YALE NEWS: Sick days: Assessing the economic costs of long COVID

Yale University

A new Yale study finds that the effects of long COVID have caused many Americans to miss extensive work time, and that 14% of study participants reported not returning to work in the months after their infection. 

The findings, published recently in PLOS One, suggest that long COVID may have affected millions of Americans and generated steep economic costs, highlighting the need for policies to support those with the condition, researchers said.

The study drew on a long-term survey of individuals who contracted COVID-19 — dubbed Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections Registry, or INSPIRE — that began recruiting participants in the fall of 2020 and continued through summer 2022. More than 6,000 participants — at eight study sites in Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California — received surveys upon recruitment and every three months thereafter for 18 months. 

The Yale researchers focused specifically on participant responses to questions pertaining to work — including whether they returned to work after contracting COVID-19 and how many workdays they missed due to COVID-19-related symptoms. They also assessed how many symptoms participants experienced after having COVID-19.

Among the nearly 3,000 participants who were employed prior to the pandemic, almost 10% reported having five or more symptoms three months after having contracted COVID-19.

“And this number was important because we’ve shown in previous studies that the number of symptoms someone has after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be more indicative of how severe their long COVID is,” said Arjun Venkatesh, lead author of the study and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

The researchers also found that more than 7% of participants missed more than 10 days of work in the three months following SARS-CoV-2 infection due to COVID-19 symptoms. (Most of the study data was collected after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced their recommended isolation period to five days for those with COVID-19.) Additionally, nearly 14% of participants did not return to work within three months after their infection; those with five or more symptoms were more than twice as likely to not return to work than individuals with no symptoms.

“We found that having five or more symptoms three months after infection was strongly associated with not returning to work,” said Venkatesh. “And when we compare the rates observed in this study to the national population, it could mean as many as 2 million people may be out of work because of post-COVID conditions.”

This is especially startling, Venkatesh said, since the participants in this study were fairly young; the average age was roughly 40.

“This has big economic impacts,” he added. “It also has impacts on those people individually in terms of their own income security and their ability to care for themselves and their families.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, Venkatesh said, policymakers enacted key measures to offer economic relief and support to Americans, including federal legislation that helped workers remain employed even if they weren’t able to work and to weather the economic storm of the initial part of the pandemic. But the economic and personal costs of long COVID have not yet received the same level of attention, he said.

As public health officials and lawmakers consider the long-term health and economic effects of COVID-19 and long COVID, said Venkatesh, they may want to assess how disability policy should address long COVID and whether to support work transitions for people whose long COVID symptoms prevent them from returning to their previous jobs.

“Given the millions of people who have had COVID-19 in the United States and the millions of people that report prolonged symptoms, this is not a small problem,” said Venkatesh. “So it does require big interventions.”

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Journal

PLoS ONE

 

Defining the line between virtual and reality

Griffith University

If you thought your kids were away from harm playing multi-player games through VR headsets while in their own bedrooms, you may want to sit down to read this.

Griffith University’s Dr Ausma Bernot teamed up with researchers from Monash University, Charles Sturt University and University of Technology Sydney to investigate what has been termed as ‘metacrime’ – attacks, crimes or inappropriate activities that occur within virtual reality environments.

The ‘metaverse’ refers to the virtual world, where users of VR headsets can choose an avatar to represent themselves as they interact with other users’ avatars or move through other 3D digital spaces.

While the metaverse can be used for anything from meetings (where it will feel as though you are in the same room as avatars of other people instead of just seeing them on a screen) to wandering through national parks around the world without leaving your living room, gaming is by far its most popular use.   

Dr Bernot said the technology had evolved incredibly quickly.

“Using this technology is super fun and it’s really immersive,” she said.

“You can really lose yourself in those environments.

“Unfortunately, while those new environments are very exciting, they also have the potential to enable new crimes.

“While the headsets that enable us to have these experiences aren’t a commonly owned item yet, they’re growing in popularity and we’ve seen reports of sexual harassment or assault against both adults and kids.”

