Tuesday, March 07, 2023

Genetic and socioeconomic factors interact to affect risk of type 2 diabetes and obesity

Study’s findings have implications for both precision medicine and public health

MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

BOSTON – New research led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of Mass General Brigham (MGB), indicates that socioeconomic and genetic factors likely interact in an additive way to affect people’s risks of developing obesity and type 2 diabetes. The findings, which are published in Diabetes Care, suggest that interventions to improve socioeconomic deprivation may decrease metabolic diseases at the individual and community levels, especially among people with concomitant high genetic risk.

Genetic and socioeconomic factors—one intrinsic and unmodifiable and one extrinsic and potentially modifiable—have both been shown to increase the risk of metabolic diseases, but the relative contributions of the two and the degree to which they may interact to impact a person’s risk are poorly understood. To investigate, scientists examined the independent and additive effects of genetic and socioeconomic risk in 26,737 and 223,843 participants of European genetic ancestry from the Mass General Brigham Biobank and the UK Biobank, respectively, as well as in 3,468 and 7,459 participants of non-European ancestry in the respective biobanks. The team examined individuals’ genetic data at millions of points across the genome as well as information related to education, income, and employment from their area of residence. Because educational attainment had the strongest association with type 2 diabetes and obesity out of all area-level socioeconomic variables examined, this was used as the primary socioeconomic risk measure.

Results indicated that people in the highest quintile of both genetic and socioeconomic risk had a more than seven-fold higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes (22.2% vs. 3.1%) and a more than three-fold higher prevalence of obesity (69.0% vs. 20.9%) compared with those in the combined lowest risk quintiles.

There was a significant positive interaction between genetic and socioeconomic risk on an additive scale. This suggests that the absolute increase in metabolic disease prevalence with unfavorable socioeconomic risk was much greater for those at higher genetic risk than for those at lower genetic risk. For example, adverse area-level socioeconomic risk was associated with increased type 2 diabetes prevalence across the spectrum of genetic risk, but the absolute increase in prevalence was greatest in those at highest genetic risk: +9.2% in the highest genetic risk quintile vs. +1.7% in the lowest genetic risk quintile. Overall, the additive effects of genetic and socioeconomic factors accounted for 13.2% and 16.7% of type 2 diabetes and obesity prevalence, respectively.

“We believe that this research calls for a whole-person approach to metabolic disease prevention and that public health interventions may be most impactful if targeted to those who also have elevated genetic risk,” says lead author Sara Cromer, MD, an Endocrinologist in the Department of Medicine at MGH and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. “The next steps in this research include expanding models to include more risk factors (such as lifestyle factors and behaviors), improving models for individuals of non-European ancestry, exploring the predictive value of area-level socioeconomic measures in diverse populations, and examining the gene–socioeconomic status interplay in regards to other outcomes.”

Senior author Miriam Udler, MD, PhD, an endocrinologist the department of Medicine at MGH, an investigator in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, adds that the study highlights not only the high prevalence of metabolic disease among individuals with both genetic and socioeconomic risk factors, but also that genetic risk for these diseases is not deterministic. “People at high genetic risk who live in low-risk socioeconomic regions have similar rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity as those with low genetic risk living in certain socioeconomic risk regions,” she says. “More research is needed to understand exactly why this is.”

Co-authors include Chirag M. Lakhani, Josep M. Mercader, Timothy D. Majarian, Philip Schroeder, Joanne B. Cole, Jose C. Florez, Chirag J. Patel, Alisa K. Manning, Sherri-Ann M. Burnett-Bowie, Jordi Merino, and Miriam S. Udler. 

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the American Diabetes Association.

About the Massachusetts General Hospital

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In July 2022, Mass General was named #8 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America’s Best Hospitals." MGH is a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.

JOURNAL

Diabetes Care

DOI

10.2337/dc22-1954

ARTICLE TITLE

Association and Interaction of Genetics and Area-Level Socioeconomic Factors on the Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity

Department of Energy and NASA join forces on innovative lunar experiment

LuSEE-Night will utilize deployable antennas and radio receivers to measure these sensitive radio waves from the Dark Ages for the first time

Business Announcement

DOE/US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are working together to develop a science instrument that will survive the harsh and unforgiving environment of the nighttime lunar surface on the far side of the Moon to attempt first-of-its-kind measurements of the so-called Dark Ages of the Universe.

