s exactly what we had for this study.”
The data underpinning this research spans more than 40 years and tracks 499 individual birds over their entire lifetimes at the 2,500-acre Hastings Natural History Reservation in the Carmel Valley along California’s central coast, where a rotating cast of some 150 scientists and interns has been observing acorn woodpeckers since 1968. Researchers working at the Hastings Reserve recorded each bird’s reproductive output from their first attempt to their last along with information including territory quality, group composition, social standing and genetic data linking parents to their offspring for birds hatched between 1984 and 2006.
CAPTION
Female (left) and male (right) acorn woodpeckers. A new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that even complex cooperative breeding strategies may offer direct evolutionary benefits over an animal’s lifetime, and perhaps offers clues into how social behavior first evolved in humans and other animals. The data underpinning this research spans more than 40 years and tracks 499 individual birds over their entire lifetimes at the 2,500-acre Hastings Natural History Reservation in the Carmel Valley along California’s central coast, where a rotating cast of some 150 scientists and interns has been observing acorn woodpeckers since 1968. Researchers working at the Hastings Reserve recorded each bird’s reproductive output from their first attempt to their last along with information including territory quality, group composition, social standing and genetic data linking parents to their offspring for birds hatched between 1984 and 2006.
CREDIT
Copyright Steve Zamek
Researchers had traditionally explained the evolution of the woodpeckers’ polygamous co-breeding with a concept known as kin selection. In this view, cooperative breeding could have arisen and perpetuated itself among the woodpeckers despite reducing the number of offspring an individual bird parented because even if a male loses out on a breeding opportunity to one of his brothers, the resulting chicks will still carry a portion of that lonely male’s shared DNA. Also, if the unmated male helps raise and support his nieces and nephews, he also increases the chances that they survive and reproduce, passing on a portion of his DNA to the next generation.
Another idea was that the polygamous birds were trading the relative certainty of parenting offspring in a couple for the increased odds of controlling a territory chock-full of acorns afforded to them by teaming up with their brothers or sisters. Strength in numbers is important for these woodpeckers because of the vicious, bloody battles they must fight to win territories with the best granaries. These granaries are trees, usually dead, that have been plugged full of thousands of acorns over many years by the woodpeckers living in their vicinity. Presiding over a granary that is well-stocked can make or break a group’s ability to reproduce during lean years when acorns are less abundant.
The multi-decade data set from the Hastings Reserve allowed Barve and his collaborators to finally assess whether breeding cooperatively was as costly as researchers had long assumed. To do this, the team compared the number of lifetime offspring produced by woodpeckers that did their breeding in pairs with the number produced by birds engaged in some form of cooperative polygamy.
The research team’s analysis revealed that individual males that bred as co-breeding duos and trios left behind 1.5-times more direct offspring than single-breeding males. The study also finds that these co-breeding males tend to spend two to three extra years as breeders compared to their paired-up counterparts, which may be responsible for the increased reproductive success over the co-breeding birds’ lifetimes.
Female woodpecker duos and single-breeders each left behind roughly the same number of young over their lifetimes, but those that bred as trios produced 2.5 fewer chicks. Barve said that while these figures for female birds might not seem as convincing, the co-breeding duos may still be leaving behind a more substantial genetic legacy than their single-breeding counterparts by helping their closely related co-breeders’ chicks survive. The same could be said of the males, which would endow cooperative breeding with even more substantial advantages.
CAPTION
Male (left) and female (right) acorn woodpeckers. Researchers had traditionally explained the evolution of acorn woodpeckers’ polygamous co-breeding with a concept known as kin selection. In this view, cooperative breeding could have arisen and perpetuated itself among the woodpeckers despite reducing the number of offspring an individual bird parented because even if a male loses out on a breeding opportunity to one of his brothers, the resulting chicks will still carry a portion of that lonely male’s shared DNA. Also, if the unmated male helps raise and support his nieces and nephews, he also increases the chances that they survive and reproduce, passing on a portion of his DNA to the next generation. But now, a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that even complex cooperative breeding strategies may offer direct evolutionary benefits over an animal’s lifetime, and perhaps offers clues into how social behavior first evolved in humans and other animals. The study finds that male acorn woodpeckers breeding polygamously in duos or trios of males actually fathered more offspring than males breeding alone with a single female, contrary to conventional thinking among biologists that monogamous males necessarily produce more offspring than those in polygamous groups.
