Huge new ichthyosaur, one of the largest animals ever, uncovered high in the Alps

Largest ever ichthyosaur tooth is among fossil discoveries including remains of a new beast, sized longer than a bowling alley

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

 

IMAGE: THE HABITAT AND ANIMALS THAT WERE FOUND TOGETHER WITH THE GIANT ICHTHYOSAURS COPYRIGHT HEINZ FURRER view more 

CREDIT: HEINZ FURRER

Paleontologists have discovered sets of fossils representing three new ichthyosaurs that may have been among the largest animals to have ever lived, reports a new paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Unearthed in the Swiss Alps between 1976 and 1990, the discovery includes the largest ichthyosaur tooth ever found. The width of the tooth root is twice as large as any aquatic reptile known, the previous largest belonging to a 15-meter-long ichthyosaur.

Other incomplete skeletal remains include the largest trunk vertebra in Europe which demonstrates another ichthyosaur rivaling the largest marine reptile fossil known today, the 21-meter long Shastasaurus sikkanniensis from British Columbia, Canada.

Dr Heinz Furrer, who co-authors this study, was among a team who recovered the fossils during geological mapping in the Kössen Formation of the Alps. More than 200 million years before, the rock layers still covered the seafloor. With the folding of the Alps, however, they had ended up at an altitude of 2,800 meters!

Now a retired curator at the University of Zurich’s Paleontological Institute and Museum, Dr Furrer said he was delighted to have uncovered “the world's longest ichthyosaur; with the thickest tooth found to date and the largest trunk vertebra in Europe!"

And lead author P. Martin Sandler, of the University of Bonn, hopes “maybe there are more remains of the giant sea creatures hidden beneath the glaciers.”

“Bigger is always better,” he says. “There are distinct selective advantages to large body size. Life will go there if it can. There were only three animal groups that had masses greater than 10–20 metric tonnes: long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods); whales; and the giant ichthyosaurs of the Triassic.”

These monstrous, 80-ton reptiles patrolled Panthalassa, the World's ocean surrounding the supercontinent Pangea during the Late Triassic, about 205 million years ago. They also made forays into the shallow seas of the Tethys on the eastern side of Pangea, as shown by the new finds.

Ichthyosaurs first emerged in the wake of the Permian extinction some 250 million years ago, when some 95 percent of marine species died out. The group reached its greatest diversity in the Middle Triassic and a few species persisted into the Cretaceous. Most were much smaller than S. sikanniensis and the similarly-sized species described in the paper.

Roughly the shape of contemporary whales, ichthyosaurs had elongated bodies and erect tail fins. Fossils are concentrated in North America and Europe, but ichthyosaurs have also been found in South America, Asia, and Australia. Giant species have mostly been unearthed in North America, with scanty finds from the Himalaya and New Caledonia, so the discovery of further behemoths in Switzerland represents an expansion of their known range.

However, so little is known about these giants that there are mere ghosts. Tantalizing evidence from the UK, consisting of an enormous toothless jaw bone, and from New Zealand suggest that some of them were the size of blue whales. An 1878 paper credibly describes an ichthyosaur vertebrae 45 cm in diameter from there, but the fossil never made it to London and may have been lost at sea. Sander notes that "it amounts to a major embarrassment for paleontology that we know so little about these giant ichthyosaurs despite the extraordinary size of their fossils. We hope to rise to this challenge and find new and better fossils soon."

CAPTION

Heinz Furrer with the largest ichthyosaur vertebrae.

CREDIT

© Rosi Roth/University of Zurich

These new specimens probably represent the last of the leviathans. “In Nevada, we see the beginnings of true giants, and in the Alps the end,” says Sander, who also co-authored a paper last year about an early giant ichthyosaur from Nevada’s Fossil Hill. “Only the medium–to–large-sized dolphin – and orca-like forms survived into the Jurassic.”

