Sunday, August 04, 2024

Pestina, the coquettish bug-girl: how a forgotten environmental mascot reveals American anxieties surrounding race, gender, and immigration

University of Chicago Press Journals

80 years after his inception, Smokey the Bear continues to evoke the importance of wildfire prevention in the United States. However, another environmental mascot was introduced around the same time whose history has now been all but forgotten. Pestina, designed in 1958, took the form of a bug dressed not only as a human woman, but a “curvaceous, ‘exotic’” one, and was originally intended to represent to travelers the dangers of transporting invasive species and quarantined materials. Over time, her persona became that of a “law-abiding friend,” and finally, in the 1970s, her usage was phased out altogether. “‘A Coquettish, Hitchhiking Bug’: the Rise and Fall of Pestina, Symbol of Invasive Pests and Agricultural Quarantine,” a new gallery essay in Environmental History, demonstrates how, despite its brevity, the life of Pestina reflected shifting American attitudes towards women, migration, and foreignness, as well as the changing habits of American consumers during the postwar economic boom.

“As international trade and travel accelerated after World War II,” writes article author Erinn E. Campbell, the USDA struggled to monitor unprecedented numbers of pests and diseases moving across the globe. In 1958, a federal inspector in Hawai’i devised a method of public outreach: a notice to hotel guests featuring a voluptuous bug wearing the clothes of a hula dancer. After the success of this advisory, the character was repurposed in Puerto Rico, this time “in Latin American dress.” From its inception, Campbell writes, the character of Pestina, incarnating mainland U.S. fears of external contamination, “illustrates how rhetoric of more-than-human ‘invasiveness’ can become entangled with entirely human prejudices.” A short while later, her character would be deracialized, but hardly desexed. Clad in a little black dress and a pearl necklace, Pestina in the mid-1960s, writes Campbell, “now tapped into broader anxieties about ‘vagrants,’ sex workers, and other itinerant social outsiders.”

In 1969, however, the USDA sanitized Pestina’s public image. New standards “insisted that she must be portrayed ‘always as a beneficial character’ who encouraged travelers to obey regulations,” her new slogan “Pestina says: help stop the spread of plant pests.” The USDA’s reasons for rebranding Pestina are unclear, writes Campbell, and the mascot fell out of use a short while later. Nevertheless, her story provides fascinating insight into "how officials tried to convince an increasingly mobile public of the dangers of pest invasion,” and into the ways in which this public defined itself in the mid-20th century through certain fears and fetishes regarding the greater world.

Journal

Environmental History

DOI

10.1086/730527

Article Title

“A Coquettish, Hitchhiking Bug”: The Rise and Fall of Pestina, Symbol of Invasive Pests and Agricultural Quarantine

Improving cat food flavors with the help of feline taste-testers

American Chemical Society

Cats are notoriously picky eaters. But what if we could design their foods around flavors that they’re scientifically proven to enjoy? Researchers publishing in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry used a panel of feline taste-testers to identify favored flavor compounds in a series of chicken-liver-based sprays. The cats particularly enjoyed the sprays that contained more free amino acids, which gave their kibble more savory and fatty flavors.

Cats have a more acute sense of smell than humans, and the aroma of their food plays a big role in whether they’ll eat or snub what their owner serves for dinner. Feline palates are also more sensitive to umami (savory) flavors than humans, and they can’t taste sweetness. While meat-flavored food attractant sprays can help improve the scent and tastiness of dry kibble, the exact correlation between volatile flavor compounds and palatability is not well understood. Additionally, previous studies in this area lack input from a very important focus group: actual cats! So, Shiqing Song and colleagues relied on the expertise of a panel of 10 hungry adult cats to evaluate a series of food sprays containing different volatile flavor compounds.

To prepare their fragrant sprays, the researchers homogenized and heat-treated chicken livers. Then, they broke down proteins in the liver paste to various degrees using enzymes to produce four different food attractants. Song’s team identified over 50 different flavor compounds across the sprays, ranging from tropical and floral to sweaty and rubbery. For the taste test, the researchers coated commercially available cat food with chicken fat and then sprayed it with one of the four chicken liver attractants. The samples were presented to the cats alongside a control food treated with a different, commercially available attractant. The team observed which bowl the cats chose first and how much food they ate throughout the day.