In a December 2023 report, the Australian eSafety Commissioner estimated around 680,000 adults in Australia are engaged in the metaverse.

This followed a survey conducted in November and December 2022 by researchers from the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, who conducted 11 hours and 30 minutes of recorded user interactions on Meta’s Oculus headset in the popular VRChat.

The researchers found most users had been faced with at least one negative experience in the virtual environment, including being called offensive names, receiving repeated unwanted messages or contact, being provoked to respond to something or to start an argument, being challenged about cultural identity or being sent unwanted inappropriate content.

Eleven per cent had been exposed to a sexually graphic virtual space and nine per cent had been touched (virtually) in a way they didn’t like.

Of these respondents, 49 per cent said the experience had a moderate to extreme impact on their mental or emotional wellbeing.

With the two largest user groups being minors and men, Dr Bernot said it was important for parents to monitor their children’s activity or consider limiting their access to multi-player games.

“Minors are more vulnerable to grooming and other abuse,” she said.

“They may not know how to deal with these situations, and while there are some features like a ‘safety bubble’ within some games, or of course the simple ability to just take the headset off, once immersed in these environments it does feel very real.

“It's somewhere in between a physical attack and for example, a social media harassment message – you’ll still feel that distress and it can take a significant toll on a user’s wellbeing.

“It is a real and palpable risk.”

Monash University’s You Zhou said there had already been many reports of virtual rape, including one in the United Kingdom where police have launched a case for a 16-year-old girl whose avatar was attacked, causing psychological and emotional trauma similar to an attack in the physical world.

“Before the emergence of the metaverse we could not have imagined how rape could be virtual,” Mr Zhou said.

“When immersed in this world of virtual reality, and particularly when using higher quality VR headsets, users will not necessarily stop to consider whether the experience is reality or virtuality.

“While there may not be physical contact, victims – mostly young girls – strongly claim the feeling of victimisation was real.

“Without physical signs on a body, and unless the interaction was recorded, it can be almost impossible to show evidence of these experiences.”

With use of the metaverse expected to grow exponentially in coming years, the research team’s findings highlight a need for metaverse companies to instil clear regulatory frameworks for their virtual environments to make them safe for everyone to inhabit.

 

 

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Journal

Asian Journal of Criminology

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Metacrime and Cybercrime: Exploring the Convergence and Divergence in Digital Criminality

 

Temperature reconstructions during the Common Era are affected by the selection of paleoclimate data

Science China Press

 

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(a) Tree-ring based annual temperature reconstructions for the global (GL), Northern Hemisphere (NH), and Southern Hemisphere (SH). (b) Non-tree-ring based reconstructions for the same spatial domains.

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Credit: ©Science China Press

This study was led by Bao Yang, a professor at Nanjing University in China, and co-authored by researchers at Nanjing University, the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and the National Institute of Scientific Research in Canada.

Paleoclimate data, also known as climate proxies, are essential for investigating past climate variability and can help assess the extent of recent climate change. “Despite intensifying proxy network has improved the quality of recent large-scale climate reconstruction products, we wanted to know how our understanding of climate in the past is dependent on proxies” says Professor Bao Yang.

To do so, the research team led by Professor Bao Yang integrated the longest millennial paleoclimate data in the PAGES proxy network into new versions of global and hemispheric reconstructions of annual temperatures. The results show that the rate of pre-industrial millennial cooling in global and hemispheric temperatures varies according to proxy combination, with the strongest cooling revealed by non-tree-ring proxies.

Yang and colleagues compared the volcanic responses and spectral characteristics of tree-ring and non-tree-ring records. They found the properties of tree-ring and non-tree-ring data differ significantly.

“All the evidence points out that we are still far from a complete understanding of the Common Era temperature variability at hemispheric and global scales” says Professor Bao Yang.

Due to uncertainties and distinct properties of proxy records, the decision making on the selection of proxy becomes crucial for climate reconstructions.

