Saturday, July 01, 2023

Anti-LGBTQ+ policies linked to depression in Black and Latinx youth

YALE UNIVERSITY

Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ youth living in U.S. states with discriminatory policies, such as “Don’t Say Gay” laws, are more likely to be depressed than their peers in the most LGBTQ+-affirming states, according to new research from Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) scholars.

When controlling for individual experiences of bullying based on race and ethnicity or sexual orientation, Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ youth in states without protections — such as anti-bullying legislation and conversion therapy bans — are 32% more likely to experience symptoms of depression, according to the research published June 22 in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science.

“This study provides scientific evidence to what many queer and trans people of color in the U.S. are experiencing day to day,” said co-author Tyler Harvey, program administrator of the Yale School of Medicine’s SEICHE Center for Health and Justice. “Queer and trans youth living in states such as Florida that are passing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation know this to be true: their surroundings are influencing their mental health.”

The article includes a map that researchers believe is the first youth-focused U.S. state-level measure of anti-LGBTQ+ structural stigma, said lead author Skyler Jackson, an assistant professor in the YSPH Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. States were ranked based on nine anti-LGBTQ+ structural stigma indicators specifically relevant to adolescents. Two indicators were considered harmful (the presence of “Don’t Say Gay” laws and anti-LGBTQ+ community attitudes), while others, such as a greater density of high schools with gender-sexuality alliances (formerly known as gay-straight alliances), were protective.

Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas were found to have the highest anti-LGBTQ+ structural stigma. California had the lowest.

Completing the puzzle

While previous studies on discrimination have focused on everyday interpersonal experiences, such as bullying at school, Jackson said this new work broadens that scope.

“The laws, policies, and overall social conditions within which individuals live take a toll on their health and well-being,” Jackson said. “This study helps to complete the puzzle of the various ways that stigma might show up within the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals.”

Jackson is part of a team of researchers and staff members from YSPH, the Yale School of Medicine, and the Yale Department of Psychology who are affiliated with the Yale LGBTQ+ Mental Health Initiative. The initiative is devoted to understanding and improving the mental health of LGBTQ+ populations in the U.S. and around the world.

There has been a need for research that demonstrates that decisions made at the state level can impact the daily lives of young people,” Jackson said.

“The laws that many of us view as unjust, as hateful, don’t exist in a vacuum with no real consequences,” he said. “When policies are implemented that undermine the rights, protections, and dignity of LGBTQ+ individuals, that’s felt in real and tangible ways. We are becoming more acutely aware of this as there are so many sociopolitical battles going on across the country right now, particularly related to trans kids and adolescents.”

A focused approach

Starting with the subpopulation of Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ youth was another unique aspect of the study, said Jackson.

“While most research of this kind begins with a broad cross-section of the LGBTQ+ population and adopts a one-size-fits-all approach, we made the decision to begin at the margins and consider how youth may experience anti-LGBTQ+ structural stigma alongside other forms of discrimination, such as racial/ethnic bullying,” he said.

Jackson said he adopted this approach out of concern that previous studies have failed to accurately reflect the broad diversity of the populations they intend to describe. Both identity and stigma, he said, are multi-layered.

“Unfortunately, our field often neglects to take the extra steps to ensure our major findings remain consistent among the smaller, marginalized, and less prototypical segments of the LGBTQ+ community,” Jackson said. For example, he said, broad findings that are produced by studies on LGBTQ+ people generally, might not apply — or apply to the same extent — when examined among specific subgroups such as LGBTQ+ people of color, queer women, trans/nonbinary people, bisexual/pansexual people, LGBTQ+ people of at different stages of life, LGBTQ+ people in non-Western contexts, and so on.

Also, focusing on a marginalized group can result in different research questions, science, and even eventual interventions, Jackson said.

“It still will take time for us to learn how structural stigma might land differently among LGBTQ+ youth of color,” he added.

Along with Jackson and Harvey, who presented their work in March at the 2023 International Convention of Psychological Science sponsored by the Association for Psychological Science in Brussels, the study’s co-authors are Kobe Pereira, a former YSPH research assistant, Kirsty Clark, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, and Ryan Watson, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut.