While the smaller ichthyosaurs typically had teeth, most of the known gigantic species appear to have been toothless. One hypothesis suggests that rather than grasping their prey, they fed by suction. “The bulk feeders among the giants must have fed on cephalopods. The ones with teeth likely feed on smaller ichthyosaurs and large fish,” Sander suggests.

The tooth described by the paper is only the second instance of a giant ichthyosaur with teeth—the other being the 15-meter-long Himalayasaurus. These species likely occupied similar ecological roles to modern sperm whales and killer whales. Indeed, the teeth are curved inwards like those of their mammalian successors, indicating a grasping mode of feeding conducive to capturing prey such as giant squid.

“It is hard to say if the tooth is from a large ichthyosaur with giant teeth or from a giant ichthyosaur with average-sized teeth,” Sander wryly acknowledges. Because the tooth described in the paper was broken off at the crown, the authors were not able to confidently assign it to a particular taxon. Still, a peculiarity of dental anatomy allowed the researchers to identify it as belonging to an ichthyosaur.

“Ichthyosaurs have a feature in their teeth that is nearly unique among reptiles: the infolding of the dentin in the roots of their teeth,” explains Sander. “The only other group to show this are monitor lizards.”

The two sets of skeletal remains, which consist of a vertebrae and ten rib fragments, and seven asssociated vertebrae, have been assigned to the family Shastasauridae, which contains the giants Shastasaurus, Shonisaurus, and Himalayasaurus. Comparison of the vertebrae from one set suggests that they may have been the same size or slightly smaller than those of S. sikkanniensis. These measurements are slightly skewed by the fact that the fossils have been tectonically deformed—that is, they have literally been squashed by the movements of the tectonic plates whose collision led to their movement from a former sea floor to the top of a mountain.

Known as the Kössen Formation, the rocks from which these fossils derive were once at the bottom of a shallow coastal area—a very wide lagoon or shallow basin.

This adds to the uncertainty surrounding the habits of these animals, whose size indicates their suitability to deeper reaches of the ocean. “We think that the big ichthyosaurs followed schools of fish into the lagoon. The fossils may also derive from strays that died there,” suggests Furrer.

“You have to be kind of a mountain goat to access the relevant beds,” Sander laughs. “They have the vexing property of not occurring below about 8,000 feet, way above the treeline.”

“At 95 million years ago, the northeastern part of Gondwana, the African plate (which the Kössen Formation was part of), started to push against the European plate, ending with the formation of the very complex piles of different rock units (called "nappes") in the Alpine orogeny at about 30–40 million years ago,” relates Furrer. So it is that these intrepid researchers found themselves picking through the frozen rocks of the Alps and hauling pieces of ancient marine monsters nearly down to sea level once again for entry into the scientific record.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

DOI

10.1080/02724634.2021.2046017 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animal tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Giant Late Triassic ichthyosaurs from the Kössen Formation of the Swiss Alps and their paleobiological implications

Giant marine reptiles at 2,800 meters above sea level

New study shows that fossil finds from the High Alps come from three giants of the seas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BONN

CAPTION

Martin Sander with a rib of the larger skeleton. The estimated length of the animal is 20 meters.

CREDIT

© Laurent Garbay/University of Bonn

The first ichthyosaurs swam through the primordial oceans in the early Triassic period about 250 million years ago. They had an elongated body and a relatively small head. But shortly before most of them became extinct some 200 million years ago (only the familiar dolphin-like species survived until 90 million years ago), they evolved into gigantic forms. With an estimated weight of 80 tons and a length of more than 20 meters, these prehistoric giants would have rivaled a sperm whale. However, they left scarcely any fossil remains - "why that is remains a great mystery to this day," stresses Prof. Dr. Martin Sander from the Section Paleontology at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn.