See the article:

Yang B, Li X, He M, Wang F, Zhao Y, Zhang P, Wang J. 2024. The influence of proxy selection on global annual mean temperature reconstructions during the Common Era. Science China Earth Sciences, 67(8): 2522-2534, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-024-1348-3

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Journal

Science China Earth Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s11430-024-1348-3 

 

From shrimp to steel: Introducing nature-inspired metalworking

Singapore University of Technology and Design

 

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Metallic replica of a honeybee’s (Apis mellifera) head, created at room temperature and pressure, using the same principles insects use to form their exoskeleton

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Credit: SUTD

Humans have long turned to nature for solutions, from deciphering the mysteries of flight to creating stronger materials. For Javier Fernandez, Associate Professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), nature is a blueprint for sustainability. “Unlike our society’s energy-intensive engineering, nature operates under a paradigm of scarcity and finds solutions without access to intense energy sources or transport of materials,” he observed.

Chitin, found everywhere in nature ranging from shrimp to seashells and mushrooms, is an organic material that deserves a closer look. In addition to being the second most abundant organic material on Earth, it is strong and lightweight, making it an ideal material for many engineering applications.

“Chitin also has a strong affinity for metals,” said Assoc Prof Fernandez. “We decided to evaluate whether this affinity, combined with the processes that shape the cuticle, could be used to produce functional metallic structures in a ‘biological’ way.”

In the natural world, metals, while rarely used, can be found in some chitinous structures, such as the cuticles and exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans. By digging deeper into the affinity that chitins and their derivatives have for metals, Fernandez and his team designed a new approach to metalworking, which they published in their paper, “A biological approach to metalworking based on chitinous colloids and composites”, in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Through the use of design and technology inspired by these chitinous compounds, the research team demonstrated a novel way of producing functional metallic structures without the usual energy costs.

In traditional metalworking, high temperatures and pressures are essential to melt and shape metals. This stands in stark contrast to how metals are incorporated into chitinous materials in nature, which happens under ambient conditions. Take the metallic compounds found in arthropod cuticles like crab shells for example. Typically, the metals only make their way into the crab shell at the later stages of chitin development—the chitin would first stiffen into a shell through tanning and dehydration before any metal from the environment gets added to it.

This is similar to how metal compounds might also be introduced to chitosan, a derivative of chitin, as the researchers discovered in their experiments. They were able to form solid metallic composites under standard temperature and pressure just by introducing very small amounts of chitosan and water between particles of different metals. When the water evaporates, the chitosan molecules replicate the consolidation process in the cuticles, pulling the particles together with such strength that they become a continuous solid of 99.5% metal. Fernandez likens the fabrication process to concrete formation, explaining, “By pouring metal particles into dissolved chitosan and letting them ‘dry’, we can form massive metallic parts without the constraints of melting.”

While these chitometallic composites were not physically strong, the researchers found that the material acquired good electrical conductivity and could be 3D-printed. At the same time, the material continued to show compatibility with other biomaterials despite only containing a small amount of chitosan. This opens up the possibility of introducing these chitometallic properties into other biomaterials, such as wood and cellulose.

Fernandez believes this technology creates a new paradigm of metalworking. Despite the lack of mechanical strength, the fabricated biomaterial is suitable for non-load-bearing metallic components, such as electrical components or battery electrodes. Metalwork for some components can now be performed without being resource-intensive. “This technology does not replace traditional methods but enables new complementary production methods,” he emphasised.

Since then, Fernandez’s team has successfully filed a patent for the innovative fabrication method and is now looking into designing a new technology to develop biodegradable 3D electronic components, which can pave the way for more efficient and sustainable methods of production.

Video 1 [VIDEO] |

Production of electrically conductive biological objects at room temperature and pressure using water-based colloidal suspensions of Tin and chitosan

Video 2 [VIDEO] | 

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Journal

Advanced Functional Materials

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202406800 

Article Title

A biological approach to metalworking based on chitinous colloids and composites

 

Robot planning tool accounts for human carelessness

Washington State University

PULLMAN, Wash. -- A new algorithm may make robots safer by making them more aware of human inattentiveness.

In computerized simulations of packaging and assembly lines where humans and robots work together, the algorithm developed to account for human carelessness improved safety by about a maximum of 80% and efficiency by about a maximum of 38% compared to existing methods.