JOURNAL

Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science

Economic inequality cannot be explained by individual bad choices

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

A global study led by a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and published in the journal Scientific Reports(link is external and opens in a new window) finds that economic inequality on a social level cannot be explained by bad choices among the poor nor by good decisions among the rich. Poor decisions were the same across all income groups, including for people who have overcome poverty.

While economic inequality continues to rise within countries, efforts to address it have been largely ineffective, particularly those involving behavioral approaches. It is often implied but, until now, not tested that choice patterns among low-income individuals may be a factor impeding behavioral interventions aimed at improving upward economic mobility.

The study is based on online surveys in 22 languages with close to 5000 participants from 27 countries in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Decision-making ability was measured through 10 individual biases, including (1) temporal discounting, not preferring immediate funds over larger future gains; (2) overestimation, or thinking you are better than you are at making decisions; (3) over-placement, or thinking you are better than the average person at making decisions; and (4) extremeness, or taking the “middle option” simply because it seems safer than the highest or lowest.

Taken along with related work(link is external and opens in a new window) showing that temporal discounting is tied more to the broader societal economic environment rather than individual financial circumstances, the new findings are a major validation of arguments stating that poorer individuals are not uniquely prone to cognitive biases that alone explain protracted poverty.

“Our research does not reject the notion that individual behavior and decision-making may directly relate to upward economic mobility. Instead, we narrowly conclude that biased decision-making does not alone explain a significant proportion of population-level economic inequality,” says first author Kai Ruggeri, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia Public Health.

“Low-income individuals are not uniquely prone to cognitive biases linked to bad financial decisions. Instead, scarcity is more likely a greater driver of these decisions,” Ruggeri adds.

The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (grant 2218595) and by Undergraduate Global Engagement at Columbia University. Additional support was provided to individual researchers from the Columbia University Office of the Provost, Masaryk University Centre for International Cooperation, and the Benjamin A. Gilman International Fund from the United States Department of State. This research was funded in part, by the UKRI (grant MR/N013468/1). Co-authors on the study were primarily from two programs aimed at creating opportunities for students and early career researchers from all backgrounds around the world – the Junior Researcher Programme and the Global Behavioral Science initiative (GLOBES) at Columbia.

A full list of co-authors is available on the journal article page.

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-36339-2

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The persistence of cognitive biases in financial decisions across economic groups

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Jun-2023

US infant mortality declined, but low birth weight, preterm births increased

Research over 11 years suggests infant mortality alone not a sufficient indicator of health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Temporal Trends - Implications for Achieving Health Equity — IMAGE: NEW RESEARCH FROM FAU'S SCHMIDT COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND COLLABORATORS INDICATES THAT INFANT MORTALITY ALONE MAY BE INSUFFICIENT AS A HEALTH INDICATOR. view more
CREDIT: ALEX DOLCE, FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Nearly 4 million infants are born in the United States each year. Despite improvements in obstetric and perinatal care, infant mortality in the U.S. is of ongoing concern. The nation ranks No. 23 in the world for infant mortality rates with 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, with worse outcomes observed in Black infants compared to white infants.

Now, new original research from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators indicates that infant mortality alone may be insufficient as a health indicator. For the study, researchers explored time trends and racial inequities in infant mortality, low birth weight and preterm births from 2007 to 2019 using the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) and the Linked Birth/Infant Death Records (LBIDR).

Results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Pediatrics and Child Health, showed that from 2014 to 2019 infant mortality fell, while low birth weight and preterm births rose. For all three indicators, researchers reported significant inequities between white and Black infants. When compared with white infants, Black infants experienced a significant twofold greater infant mortality and low birth weight and one-and-a-half times greater preterm birth rate.