The researchers found that most cats preferred and ate more of the foods sprayed with their attractants, particularly the sprays with proteins that were further broken-down by the enzymes and contained more free amino acids. These compounds are important flavor precursors that can undergo the Maillard reaction, which likely produced many different aroma-enhancing compounds during the heat treatment step. The favored foods contained more mushroom and fatty flavors as well, while the less-enjoyed foods featured acidic- and sweet-tasting compounds, possibly because fewer Maillard reactions occurred. This work could help inform future cat food formulations and increase your chances of choosing a kibble your finicky feline might enjoy.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai and thank their feline volunteers for their participation.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Journal

Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

DOI

10.1021/acs.jafc.4c02871

Article Title

“Generation of Olfactory Compounds in Cat Food Attractants: Chicken Liver-Derived Protein Hydrolysates and Their Contribution to Enhancing Palatability”

Research spotlight: Uncovering the links between sleep struggles, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts in teens with depression

Mass General Brigham

Rebecca Robbins, PhD, of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is the senior author of a paper published in Psychiatry Research, “Exploring sleep difficulties, alcohol, illicit drugs, and suicidal ideation among adolescents with a history of depression.”

How would you summarize your study for a lay audience?

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for adolescents in the U.S. We know, due to previous research, that difficulty falling asleep or waking up too early as well as abuse of prescription drugs, sedative and opioids is associated with thinking, planning or attempting suicide — otherwise known as, suicide ideation.

Using responses from the 2015 to 2020 National Surveys of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), our team analyzed and quantified the associations between sleep difficulties and suicidal ideation among adolescents with a history of depression and how these associations were amplified by illicit drug and/or alcohol abuse/dependence. We found significant associations between sleeping difficulties and suicide ideation among adolescents with a history of depression, and a more robust association between sleep difficulties when the person reported alcohol abuse/dependence and those that reported illicit drug abuse/dependence in the past year

What knowledge gaps does your study help to fill?

Through our analysis, we quantified the connection between sleep difficulty and substance use among adolescents with a history of depression. Our work suggests significant associations between sleep difficulties, illicit drug use and suicidal ideation in adolescents with symptoms of major depressive episodes.

How did you conduct your study?

We analyzed NSDUH survey results from 38,418 respondents between the ages of 12 to 17 over a five-year period. Questions in the surveys asked respondents about their sleep difficulties, suicide ideation symptoms, illicit drug use and depression symptoms.

From that dataset, 11.6% reported thinking about suicide, 5.7% reported planning a suicide attempt and 3.8% reported making a suicide attempt. Additionally, 16.7% reported sleeping difficulties. Respondents who engaged with alcohol abuse had associations with sleep difficulties and attempts of suicide. Respondents who partook in illicit drug abuse had associations with sleep difficulties and thinking and attempting suicide.

What are the implications?

The findings of our work are consistent with past research connecting difficulty in sleeping with mental health concerns, such as suicide ideation. Fortunately, behavioral interventions, therapies and medications can treat patients who experience difficulties in sleeping.

There are a few limitations to our study, therefore, our results should be interpreted with caution. In the dataset, there was one question about sleeping difficulties. In addition, based on the format of the questions in the survey, it’s possible sleep difficulty and suicide behavior symptoms were experienced more than one year before and alcohol and illicit drug use occurred in the year prior to the responses.

What are the next steps?

Fortunately, sleep difficulties are treatable with behavioral therapy and medication. Future research may include designing sleep health interventions that are tailored to the needs of adolescents struggling with mental health concerns and/or substance use/abuse.