The instrument is named the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment – Night (LuSEE-Night), a collaboration between DOE’s Brookhaven and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, UC Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory, and NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. LuSEE-Night is a pathfinder to understand the Moon’s radio environment to potentially look at a previously unobserved era in our cosmic history.

The Dark Ages are a time in our early universe that occurred between approximately 380,000 and 400 million years after the origin of the universe, known as the Big Bang. The Dark Ages were well before the formation of the stars and galaxies that we see today. Radio wave signals from this period are impossible to measure from Earth due to our planet’s constant “radio pollution” across nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum. However, our Moon lacks an interfering atmosphere and ionosphere, and the far side of the Moon is continually shielded from harmful radio emissions from the Earth, as well as from the Sun during the lunar night. The far side of the Moon offers a unique environment that allows for observations of sensitive radio astronomy signals that cannot be obtained anywhere else in the near-Earth space environment.

LuSEE-Night, which will be delivered to the far side of the Moon on a future Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) flight, will utilize deployable antennas and radio receivers to measure these sensitive radio waves from the Dark Ages for the first time. By physically being on the lunar surface and taking measurements at the right time, several external sources of radio interference will be removed, including radio noise from the Sun, Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. DOE scientists are excited about doing science from the far side of the Moon because it offers a unique environment that is advantageous to not only radio astronomy, but also for possible future gravitational wave observatories and other optical and infrared instrumentation.

“LuSEE-Night is a fascinating experiment that will allow us to observe something we’ve never been able to before - the Dark Ages signal,” said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Director of the Office of Science at DOE. “With this collaboration, DOE and NASA are setting conditions for successful exploration of the Dark Ages cosmology in the decades to come.”

However, a significant challenge will be for the instrument to survive the harsh, cold, and dark environment of the lunar night on the far side of the Moon long enough to collect and return data to Earth. Throughout the day and night cycle on the Moon, temperatures swing between around 250°F (120°C) during the day and -280°F (-173°C) at night. This temperature range presents a significant challenge to not only taking and transmitting the data, but also in keeping the instrument from freezing and ending the mission prematurely.

“LuSEE-Night will operate during the cold temperatures of the 14-day lunar night, when no sunlight is available to generate power or heat,” said Joel Kearns, Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “In addition to the significant potential science return, demonstration of the LuSEE-Night lunar night survival technology is critical to performing long-term, high-priority science investigations from the lunar surface.”

If successful, LuSEE-Night could help inform larger future instruments to further measure these otherwise undetectable radio frequencies and help scientists better understand the earliest period of the Universe’s formation and evolution.

"This measurement is very challenging—radio emission from the galaxy is very bright, and our Dark Ages signal is hiding behind it,” said Stuart D. Bale, NASA’s Principal Investigator for LuSEE-Night and a professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

Anže Slosar, the DOE Science Lead and Collaboration Spokesperson added, "Every time we have opened a new frequency window in cosmology, we have unlocked new discoveries about the history of the Universe and our place within it."

Sven Herrmann, the instrument construction Project Manager for DOE and a research scientist at Brookhaven Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) said, "While I have been working on space missions my entire life, I am very excited about being able to do this for the first time for the Department of Energy."

Brookhaven National Laboratory leads the construction of the instrument for DOE, the science collaboration, and is responsible for the development of the radio receiver, crucial analog and digital electronics, as well as power systems. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a collaborating institution and is responsible for the development of actuated antenna subsystem hardware and pre-flight antenna characterization.

Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit www.energy.gov/science.

Bees follow linear landmarks to find their way home, just like the first pilots

Study suggests that honeybees search for linear landscape elements that match mental map of home area

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Transponder — IMAGE: A HARMONIC RADAR TRANSPONDER ATTACHED TO THE THORAX OF A FORAGER HONEYBEE. view more
CREDIT: E BULLINGER, U GREGGERS, R MENZEL

In the earliest days of human flight, before the invention of the first radio beacons and ground-based electronic systems, and modern GPS, pilots commonly navigated by following roads and railways – striking linear landscape elements at ground level that guide towards a destination of interest.

