‘Mass testing’ linked to 25% cut in covid-19 related hospital admissions

If causal, this is equivalent to over 200 fewer hospital admissions than expected without this intervention, say researchers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

The first ever voluntary ‘mass testing’ pilot for people without covid symptoms was associated with an overall 25% reduction in covid-19 related hospital admissions, including an initial 43% reduction with military assistance, finds a study published by The BMJ today. 
 
Assuming this effect was causal, the researchers say the pilot prevented 6,829 infections and led to 239 fewer hospital admissions across the city of Liverpool, before being rolled out to the rest of the UK.
 
Transmission of the covid-19 virus by people without symptoms has been a major challenge in controlling the pandemic. These latest findings show that large scale voluntary community testing for covid-19 can potentially reduce virus transmission and prevent hospital admissions. 
 
The pilot, known as Covid-SMART, offered supervised voluntary lateral flow testing to all people over the age of 5 years without symptoms who were living or working in Liverpool from 6 November 2020 to 2 January 2021. The aim was to identify infectious people sooner and disrupt transmission.
 
Covid-SMART coincided with the start of the second national UK lockdown (5 November to 2 December 2020). At the time, the unvaccinated population of Liverpool had the highest covid-19 case rate in the country.
 
The researchers wanted to find out whether such large scale testing was effective at reducing covid-19 related hospital admissions.
 
To do this, they compared weekly covid-19 related hospital admissions among the pilot (intervention) population with a control population selected from the rest of England with similar previous covid-19 hospital admissions and sociodemographic factors to the intervention population.
 
When analysis was restricted to the first month of the pilot (6 November to 3 December 2020), the results show that it was associated with a 43% reduction in covid-19 related hospital admissions in Liverpool compared with the control population.
 
In absolute numbers this is the equivalent of 146 fewer admissions in the period up to 3 December 2020.
 
However, the researchers stress that this was a time of intensive testing with military assistance when Liverpool was under higher (tier 3) lockdown restrictions than many other areas of the country. 
 
When analysis was extended across the full intervention period (6 November 2020 to 2 January 2021), and regional differences in lockdown restrictions were taken into account, a 25% reduction in covid-19 related hospital admissions was seen (equivalent to 239 fewer admissions) compared with the control population.
 
This is an observational study, and the researchers stress that care should be taken when interpreting the findings in the context of different variants, levels of immunity, and testing policies. What’s more, they can’t rule out the possibility that other unmeasured (confounding) factors may have influenced their results.
 
Nevertheless, their approach ensured that control areas were likely to have been affected by similar coronavirus transmission patterns before the introduction of CovidSMART in Liverpool, and the results were similar after additional analyses, suggesting that they are robust.
 
As such, they say: “It is plausible that the main effect in our analysis is causally related to the Covid-SMART intervention, especially as the study period pre-dates the main roll-out of covid-19 vaccination.”
 
They note that large scale community testing is a complex intervention, where one person’s testing may affect another’s (eg. family member’s) covid risk behaviour, and therefore the testing effect is not a simple relationship between one test and one chain of virus transmission. They also emphasise that success relies on high levels of uptake and effective support to enable isolation of infectious people and their close contacts.
 
But they say their findings suggest that even when uptake is unequal and barriers to effective isolation exist, “widespread community testing can potentially reduce transmission and subsequent hospital admissions at least in the short term.”
 

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2022-071374 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Impact of community asymptomatic rapid antigen testing on covid-19 related hospital admissions: synthetic control study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Nov-2022

Astronomers observe intra-group light – the elusive glow between distant galaxies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

 

IMAGE: LIGHT 'BETWEEN' THE GROUPS OF GALAXIES – THE 'INTRA-GROUP LIGHT' – HOWEVER DIM, IS RADIATED FROM STARS STRIPPED FROM THEIR HOME GALAXY. IMAGE: SUPPLIED. view more 

CREDIT: MARTÍNEZ-LOMBILLA ET AL./UNSW SYDNEY

An international team of astronomers have turned a new technique onto a group of galaxies and the faint light between them – known as ‘intra-group light’ – to characterise the stars that dwell there. 

Lead author of the study published in MNRAS, Dr Cristina Martínez-Lombilla from the School of Physics at UNSW Science, said “We know almost nothing about intra-group light. 