The work is reported in IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics Systems.

“There are a large number of accidents that are happening every day due to carelessness – most of them, unfortunately, from human errors,” said lead author Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, assistant professor in Washington State University’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “Robots act as planned and follow the rules, but the humans often don’t follow the rules. That’s the most difficult and challenging problem.”

Robots working with people are increasingly common in many industries, where they often work together. Many industries require that humans and robots share a workspace, but repetitive and tedious work can make people lose their focus and make mistakes. Most computer programs help robots react when a mistake happens. Those algorithms might focus either on improving efficiency or safety, but they haven’t considered the changing behavior of the people they’re working with, said Hosseinzadeh.

As part of their effort to develop a plan for the robots, the researchers first worked to quantify human carelessness, looking at factors such as how often a human ignores or misses a safety alert.

“We defined the carelessness, and the robot observed the behavior of the human and tried to understand it,” he said. “The notion of carelessness level is something new. If we know which human is inattentive, we can do something about that.”

Once the robot identifies careless behavior, it is programmed to change how it interacts with the human acting that way, working to reduce the chance that the person might cause a workplace error or hurt themselves. So, for instance, the robot might change the way it manages its tasks to avoid getting in the human’s way. The robot continuously updates the carelessness level and any changes that it observes.

The researchers tested their plan with a computer simulation of a packaging line made up of four people and a robot. They also tested a simulated collaborative assembly line where two humans would work together with a robot.

“The core idea is to make the algorithm less sensitive to the behavior of careless humans,” said Hosseinzadeh. “Our results revealed that the proposed scheme has the capability of improving efficiency and safety.”

After conducting a computerized simulation, the researchers are planning to test their work in a laboratory with real robots and people—and eventually in field studies. They also want to quantify and account for other human traits that affect workplace productivity, such as human rationality or danger awareness.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation. Co-authors on the study included Bruno Sinopoli and Aaron F. Bobick from Washington University, St. Louis.

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Journal

IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics Systems

DOI

10.1109/TSMC.2024.3404346 

Article Title

Robot Action Planning in the Presence of Careless Humans

 

Adverse childhood experiences and adult household firearm ownership

JAMA Network Open

About The Study: 

Consistent with prior research on adverse childhood experience (ACE; defined as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18) exposure and presence of a firearm in the household during childhood, this study found that cumulative ACE exposure was associated with higher odds of household firearm ownership in adulthood. The relationship may be due to a heightened sense of vulnerability to physical violence and greater perceived threats to personal safety associated with a traumatic childhood, which lead individuals to seek self-protection.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Alexander Testa, PhD, email alexander.testa@uth.tmc.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.28027)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.28027?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081524

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

Venting your frustrations can make friends like you better – if you do it right

Psychologists find it isn’t cathartic but can strengthen bonds that might pay off in the future

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of California - Los Angeles

Key takeaways

• Venting about your frustrations with one friend to another may feel good, but it doesn’t necessarily reduce anger.
• Experiments showed that people who listened to a friend vent liked and supported that person more than those who were vented about — but only if the person venting didn’t derogate or seem aggressive toward the other friend.
• Venting might be an effective tool of competition for listeners’ affections precisely because it is not readily recognized as a tool of competition.

Venting about your frustrations with one friend to another isn’t necessarily cathartic, but it can make the friend you’re talking to like and treat you better, UCLA psychologists say. Their experiments show that under certain conditions, it can be an effective form of competition that makes listeners feel closer to the person venting and like the target less.

However, this was not the case when people’s friends overtly derogated others. The real benefits of venting, the researchers conclude, are the strengthening of bonds that might pay off in the future — and the improved health and happiness enjoyed by people who are well liked by their friends.

“Since the 1950s, we’ve known the Freudian catharsis explanation for venting is wrong. It can feel good to vent, but venting doesn’t reliably decrease anger and sometimes even amplifies anger,” said lead author Jaimie Krems, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA. “We didn’t have a good explanation for what venting does for us. So we tested a novel alliance view of venting — that under certain parameters, venting can make the people we vent to support us over the people we vent about.”