CREDIT
Copyright Vivek Khanzode
“We thought acorn woodpeckers lost out on fitness by breeding cooperatively, but we show that breeding in these larger cooperative groups is actually better than breeding in pairs,” Barve said. “This is something that hasn’t been shown before because it’s so hard to get strong enough long-term data to really study it. In that sense, our findings also highlight the value of long-term research in animal behavior.”
Barve added that researchers may no longer need to invoke kin selection as a mechanism for how this cooperative trait evolved and persisted in acorn woodpeckers.
“Acorn woodpeckers have some of the most complicated social systems of any organism,” Barve said. “And these findings help us understand how this social system might have evolved, while opening up the possibility that cooperative breeding behaviors may be more beneficial than previously thought in other species as well. It could even help explain why sociality evolves so commonly throughout the tree of life.”
Funding and support for this research were provided by the Smithsonian and the National Science Foundation.
# # #
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
DOI
10.1098/rspb.2021.0579
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Data/statistical analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Animals
ARTICLE TITLE
Lifetime reproductive benefits of cooperative polygamy vary for males and females in the acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus)
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Aug-2021
Use of dexamethasone, remdesivir against Covid-19 varied widely across US health systems
Study using nationwide NIH database suggests possible underuse of dexamethasone, lack of uniform treatment practices
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
As many as one-fifth of patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 in the United States who may have benefitted from treatment with the anti-inflammatory steroid dexamethasone or closely related drugs were not given such treatment at the height of the pandemic, according to a large, nationwide study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study also found that the use of dexamethasone and another drug, the antiviral remdesivir, varied greatly across health systems in the U.S. Dexamethasone and remdesivir are among a handful of recommended treatments for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who require oxygen.
For their study, the researchers analyzed anonymized health records of 137,870 people hospitalized in the United States with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 for the thirteen-month period from February 2020 through February 2021.
The research is published online August 16 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
“These findings underscore the wide variation in COVID-19 care across American health systems,” says study lead author Hemalkumar Mehta, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School. “This variation is vital to understand, since it may indicate that many patients who would benefit from these treatments may not be receiving them.”
Dexamethasone is an inexpensive and widely available steroid drug that has been in use in the U.S. since the early 1960s, chiefly to reduce serious inflammation in severe arthritis or allergic anaphylactic shock. The drug became a standard clinical weapon against severe COVID-19 worldwide after a U.K. clinical study, whose results were announced in June 2020, found that it reduced mortality by more than one-third when given to ventilated COVID-19 patients, and by more than one-fifth when given to patients who were getting supplemental oxygen.
Remdesivir, an antiviral drug originally developed as a treatment for Hepatitis C virus infection, showed efficacy against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in early lab-dish tests. Later, in large clinical trials, its use significantly cut the lengths of COVID-19 patients’ hospital stays. In May 2020, remdesivir received emergency use approval in the U.S. for treating COVID-19, and in October 2020 it received full FDA approval.
To get a sense of how these drugs were put to use against COVID-19 in the U.S., the researchers analyzed data from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), a National Institutes of Health-sponsored collection of electronic health records on millions of COVID-19 patients from 43 health systems nationwide. The study covered 137,870 adults who were hospitalized with COVID-19, and met other criteria—for instance, those hospitalized for at least one day—between February 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021.
The analysis showed that the rate of dexamethasone use in hospitalized COVID-19 patients—with or without mechanical ventilation—climbed steeply in June 2020 and continued to climb until it peaked in mid-November at just over 50 percent of patients. Usage then fell to about one-third of patients by late February 2021.
The rate of remdesivir use showed a similar pattern, peaking in November 2020 at about 35 percent. The results also showed that the rate of use of the drug hydroxychloroquine rose to about 42 percent in March 2020 but fell back to near zero the following month, after clinical trial evidence suggested that it was ineffective against COVID-19.