“The brightest parts of the intra-group light are ~50 times fainter than the darkest night sky on Earth. It is extremely hard to detect, even with the largest telescopes on Earth – or in space.” 

Using their sensitive technique, which eliminates light from all objects except that from the intra-group light, the researchers not only detected the intra-group light but were able to study and tell the story of the stars that populate it. 

“We analysed the properties of the intra-group stars – those stray stars between the galaxy groups. We looked at the age and abundance of the elements that composed them and then we compared those features with the stars still belonging to galaxy groups,” Dr Martínez-Lombilla said. 

“We found that the intra-group light is younger and less metal-rich than the surrounding galaxies.” 

Rebuilding the story of intra-group light 

Not only were the orphan stars in the intra-group light ‘anachronistic’ but they appeared to be of a different origin to their closest neighbours. The researchers found the character of the intra-group stars appeared similar to the nebulous ‘tail’ of a further away galaxy. 

The combination of these clues allowed the researchers to rebuild the history – the story – of the intra-group light and how its stars came to be gathered in their own stellar orphanage. 

“We think these individual stars were at some points stripped from their home galaxies and now they float freely, following the gravity of the group,” said Dr Martínez-Lombilla. “The stripping, called tidal stripping, is caused by the passage of massive satellite galaxies – similar to the Milky Way – that pull stars in their wake.” 

This is the first time the intra-group light of these galaxies has been observed. 

“Unveiling the quantity and origin of the intra-group light provides a fossil record of all the interactions a group of galaxies has undergone and provides a holistic view of the system's interaction history,” Dr Martínez-Lombilla said. 

“Also, these events occurred a long time ago. The galaxies [we’re looking at] are so far away, that we're observing them as they were 2.5 billion years ago. That is how long it takes for their light to reach us.” 

By observing events from a long time ago, in galaxies so far away, the researchers are contributing vital datapoints to the slow-burning evolution of cosmic events. 

Tailored image treatment procedure 

The researchers pioneered a unique technique to achieve this penetrating view. 

“We have developed a tailored image treatment procedure that allows us to analyse the faintest structures in the Universe,” said Dr Martínez-Lombilla. 

“It follows the standard steps for the study of faint structures in astronomical images – which implies 2D modelling and the removal of all light except that coming from the intra-group light. This includes all the bright stars in the images, the galaxies obscuring the intra-group light and a subtraction of the continuum emission from the sky. 

“What makes our technique different is that it is fully Python-based so it is very modular and easily applicable to different sets of data from different telescopes rather than being just useful for these images. 

“The most important outcome is that when studying very faint structures around galaxies, every step in the process counts and every undesirable light should be accounted for and removed. Otherwise, your measurements will be wrong. 

The techniques presented in this study are a pilot, encouraging future analyses of intra-group light, Dr Martínez-Lombilla said. 

“Our main long-term goal is to extend these results to a large sample of group of galaxies. Then we can look at statistics and find out the typical properties regarding the formation and evolution of the intra-group light and these extremely common systems of groups of galaxies. 

“This is key work for preparing the next generation of deep all-sky surveys such as those to be performed with the Euclid space telescope and the LSST with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.” 

 

 

—ENDS—

Media Contact:

Jesse Hawley

UNSW Science | News and Content Coordinator

Jesse.hawley@unsw.edu.au

0422 537 392

Dr Cristina Martínez Lombilla, Postdoctoral Research Associate School of Physics, UNSW Sydney. Contact: Jesse Hawley

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JOURNAL

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stac3119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Imaging analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Extended intra-group light in a group at 𝑧 = 0.2 from deep hyper-suprime cam images

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Nov-2022

Duke-NUS scientists reveal first close-up look at bats’ immune response to live infection

Understanding how bats tolerate viral infections without developing symptoms may lead to better ways of combatting human disease

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE-NUS MEDICAL SCHOOL

SINGAPORE, 23 November 2022 – In a world first, scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School and colleagues in Singapore have sequenced the response to viral infection in colony-bred cave nectar bats (Eonycteris spelaea) at single-cell resolution. Published in the journal Immunity, the findings contribute to insights into bat immunity that could be harnessed to protect human health.