Folding of the Alps brought up fossils from the bottom of the sea

The finds now examined come from the Grisons (canton of Graubünden). Sander's colleague Dr. Heinz Furrer of the University of Zurich had recovered them together with students between 1976 and 1990 during geological mapping in the Kössen Formation. More than 200 million years before, the rock layers with the fossils still covered the seafloor. With the folding of the Alps, however, they had ended up at an altitude of 2,800 meters. "Maybe there are more rests of the giant sea creatures hidden beneath the glaciers," Sander hopes.

The paleontologist first held the fossilized bones in his hands three decades ago. At that time, he was still a doctoral student at the University of Zurich. In the meantime, the material had been somewhat forgotten. "Recently, though, more remains of giant ichthyosaurs have appeared," the researcher explains. "So it seemed worthwhile to us to analyze the Swiss finds again in more detail as well."

According to the study, the fossils come from three different animals that lived about 205 million years ago. From one of the ichthyosaurs, a vertebra is preserved together with ten rib fragments. Their sizes suggest that the reptile was probably 20 meters in length. In contrast, only a series of vertebrae were excavated from a second ichthyosaur. Comparison with better preserved skeletal finds suggests a length of about 15 meters.

"From our point of view, however, the tooth is particularly exciting," explains Sander. "Because this is huge by ichthyosaur standards: Its root was 60 millimeters in diameter - the largest specimen still in a complete skull to date was 20 millimeters and came from an ichthyosaur that was nearly 18 meters long." His colleague Heinz Furrer is delighted with the belated appreciation of the spectacular remains from the Swiss Alps: "The publication has confirmed that our finds at the time belonged to the world's longest ichthyosaur; with the thickest tooth found to date and the largest trunk vertebra in Europe!"

However, it is unlikely that the animals that populated the primordial oceans 205 million years ago were much longer than previously thought. "The tooth diameter cannot be used to directly infer the length of its owner," emphasizes paleontologist Martin Sander from Bonn. "Still, the find naturally raises questions."

Root of the tooth (IMAGE)

UNIVERSITY OF BONN

CAPTION

The root of the tooth found has a diameter of 60 Millimeters. This makes it the thickest ichthyosaur tooth found so far.

CREDIT

© Rosi Roth/University of Zurich

Predators larger than a sperm whale are not really possible

This is because research assumes that extreme gigantism and a predatory lifestyle (which requires teeth) are incompatible. There is a reason why the largest animal of our time is toothless: the blue whale, which can be up to 30 meters long and weighs 150 tons. Next to it, the teeth-bearing sperm whale (20 meters and 50 tons) looks like an adolescent. While the blue whale filters tiny creatures from the water, the sperm whale is a perfect hunter. This means it requires a larger portion of the calories it consumes to fuel its muscles. "Marine predators therefore probably can't get much bigger than a sperm whale," Sander says.

It is thus possible that the tooth did not come from a particularly gigantic ichthyosaur - but from an ichthyosaur with particularly gigantic teeth.

Participating institutions:

The Section Paleontology of the Institute of Geosciences of the University of Bonn, the Paleontological Institute and Museum of the University of Zurich, and the Institute of Anatomy of the University of Bonn were involved in the study.

Publication: P. Martin Sander, Pablo Romero Pérez de Villar, Heinz Furrer and Tanja Wintrich: Giant Late Triassic ichthyosaurs from the Kössen Formation of the Swiss Alps and their paleobiological Implications. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2021.2046017

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JOURNAL

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

DOI

10.1080/02724634.2021.2046017 

ARTICLE TITLE

Giant Late Triassic ichthyosaurs from the Kössen Formation of the Swiss Alps and their paleobiological Implications

New study links red tides and dead zones off west coast of Florida

Researchers are closer to understanding favorable conditions for combined events

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: RED TIDES ARE BECOMING A NEAR ANNUAL OCCURRENCE OFF THE WEST COAST OF FLORIDA, WHICH ARE CAUSED BY MASSIVE BLOOMS OF THE ALGAE KARENIA BREVIS FUELED IN PART BY EXCESS NUTRIENTS IN THE OCEAN. view more 

CREDIT: NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY IMAGES BY JOSHUA STEVENS, USING LANDSAT DATA, ACQUIRED ON JULY 14, 2021, BY THE OPERATIONAL LAND IMAGER (OLI) ON LANDSAT 8.