Most research on close relationships has focused on romantic partnerships. Yet, especially for younger people, friendship plays some of the roles that have traditionally been found in romantic relationships; the U.S. surgeon general has also talked about the “loneliness epidemic.” There is a need to better understand friendship, researchers say, including how people might ‘compete’ to make their friends like them better than other friends.

“As much as people readily admit that we compete for romantic partners’ finite time and affection, people seem less willing to admit to competing for friends,” Krems said. “But if being relatively better liked means getting better support from friends, then we should expect some friend competition, whether or not we like that it exists.”

In a paper published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Krems and colleagues at Oklahoma State University and Hamilton College asked participants to listen to a friend vent or gossip about or derogate a mutual friend. Although the vignettes varied across experiments, those venting typically began by telling participants, “I’m so frustrated and hurt right now…” before venting about a mutual friend canceling on them at the last minute.

In the derogation condition, this same complaint was prefaced with: “I’m so frustrated and angry right now…” In other conditions, the participant heard the speaker gossip about having dinner with the mutual friend or vent about the speaker’s car problems.

After reading the vignette, participants rated their feelings about the speaker and the target on an 11-point sliding scale. Participants who heard people vent about a friend canceling on them liked the speaker better than the target. This was not the case when speakers derogated the target for the same behavior, shared neutral gossip about targets or vented about their car troubles.

In another experiment, participants heard their friends vent about or derogate the target and were asked to divide a pot of lottery tickets between the speaker and target. Participants gave more tickets to the speaker than to the target, but only in the venting — not the derogation — condition.

However, venting backfired in an additional experiment. When researchers hinted the person venting was secretly rivalrous with the targeted friend, participants no longer liked that person better than the target.

The results show that venting makes the speaker more likable only when listeners do not perceive the speaker as having any aggressive intent toward the target. This suggests venting might be an effective tool of competition for listeners’ affections precisely because it isn’t readily recognized as such.

The benefits of being relatively better liked by one’s friends can include being given preferential treatment, as in the ticket example above, but could also have less tangible effects. For example, friends are associated with improved economic mobility, health, well-being and longevity.

The researchers emphasize that none of this competition has to be conscious, and some other scholars have suggested that such tactics might work best if we’re fooling ourselves that we’re not competing. If we don’t think we’re doing it to be aggressive, others might be less likely to realize we’re engaging in what might be an act of aggression.

The researchers also emphasize the ways in which venting can fail, such as when those venting are perceived as aggressive, choose the wrong thing to vent about or the wrong person to vent to. That venting works at all suggests, they say, that people can be deeply — if not consciously — strategic about what they vent about and to whom.

“People are so lonely right now, and that puts even greater pressure on us as researchers to be honest about how friendship works,” Krems said. “As much as we want it to be all unicorns and rainbows, sometimes it’s more like a koala: cuddly but also vicious.”

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Journal

Evolution and Human Behavior

 

World’s largest computing society launches new award to recognize researchers from historically underrepresented communities

ACM now accepting nominations for inaugural Luiz André Barroso Award

Association for Computing Machinery

 

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Luiz André Barroso was a Brazilian computer engineer who pioneered the design of the modern data center. He was a role model for numerous computer scientists and recruited many women and other individuals from historically underrepresented communities in tech who subsequently made strong contributions to the field.

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Credit: Association for Computing Machinery

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced that it has initiated the Luiz André Barroso Award to recognize researchers from historically underrepresented communities who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. 

The ACM Luiz André Barroso Award will be given annually, and the winner of the award will give a one-hour invited talk at a major ACM conference of their choice. A video of the talk will be made available on the ACM website. The award carries a cash prize of $40,000 and includes travel expenses to the conference, plus an additional $10,000 cash contribution to an approved charity of the awardee’s choice. Financial support for the Luiz André Barroso Award is provided by Google.