Authorship: In addition to Dr. Robbins, additional Brigham and Women’s Hospital authors include Matthew D. Weaver, Stuart F. Quan, Charles A. Czeisler, Ralph J. DiClemente

Paper cited: Robbins, R et al. “Exploring sleep difficulties, alcohol, illicit drugs, and suicidal ideation among adolescents with a history of depression.” Psychiatry Research DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2024.116116

Journal

Psychiatry Research

DOI

10.1016/j.psychres.2024.116116

Article Title

Robbins, R et al. “Exploring sleep difficulties, alcohol, illicit drugs, and suicidal ideation among adolescents with a history of depression.” Psychiatry Research DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2024.116116

Article Publication Date

2-Aug-2024

New study reveals alarming increase in suicide rates among young Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) population

First nationally representative analysis of suicide temporal trends among AAPI young adults across sexes over 21 years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Boston University School of Medicine

(Boston)—While suicide rates have decreased for white populations over the past two decades, they have increased in the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Yet, there are very little studies that examine trends of suicidal death across sexes in AAPI young adults aged 18–25.

A new study from researchers at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine has found that over the 21-year period (1999–2020), there has been a notable increase in the prevalence of suicidal death among AAPI young adults across both sexes, with a sharp increase among AAPI male young adults starting in 2008.

“Our study highlights a growing mental health crisis within this community that often goes unnoticed. More importantly, there is a severe, dire lack of public health attention and federal funding on this issue,” explains corresponding author Seungbin Oh, PhD, LPC, NCC, assistant professor of psychiatry at the school.

Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Multiple Cause-of-Death files spanning from 1999–2020, the researchers analyzed trends of suicidal death among Asian American young adults aged 18-25.

They found that during the 21-year study period, a total number of 4,082 AAPI young adults died by suicide, with the annual average suicidal rate being 3.47 per 100,000 individuals. Of those deaths, the majority (74.9 %) were males while 25.1 % were females. From 1999–2020, the rate of suicide increased for both AAPI males and females. Specifically, males reported a 60.7% increase in their suicide rate, from 10.78 % to 17.32 %. AAPI females reported an increase of 64 %, from 4.70 % to 7.71 %. The peak suicide rate for males was in 2019 at 19.69 %., while for females, it was in 2020 at 7.71 %.

According to the researchers, these suicidal actions are often not preceded by visible warning signs, suggesting that AAPI may silently endure their suicidal thoughts before deciding to act on them. “Given the "hidden ideation" phenomenon, where AAPI individuals may not show visible warning signs before a suicide attempt, there is a critical need for culturally tailored early detection and preventive strategies,” says Oh.

The researchers hope that this study will ultimately lead to the development of more effective, culturally sensitive mental health interventions that can address the unique challenges faced by AAPI young adults. “By understanding and mitigating the rising trends of suicidality, we aim to improve the overall quality of life and mental well-being for all individuals in this community,” adds Oh.

These findings appear online in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry.

Journal

Asian Journal of Psychiatry

DOI

10.1016/j.ajp.2024.104180

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

National trends of suicidality 1999–2020 among Asian American Pacific Islander young adults across sex

More than 1 in 5 Californians who are impacted by climate events report negative effects on their mental health

PLOS

More than 1 in 5 Californians who are impacted by climate events report negative effects on their mental health, with young, white women and those who’ve experienced property damage being especially affected.

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Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000387

Article Title: Exposure to climate events and mental health: Risk and protective factors from the California Health Interview Survey

Author Countries: United States

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Journal

PLOS Climate

DOI

10.1371/journal.pclm.0000387

COI Statement

I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Dr. Alison Hwong has an unpaid position as member of the American Psychiatric Association Council on Research, 2023-2025. The remaining authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

New compound effective against flesh-eating bacteria

Could combat serious, antibiotic-resistant infections, mouse study indicates

Washington University School of Medicine

Before and after images of Streptococcus pyogenes treated with GmpCide — image:
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a compound that is effective against common bacteria that can lead to rare, dangerous illnesses. This image shows untreated Streptococcus pyogenes bacterial culture full of healthy microbes, labeled green (left). After treatment by GmPcide, the dish is full of dead bacteria (red; right).
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Credit: Zongsen Zou, Ph.D, Washington University in St Louis.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a novel compound that effectively clears bacterial infections in mice, including those that can result in rare but potentially fatal “flesh-eating” illnesses. The compound could be the first of an entirely new class of antibiotics, and a gift to clinicians seeking more effective treatments against bacteria that can’t be tamed easily with current antibiotics.