Bats harbour many types of viruses. Even when they are infected with viruses deadly to humans, they show no notable signs or symptoms of disease. 

“It is our hope that by understanding how bats’ immune responses protect them from infections, we may find clues that will help humans to better combat viral infections,” explained Dr Akshamal Gamage, Research Fellow with Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Programme and a co-first author of the study.

“And knowing how to better fight viral infections can aid in the development of treatments that will help us to be more bat-like—by falling sick less and ageing better,” added Mr Wharton Chan, an MD-PhD candidate at Duke-NUS who is also a co-first author of the study.

In this study, the scientists investigated bat immune responses to Malacca virus, a double-stranded RNA virus that uses bats as its natural reservoir. This virus also causes mild respiratory disease in humans.

The team used single-cell transcriptome sequencing to study lung immune responses to infections at the cellular level, identifying the different types of immune cells in bats—some of which are different from those in other mammals, including humans—and uncovering what they do in response to such viral infections.

They found that a type of white blood cell, called neutrophils, showed a very high expression of a gene called IDO1, which is known to play a role in mediating immune suppression in humans. The scientists believe that IDO1 expression in cave nectar bats could play an important role in limiting inflammation following infection.

Dr Feng Zhu, Research Fellow with the EID Programme and a co-first author of the study, said, “We also found marked anti-viral gene signatures in white blood cells known as monocytes and alveolar macrophages, which—in a sense—consume viral particles and then teach T cells how to recognise the virus. This observation is interesting as it shows that bats clearly activate an immune response following infection despite showing few outward symptoms or pathology.”

The team also identified an unusual diversity and abundance of T cells and natural killer cells—named for their ability to kill tumour cells and cells infected with a virus—in the cave nectar bat, which are broadly activated to respond to the infection.

“This is the first study that details the bat immune response to in vivo infection at the single-cell transcriptome level,” said Professor Linfa Wang, senior author of the study from the EID Programme. “We believe that our work serves as a key guide to inform further investigations into uncovering the remarkable biology of bats. Moving forward, besides studies into viral disease tolerance, we also hope to uncover clues to longevity from bats as long-lived mammals and also learn how these nectarivorous bats can live on the high sugar diet in nectar without getting diabetes.”

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JOURNAL

Immunity

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Single-cell transcriptome analysis of the in vivo response to viral infection in the cave nectar bat Eonycteris spelaea

AI-powered make-up mirrors are driving consumers back to stores as they enhance sense of ‘fakeness’, new study finds

New research explores why consumers are reluctant to use augmented reality make-up mirrors, with users fearing Augmented Reality (AR) devices/apps distort how others see them as well as how they perceive themselves.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON

A new study has found that digital make-up mirrors enhance a sense of ‘fakeness’ and embarrassment and creates a desire for the ‘real’ in-store experience among consumers.

The report, co-authored by Bayes Business School and conducted between 2018-2022, has explored the psychological and sociological factors of the consumer experience when using Augmented Reality (AR) make-up technology; in particular the role that digital make-up mirrors play in enhancing people’s imagination and their perception of self.

The authors find that although individuals may feel comfortable wearing make-up when looking at themselves through a ‘real’ mirror the opposite is true when looking into a digital make-up mirror.

Consumers found that digital mirrors, promoted by brands including Charlotte Tilbury, L’Oréal and Amazon, enhanced their self-imagination as they were able to imagine themselves looking like their favourite celebrity or how they looked in the past. However, when compared with the ‘real’ shopping experience of buying make-up, AR mirrors have created a strong sense of self inauthenticity. This is because of factors including:

• Trying make-up instore brings a sense of enjoyment, whereas looking at ourselves through a digital make-up mirror brings a feeling of ‘horror’
• Individuals have a sense of embarrassment when using digital make-up mirrors and feel less likely to want to share digital content in their search for social acceptance
• Make-up is an emotional experience: real instore make-up shopping is perceived as a journey of self-reflection which is difficult to compare with digital make-up mirror
• Individuals view themselves through a lens whereby how they should look is based on a collective online observation of friends, celebrities or influencers. A digital make-up mirror hinders the way individuals search for this proxy-self.