“During this period, infant mortality, on average, declined across all groups,” said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., Dr.PH, coauthor and first Sir Richard Doll Professor of Medicine, senior academic advisor to the dean, and interim chair, Department of Population Health and Social Medicine, in FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine, and an adjunct professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “There was a statistically significant increase in low birth weight and preterm birth rates overall and among Black infants. While infant mortality appears to be trending down in all groups, a statistically significant decrease was observed among whites between 2014 and 2018.”

The differences between Black infants and white infants have remained largely unchanged for decades. Based on data from the current original research, the Black infant mortality rate in 2018 approximated the white infant mortality rate of 1981. Since 1980, the U.S. Healthy People (HP) initiative has drafted objectives to improve health and well-being in the U.S. had hoped to eliminate racial inequities by 2010. The HP 2023 initiative has opined that infant mortality is the leading health indicator of child health.

For the study, researchers calculated annual infant mortality rates per 1,000 live births and low birth weight as well as preterm birth rates per 100,000 live births. Newborns of low birth weight were classified as those weighing approximately 5.5 pounds or less. Preterm births were classified as 20 to 36 weeks’ gestation. A total of 47,474,176 infant births from the LBIDR over 11 years were analyzed, out of which 7,111,385 and 25,735,338 were the number of white and Black infant births, respectively.

Researchers obtained data by year and mother’s race: reported as non-Hispanic white and Black as well as non-Hispanic Black.

“While further analytic studies are needed, there are certainly important clinical and public health implications based on our study findings,” said Sarah K. Wood, M.D., senior author, director of the Harvard Macy Institute at Harvard Medical School and former professor of pediatrics and vice dean for medical education, FAU Schmidt College of Medicine. “It is tempting to hypothesize about possible etiologic factors in addition to social and economic determinants of health such as maternal education, access to health care, poverty and crime as well as structural racism.”

Study co-authors are Hannia Diaz Allyon, first author and second-year medical student at FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine; and Robert S. Levine, M.D., professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and an affiliate professor in FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine.

– FAU –

About the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine:

FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine is one of approximately 156 accredited medical schools in the U.S. The college was launched in 2010, when the Florida Board of Governors made a landmark decision authorizing FAU to award the M.D. degree. After receiving approval from the Florida legislature and the governor, it became the 134th allopathic medical school in North America. With more than 70 full and part-time faculty and more than 1,300 affiliate faculty, the college matriculates 64 medical students each year and has been nationally recognized for its innovative curriculum. To further FAU’s commitment to increase much needed medical residency positions in Palm Beach County and to ensure that the region will continue to have an adequate and well-trained physician workforce, the FAU Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Consortium for Graduate Medical Education (GME) was formed in fall 2011 with five leading hospitals in Palm Beach County. The Consortium currently has five Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited residencies including internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, psychiatry, and neurology.

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Temporal Trends in United States Infants: Implications for Achieving Health Equity

No more crying over rotting onions? Researchers gain insight into bacteria threatening Vidalia onion production

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Kvitko Onion Field — IMAGE: DR. BRIAN KVITKO COUNTING ONIONS IN THE FIELD. view more
CREDIT: DR. BRIAN KVITKO

The Vidalia onion is a trademarked variety of sweet onion that can only be grown in several counties in Georgia by law. These prized vegetables are currently threatened by the bacterial pathogen Pantoea ananatis, which severely damages the plant by rotting the onion bulbs and leaves. This results in substantial losses for onion growers in Georgia, as there are no disease resistant cultivars available. The plant toxin pantaphos, produced by the P. ananatis pathogen, causes the rotting symptoms in onion. More specifically, the eleven genes responsible for producing this toxin are grouped together in a cluster called HiVir (high virulence). However, most of the genes from the cluster have an unknown role in bacterial pathogenesis, so there is much more to discover about how this bacterium infects onion.

To combat this critical plant disease, Dr. Brian Kvikto and Dr. Bhabesh Dutta from the University of Georgia have developed an aggressive research program. A recent study led by Dr. Gi Yoon (Gina) Shin from Dr. Kvikto’s lab has confirmed which genes in the HiVir cluster are essential and which genes contribute partially to this disease.