The research is published Aug. 2 in Science Advances.

The compound targets gram-positive bacteria, which can cause drug-resistant staph infections, toxic shock syndrome and other illnesses that can turn deadly. It was developed through a collaboration between the labs of Scott Hultgren, PhD, the Helen L. Stoever Professor of Molecular Microbiology, and Michael Caparon, PhD, a professor of molecular microbiology, and Fredrik Almqvist, a professor of chemistry at the University of Umeå in Sweden.

A new type of antimicrobial would be good news for clinicians seeking effective treatments against pathogens that are becoming more resistant to currently available drugs, and thus much more dangerous.

“All of the gram-positive bacteria that we’ve tested have been susceptible to that compound. That includes enterococci, staphylococci, streptococci, C. difficile, which are the major pathogenic bacteria types,” said Caparon, the co-senior author. “The compounds have broad-spectrum activity against numerous bacteria.”

It’s based on a type of molecule called ring-fused 2-pyridone. Initially, Caparon and Hultgren had asked Almqvist to develop a compound that might prevent bacterial films from attaching to the surface of urethral catheters, a common cause of hospital-associated urinary tract infections. Discovering that the resulting compound had infection-fighting properties against multiple types of bacteria was a happy accident.

The team named their new family of compounds GmPcides (for gram-positive-icide). In past work, the authors showed that GmPcides can wipe out bacteria strains in petri dish experiments. In this latest study, they decided to test it on necrotizing soft-tissue infections, which are fast-spreading infections usually involving multiple types of gram-positive bacteria, for which Caparon already had a working mouse model. The best known of these, necrotizing fasciitis or “flesh-eating disease,” can quickly damage tissue severely enough to require limb amputation to control its spread. About 20% of patients with flesh-eating disease die.

This study focused on one pathogen, Streptococcus pyogenes, which is responsible for 500,000 deaths every year globally, including flesh-eating disease. Mice infected with S. pyogenes and treated with a GmPcide fared better than did untreated animals in almost every metric. They had less weight loss, the ulcers characteristic of the infection were smaller, and they fought off the infection faster.

The compound appeared to reduce the virulence of the bacteria and, remarkably, speed up post-infection healing of the damaged areas of the skin.

It is not clear how GmPcides accomplish all of this, but microscopic examination revealed that the treatment appears to have a significant effect on bacterial cell membranes, which are the outer wrapping of the microbes.

“One of the jobs of a membrane is to exclude material from the outside,” Caparon said. “We know that within five to ten minutes of treatment with GmPcide, the membranes start to become permeable and allow things that normally should be excluded to enter into the bacteria, which suggests that those membranes have been damaged.”

This can disrupt the bacteria’s own functions, including those that cause damage to their host, and make the bacteria less effective at combating the host’s immune response to infections.

In addition to their antibacterial effectiveness, GmPcides appear to be less likely to lead to drug-resistant strains. Experiments designed to create resistant bacteria found very few cells able to withstand treatment and thus pass on their advantages to the next generation of bacteria.

Caparon explained that there is a long way to go before GmPcides are likely to find their way into local pharmacies. Caparon, Hultgren and Almqvist have patented the compound used in the study and licensed it to a company, QureTech Bio, in which they have an ownership stake, with the expectation that they will be able to collaborate with a company that has the capacity to manage the pharmaceutical development and clinical trials to potentially bring GmPcides to market.

Hultgren said that the kind of collaborative science that created GmPcides is what is needed to treat intractable problems like antimicrobial resistance.

“Bacterial infections of every type are an important health problem, and they are increasingly becoming multi-drug resistant and thus harder to treat,” he said. “Interdisciplinary science facilitates the integration of different fields of study that can lead to synergistic new ideas that have the potential to help patients.”