MIAMI—A new study found that when red tides began in early summer and continued into the fall, low oxygen areas—or dead zones— were more likely to also occur. This study by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and NOAA collaborators is the first study to link low oxygen—or hypoxia—to red tides across the west coast of Florida and offers new information to better understand the conditions favorable for combined events as they are expected to increase as Earth continues to warm.

Red tides are becoming a near annual occurrence off the west coast of Florida, which are caused by massive blooms of the algae Karenia brevis fueled in part by excess nutrients in the ocean. These algae blooms turn the ocean surface red and produce toxins that are harmful to marine mammals, sharks, seabirds and humans causing a range of issues from respiratory irritation, localized fish kills to large-scale massive mortalities to marine life. Hypoxic areas are typically referred to as ‘dead zones’.

“These events are so disruptive they are being incorporated in population assessments of some grouper species for use in fishery management decisions. During the 2005 red tide that also had hypoxia, it was estimated that about 30% of the red grouper population was killed,” said Brendan Turley, an assistant scientist at the UM Rosenstiel School and NOAA’s Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies. “There are also concerns that the conditions favorable for combined red tide and hypoxia events will increase with climate change projections into the future.”

The study, conducted as part of NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program, examined nearly 20 years of oceanographic data that included temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen from the surface to the seafloor across the West Florida Shelf to determine the frequency of hypoxia and association with known red tides. The researchers found that hypoxia was present in five of the 16 years examined, three of which occurred concurrently with extreme red tides in 2005, 2014, and 2018. There is an ongoing effort to collaborate with commercial fishermen in Southwest Florida to monitor for red tide blooms and formation of hypoxia, which incorporates data collected during various NOAA surveys conducted in the region annually.

The study, titled “Relationships between blooms of Karenia brevis and hypoxia across the West Florida Shelf,” will appear in the May issue of the journal Harmful Algae, which is currently online. The study’s authors include: Brendan Turley from the UM NOAA Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies; Mandy Karnauskas, Matthew Campbell, David Hanisko from NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center and Christopher Kelble from NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

This research was carried out, in part, under the auspices of the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, cooperative agreement # NA20OAR4320472.

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JOURNAL

Harmful Algae

DOI

10.1016/j.hal.2022.102223 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Relationships between blooms of Karenia brevis and hypoxia across the West Florida Shelf

Protecting species for the good of global climate

How climate can benefit from the conservation of biodiversity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH - UFZ

 

IMAGE: THE WORLD HERITAGE SITE WITH ITS IRRIGATED FIELDS OWES ITS EXISTENCE TO A CONTINUOUS WATER SUPPLY FROM THE FORESTS ABOVE. WHILE METHANE IS EMITTED THROUGH RICE CULTIVATION, THE TRADITIONAL GENETIC DIVERSITY OF RICE PLANTS IS PRESERVED HERE AT THE SAME TIME, WHICH CAN FORM THE BASIS FOR FUTURE LAND USE ADAPTATIONS. IT ALSO PRESERVES THE FOREST, WHICH IS CHARACTERISED BY ENORMOUS BIODIVERSITY AND A HIGH PROPORTION OF ANIMAL AND PLANT SPECIES FOUND ONLY THERE. AT THE SAME TIME, THIS PROTECTION CONTRIBUTES TO THE SEQUESTRATION OF CARBON IN THE FORESTS. view more 

CREDIT: ©ANDRÉ KÜNZELMANN / UFZ

When the global community is expected to meet for the second part of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, in autumn, it must also adopt the next generation of UN biodiversity targets. These will then replace the Aichi Targets that were aimed for until 2020 – and have hardly been achieved. 21 "Post-2020 Action Targets for 2030” have already been pre-formulated. While they still have to be finally agreed, they aim to reduce potential threats to biodiversity, improve the well-being of humans, and implement tools and solutions for the conservation of biodiversity.