Enter the honeybee. A century of research has shown that honeybees are navigators par excellence. They can navigate by their sense of smell, the sun, the sky’s pattern of polarized light, vertical landmarks that stand out from the panorama, and possibly the Earth’s magnetic field. They are also clever learners, able to recognize associations between disparate memories in order to generalize rules.

Now, scientists have shown that honeybees tend to search for their way home by orienting themselves in relation to the dominant linear landscape elements, just like the first pilots. The results are shown in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Dr Randolf Menzel, an emeritus professor at the Department of Neurobiology of the Free University of Berlin, and the study’s lead author, explained: “Here we show that honeybees use a ‘navigation memory’, a kind of mental map of the area that they know, to guide their search flights when they look for their hive starting in a new, unexplored area. Linear landscape elements, such as water channels, roads, and field edges, appear to be important components of this navigation memory.”

Tiny transponder

In late summer of 2010 and 2011 near the village of Klein Lüben in Brandenburg, Menzel and colleagues caught 50 experienced forager honeybees and glued a 10.5-mg transponder on their back. They then released them in a new test area, too distant to be familiar to the bees. In the the test area was a radar, which could detect the transponders at a distance of up to 900 meters. The most notable landmark in the test area was a pair of parallel irrigation channels, running southwest to northeast.

When honeybees find themselves in unfamiliar territory, they fly in exploratory loops in different directions and over different distances, centered on the release spot. With the radar, the researchers tracked the exact exploratory flight pattern of each bee for between 20 minutes and three hours. The bees flew at up to nine meters above the ground during the experiment.

The researchers had collected foragers from five hives: the home area around hives A and B resembled the test area in terms of the number, width, length, and angle of linear landscape elements, especially irrigation channels. The home range around hives D and E was highly dissimilar in this regard, while the home area around hive C was intermediate in similarity to the test area. Other landmarks by which honeybees are known to find their way, such as structured horizons or vertical elements that stand out, were absent in the test area.

Non-random search pattern

Menzel et al. first simulated two sets of random flight patterns, centered on the release spot, and generated with different algorithms. Since the observed flight patterns were highly different from these, the researchers concluded that the honeybees didn’t simply conduct random search flights.

The researchers then used advanced statistics to analyze the orientation of flights and their frequency of flying over of each 100 x 100 meter block within the test area. They showed that the honeybees spent a disproportionate amount of time flying alongside the irrigation channels. Analyses showed that these continued to guide the exploratory flights even when the bees were more than 30 meters away, the maximum distance from which honeybees are able to see such landscape elements. This implies that the bees kept them in their memory for prolonged periods.

“Our data show that similarities and differences in the layout of the linear landscape elements between their home area and the new area are used by the bees to explore where their hive might be,” said Menzel.

Navigational memory

Importantly, machine learning algorithms showed that the irrigation channels in the test area were most informative for predicting the exploratory flights of bees from hives A and B, less so for bees from hive C, and least for bees from hives D and E. This suggests that the bees retained a navigational memory of their home area, based on linear landscape elements, and tried to generalize what they saw in the test area to his memory to find their way home.

“Flying animals identify such extended ground structures in a map-like aerial view making them highly attractive as guiding structures. It is thus not surprising that both bats and birds use linear landmarks for navigation. Based on the data reported here we conclude that elongated ground structures are also salient components of the honeybees’ navigation memory,” concluded the authors.