Dexamethasone use was higher among patients whose COVID-19 was severe enough to require mechanical ventilation to support the lungs. However, even after June 2020 when dexamethasone’s efficacy had been established, the rate of its use in ventilated patients varied widely across the 40 health systems represented by the data, with a median value of only 80 percent. The analysis revealed that the rate of remdesivir use in hospitalized COVID-19 patients also varied widely across health systems.
The findings, the researchers say, suggest the possibility that dexamethasone has been underused in patients with severe COVID-19, and more generally that clinical practice for treating COVID-19 has not developed a set of uniform standards.
In an accompanying editorial, Marshall J. Glesby, MD, PhD, and Roy M. Gulick, MD, MPH, of Weill Cornell Medicine, highlight the evolving evidence on COVID-19 treatments and its influence on treatment uptake, including considerable variation among U.S. health systems.
“The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a wave of scientific activity to identify new or repurposed treatments to halt the disease,” says G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS, a study author and professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology. “It is vital that these treatments are used consistently across hospitals and health systems, so as to prevent as much death and disability as possible.”
The researchers note that their analysis did not take into account factors such as drug shortages and differences between COVID-19 patients receiving oxygen supplementation—differences that might help explain some of the apparent variation in treatment utilization rates.
“It’s possible that, for example, some hospitals had sicker patients on average compared to other hospitals—it will be critical to understand the potential factors in future investigations,” Mehta says.
“Use of Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, and Dexamethasone Among Adults Hospitalized With COVID-19 In The United States” was co-authored by Hemalkumar Mehta, Huijun An, Kathleen Andersen, Omar Mansour, Vithal Madhira, Emaan Rashidi, Benjamin Bates, Soko Setoguchi, Corey Joseph, Paul Kocis, Richard Moffitt, Tellen Bennett, Christopher Chute, Brian Garibaldi, and G. Caleb Alexander.
Support was provided in part by the National Institute on Aging (1K01AG070329-01) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (T32HL139426-03).
Disclosures:
Caleb Alexander is past Chair of FDA’s Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee; has served as a paid advisor to IQVIA; is a co-founding principal and equity holder in Monument Analytics, a health care consultancy whose clients include the life sciences industry as well as plaintiffs in opioid litigation; and is a member of OptumRx’s National P&T Committee.
# # #
JOURNAL
Annals of Internal Medicine
ALL SMOKING PRODUCES TOXIC PARTICULATES
Smoking exposure during childhood may increase risk of rheumatoid arthritis
Longitudinal study uncovers significant influence of passive exposure to parental smoking on adult-onset incident seropositive rheumatoid arthritis
A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital found a potential direct link between exposure to parental smoking during childhood and increased risk of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis (RA) later in life. Researchers utilized established longitudinal data from 90,923 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII) to elucidate the relationship between passive smoking exposure and incident RA. Passive exposure was broken down into three categories, including maternal smoking during pregnancy, parental smoking during childhood, and years lived with smokers since age 18. Even with personal smoking accounted for, passive exposure to parental smoking during childhood was found to increase risk of incident seropositive RA by 75-percent. Findings are published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.
“There has been intense interest in mucosal lung inflammation from personal smoking as a site of RA pathogenesis,” said senior author Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc, of the Department of Medicine at the Brigham. “But the majority of RA patients aren’t smokers, so we wanted to look at another inhalant that might precede RA.”
RA is an inflammatory disease characterized by arthritis at multiple joints and is associated with morbidity and mortality outcomes. Many people with RA have signs of lung inflammation, and while genetic and environmental factors contribute to risk of developing RA, smoking has long been implicated as a key RA risk factor. Personal (active) smoking is the most well-established environmental risk factor associated with RA, with passive smoking left relatively unexplored.
To link passive smoking and incident RA more conclusively, Sparks and colleagues used data from NHSII questionnaires collected biennially between 1989 and 2017 from 90,923 women aged 35-52 years. Researchers used participant medical records to confirm incident RA and serostatus. Statistical modeling was then used to estimate the direct effect of each passive smoking exposure on RA risk, as well as to control for other factors such as personal smoking.