In a review study for Global Change Biology, the authors assessed to which extent these 21 biodiversity targets can also slow climate change. The bottom line: 14 out of 21 (i.e. two thirds) of all targets are making a positive contribution to climate protection. “It turns out that conservation measures that halt, slow, or reverse the loss of biodiversity can greatly slow human-induced climate change at the same time”, says lead author Dr. Yunne-Jai Shin of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). Among others, this applies to the goal of connecting protected areas via corridors or further protected areas on at least 30% of the earth’s surface. “There is growing evidence that the creation of new protected areas and the adequate management of existing ones on land and in the sea help to mitigate climate change through capture and storage of carbon”, says UFZ biodiversity researcher and co-author Prof. Josef Settele. For example, it is estimated that all terrestrial protected areas around the globe currently store 12–16% of the total global carbon stock. And, even though knowledge is still limited, deep-sea ecosystems can also contain important carbon stocks on the seabed (e.g. on remote islands, deep-sea mountains, and Arctic and Antarctic continental shelves). However, the 30% target is still far from being reached. According to current United Nations figures from 2021, the coverage of protected areas on land was 15.7%, and in the sea, 7.7%.

But climate also benefits from some of the other newly formulated global biodiversity goals. For example, one goal is also to restore at least 20% of degraded ecosystems (e.g. tropical and subtropical forests) or coastal habitats (e.g. coral reefs, sea grass beds, and mangrove forests). According to the study, global carbon capture in coastal systems is considerably lower than in terrestrial forests because of their smaller size. However, the amount of carbon captured per unit of coastal vegetation area is considerably higher. Taking biodiversity into account in laws, directives, and spatial planning processes also helps to protect the climate because, inter alia, it prevents the clearing of forests, which are an important CO2 reservoir. Other goals that are positive for both biodiversity and climate protection include the expansion of green and blue infrastructures in cities (e.g. parks, green roofs, and lakes) or better public relations work in order to encourage the general public to deal with waste in a more sustainable way and to consume less.

The authors have compiled 12 case studies in order to illustrate how these biodiversity goals are already being implemented in practice (e.g. in the conservation of African peat lands, the protection of mega-fauna in the Southern Ocean, or the saving of the largest mangrove forests on earth, the Sundarbans, on the border between India and Bangladesh). However, there may also be conflicting goals between the protection of climate and biodiversity. In Central Europe, the preservation of the cultural landscape is an example that shows that not everything can be easily reconciled. On one hand, imitating traditional land use systems instead of intensifying or even abandoning land use has clear advantages for the conservation of biodiversity. “These systems reduce the extinction risk of rare species and varieties that are quite well adapted to an extensive form of agricultural use and promote the preservation of a high diversity of pollinators and natural enemies of pests”, says UFZ researcher Josef Settele. On the other hand, there are conflicts because some of the measures are, in fact, harmful to climate. “Because much of the land is used for agriculture, the proportion of forest is not as high, and less carbon is stored”, he says. In addition, the farming of cattle, sheep, and cows releases methane, which is harmful to the climate. “There is a consensus that we must stop climate change – but this must not be at the expense of nature. We therefore need to find methods to slow climate change and implement adaptation measures without losing biodiversity. This is often possible only through compromises”, says Settele. It would therefore be positive if many of the new global biodiversity targets of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity were implemented. Prof. Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-author and climate researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), adds: “The climate problem is now well understood. However, the issue of biodiversity is treated in complete separation – even when it comes to possible solutions. There is also the risk that nature is discussed as a vehicle for solving the climate problem; this is quite problematic. The capacity of ecosystems to slow climate change is overestimated, and climate change is damaging this capacity”. Humans nevertheless believe that nature is capable of overcoming the climate crisis and enabling us to continue or prolong the use of fossil fuels. “But it is the other way round: only when we succeed in drastically reducing emissions from fossil fuels nature can help us to stabilise the climate”, says Pörtner.