Published in Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (MPMI), the study found that this HiVir gene cluster is common in many onion-pathogenic P. ananatis strains, and natural mutations in these essential genes render them powerless to cause infection in onions. The lab developed a clever assay to isolate the toxin from the pathogen. Dr. Shin explains that application of this toxin onto other plants besides onions also causes lesions to form. “This suggests that the toxin produced by P. ananatis could have broad-spectrum activity, potentially targeting conserved function or pathways within the plant.”

The exact mechanism by which this toxin can cause lesions on various plants is yet to be determined. Dr. Shin states, “The elucidation of the specific target of the toxin holds great promise in facilitating the discovery of pantaphos-resistant onion cultivars. This breakthrough would effectively mitigate the economic losses experienced by the onion industry.” This study provides exciting insights to get us one step closer to developing disease-resistant Vidalia onions.

Pathogenicity assay of greenhouse-grown Vidalia onions studied in Dr. Kvitko’s lab.

CREDIT

Dr. Kvitko's lab

For additional details, read The Genetic Requirements for HiVir-Mediated Onion Necrosis by Pantoea ananatis, a Necrotrophic Plant Pathogen, published in MPMI.

Follow the authors on Twitter

Dr. Gi Yoon (Gina) Shin: @maeyong_ee

Dr. Bhabesh Dutta: @BhabeshDutta5

Dr. Brian Kvikto @KvitkoPhD

About Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (MPMI)

Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions® (MPMI) is a gold open access journal that publishes fundamental and advanced applied research on the genetics, genomics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics of pathological, symbiotic, and associative interactions of microbes, insects, nematodes, or parasitic plants with plants.

JOURNAL

Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions

DOI

10.1094/MPMI-11-22-0246-R

ARTICLE TITLE

The Genetic Requirements for HiVir-Mediated Onion Necrosis by Pantoea ananatis, a Necrotrophic Plant Pathogen

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Jun-2023

Energy subsidy reforms in Europe require honesty, step-by-step approach

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN

Countries around the European Union are looking at reforms of energy subsidies, to encourage more sustainable energy use and to accommodate the higher prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These countries should be careful and considerate of the effects these reforms may have on the firms and productivity in these countries, researchers from Radboud University warn. Their study of an energy reform in Iran in 2010, published in Energy Economics, identifies some challenges that can come with such reforms.

The researchers studied the impact of Iran's energy subsidy reform of 2010, which caused price increases of up to six times for various energy sources. Though the Iranian government decided to redistribute some of the savings from the energy subsidy reform to individual households, this was not nearly enough to compensate for the total increase in prices.

Iranian energy market

‘Companies that were less energy-intensive were able to cope with the price increase comparatively well as long as they did not depend on energy-intensive inputs. Yet, energy-intensive companies had a tough time adapting resulting in profit losses.’ explains Natascha Wagner, professor of International Economics at Radboud University and one of the authors of the paper. ‘As a consequence, they increased their prices, which affected households. Households were squeezed from multiple sides: higher prices for their own energy consumption, and for the products and services they use,

Though Iran obviously presents a very different situation compared to the European energy market, there are a number of lessons relevant to the European Union as it transitions to cleaner energy sources, while managing rising energy prices and inflation. ‘The timing of Iran's reform, which coincided with international sanctions, exacerbated its costs. Europe is in a somewhat similar situation: while it wants to transition to cleaner energy for reasons related to climate, the conflict in Ukraine and the already high levels of inflation put extra pressure on energy prices.’

Honesty is key

‘That means energy reforms in Europe are also likely to come at a non-negligible cost,’ adds Wagner. Based on their study of Iran, the researchers recommend taking two things into account. ‘The main lesson from Iran is that policymakers should be honest about the costs. There's not just a direct cost, but also an indirect one: once manufacturing companies are affected, we'll notice that in the price of our goods and services. Transparency about both direct and indirect price increases is key.’