A 75-percent higher risk of RA was found in individuals who experienced passive childhood exposure to parental smoking. This risk increased in participants who themselves became active smokers. Over the median follow-up of 27.7 years, 532 women in the cohort developed confirmed incident RA cases — the majority (352) of which were seropositive (positive for RA autoantibodies). Maternal smoking during pregnancy and years lived with smokers beyond age 18 showed no significant association with incident RA risk.
Although the all-female nurse participant pool led to high response rates and retention, the study is limited by the absence of men. The team intends to continue with longitudinal studies that encompass both men and women, as to provide critical insight into other rheumatoid conditions and even other autoimmune diseases.
“Our findings give more depth and gravity to the negative health consequences of smoking in relation to RA, one of the most common autoimmune diseases,” said lead and co-corresponding author Kazuki Yoshida, MD, ScD, of the Brigham’s Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation and Immunity. “This relationship between childhood parental smoking and adult-onset RA may go beyond rheumatology — future studies should investigate whether childhood exposure to inhalants may predispose individuals to general autoimmunity later in life.”
Conflict of Interest: None
Funding: This work was supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) under award number K23 AR069688 to Dr. Sparks. This work was additionally supported by the Rheumatology Research Foundation R Bridge Award, and by the National Institutes of Health (award numbers L30 AR066953, K24 AR052403, R01 AR049880, R01AR057327, R01 AR119246, R01 HL034594, P30 AR070253, P30 AR072577, P30 AR069625, UM1CA186107, U01 HG008685, 1OT2OD026553, and R03 AR075886). Dr. Yoshida was supported by the Rheumatology Research Foundation K Bridge Award, Brigham and Women's Hospital Department of Medicine Fellowship Award, and K23 AR076453 (NIAMS).
Nurses’ Health Study II was supported by the National Institutes of Health (U01 CA176726, R01CA67262, and U01 HL145386).
Paper cited: Yoshida K et al. “Passive Smoking Throughout the Life Course and the Risk of Incident Rheumatoid Arthritis in Adulthood Among Women” Arthritis Rheumatol. DOI: 10.1002/art.41939
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
18-Aug-2021
Investigators examine antibiotic prescribing following COVID-19 restrictions
In regions with high rates of COVID-19 spread, such as Europe and the United States, prescriptions for antibiotics in the community dropped dramatically after COVID-19 restrictions were introduced in early 2020. A study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology looked at antibiotic prescribing in Australia, which has had low COVID-19 rates.
Analyses of national claims data revealed that COVID-19 restrictions in Australia were associated with substantial reductions in community dispensing of antibiotics primarily used to treat respiratory infections, but antibiotics for non-respiratory infections were unchanged.
“The issue is that antibiotics should rarely be prescribed for common viral respiratory infections in the first place. These big reductions show how low general practitioners’ antibiotic prescribing could go if guidelines were followed more closely,” said co–senior Helga Zoega, PhD, of UNSW Sydney, in Australia.
Vitamin D is made when the skin comes into contact with sunshine; however, we can also get vitamin D from our food intake. It has several important functions within the body, but it is primarily known for promoting calcium absorption, which makes it a vital nutrient for bone health.
In a paper published by The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Surrey’s researchers conducted a systematic review of the vitamin D and dietary intakes of members of the black community across the globe. The findings suggest that people of African descent should consider taking vitamin D supplements and consume more vitamin D rich foods.
The researchers found that when looking at black individuals who live in low latitude countries (such as Brazil and South Africa), there was vitamin D sufficiency. However, in those who live at higher latitudes, such as in the UK, vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency was common.
The Surrey researchers' findings suggest that awareness of vitamin D deficiency needs to be highlighted in African-Caribbean populations, especially those living in countries like the UK where low dietary vitamin D intake was prevalent.
Rebecca Vearing, PhD research student from the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Surrey, said: “As the majority of our vitamin D comes from exposure to sunlight, for many people getting enough vitamin D may be a real challenge. This research shows that eating a nutritionally balanced diet including foods that provide vitamin D -- such as oily fish, red meat, egg yolk and fortified foods such as breakfast cereals -- and taking regular supplements are key to boosting vitamin D status.”