This feeling of self-inauthenticity initially deflates the consumers’ desire to use online make-up mirrors. However, for consumers to ‘complete’ and ‘enjoy’ their shopping experience, they would rather be physically inside the make-up store. In the meantime, while these apps and devices allow them to send a photo of their transformed self to social media, they fear embarrassment from their social network. So, instead of using an AR make-up mirror to try-on makeup, consumers prefer to find a make-up influencer who shares similarity with their own look, such as skin type or face contour and follow their recommendations.

Users of the digital make-up mirror for the study criticised AR’s lack of understanding or respect for human skin, ethnicity or feelings when applying colour on skin, in particular with luxury make-up brands. They also claimed ‘shameful surprise’ with how they looked when using AR make-up mirrors. For instance, although they looked surprised when seeing AR colours on their face, they quickly felt ashamed of their AR look and would barely share their AR photo ‘privately’ with close family and friends rather than sharing it publicly online.

One participant said:

“... It’s my face. I want it. I want to feel it. I want to try it [real makeup products] on. I want to see the consistency...with makeup it’s not something that I can trust any kind of virtual augmented anything for a decision like what I’m putting on my face.”

Khaled El-Shamandi Ahmed, co-author of the study, said managers and creative companies were “a world apart” from consumers in the experience, adding that consumers must be involved as co-creators if progress is to be made.

However, he added that online AR make-up apps could drive consumers’ footfalls to visit make-up stores ahead of Black Friday on 25 November – with the most recent retail footfall figures showing a 14 per cent decline over the pre-Covid comparative period in 2019 – and enjoy ‘real’ makeup shopping experience.

“Digital make-up mirrors do not extend the self but, to the contrary, create a sense of inauthentic self that can result in embarrassment and shame. This is despite the research which promises that AR will transform consumers’ shopping experience.

“Those surveyed described finding the right make-up as an ‘emotional process’ and ‘a journey’. This study makes clear that technology, while a powerful and progressive tool in the service sector, can also be a negative and disruptive influence for the consumer.

“Technology companies and consumers are a world apart in terms of the expected and perceived digital service experience, and customer experience managers have a responsibility to balance the fun-factor with reality.”

Ends

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JOURNAL

Journal of Service Management

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

I.C.Y.M.I.

Planet’s most unique birds at higher risk of extinction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY

 

IMAGE: AGAMI HERON (AGAMIA AGAMI) view more 

CREDIT: JOE TOBIAS

A new study finds that bird species with extreme or uncommon combinations of traits face the highest risk of extinction. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology.

A new study led by researchers at Imperial College London finds that the most unique birds on the planet are also the most threatened. Losing these species and the unique roles they play in the environment, such as seed dispersal, pollination and predation, could have severe consequences to the functioning of ecosystems.

The study analysed the extinction risk and physical attributes (such as beak shape and wing length) of 99% of all living bird species, making it the most comprehensive study of its kind to date.

The researchers found that in simulated scenarios in which all threatened and near-threatened bird species became extinct, there would be a significantly greater reduction in the physical (or morphological) diversity among birds than in scenarios where extinctions were random.

Bird species that are both morphologically unique and threatened include the Christmas Frigatebird (Fregata andrewsi), which nests only on Christmas Island, and the Bristle-thighed Curlew (Numenius tahitiensis), which migrates from its breeding grounds in Alaska to South Pacific islands every year.

Jarome Ali, a PhD candidate at Princeton University who completed the research at Imperial College London and was the lead author of the research, said: “Our study shows that extinctions will most likely prune a large proportion of unique species from the avian tree. Losing these unique species will mean a loss of the specialised roles that they play in ecosystems.

“If we do not take action to protect threatened species and avert extinctions, the functioning of ecosystems will be dramatically disrupted.”

In the study, the authors used a dataset of measurements collected from living birds and museum specimens, totalling 9943 bird species. The measurements included physical traits like beak size and shape, and the length of wings, tails and legs.

The authors combined the morphological data with extinction risk, based on each species’ current threat status on the IUCN Red List. They then ran simulations on what would happen if the most threatened birds were to go extinct.

Although the dataset used in the study was able to show that the most unique birds were also classified as threatened on the Red List, it was unable to show what links uniqueness in birds to extinction risk.