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1101/2024.01.02.573960

Article Title

DOI: 10.1101/2024.01.02.573960

Article Publication Date

2-Aug-2024

COI Statement

Scott Hultgren, Michael Caparon and Fredrik Almqvist have ownership interest in QureTech Bio AB, which licenses the compound tested in this study, and may benefit if the company is successful in marketing GmPcides.

KIDZ LIBERATION

Boosting children’s voices could help to relieve significant backlogs in the family court, study says

University of Exeter

Giving children a right to be heard and taken seriously when parents separate could help couples reach sustainable child arrangements and relieve significant backlogs in the family court, avoiding unnecessary financial and emotional costs, a new study says.

Mediation, court and legal processes should provide a forum for young people’s views on post-separation arrangements being considered for them to be aired independently and factored in wherever appropriate. Giving them more agency about decisions which affect their lives and futures will help families make more effective decisions, improve children’s wellbeing during this difficult time and may help avoid expensive court cases.

Private family law cases took an average of 45 weeks to reach a final order in 2022.

The study, by Anne Barlow and Jan Ewing, from the University of Exeter, recommends that unless considered unsafe to do so, child arrangement decisions should be based on whole family consultation. When mediation is used to agree such arrangements and where the children wish to participate by expressing their own views during a separate session with a mediator, this should be facilitated as the default model. Decisions should no longer be seen as the preserve of parental discussion alone.

The government must also implement funding mechanisms to ensure children’s voices are heard in other non-court processes such as solicitor negotiations, collaborative law or arbitration.

Moving towards a family justice system that fully respects children’s voices when parents separate in line with their rights under article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) would benefit their mental health and wellbeing. Incorporation of the UNCRC into UK domestic law should be the goal in the longer term.

Professor Barlow said: “There is potential to reduce conflict and help families reach appropriate arrangements by doing more to include children’s voices and taking their views seriously. This requires a shift away from parental autonomy in mediation and wider family dispute resolution towards one that recognizes children as people and not just passive objects.

If developed appropriately, this would enhance the process for families. Enhancing children’s rights can be an asset rather than a threat within the wider family justice system.”

Dr Ewing said: “Family mediation, although child-focused, is based around parental autonomy. This can mean arrangements can become the parents’ lowest common denominator for agreement, which may or may not coincide with the child’s wishes or, indeed, their best interests, an issue which the young people in this study felt was a grave injustice. Children’s views in the decision-making process within mediation should become the default. This does not mean their views will or should always prevail, but rather that they are gathered directly from the children and taken seriously as part of the dispute resolution considerations, balancing them against other important considerations about how to further their best interests.”

The study says the Family Mediation Council (FMC) should take the lead in redefining the purpose of mediation.

Small domestic legislative changes could be adopted to aid the focus on children’s rights and a further duty could be placed on separating parents to discuss the proposed child arrangements with their children and seek their views.

The welfare principle in section 1(1) Children’s Act 1989 could be expanded. This makes the child’s welfare the paramount consideration in court proceedings determining any question concerning the child’s upbringing but is a principle which could be formally extended to apply to out-of-court processes as well.

The study recommends a public awareness campaign to raise the profile of child-inclusive mediation and increase awareness of children’s right to be informed and consulted when parents separate.

At least one session of mediation for each child of the family should be funded by the Legal Services Commission, where the child has expressed a desire to meet with the mediator.

DOI

10.51952/9781529228939

A Bronze Age technology could aid the switch to clean energy

Stanford University

Technology with roots going back to the Bronze Age may offer a fast and inexpensive solution to help achieve the United Nations climate goal of net zero emissions by 2050, according to recent Stanford-led research in PNAS Nexus.

The technology involves assembling heat-absorbing bricks in an insulated container, where they can store heat generated by solar or wind power for later use at the temperatures required for industrial processes. The heat can then be released when needed by passing air through channels in the stacks of “firebricks,” thus allowing cement, steel, glass, and paper factories to run on renewable energy even when wind and sunshine are unavailable.