Last June, the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) set the record straight in a joint workshop report, where they compiled current knowledge on biodiversity and climate change, and defined and prioritised courses of action.

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JOURNAL

Global Change Biology

DOI

10.1111/gcb.16109 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

ARTICLE TITLE

Actions to halt biodiversity loss generally benefit the climate

Meet the forest microbes that can survive megafires

Burns allow fungi, bacteria to transform redwood forests

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: LYOPHYLLUM ATRATUM FORMS SMALL, DARK MUSHROOMS ON BURNT GROUND FOLLOWING FIRE. THIS SPECIES WAS FOUND IN SOIL BURNED BY THE SOBERANES FIRE. view more 

CREDIT: DYLAN ENRIGHT/UCR

New UC Riverside research shows fungi and bacteria able to survive redwood tanoak forest megafires are microbial “cousins” that often increase in abundance after feeling the flames. 

Fires of unprecedented size and intensity, called megafires, are becoming increasingly common. In the West, climate change is causing rising temperatures and earlier snow melt, extending the dry season when forests are most vulnerable to burning. 

Though some ecosystems are adapted for less intense fires, little is known about how plants or their associated soil microbiomes respond to megafires, particularly in California’s charismatic redwood tanoak forests. 

“It’s not likely plants can recover from megafires without beneficial fungi that supply roots with nutrients, or bacteria that transform extra carbon and nitrogen in post-fire soil,” said Sydney Glassman, UCR mycologist and lead study author. “Understanding the microbes is key to any restoration effort.”

The UCR team is contributing to this understanding with a paper in the journal Molecular Ecology. 

In addition to examining megafire effects on redwood tanoak forest microbes, the study is unusual for another reason. Soil samples were pulled from the same plots of land both before and immediately after the 2016 Soberanes fire in Monterey County. 

“To get this kind of data, a researcher would almost have to burn the plot themselves. It’s so tough to predict exactly where there will be a burn,” Glassman said. 

The team was not surprised to find that the Soberanes fire had a massive impact on bacterial and fungal communities, with as much as a 70% decline in the number of microbe species. They were surprised that some yeast and bacteria not only survived the fire but increased in abundance. 

Bacteria that increased included Actinobacteria, which are responsible for helping plant material decompose. The team also found an increase in Firmicutes, known for promoting plant growth, helping control plant pathogens, and remediating heavy metals in soil. 

In the fungal category, the team found a massive increase in heat resistant Basidioascus yeast, which is able to degrade different components in wood, including lignin, the tough part of plant cell walls that gives them structure and protects them from insect attacks.

Some of the microbes may have used novel strategies for increasing their numbers in the burn-scarred soils. “Penicillium is probably taking advantage of food released from necromass, or ‘dead bodies,’ and some species may also be able to eat charcoal,” Glassman said. 

Perhaps the team’s most significant finding is that fungi and bacteria — both those that survived the megafire and those that didn’t — appear to be genetically related to one another.

“They have shared adaptive traits that allow them to respond to fire, and this improves our ability to predict which microbes will respond, either positively or negatively, to events like these,” Glassman said. 

In general, little is known about fungi and the full extent of their effects on the environment. It is imperative that studies like these continue to reveal the ways they can help the environment recover from fires.

“One of the reasons there is so little understanding of fungi is that there are so few mycologists who study them,” Glassman said. “But they really do have important impacts, especially in the aftermath of major fires which are only increasing in frequency and severity both here and across the globe.”

  

CAPTION

The Soberanes Fire on a ridge near the Pacific Ocean in 2016.