These findings are supported by a second paper from Surrey published by The Journal of Nutrition, where researchers studied how vitamin D supplements and sunlight exposure affect the health of Brazilian women living in both the UK and Brazil.*
This first-of-its-kind study examined two groups of the same ethnic identity and sex, living in different countries in an identical way and looked at whether supplements or sunlight altered the vitamin D status of its participants.
Researchers studied 120 healthy Brazilian women in parallel, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trials conducted at different latitudes in Brazil and England. Participants were chosen randomly to receive a daily vitamin D supplement or placebo for 12 weeks during the wintertime.
Researchers found that although vitamin D dietary requirements may vary considerably between participants in each country, a moderate dose of vitamin D supplementation is a remarkably effective strategy for raising and maintaining adequate vitamin D levels over the winter months in both the UK and Brazil.
The participants with the lowest initial vitamin D levels had the most significant increases in response to vitamin D supplements.
Overall, the study found that the effect of vitamin D supplements is not dependent on latitude.
Dr Marcela Mendes, visiting research fellow from the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Surrey, said: “Our research looks at different ethnic groups, and our findings show that people might benefit from increasing consumption of foods that naturally contain vitamin D or are fortified with it, or even taking an additional supplement, in the autumn and winter, regardless of where they live.”
JOURNAL
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
DOI
10.1038/s41430-021-00980-9
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Literature review
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Global Perspective of the Vitamin D Status of African-Caribbean Populations: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
18-Jul-2021
Researchers uncover new evidence that fetal membranes can repair themselves after injury
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London and UCL have shown that fetal membranes are able to heal after injury in a new study published today in Scientific Reports.
The integrity of the fetal membranes that surround the baby in the womb during pregnancy is vital for normal development. But fetal membranes can become damaged as a result of infection, bleeding, or after fetal surgery and even diagnostic tests during pregnancy, such as amniocentesis, which require doctors to make a hole with a needle in the fetal membrane sac.
Currently there are no clinical approaches available to repair or improve healing in the fetal membranes, and until now it was unclear if small holes in the membranes were able to heal themselves.
The international research team, which also includes scientists and clinicians from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, created small defects using a needle in donated human fetal membrane tissue, to mimic damage caused during fetal surgery. A few days after injury, the researchers discovered a population of cells called myofibroblasts (MFs), which play an important role in wound healing, and found that these cells crawled towards the edges of the wound and into the defect site. This cell population produced collagen and started to pull the edges of the wound, contracting the tissues together and repairing the wound.
The findings follow on from the team’s previous work that highlighted the importance of a protein called Connexin 43 (Cx43) in the process of wound healing and repair. Whilst in this study, the researchers show that Cx43 was expressed by two cell populations, amniotic mesenchymal cells (AMCs) and MFs, the localisation and levels of Cx43 measured were different. They also found that overexpression of this protein affected the ability of cells to migrate into the defect site and close the wound.
Dr Tina Chowdhury, Senior Lecturer in Regenerative Medicine at Queen Mary, said: “We have always thought that small diameter wounds created in human fetal membranes rarely heal by themselves but here we show that the tissues have the potential to do this. We found that Cx43 has different effects on cell populations found in the membranes and promotes transformation of AMCs into MFs, triggering them to move, repair and heal defects in the fetal membranes.”
The premature rupture of fetal membranes, known as preterm prelabour rupture of the membranes (PPROM), is a major cause of preterm birth accounting for around 40 per cent of early infant death. Therefore, the successful repair of fetal membranes could help reduce the risk of birth complications.
Anna David, UCLH Consultant and Professor in Obstetrics and Maternal Fetal Medicine and Director at the UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health and a co-author of the study, said: “Finding that the fetal membranes have this potential to heal is a huge step towards developing treatments for women with PPROM. It holds out hope that we may be able to delay or even prevent preterm birth, which will significantly improve baby outcomes.”
Research publication: ‘Cx43 mediates changes in myofibroblast contraction and collagen release in human amniotic membrane defects after trauma’ Eleni Costa, Babatunde O. Okesola, Christopher Thrasivoulou, David L. Becker, Jan A. Deprest, Anna L. David, Tina T. Chowdhury, Scientific Reports.
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