‘Energy subsidy reforms are a real balancing act, but we have to be open about that. That does not mean we should not act: the problems we face are real and need to be tackled. We have to be honest that we overexploited fossil energy sources. We've been living beyond our means: current prices and subsidies are unsustainable, further price increases can be expected.’

Step-by-step

Second, governments should reform the market step-by-step, rather than all at once. A complete overhaul is likely to shock the market and may cause price dynamics that are difficult to counteract. ‘Taking smaller steps won't help avoid price increases completely, but the market will be able to adapt to the price changes better. By supporting households and companies that suffer the most more specifically, instead of supporting everyone a little bit, the biggest pains may be avoided. But in the end, politicians need to have an honest discussion with the public about the many trade-offs and difficulties of the energy transition. This is key for building broad societal support for the necessary but difficult reforms.’

JOURNAL

Energy Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.eneco.2023.106762

ARTICLE TITLE

How manufacturing firms respond to energy subsidy reforms? An impact assessment of the Iranian Energy Subsidy Reform

Is a foreign-sounding name a disadvantage?

How do you react to someone whose name clearly tells you they're foreigners? When it comes to sports, the answer is complicated.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Sports are a way in for people who want to build contacts with other people. Sports give you an opportunity to integrate and interact with people on an equal footing. For immigrants, sports can be the key that allows them to fit into a society.

But how easy is it for people with strange names to join in the fun?

That depends on how foreign sounding a person’s name is, and perhaps where the person lives. Because the results from the experiment were not the same throughout Scandinavia. Some are more similar than others.

The rigged football experiment actually shows encouraging results for Norway and Denmark, less so for Sweden.

Fictional football girls applied for tryouts

In the experiment, the researchers pretended to be girls who wanted to try out for football clubs in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

“We contacted every division-based women’s club with amateur teams in Scandinavia, apart from the top level,” says Tor Georg Jakobsen, a professor of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Business School.

The researchers sent emails under fictitious names to club contact persons at a total of 1141 football clubs. These included 665 clubs in Sweden, 259 in Norway and 207 in Denmark.

The emails were identical, but the researchers varied them by signing some with traditional native names and others with random names from the three largest, measurable minority groups in each country.

The researchers then checked the responses they received – or didn’t receive – and noted how they differed depending on what kind of name the fictional girls had.

What we say and what we do

“What we measured was the proportion of positive responses – that girls would be welcome to come to tryouts,” says Jakobsen.

Few football contacts were directly negative when they responded to a request. Perhaps that is typical for Scandinavians. But quite a few club contacts simply failed to respond. The researchers categorized the no-responses as a lack of positive response.

“This method is an ingenious way of measuring ‘incorrect’ opinions. Failing to respond to an email doesn’t entail any risk for the contact. But by analysing this information, we can discern tendencies that we otherwise only find in elections, and not in surveys,” says Jakobsen.

What people say and what they do are not always the same.

Swedes discriminated the most

“Sweden is the most interesting country and had relatively clear findings,” says Jakobsen. “We found a much clearer tendency towards discrimination here than in Norway and Denmark.”

The trend in Sweden was clear. Native Swedish names had a positive response rate of around 77, Finnish around 73, Polish 65 and Iraqi 62. This corresponds to cultural distance, that is, how different the cultures are considered to be.

“The difference between Swedish and Finnish names isn’t significant, but for Polish and Iraqi names it is,” says Jakobsen.

The researchers did not find this clear tendency in either Norway or Denmark.

In Norway, Polish and Lithuanian names did receive somewhat less frequent responses than Norwegian ones, but the difference is not significant. Somali names had almost identical responses to Norwegian names.

Polish, Syrian and Turkish names in Denmark received somewhat less frequent responses than Danish ones, but here too, the difference was not significant. German names should actually have been included for Denmark, since Germans are the second largest immigrant group there. But German names were excluded because they are too similar to the Danish ones.

What Swedes say, and what Swedes do

“It’s a paradox that Sweden sometimes scores significantly higher than Denmark and Norway in large surveys when it comes to trusting people of other nationalities,” says Jakobsen.