CREDIT

CalFire

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JOURNAL

Molecular Ecology

DOI

10.1111/mec.16399 

ARTICLE TITLE

Mega-fire in redwood tanoak forest reduces bacterial and fungal richness and selects for pyrophilous taxa that are phylogenetically conserved

Study finds rate of multiple sclerosis similarly high in Black and white people

Prevalence of MS found to be lower in Hispanic and Asian people

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF NEUROLOGY

MINNEAPOLIS – The rate of multiple sclerosis (MS) cases varies greatly by race and ethnicity. A new study suggests that the prevalence of MS in Black and white people is similarly high, while much lower in Hispanic and Asian people. The research is published in the April 27, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“MS has long been believed to be a disease of white people, but the prevalence of MS in Black people has been understudied and therefore underrecognized,” said study author Annette Langer-Gould, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Los Angeles and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “The findings of our study and other recent studies indicate that MS has affected Black and white adults at similar rates for decades.”

Langer-Gould said, “The belief that MS is rare in Black people has been based on a history of problematic evidence, including a 1950s study of veterans that found white men more likely than Black men to receive services through the Veterans Administration for MS. That study did not consider the barriers and disparities Black men faced in receiving services, and that they were less likely to be measured accurately.”

Langer-Gould also notes that even current research uses the terms Hispanic, Asian, Black, and white, which are socially constructed labels that influence social standing and opportunities for advancement in the U.S., not uniform biological or even cultural differences. She said it’s crucial that new research addresses systemic bias in medical research.

This new study looked at more than 2.6 million adults residing in Southern California. Researchers analyzed Kaiser Permanente health records to determine how many people had a confirmed diagnosis of MS in 2010.

Researchers identified 3,863 people with MS. The average age was 52 and 77% were women.

Researchers found that MS prevalence per 100,000 people was similarly high for Black and white people, occurring in 226 per 100,000 Black people and in 238 per 100,000 white people. MS prevalence was lower among Hispanic and Asian people, occurring in 70 per 100,000 Hispanic people and 23 per 100,000 Asian people.

The percentage of women with MS was more pronounced among Black and Asian people. Of Black people with MS, 82% were women and of Asian people, 84% were women. Of white people with MS, 76% were women and of Hispanic people, 75% were women.

“Understanding MS prevalence in all people has important implications when it comes to making sure people are properly screened and treated for this disease,” said Langer-Gould.

“More studies are needed to determine whether MS is also an emerging disease among Hispanic people in the U.S. and whether MS susceptibility and prevalence vary among Hispanic or Asian individuals from different cultures and ancestral backgrounds,” Langer-Gould added. “Larger studies are also needed that look at bigger populations across the U.S.”

The study was supported by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Learn more about multiple sclerosis at BrainandLife.org, home of the American Academy of Neurology’s free patient and caregiver magazine focused on the intersection of neurologic disease and brain health. Follow Brain & Life® on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When posting to social media channels about this research, we encourage you to use the hashtags #Neurology and #AANscience.

The American Academy of Neurology is the world’s largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals, with over 38,000 members. The AAN is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, concussion, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit AAN.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

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JOURNAL

Neurology

WASP KULTURE

School segregation: Contributor to racial/ethnic childhood obesity disparities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE OBESITY SOCIETY

SILVER SPRING, Md.---Obesity gaps are larger between segregated schools and smaller in racially-integrated schools among child populations, according to a new study in Obesity, The Obesity Society’s (TOS) flagship journal. This is the first study to examine childhood obesity disparities specifically within integrated schools to begin to elucidate the role of school segregation in the racial/ethnic patterning of obesity among youth.

“School-level racial segregation matters for child health disparities. Programs and policies to reduce gaps in obesity early in life must prioritize socioeconomically disadvantaged schools, and segregated schools attended primarily by children of color,“ said Brisa N. Sánchez, PhD, MS, MSc, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health, Philadelphia, Pa. Sánchez is the corresponding author of the study.

Recent studies have observed that racial or ethnic adult health disparities revealed in national data dissipate in racially integrated communities, supporting the theory that “place, not race” is a key driver of racial/ethnic health disparities. In other words, the characteristics of places and the systems or policies that influence place characteristics are more important than personal characteristics of individuals. This study tested this theory among children.