These systems, which several companies have recently begun to commercialize for industrial heat storage, are a form of thermal energy storage. The bricks are made from the same materials as the insulating bricks that lined primitive kilns and iron-making furnaces thousands of years ago. To optimize for heat storage instead of insulation, the materials are combined in different amounts.

Batteries can store electricity from renewable sources and provide electricity to generate heat on demand. “The difference between firebrick storage and battery storage is that the firebricks store heat rather than electricity and are one-tenth the cost of batteries,” said lead study author Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and School of Engineering. “The materials are much simpler too. They are basically just the components of dirt.”

High heat storage

Many industries require high-temperature heat for manufacturing. Temperatures in factories need to reach at least 1,300 degrees Celsius (nearly 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit) to produce cement, and 1,000 C (about 1,800 F) or hotter for glass, iron, and steelmaking. Today, about 17% of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide stem from burning fossil fuels to produce heat for industrial processes, according to Jacobson and co-author Daniel Sambor’s calculations. Generating industrial heat from renewable sources could all but eliminate these emissions.

“By storing energy in the form closest to its end use, you reduce inefficiencies in energy conversion,” said Sambor, a postdoctoral scholar in civil and environmental engineering. “It’s often said in our field that ‘if you want hot showers, store hot water, and if you want cold drinks, store ice’; so this study can be summarized as ‘if you need heat for industry, store it in firebricks.’”

Substantial savings

The researchers set out to examine the impact of using firebricks to store most industrial process heat in 149 countries in a hypothetical future where each country has transitioned to wind, geothermal, hydropower, and solar for all energy purposes. The 149 countries are responsible for 99.75% of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. “Ours is the first study to examine a large-scale transition of renewable energy with firebricks as part of the solution,” Jacobson said. “We found that firebricks enable a faster and lower-cost transition to renewables, and that helps everyone in terms of health, climate, jobs, and energy security.”

The team used computer models to compare costs, land needs, health impacts, and emissions involved in two scenarios for a hypothetical future where 149 countries in 2050 are using renewables for all energy purposes. In one scenario, firebricks provide 90% of industrial process heat. In the other, there’s zero adoption of firebricks or other forms of thermal energy storage for industrial processes. In the no-firebrick scenario, the researchers assumed heat for industrial processes would come instead from electric furnaces, heaters, boilers, and heat pumps, with batteries used to store electricity for those technologies.

The researchers found the scenario with firebricks could cut capital costs by $1.27 trillion across the 149 countries compared with the scenario with no firebrick storage, while reducing demand for energy from the grid and the need for energy storage capacity from batteries.

Clean energy, cleaner air

Solutions for accelerating the transition to clean energy are also connected to human health. Previous research has shown that air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes millions of early deaths each year. “Every bit of combustion fuels we replace with electricity reduces that air pollution,” Jacobson said. “And because there is a limited amount of money to transition at a high speed, the lower the cost to the overall system, the faster we can implement it.”

Jacobson has spent his career understanding air pollution and climate problems and developing energy plans for countries, states, and cities to solve these problems. But his focus on firebricks is relatively new, inspired by a desire to identify effective solutions that could be adopted quickly.

“Imagine if we propose an expensive and difficult method of transitioning to renewable electricity – we’d have very few takers. But, if this will save money compared with a previous method, it will be implemented more rapidly,” he said. “What excites me is that the impact is very large, whereas a lot of technologies that I’ve looked at, they have marginal impacts. Here I can see a substantial benefit at low cost from multiple angles, from helping to reduce air pollution mortality to making it easier to transition the world to clean renewables.”

Jacobson is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Journal

PNAS Nexus

DOI

10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae274

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Effects of firebricks for industrial process heat on the cost of matching all-sector energy demand with 100% wind–water–solar supply in 149 countries

New study highlights scale and impact of long COVID

University of Arizona Health Sciences

In a new review paper, researchers from the Universities of Arizona, Oxford and Leeds analyzed dozens of previous studies into long COVID to examine the number and range of people affected, the underlying mechanisms of disease, the many symptoms that patients develop, and current and future treatments.