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

DOI

10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1070957

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Mar-2023

Bumblebees learn new “trends” in their behavior by watching and learning

Peer-Reviewed Publication
QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
A new study has shown that bumblebees pick up new “trends” in their behaviour by watching and learning from other bees, and that one form of a behaviour can spread rapidly through a colony even when a different version gets discovered.
The research, led by Queen Mary University of London and published in PLOS Biology, provides strong evidence that social learning drives the spread of bumblebee behaviour – in this case, precisely how they forage for food.
A variety of experiments were set up to establish this. The researchers designed a two-option puzzle box that could be opened either by pushing a red tab clockwise or a blue tab counter-clockwise to reveal a 50 per cent sucrose solution reward.
‘Demonstrator’ bees were trained to use either the red or blue tabs, with ‘observer’ bees watching. When it was the observers’ turn to tackle the puzzle, they overwhelmingly and repeatedly chose to use the same method that they had seen, even after discovering the alternative option. This preference for the taught option was maintained by whole colonies of bees, with a mean of 98.6% of box openings made using the taught method.
The importance of social learning to the acquisition of puzzle box solutions was also illustrated through the control group, which lacked a demonstrator. In this group, some bees managed to open the puzzle boxes, but did so far fewer times than those who benefitted from seeing another bee do it first. The median number of boxes opened in a day by the observer bees with a demonstrator was 28 boxes a day, whereas it was only 1 for the control colony.
In an additional experiment, the researchers put both ‘blue’ and ‘red’ demonstrators into the same populations of bees. In the first population, 97.3% of the 263 incidences of box-opening by observers by day 12 used the red method. In the second population, observers preferred the blue method over the red on all days except one. In both cases, this demonstrated how a behavioural trend might emerge in a population in the first place – for the most part, due to experienced bees retiring from foraging and new learners arising, rather than any bees changing their preferred behaviour.
Similar results from similar experiments have been used in species such as primates and birds to suggest that they, like humans, are capable of culture. If bumblebees are capable of this, too, this could potentially explain the evolutionary origin of many of the complex behaviours seen among social insects. It might be possible that what now appears instinctive could have been socially learnt, at least originally.
Dr Alice Bridges, the lead author from Queen Mary University of London, said: “Bumblebees – and, indeed, invertebrates in general - aren’t known to show culture-like phenomena in the wild. However, in our experiments, we saw the spread and maintenance of a behavioural “trend” in groups of bumblebees – similar to what has been seen in primates and birds. The behavioural repertoires of social insects like these bumblebees are some of the most intricate on the planet, yet most of this is still thought to be instinctive. Our research suggests that social learning may have had a greater influence on the evolution of this behaviour than previously imagined.”
Professor Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London and author of the book ‘The Mind of a Bee’, said: “The fact that bees can watch and learn, and then make a habit of that behaviour, adds to the ever-growing body of evidence that they are far smarter creatures than a lot of people give them credit for.
“We tend to overlook the “alien civilisations” formed by bees, ants and wasps on our planet – because they are small-bodied and their societies and architectural constructions seem governed by instinct at first glance. Our research shows, however, that new innovations can spread like social media memes through insect colonies, indicating that they can respond to wholly new environmental challenges much faster than by evolutionary changes, which would take many generations to manifest.”

JOURNAL

PLoS Biology

Puzzle-solving behavior spreads through bumblebee colonies

Bees that learned from others were more adept and preferred the learned solution over alternatives
Peer-Reviewed Publication
PLOS

IMAGE: BUMBLEBEES CAN LEARN BY WATCHING A TRAINED BEE DEMONSTRATING ONE OF TWO WAYS TO SOLVE PUZZLE FOR A SUGARY REWARD, THEN COPY THE BEE TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE IN THE SAME WAY view more
CREDIT: DIEGO PEREZ-LOPEZ, PLOS (CC-BY 4.0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
Bumblebees learn to solve a puzzle by watching more experienced bees, and this behavioral preference then spreads through the colony, according to a study publishing March 7th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Alice Dorothy Bridges and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Social animals like primates are skilled at learning by watching others, and previous work has shown that individual bees can learn tasks in this way, but it remained unclear whether these new behaviors would then spread through the colony. To investigate, researchers tested six colonies of bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) using a puzzle box that could be opened by rotating a lid to access a sugar solution. The bees could rotate the lid either clockwise or anticlockwise by pushing one of two different colored tabs.
The researchers trained bees to use one of these two solutions and then released these ‘demonstrator’ bees into a foraging arena alongside untrained bees and filmed them over a period of six to twelve days. Foraging bees with a demonstrator opened more puzzle boxes than control bees, and used the same puzzle solution that the demonstrator had been taught 98% of the time, suggesting that they learned the behavior socially rather than stumbling upon a solution themselves. In experiments where multiple demonstrators were each taught a different solution to the puzzle, untrained bees initially learned to use both methods, but over time they randomly developed a preference for one solution or the other, which then came to dominate in that colony.
The study is the first to document the spread of different behavioral approaches to solving the same problem in bees. The results provide strong evidence that social learning is important for the transmission of new behaviors through bumblebee colonies, as has previously been shown in primates and birds, the authors say.
Bridges adds, “These results in bumblebees, which are tiny-brained invertebrates, echo those previously found using similar experiments in primates and birds - which were used to demonstrate the capacity of those species for culture.”