Jarome Ali said: “One possibility is that highly specialised organisms are less able to adapt to a changing environment, in which case human impacts may directly threaten species with the most unusual ecological roles. More research is needed to delve deeper into the connection between unique traits and extinction risk.”

Blyth's Kingfisher (Alcedo hercules)

Bristle-thighed Curlew (Numenius tahitiensis)

CREDIT

Joe Tobias

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JOURNAL

Functional Ecology

DOI

10.1111/1365-2435.14201 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Bird extinctions threaten to cause disproportionate reductions of functional diversity and uniqueness

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Nov-2022

In world first, scientists demonstrate continuous-wave lasing of deep-ultraviolet laser diode at room temperature

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NAGOYA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS THAT SUCCESSFULLY CONDUCTED THE WORLD'S FIRST ROOM-TEMPERATURE CONTINUOUS-WAVE LASING OF A DEEP-ULTRAVIOLET LASER DIODE view more 

CREDIT: 2022 ASAHI KASEI CORP. AND NAGOYA UNIVERSITY

A research group led by 2014 Nobel laureate Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University's Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS) in central Japan, in collaboration with Asahi Kasei Corporation, has successfully conducted the world's first room-temperature continuous-wave lasing of a deep-ultraviolet laser diode (wavelengths down to UV-C region). These results, published in Applied Physics Letters, represent a step toward the widespread use of a technology with the potential for a wide range of applications, including sterilization and medicine.

 

Since they were introduced in the 1960s, and after decades of research and development, successful commercialization of laser diodes (LDs) was finally achieved for a number of applications with wavelengths ranging from infrared to blue-violet. Examples of this technology include optical communications devices with infrared LDs and blue-ray discs using blue-violet LDs. However, despite the efforts of research groups around the world, no one could develop deep ultraviolet LDs. A key breakthrough only occurred after 2007 with the emergence of technology to fabricate aluminum nitride (AlN) substrates, an ideal material for growing aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) film for UV light-emitting devices.

 

Starting in 2017, Professor Amano's research group, in cooperation with Asahi Kasei, the company that provided 2-inch AlN substrates, began developing a deep-ultraviolet LD. At first, sufficient injection of current into the device was too difficult, preventing further development of UV-C laser diodes. But in 2019, the research group successfully solved this problem using a polarization-induced doping technique. For the first time, they produced a short-wavelength ultraviolet-visible (UV-C) LD that operates with short pulses of current. However, the input power required for these current pulses was 5.2 W. This was too high for continuous-wave lasing because the power would cause the diode to quickly heat up and stop lasing.

 

But now, researchers from Nagoya University and Asahi Kasei have reshaped the structure of the device itself, reducing the drive power needed for the laser to operate at only 1.1W at room temperature. Earlier devices were found to require high levels of operating power because of the inability of effective current paths due to crystal defects that occur at the laser stripe. But in this study, the researchers found that the strong crystal strain creates these defects. By clever tailoring of the side walls of the laser stripe, they suppressed the defects, achieving efficient current flow to the active region of the laser diode and reducing the operating power.

 

Nagoya University’s industry-academic cooperation platform, called the Center for Integrated Research of Future Electronics, Transformative Electronics Facilities (C-TEFs), made possible the development of the new UV laser technology. Under C-TEFs, researchers from partners such as Asahi Kasei share access to state-of-the-art facilities on the Nagoya University campus, providing them with the people and tools needed to build reproducible high-quality devices.  Zhang Ziyi, a representative of the research team, was in his second year at Asahi Kasei when he became involved in the project’s founding. “I wanted to do something new,” he said in an interview. “Back then everyone assumed that the deep ultraviolet laser diode was an impossibility, but Professor Amano told me, ‘We have made it to the blue laser, now is the time for ultraviolet’.”

 

This research is a milestone in the practical application and development of semiconductor lasers in all wavelength ranges. In the future, UV-C LDs could be applied to healthcare, virus detection, particulate measurement, gas analysis, and high-definition laser processing. “Its application to sterilization technology could be groundbreaking,” Zhang said. “Unlike the current LED sterilization methods, which are time-inefficient, lasers can disinfect large areas in a short time and over long distances”. This technology could especially benefit surgeons and nurses who need sterilized operating rooms and tap water.