Long COVID, also known as Post-COVID-19 condition, is generally defined as symptoms persisting for three months or more after acute COVID-19. The condition can affect and damage many organ systems, leading to severe and long-term impaired function and a broad range of symptoms, including fatigue, cognitive impairment – often referred to as ‘brain fog’ – breathlessness and pain.

Long COVID can affect almost anyone, including all age groups and children. It is more prevalent in females and those of lower socioeconomic status, and the reasons for such differences are under study. The researchers found that while some people gradually get better from long COVID, in others the condition can persist for years. Many people who developed long COVID before the advent of vaccines are still unwell.

“Long COVID is a devastating disease with a profound human toll and socioeconomic impact,” said Janko Nikolich, MD, PhD, senior author of the paper, director of the Aegis Consortium at the U of A Health Sciences, professor and head of the Department of Immunobiology at the U of A College of Medicine – Tucson, and BIO5 Institute member. “By studying it in detail, we hope to both understand the mechanisms and to find targets for therapy against this, but potentially also other infection-associated complex chronic conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.”

If a person has been fully vaccinated and is up to date with their boosters, their risk of long COVID is much lower. However, 3%-5% of people worldwide still develop long COVID after an acute COVID-19 infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long COVID affects an estimated 4%-10% of the U.S. adult population and 1 in 10 adults who had COVID develop long COVID.

The review study also found that a wide range of biological mechanisms are involved, including persistence of the original virus in the body, disruption of the normal immune response, and microscopic blood clotting, even in some people who had only mild initial infections.

There are no proven treatments for long COVID yet, and current management of the condition focuses on ways to relieve symptoms or provide rehabilitation. Researchers say there is a dire need to develop and test biomarkers such as blood tests to diagnose and monitor long COVID and to find therapies that address root causes of the disease.

People can lower their risk of developing long COVID by avoiding infection – wearing a close-fitting mask in crowded indoor spaces, for example – taking antivirals promptly if they do catch COVID-19, avoiding strenuous exercise during such infections, and ensuring they are up to date with COVID vaccines and boosters.

“Long COVID is a dismal condition but there are grounds for cautious optimism,” said Trisha Greenhalgh, lead author of the study and professor at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. “Various mechanism-based treatments are being tested in research trials. If proven effective, these would allow us to target particular subgroups of people with precision therapies. Treatments aside, it is becoming increasingly clear that long COVID places an enormous social and economic burden on individuals, families and society. In particular, we need to find better ways to treat and support the ‘long-haulers’ – people who have been unwell for two years or more and whose lives have often been turned upside down.”

The full paper, “Long COVID: a clinical update,” is published in The Lancet.

Journal

The Lancet

DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01136-X

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Long COVID: a clinical update

Article Publication Date

31-Jul-2024

COI Statement

In the past 36 months, TG has held research grants from UK National Institute for Health and Care Research, Balvi, Medical Research Council, Health Data Research UK, and Research Council of Norway. She is a Governing Body Fellow at Green Templeton College and a Visitor at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and was until 2022, a trustee of the Hilda Martindale Charitable Trust (an educational hardship fund). MS has held research grants from National Institute for Health and Care Research, Research England Policy Support Fund, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Handbook of Rehabilitation Medicine. AP has received consulting fees and grants from the US National Institutes of Health and is Chief Medical Officer of Blooming Magnolia (a 501[c]3 non-profit organisation). JŽN acknowledges institutional support from the endowed Bowman Professorship in Medical Science that he holds at the University of Arizona. He holds or has held research grants from the US National Institutes of Health. He holds US patent number 11119103 (serological assays for SARS-CoV-2). TG and MS were funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (LOCOMOTION study), and JŽN by the US National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in any aspect of the writing of this Review. The authors were not precluded from accessing any data in the study (which, being a Review, came from publicly available published papers), and they accept responsibility to submit this Review for publication.