Bees feeding from a puzzle box opened by pushing the blue tab

CREDIT

Alice Bridges (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Puzzle-solving behavior spread [VIDEO] |

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019

Author Interview: https://plos.io/3IFJz7c
Citation: Bridges AD, MaBouDi H, Procenko O, Lockwood C, Mohammed Y, Kowalewska A, et al. (2023) Bumblebees acquire alternative puzzle-box solutions via social learning. PLoS Biol 21(3): e3002019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019
Author Countries: United Kingdom, China
Funding: This study was funded by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council programme grant, “Brains on Board” (ref. no. EP/P006094/1 to L.C.) and a Queen Mary University of London PhD studentship (to A.B.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

JOURNAL

PLoS Biology

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

COI STATEMENT

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Pregnant people with schizophrenia have threefold risk of interpersonal violence

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION JOURNAL

Pregnant and postpartum people with schizophrenia have a more than threefold increase in the risk of an emergency department visit for interpersonal violence, compared with those without schizophrenia, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.220689.

Interpersonal violence can include physical, sexual and psychological abuse by a family member, intimate partner, acquaintance or stranger.

"Though we found a threefold increased risk for individuals with schizophrenia, we also found that the majority of people, both with and without schizophrenia, are screened for interpersonal violence during pregnancy," says lead author Kelly Leslie, a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. "This suggests there are many opportunities for health care providers to intervene and prevent harm to these patients and their children."

About 1 in 5 (20.7%) women with schizophrenia experience physical or sexual violence during their lifetime, about 9 times the risk for those without serious mental illness. However, little is known about their risk during the perinatal period.

Led by researchers from ICES and Women's College Hospital, the study included more than 1.8 million pregnant people aged 15–49 years, of whom 4470 had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia were more likely to live in a lower-income neighbourhood, to have other psychiatric and chronic medical conditions, and to have had an emergency department (ED) visit for interpersonal violence in the 2 years before their pregnancy.

Key findings:

Overall, 3.1% of people with schizophrenia had an ED visit for interpersonal violence during pregnancy and the first year postpartum, versus 0.4% of those without schizophrenia.
Pregnant individuals with schizophrenia were equally likely to be screened for (74.3% v. 73.8%), yet more likely to self-report (10.2% v. 2.4%), interpersonal violence.
Among study participants who were screened and did not disclose interpersonal violence in pregnancy, schizophrenia was associated with a sixfold increase in the risk of experiencing an ED visit for interpersonal violence in both pregnancy and postpartum.

The study suggests "that routine violence screening in antenatal care settings is an important opportunity for intervention to prevent severe physical, psychological and social harm to these patients and their children," writes Dr. Simone Vigod, head of psychiatry, Women's College Hospital and a professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, with coauthors.

JOURNAL

Canadian Medical Association Journal

DOI

10.1503/cmaj.220689

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Risk of interpersonal violence during and after pregnancy among people with schizophrenia: a population-based cohort study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Mar-2023

As urban populations soar wastewater treatment struggles to find sustainable solutions

Activated sludge comes of age

Book Announcement

WORLD SCIENTIFIC

Activated Sludge: Developments and Sustainable Solutions — IMAGE: COVER OF "ACTIVATED SLUDGE: DEVELOPMENTS AND SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS" view more
CREDIT: WORLD SCIENTIFIC

Globally, activated sludge treats the majority of urban wastewaters; yet it is one of the most complex biological processes used. It is a sophisticated microbial process fraught with operational problems leading to occasional failures in achieving required effluent quality standards. With the increasing problem of partially treated and raw sewage entering rivers and estuaries, the pressure on the process to cope with ever increasing volumes of wastewater has never been so great.

With increasing volumes of dilute wastewater entering treatment plants the high variability in hydraulic and organic loadings cause significant problems to operators of activated sludge plants, often resulting in untreated wastewater entering rivers. There is a long delay between design, funding and construction of wastewater treatment plants, including retrofitting, and so the problem of surface water pollution is on the rise, This is exacerbated by rapid housing developments in areas where there is insufficient wastewater treatment capacity or where receiving waters are insufficient to cope with increased loadings requiring increasingly higher levels of treatment. The better the effluent quality the more costly wastewater becomes to treat in terms of capital cost, energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge for operators, designers, consultants and researchers is to find novel solutions that are reliable, sustainable and able to rapidly increase treatment capacity at minimum cost. This is a tall order and requires a firm understanding of the process and, in particular, how bacterial flocs are formed, develop and respond to different operating conditions.