About Luiz Barroso
Luiz André Barroso was a Brazilian computer engineer who pioneered the design of the modern data center. Barroso spent more than two decades at Google, rising to the position of Vice President of Engineering in the Core and Maps teams, and as a technical leader in areas such as Google Search and the design of Google’s computing platform.

Barroso, who grew up in a diverse community, was a strong supporter of equal opportunity for everyone and observed that his most effective teams included members from various backgrounds. He was a role model for numerous computer scientists and recruited many women and other individuals from historically underrepresented communities in tech who subsequently made strong contributions to the field.

Nomination Process
Successful nominations will demonstrate a sustained and/or enduring contribution to the computing community, in the engineering of deployed systems, in research, in publication, or in leadership.

Nominations will also be evaluated by the candidate’s demonstrated commitment to making the tech industry more inclusive. Nominations may focus on an important body of contributions over a significant period of time, or one particularly influential contribution.

Nominations will be reviewed for the quality and impact of the candidate's achievements.

Nomination information for the ACM Luiz André Barroso Award can be found here. For questions on the above, please contact us at acm-awards@acm.org.

Next Deadline
The nomination deadline is December 15, 2024 – end of day, anywhere on earth (AoE), UTC -12 hours.

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

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Researchers earn USDA funding to develop biological weed herbicide for stubborn Palmer amaranth

Difficult weeds annually cost the agricultural industry roughly $33 billion in losses in the U.S.

Colorado State University

 

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The fast growing, chemical herbicide resistant Palmer amaranth. Credit: Phil Westra, Colorado State Univeristy

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Credit: Please credit Phil Westra, Colorado State University

Colorado State University researchers are developing a novel biological herbicide that would specifically target Palmer amaranth – one of the most challenging weeds for agricultural producers to deal with today.

The newly funded $650,000 research project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It aims to use synthetic biology techniques to develop a biological herbicide that would replace the common chemical herbicides that have become less effective over time and have an outsized negative environmental impact. The work – jointly led by researchers in the Departments of Biology and Agricultural Biology – is an effort to curb one of the most problematic weeds in Colorado and across the country.

Difficult weeds annually cost the agricultural industry roughly $33 billion in losses in the U.S. The fast growing, chemical herbicide resistant Palmer amaranth is a key example of the problem. It has been shown to decrease crop yields by up to 91% in corn and 79% in soybeans.

Biological herbicides like the ones the researchers will try to develop may provide a solution. These would be engineered to be highly effective and selective – limiting their risk to nearby crops when applied. To do this, the researchers will develop RNA molecules known as Ribozymes that can influence specific gene expression. In this case, those would be genes that support the weed’s immune system or regulate its metabolism. This approach eliminates the weed through a specific infection, as opposed to a combination of natural or synthetic chemical compounds that can broadly kill or inhibit plant growth.

Over the next four years, the CSU team will work with an already well-known plant virus to that end. Assistant Professor Arjun Khakhar said that this is a developing area of research.

“Using RNA-based tools like this is an emerging technology, and this is one of the first instances where it is being applied in an agricultural context,” he said. “We will be creating experiments in the project to validate an inability to infect plants other than the weed and to also understand how transferable this approach may be to control other weeds in the future and support agricultural production goals.” 

Professor Todd Gaines has been studying weeds within the College of Agricultural Sciences for years and is a key partner on this new project. He said this work could prove to be beneficial and fits the university’s land grant mission perfectly.

“The CSU weed research lab partners with producers and farmers to create solutions for sustainable management. Herbicide resistance is an increasingly important issue and could threaten the global food supply,” he said. “This work supports our efforts as a land grant university to develop innovations to improve the quality of life for people in Colorado and around the world and train the next generation of researchers and producers to use them.”

The fast growing, chemical herbicide resistant Palmer amaranth. Credit: Phil Westra, Colorado State University 

Credit

Please credit Phil Westra, Colorado State University

 

Candidate malaria vaccine provides lasting protection in NIH-sponsored trials

Approach could have role in preventing malaria in pregnancy

NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

 

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Background image of malaria parasites with foreground photo montage showing infected red blood cell, mosquito, and vaccine vial.