  

In world first, scientists demonstrate continuous-wave lasing of deep-ultraviolet laser diode at room temperature

CREDIT

Issey Takahashi

The successful results have been reported in two papers in Applied Physics Letters as below.

Title: Key temperature-dependent characteristics of AlGaN-based UV-C laser diode and demonstration of room-temperature continuous-wave lasing
Authors: Ziyi Zhang, Maki Kushimoto, Akira Yoshikawa, Koji Aoto, Chiaki Sasaoka, Leo J. Schowalter, and Hiroshi Amano
DOI: 10.1063/5.0124480 (to be published online on November 28, 2022)
Nagoya University Institutional Repository URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002003984 (to be published at 5pm on November 24, 2022, JST)

Title: Local stress control to suppress dislocation generation for pseudomorphically grown AlGaN UV-C laser diodes
Authors: Maki Kushimoto, Ziyi Zhang, Akira Yoshikawa, Koji Aoto, Yoshio Honda, Chiaki Sasaoka, Leo J. Schowalter, and Hiroshi Amano
DOI: 10.1063/5.0124512 (to be published online on November 28, 2022)
Nagoya University Institutional Repository URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002003985 (to be published at 5pm on November 24, 2022, JST)

Demonstration of room-temperature continuous-wave lasing (VIDEO)

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JOURNAL

Applied Physics Letters

DOI

10.1063/5.0124512 

ARTICLE TITLE

Local stress control to suppress dislocation generation for pseudomorphically grown AlGaN UV-C laser diodes

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Nov-2022

SAY AHHH

Study sheds new light on the link between oral bacteria and diseases

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified the bacteria most commonly found in severe oral infections. Few such studies have been done before, and the team now hopes that the study can provide deeper insight into the association between oral bacteria and other diseases. The study is published in Microbiology Spectrum.

Previous studies have demonstrated clear links between oral health and common diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. However, there have been few longitudinal studies identifying which bacteria occur in infected oral- and maxillofacial regions. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now analysed samples collected between 2010 and 2020 at the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden from patients with severe oral infections and produced a list of the most common bacteria.

This was a collaborative study that was performed by Professor Margaret Sällberg Chen and adjunct Professor Volkan Özenci’s research groups.

“We’re reporting here, for the first time, the microbial composition of bacterial infections from samples collected over a ten-year period in Stockholm County,” says Professor Sällberg Chen of the Department of Dental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. “The results show that several bacterial infections with link to systemic diseases are constantly present and some have even increased over the past decade in Stockholm.”

A role in other diseases

The study shows that the most common bacterial phyla amongst the samples were Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, while the most common genera were Streptococcus spp, Prevotella spp, and Staphylococcus spp.

“Our results provide new insight into the diversity and prevalence of harmful microbes in oral infections,” says Professor Sällberg Chen. “The finding isn’t only of importance to dental medicine, it also helps us understand the role of dental infection in patients with underlying diseases. If a certain bacterium infects and causes damage in the mouth, it’s very likely that it can be harmful to tissues elsewhere in the body as the infection spreads.”

The research group has previously shown that the occurrence of oral bacteria in the pancreas reflects the severity of pancreatic tumours.

Useful method in dental care

The study was conducted using 1,014 samples from as many patients, of whom 469 were women and 545 men, and a mass-spectrometric method called MALDI-TOF that rapidly identifies individual living bacteria in a sample, but that is rarely used in dental care. 

“Our study was a single centre epidemiology study and to ensure the validity of the results we need to make more and larger studies,” says Volkan Özenci at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. “We now hope that dentists will  collaborate with clinical microbiology laboratories more to gain a better understanding of the bacteria that cause dental infections, to improve diagnostics and therapeutic management of oral infections.”

The study is part of Khaled Al-Manei’s doctoral thesis, the next step of which is a similar epidemiological study of fungal infections in the mouth that aims to identify new fungi and microbes and understand what causes their possible malignancy. 

The study was financed by the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society and CIMED (the Centre for Innovative Medicine).