Activated Sludge: Developments and Sustainable Solutions explores in detail the microbial basis of activated sludge, especially the fascinating process of floc formation and development, the role of the organisms, and how a new understanding of the biology of the process has led to the creation of many new innovative process designs. Developments in basin design have created multiple reactor stages allowing a range of anaerobic, anoxic and aerobic zones to capitalize on a wider range of organisms able to remove nitrogen and phosphorus as well as organic matter. The high energy intensive conventional systems are now replaced with highly controlled reactors operating at low dissolved oxygen concentrations using a new generation of aeration devices. Underlying all this are the increasing challenges of ever-increasing loadings, climate change, nanoparticles, microplastics, pathogen removal and antibiotic gene transfer. The development of membrane bioreactors has removed the problems of settleability thereby increasing process reliability and effluent quality, while integrated fixed-film activated-sludge processes are more efficient and compact. Activated sludge is over a hundred years old as a process and is being reimagined into a highly efficient, reliable, and increasingly sustainable treatment process. The book concludes by exploring how activated sludge can become even more sustainable, for example, by carbon harvesting and by product recovery.

This interdisciplinary book is essential reading for both engineers and scientists whether training at university or practitioners and consultants in the wastewater industry. Activated Sludge: Developments and Sustainable Solutions retails for US$168 / £150 (hardcover) and is also available in electronic formats. To order or know more about the book, visit http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/Q0408.

###

About the Author

Professor Nick Gray is a founding member and former Director of the Trinity Centre for the Environment, a hub for interdisciplinary research and teaching at Trinity College Dublin. He is an expert hydrobiologist specializing in biological wastewater treatment and water pollution control. He combines his research and experience as a consultant environmental engineer and scientist into his teaching and writing. He has written over 180 papers in 49 different journals and is the author of 15 books and numerous book chapters.

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading international independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research and professional communities. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organisations like the Nobel Foundation and US National Academies Press to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. The company publishes about 600 books and over 160 journals in various fields annually. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit www.worldscientific.com.

For more information, contact WSPC Communications at communications@wspc.com.

DOI

10.1142/q0408

Death rates from lung cancer will fall overall in the EU and UK in 2023, but rise among women in France, Italy and Spain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL ONCOLOGY

A total of 1,261,990 people will die from cancer in 2023 in the EU (EU-27). A further 172,314 people will die from the disease in the UK, according to new research published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Monday).

Researchers led by Carlo La Vecchia (MD), a professor at the University of Milan (Italy), estimate there will be a 6.5% fall in cancer death rates in men and a 3.7% fall in women between 2018 and 2023.

They predict that death rates from the ten most common cancers will continue to fall in most European countries in 2023, although the numbers of people dying will go up due to aging populations. A greater proportion of elderly people in the population means there is a greater number at the age where they are more likely to develop and die from cancer.

Compared to a peak in cancer death rates in 1988, the researchers calculate that nearly 5.9 million deaths will have been avoided in the 35 years between 1989 and 2023 in the EU-27. In the UK, 1.24 million deaths will have been avoided.

Prof. La Vecchia said: “If the current trajectory of declining cancer death rates continues, then it is possible there could be a further 35% reduction by 2035. More smokers quitting contribute to these favourable trends. In addition, greater efforts need to be made to control the growing epidemic in overweight, obesity and diabetes, alcohol consumption and infections, together with improvements in screening, early diagnosis and treatments.

“The advances in tobacco control are reflected in the favourable lung cancer trends but more could be done in this respect, particularly among women, as lung cancer death rates continue to rise among them. No deaths from lung cancer have been avoided in women, both in the EU-27 and the UK, during the period between 1989 and 2023.

“Pancreatic cancer is also a cause for concern, as death rates from this disease will not fall among men and will rise by 3.4% in women in the EU and 3.2% in women in the UK. Smoking can explain between about a quarter to a third of these deaths, and women, particularly in the middle and older age groups, did not give up smoking as early as men.”