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Credit: NIAID

WHAT:
Two National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported trials of an experimental malaria vaccine in healthy Malian adults found that all three tested regimens were safe. One of the trials enrolled 300 healthy women ages 18 to 38 years who anticipated becoming pregnant soon after immunization. That trial began with drug treatment to remove malaria parasites, followed by three injections spaced over a month of either saline placebo or the investigational vaccine at one of two dosages. Both dosages of the vaccine candidate conferred a significant degree of protection from parasite infection and clinical malaria that was sustained over a span of two years without the need for a booster dose—a first for any malaria vaccine. In an exploratory analysis of women who conceived during the study, the vaccine significantly protected them from malaria in pregnancy. If confirmed through additional clinical trials, the approach modeled in this study could open improved ways to prevent malaria in pregnancy.

Spread by Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria parasites, including those of the species Plasmodium falciparum (Pf), can cause illness in people of any age. However, pregnant women, infants and very young children are especially vulnerable to life-threatening disease. Malarial parasitemia in pregnancy is estimated to cause up to 50,000 maternal deaths and 200,000 stillbirths in Africa each year.  

The trials were co-led by investigators from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies, Bamako (USTTB), Mali. The investigational vaccine used in both trials was PfSPZ Vaccine, a radiation-attenuated vaccine based on Pf sporozoites (a stage of the parasite’s lifecycle), manufactured by Sanaria Inc., Rockville, Maryland. Multiple previous clinical trials of PfSPZ Vaccine have shown it to be safe, including in malaria-endemic countries such as Mali. In results published in 2022, for example, an NIAID-sponsored, placebo-controlled trial of a three-dose regimen of PfSPZ Vaccine in Burkina Faso found that the vaccine had up to 46% efficacy that lasted at least 18 months. 

In the first year of the current trial, 55 women became pregnant within 24 weeks of the third vaccine dose. Among these women, vaccine efficacy against parasitemia (whether before or during pregnancy) was 65% in those who received the lower dose vaccine and 86% in those who received the higher dose. Among 155 women who became pregnant across both study years, vaccine efficacy was 57% for those who received lower dose vaccine and 49% in those in the higher dosage group.

Women who received the investigational vaccine at either of the dosages conceived sooner than those who received placebo, although this finding did not reach the level of statistical significance, reported the investigators. The researchers speculate that the PfSPZ Vaccine might avert malaria-related early pregnancy losses since parasitemia risk during the periconception period was reduced by 65 to 86%.

“Preconception immunization is a new strategy to reduce mortality for women with malaria in pregnancy,” the researchers note. They plan to investigate the safety of PfSPZ Vaccine administered during pregnancy, then examine the efficacy of PfSPZ given preconception or during pregnancy in larger clinical trials. “Existing measures are not protecting women from malaria in pregnancy,” they added. “A safe and effective vaccine is urgently needed, and our results indicate PfSPZ Vaccine might be a suitable candidate,” they conclude. 

The PfSPZ Vaccine Study Team was led by Alassane Dicko, M.D., of the Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC), USTTB, Mali, Stephen L. Hoffman, M.D., of Sanaria Inc., and Patrick E. Duffy, M.D., of the NIAID Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology. Joint co-first authors were Halimatou Diawara, M.D., of MRTC, and Sara A. Healy, M.D., NIAID. 

Additional information about the trials is available at clinicaltrials.gov using the identifiers NCT03510481 or NCT03989102.

ARTICLE:
H Diawara et al. Safety and efficacy of PfSPZ Vaccine against malaria in healthy adults and women anticipating pregnancy in Mali: two randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1 and 2 trials. Lancet Infectious Diseases DOI: 10.1016/ S1473-3099(24)00360-8 (2024).

WHO:
Patrick E. Duffy, M.D., Chief, Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology, NIAID, is available to comment.

CONTACT:
To schedule interviews, please contact Anne A. Oplinger, (301) 402-1663, niaidnews@niaid.nih.gov. 

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NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit https://www.nih.gov/. 

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Journal

The Lancet Infectious Diseases

DOI

10.1016/S1473-3099(24)00360-8