People in Norway and Denmark are apparently somewhat more sceptical of foreigners when asked directly than people in Sweden are. But that’s where theory and practice diverge.

However, we shouldn’t linger too long on the Swedes’ double standards, because that’s not necessarily fair.

“We should also mention that Sweden has many more football clubs than Denmark and Norway,” says Jakobsen.

As the number of clubs increases, the chance of coincidence influencing the results also decreases. For example, it does not take too many desperate coaches in Norway and Denmark for the numbers to change. Filling up the team at almost any cost will convince even the most sceptical coach to answer yes to allowing someone with a foreign-sounding name to try out.

Foreign-sounding names might have a more exotic ring for some, or indicate football traditions and a corresponding skillset, making it more exciting to say yes.

Sweden also has a far greater proportion of immigrants and children of immigrants than Norway and Denmark. In Sweden, the proportion is 20 per cent, compared to 14 per cent in Norway and 12 per cent in Denmark.

Easier for girls?

Similar experiments have shown that boys who want to try out generally have less chance of doing so if they have foreign-sounding names. But the response is not as clear for girls.

“The Scandinavian countries are ideal for this type of research. Most European countries don’t have enough women’s teams for an empirical analysis,” says Cornel Nesseler, who is affiliated with the NTNU Business School and is an associate professor at the University of Stavanger.

Nesseler has previously carried out similar studies on male players.

Girls with foreign-sounding names receive responses more often, including positive answers, than boys did in the other experiments. In other words, it could appear that, on average, the football contacts are more positive towards girls than towards boys, but the experiments are so different that we cannot say for sure.

“The demand for female players is probably much higher compared to men, which can also affect the response rate,” says Nesseler.

The research group consisted of Jakobsen, Nesseler, Marthe Holum from the Department of Computer Science at NTNU, Rasmus K. Storm from Idrættens Analyseinstitut (Sports Analysis Institute) and the NTNU Business School, in addition to Andreas Nygaard from Idrættens Analyseinstitut.

Reference: Storm, K. Rasmus, Cornel Nesseler, Marthe Holum, Andreas Nygaard & Tor G. Jakobsen (2023) “Ethnic Discrimination in Scandinavia: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Women’s Amateur Soccer” in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1057/s41599-023-01734-7

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Ethnic discrimination in Scandinavia: evidence from a field experiment in women’s amateur soccer.

Adding natural molecule to toothpastes and mouthwash may help prevent plaque and cavities

3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM) reduced Streptococcus mutans biofilm by 90%, which is considered a main cause of plaque and cavities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, June 29, 2023 – Most of the world's population either chronically suffers from plaque and dental cavities or will develop them at some point in their lives. Toothpastes, mouthwashes, and regular checkups do their part, but more could always be done. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev scientists and their colleagues at Sichuan University and the National University of Singapore have discovered that 3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM), a naturally occurring molecule also known as bisindole, reduces the biofilms that produce plaque and cavities by 90%. The molecule is also found to have anti-carcinogenic properties.

Their findings were published earlier this month in the journal Antibiotics.

Your mouth is a great reservoir for bacteria such as S. mutans, which is believed to be one of the primary actors in dental cavities. S. mutans grows in the moist and sugary atmosphere of your mouth after food in a biofilm that coats your teeth. Biofilm generates plaque, attacks enamel and causes cavities. The scientists found that the bisindole (DIM) disrupted that biofilm by 90% and therefore the bacterium was not given a chance to grow.

"The molecule, which was found to have low toxicity, could be added to toothpastes and mouthwashes to greatly improve dental hygiene," says lead author Prof. Ariel Kushmaro of the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering. He is also a member of the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change.

The study was conducted with his student Yifat Baruch, and Dr. Karina Golberg, as well as Prof. Robert S. Marks of the same department and Qun Sun of Sichuan University, and Karina Yew-Hoong Gin of the National University of Singapore.

The research was supported by the International Research and Development Program of Sichuan (2019YFH0113) and SMART innovation grant ING-000398 (Singapore).