The researchers analysed cancer death rates in the EU 27 Member States [2] as a whole and separately in the UK. They also looked at the five most populous EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain) and, individually, for stomach, intestines, pancreas, lung, breast, uterus (including cervix), ovary, prostate, bladder and leukaemias for men and women [3]. Prof La Vecchia and his colleagues collected data on deaths from the World Health Organization and Eurostat databases from 1970 to 2018 for most of the EU-27 and the UK. This is the thirteenth consecutive year the researchers have published these predictions.

In the EU-27 countries the researchers predict that will be an age standardised rate (ASR) [4] of 123.8 deaths per 100,000 men by the end of 2023. In women, the age standardised death rate will be 79.3 per 100,000. In the UK, the death rates will be 106.5 and 83.5 per 100,000 for men and women, respectively.

Cancer death rates will fall for all cancers in men in the EU-27 and the UK. They will also fall for women in the UK. Among EU women, death rates will rise by 3.4% to nearly six per 100,000 for pancreatic cancer, and to just over 1% to 13.6 per 100,00 for lung cancer. Although there will be a 13.8% drop in lung cancer death rates among women in the UK, the death rate of 16.2 per 100,000 is still higher than among EU women because more UK women started smoking earlier than those in the EU. Lung cancer now kills more women in the UK than breast cancer, which has a death rate of 13.5 per 100,000.

When the researchers looked specifically at lung cancer death rates in five EU countries as well as the UK, they found that, although death rates are predicted to fall in men for all six countries, for women they will rise by nearly 14% in France, 5.6% in Italy and 5% in Spain. Among women in different age groups, the researchers found a decrease in predicted death rates from lung cancer among those aged 25 to 64, but an increase in those aged 65 to over 75 years, and consequently an increase overall.

“This is because women now aged 45 to 65, born in the 1960s and 1970s, have smoked less and stopped earlier than those born in the 1950s, who were in their twenties in the 1970s when smoking among young women was most prevalent,” said Prof. Eva Negri from the University of Bologna (Italy), co-leader of the research.

Colorectal (bowel) cancer will be the third biggest killer for women in both the EU and the UK: eight and ten per 100,000, respectively. Prostate cancer will be the third biggest killer for men: 9.5 and 11.2 per 100,000 in the EU and UK, respectively.

The researchers say that organised screening programmes using low dose computed tomography (CT scans) could reduce deaths from lung cancer by up to 20%. However, there are no such organised programmes in Europe, and it is too early to evaluate the impact of screening in the UK, following the Lung Cancer Screening trial.

The researchers highlight the role that overweight and obesity plays in cancers such as post-menopausal breast, endometrial (womb) cancer, stomach and colorectal cancer. Although death rates from stomach cancer are falling overall, mainly because of improved methods of food preservation, healthier diets and a decline in Helicobacter pylori infection, approximately a third of stomach cancers now occur in the cardia, the entrance to the stomach, and are associated with overweight and obesity and, hence, reflux, which is a risk factor for the development of cancer at this site. For colorectal cancer, death rates are falling in the EU but the decline has slowed in the UK.

“This is concerning as increases in both incidence and mortality from colorectal cancer in young women have been recorded in the UK. This can be partly explained by the prevalence of overweight and obesity, and alcohol and tobacco consumption,” said Prof. Negri.

The researchers caution that their estimates do not take account of the COVID pandemic, which occurred after the dates when data were available on cancer deaths. “The COVID-19 pandemic may have an effect on cancer mortality in 2023 as a result of delayed visits and procedures, influencing both secondary prevention and treatment, and disease management for cancer,” they write.

(ends)

Notes:

[1] “European cancer mortality predictions for the year 2023 with focus on lung cancer”, by M. Malvezzi et al. Annals of Oncology, doi: 10.1016/j.annonc.2023.01.010

[2] At the time of this analysis, the EU had 27 member states, with the UK leaving in 2020. Cyprus was excluded from the analysis due to excessive missing data.

[3] The paper contains individual tables of cancer death rates for each of the six countries.

[4] Age-standardised rates per 100,000 of the population reflect the annual probability of dying adjusted to reflect the age distribution of a population.

JOURNAL

Annals of Oncology

DOI

10.1016/j.annonc.2023.01.010

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

European cancer mortality predictions for the year 2023 with focus on lung cancer