Publicly available overweight/obesity rates obtained from the California Department of Education (CDE) for fifth, seventh and ninth grade students attending state public schools in the 2018-2019 school year who participated in the California FitnessGram test were evaluated in this cross-sectional study for childhood obesity disparities. The FitnessGram is a physical fitness test required for all children in the aforementioned grades that is administered in the spring of the academic year.

The main outcome of interest is the body-composition assessment of the FitnessGram test. For this assessment, objectively measured height and weight are used to obtain children’s body mass index (BMI). BMI is then compared with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s age- and sex-specific BMI reference distributions to categorize children into three groups: healthy fitness zone, needs improvement and high risk, which correspond  to the BMI categories of normal weight, overweight and obese.

More than 1.3 million students were involved in the body composition assessment of the FitnessGram test of whom 54% were Latino, 23% were White, 9.5% were Asian, 5.4% were Black and 2.4% were Filipino. Data for the five major racial/ethnic groups included in the study was collected in more than 8,900 schools. Other races/ethnicities were excluded from the study due to small sample sizes within schools that led to masking of most of their data.

Results showed disparities within integrated schools and between segregated schools. The overweight/obesity gap between Latino, Black and Filipino children compared with White children was larger between segregated schools, relative to disparities within integrated schools:

• Whereas the disparity in overweight/obesity between Latino and White children was 22% when comparing Latino children in Latino-segregated schools to White children in White-segregated schools, the disparity narrowed to 11% when comparing rates between White and Latino children in integrated schools.
• The statewide disparity in overweight/obesity prevalence between Black and White children was 18% when comparing Black children in Black-segregated schools to White children in White-segregated schools, but narrowed to 6% within integrated schools.
• The disparity between Filipino and White children was 8% between segregated schools, but reversed to -1% within integrated schools.
• Overweight/obesity differences between Asian and White children were similar statewide and between segregated schools.

“Findings from this study suggest school segregation can foster the development of obesogenic conditions that disproportionately affect Latino, Black and Filipino childrens’ obesity risks.

While this study sheds light into the importance of school segregation, further research is needed to identify the mechanisms through which racial/ethnic integration and segregation in schools influence the current disparities in childhood obesity rates,” said Liliana Aguayo, PhD, MPH, an expert in childhood obesity disparities, TOS member and research assistant professor at Emory University's Hubert Department of Global Health in Atlanta, Ga. Aguayo was not associated with the research.

The study’s authors add that future research should examine the joint role of individual-level economic factors and racial/ethnic segregation to shed additional light on disparities and ways to reduce them. The researchers add that they were unable to conduct analyses that jointly examine economic and racial/ethnic disparities because the publicly available data from the CDE does not allow cross-classification of these factors within schools. Future research should also employ analytical approaches to disentangle the confounding effects of segregation and person-level race/ethnicity and produce valid estimates of individual-level disparities attributable to person-level factors, and, thus amenable to individual-level interventions, instead of disparities driven by segregation and concomitant place-based or structural interventions. Given findings from this and previous studies, estimating disparities within more granular levels of geography is critical to more accurately assess environmental determinants of disparities.

Other authors of the study include Nuha Mahmood of the University of Michigan Medical School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Emma Sanchez-Vaznaugh, San Francisco University, San Francisco, Calif; and Mika Matsuzaki of Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.

The study, titled “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Childhood Obesity: The Role of School Segregation,” will be published in the May 2022 print issue.

The authors declared no conflict of interest.

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The Obesity Society (TOS) is the leading organization of scientists and health professionals devoted to understanding and reversing the epidemic of obesity and its adverse health, economic and societal effects. Combining the perspective of researchers, clinicians, policymakers and patients, TOS promotes innovative research, education and evidence-based clinical care to improve the health and well-being of all people with obesity. For more information, visit www.obesity.org.

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JOURNAL

Obesity