Publication: “Clinical Microbial Identification of Severe Oral Infections by MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry in Stockholm County: An 11-Year (2010-2020) Epidemiological Investigation”. Khaled Al-Manei, Mahin Ghorbani, Sabrina Naud, Kholod Khalil Al-Manei, Michał J. Sobkowiak, Bodil Lund, Gulsen Hazirolan, Margaret Sällberg Chen och, Volkan Özenci. Microbiology Spectrum, online 24 November 2022, doi: 10.1128/spectrum.02487-22.

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JOURNAL

Microbiology Spectrum

DOI

10.1128/spectrum.02487-22 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Clinical Microbial Identification of Severe Oral Infections by MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry in Stockholm County: An 11-Year (2010-2020) Epidemiological Investigation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Nov-2022

A warmer Arctic Ocean leads to more snowfall further south

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: AN INCREASINGLY WARM AND ICE-FREE ARCTIC OCEAN HAS, IN RECENT DECADES, LED TO MORE MOISTURE IN HIGHER LATITUDES. THIS MOISTURE IS TRANSPORTED SOUTH BY CYCLONIC WEATHER SYSTEMS WHERE IT PRECIPITATES AS SNOW, INFLUENCING THE GLOBAL HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE AND MANY TERRESTRIAL SYSTEMS THAT DEPEND ON IT (ILLUSTRATION: TOMONORI SATO). view more 

CREDIT: TOMONORI SATO

A new model explains that water evaporating from the Arctic Ocean due to a warming climate is transported south and can lead to increased snowfall in northern Eurasia in late autumn and early winter. This information will allow for more accurate predictions of severe weather events.

Rising air temperatures due to global warming melt glaciers and polar ice caps. Seemingly paradoxically, snow cover in some areas in northern Eurasia has increased over the past decades. However, snow is a form of water; global warming increases the quantity of moisture in the atmosphere, and thus the quantity and likelihood of rain and snow. Understanding where exactly the moisture comes from, how it is produced and how it is transported south is relevant for better predictions of extreme weather and the evolution of the climate.

Hokkaido University environmental scientist Tomonori Sato and his team developed a new tagged moisture transport model that relies on the "Japanese 55-year reanalysis dataset", a painstaking reanalysis of world-wide historical weather data over the span of the past 55 years. The group used this material to keep their model calibrated over much longer distances than hitherto possible and were thus able to shed light onto the mechanism of the moisture transport in particular over the vast landmasses of Siberia.

A standard technique to analyse moisture transport is the "tagged moisture transport model". This is a computer modelling technique that tracks where hypothetical chunks of atmospheric moisture form, how they are moved around, and where they precipitate due to the local climatic conditions. But the computer models become more and more inaccurate as the distance to the ocean increases. In particular, this makes quantitative predictions difficult. Thus, these methods have not been able to satisfyingly explain the snowfall in northern Eurasia.

The results of the study, published in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science show that water evaporation from the Arctic Ocean has increased over the past four decades, and that the biggest changes have occurred from the Barents and Kara Seas north of western Siberia, as well as over the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas north of eastern Siberia, between October and December. At this time of year, the Arctic Ocean is still warm and the area not covered by ice is still large. Importantly, this development coincides with the area where sea ice retreat has been strongest over the time frame of the study. In addition, the quantitative model shows that evaporation and snowfall are especially strong during certain weather events such as cyclonic systems taking up unusually large quantities of moisture and transporting them south into Siberia, thus also highlighting detailed and specific mechanistic insights into the weather dynamics of the region.

With the Arctic Ocean being twice as sensitive to rapid warming than the global average, evaporation and subsequent changes to the hydrological cycle over northern Eurasia will become even more pronounced in the years to come. The researchers say that, since snowfall often delays the downstream effects of the abnormal weather events that cause it, "knowledge of the precursor signal stored as a snow cover anomaly is expected to help improve seasonal predictions of abnormal weather, e.g., the potential for heatwaves that enhance the risk of fire in boreal forests." This study therefore yields a key element to understanding the mechanism of this weather system as well as others that are influenced by it, and thus to making better predictions of severe events that could do harm to people and infrastructure.

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JOURNAL

npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

DOI

10.1038/s41612-022-00310-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Enhanced Arctic moisture transport toward Siberia in autumn revealed by tagged moisture transport model experiment

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Nov-2022