JOURNAL

Antibiotics

DOI

10.3390/antibiotics12061017

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM): A Potential Therapeutic Agent against Cariogenic Streptococcus mutans Biofilm

Friday, June 30, 2023

Restoring the identities of Mexico’s unknown dead

Goethe University Frankfurt signs cooperation agreement with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for forensic "Identifications in Mexico" project

Business Announcement

GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT

Goethe University Frankfurt has entered into a cooperation agreement with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Mexico to assist the Mexican government in identifying the country’s more than 110,000 officially disappeared. At 55,000, the official figure of unidentified decedents is also staggering. The Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Mexico’s national human rights commission, has called the current situation as a forensic crisis and an enormous burden on civil society.

Although the Mexican government is increasingly relying on international cooperation and assistance in recent years to help identify unidentified decedents, and significant progress has been made (including the construction of regional identification centers), identification remains a significant challenge. One partner is UNFPA, whose Mexican branch is a member of the “Identifications in Mexico” project (partially funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office), which supports the Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda (CNB) search commission’s national identification policy. One of the project’s workplans comprises Goethe University Frankfurt’s collaboration with Mexican institutions and universities.

The signing ceremony was attended by Cecilia Villanueva Bracho, Mexican Consul General to the city of Frankfurt; Goethe University President Prof. Enrico Schleiff; the Deputy Head of UNFPA Mexico, Iván Castellanos; the Director of Goethe University’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, Prof. Dr. Marcel Verhoff: and UNFPA Project Head Maximilian Murck. The goal of the cooperation agreement between UNFPA and the Institute of Forensic Medicine is to offer families certainty about the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Specifically, the cooperation aims to develop pragmatic approaches to identify more deceased persons within a shorter period of time, including by means of:

DNA analysis of relatives and unidentified decedents
Analysis of tattoos for identification purposes
Academic exchanges and research with Mexican forensic scientists and medical examiners

Goethe University President Prof. Dr. Enrico Schleiff emphasized the humanitarian obligation to support the Mexican government in restoring the identity of unidentified decedents, adding that the relatives of the disappeared deserve to have certainty of their loved ones’ fate. Schleiff welcomed the cooperation agreement, which allows the work done to date by Frankfurt’s forensic experts in identifying Mexico’s disappeared to be continued. He explicitly thanked UNFPA for its support of the "Identifications in Mexico" project, as well as all scientists and doctors involved.

Iván Castellanos, deputy head of UNFPA Mexico, emphasized that every person has the right to their identity, pointing to the important measures the Mexican government has initiated in recent years to strengthen its institutions in the search for the disappeared, as well as to the reforms passed to improve the identification of unidentified decedents. The government for the first time invited the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) in 2021, he said, also expressing its compromise with the disappeared.

For his part, Prof. Dr. Marcel Verhoff, director of Goethe University’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, pointed out that the Frankfurt-based institute had already worked with the University of Guadalajara in the introduction of a master degree in forensic science, and in the analysis of genetic samples, autopsies and excavations in Mexico. The new agreement will further strengthen academic collaboration, he said, allowing both institutions to benefit from one another, adding that the knowledge exchange will be realized both in scientific projects as well as practical identification work.

Maximilian Murck, who heads the UNFPA project, said that while identifying the dead is not an easy task, it is not an impossible one either, adding that it is important to work out common solutions and to make visible the successes of cooperation in this difficult context. One example is the introduction of fingerprint matching technology in several Mexican states – an initiative coordinated by the CNB. Murck expressed his gratitude to Goethe University as well as the Mexican institutions for their support and trust.

Regarding the cooperation agreement signed between Goethe University and UNFPA, Cecilia Villanueva Bracho, Mexico’s consul general in Frankfurt, stressed: "The Mexican government supports this project that contributes to the cooperation between Mexico and Germany in the field of forensic medicine. It also serves to strengthen institutions by enabling us to better address contemporary priorities in the fields of security, crime control and prevention. The collaboration comprises the exchange of knowledge and best practices to promote governmental and academic institutions and develop technical capacities."