Wednesday, November 06, 2024

How plants evolved multiple ways to override genetic instructions

WashU biologists investigate inner workings of DNA methylation in plants

Washington University in St. Louis

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered the origin of a curious duplication that gives plants multiple ways to override instructions that are coded into their DNA. This research could help scientists exploit a plant’s existing systems to favor traits that make it more resilient to environmental changes, like heat or drought stress.

The study led by Xuehua Zhong, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was published Nov. 6 in Science Advances.

Zhong’s new research focuses on DNA methylation, a normal biological process in living cells wherein small chemical groups called methyl groups are added to DNA. This activity controls which genes are turned on and off, which in turn affects different traits — including how organisms respond to their environments.

Part of this job involves silencing, or turning off, certain snippets of DNA that move around within an organism’s genome. These so-called jumping genes, or transposons, can cause damage if not controlled. The entire process is regulated by enzymes, but mammals and plants have developed different enzymes to add methyl groups.

“Mammals only have two major enzymes that add methyl groups in one DNA context, but plants actually have multiple enzymes that do that in three DNA contexts,” said Zhong, who is the Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar and program director for plant and microbial biosciences at WashU. “This is the focus of our study. The question is — why do plants need extra methylation enzymes?”

Looking forward, Zhong’s research could pave the way for innovations in agriculture by improving crop resilience. “Certain genes or combinations of genes are contributing to certain features or traits,” Zhong explained. “If we find precisely how they are regulated, then we can find a way to innovate our technology for crop improvement.”

Evolving differernt functions

The new study is centered around two enzymes specifically found in plants: CMT3 and CMT2. Both enzymes are responsible for adding methyl groups to DNA, but CMT3 specializes in the parts of DNA called the CHG sequences, while CMT2 specializes in different parts called CHH sequences. Despite their functional differences, both enzymes are a part of the same chromomethylase (CMT) family, which evolved through duplication events that provide plants with additional copies of genetic information.

Using a common model plant called Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, Zhong and her team investigated how these duplicated enzymes evolved different functions over time. They discovered that somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, CMT2 lost its ability to methylate CHG sequences. This is because it’s missing an important amino acid called arginine.

“Arginine is special because it has charge,” said Jia Gwee, a graduate student in biology and co-first author of the study. “In a cell, it’s positively charged and thus can form hydrogen bonds or other chemical interactions with, for example, the negatively charged DNA.”

However, CMT2 has a different amino acid — valine. “Valine is not charged, so it is unable to recognize the CHG context like CMT3. That’s what we think contributes to the differences between the two enzymes,” said Gwee, winner of the Dean’s Award for Graduate Research Excellence in Arts & Sciences.

To confirm this evolutionary change, the Zhong lab used a mutation to switch arginine back into CMT2. As they expected, CMT2 was able to perform both CHG and CHH methylation. This suggests that CMT2 was originally a duplicate of CMT3, a backup system to help lighten the load as DNA became more complex: “But instead of simply copying the original function, it developed something new,” Zhong explained.

This research also provided insights about CMT2’s unique structure. The enzyme has a long, flexible N-terminal that controls its own protein stability. “This is one of the ways plants evolved for genome stability and to fight environmental stresses,” Zhong said. This feature may explain why CMT2 evolved in plants growing in such a wide variety of conditions worldwide.

Much of the data for this study came from the 1001 Genomes Project, which aims to discover whole-genome sequence variation in A. thaliana strains from around the globe.

“We’re going beyond laboratory conditions,” Zhong said. “We’re looking at all of the wild accessions in plants using this larger data set.” She believes part of the reason A. thaliana has evolved to thrive despite environmental stresses is because of the diversification that happens during the methylation process, including those jumping transposons: “One jump might help species deal with harsh environmental conditions.”

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adr2222

Article Title

Substrate specificity and protein stability drive the divergence of plant-specific DNA methyltransferases

Article Publication Date

6-Nov-2024

'Shallow' sports and 'deep' social hierarchies: Not all pecking orders are created equal

University of Michigan

University of Michigan researchers have added a new dimension to the mathematics used to predict the outcomes of all manner of competitions, including sports, games and social hierarchies in both humans and animals.

This dimension, which they call "depth of competition," can be integrated into a variety of important and lucrative fields. It could, for instance, help project winners of match-ups in sports, forecast consumer preferences, rank universities and evaluate hiring practices.

But it also provides a single framework to compare and glean insights from a wide spectrum of competitive interactions. As long as the researchers have data, be it from board games or baboon fights, their model can calculate the depth of any competition with a winner and loser.

"The model doesn't know if it's getting a sports data set or an animal data set," said Max Jerdee, a doctoral student in physics at U-M and an author of the new study. "What we're trying to do is build a general way of measuring inequality in a bunch of these different settings."

In this framework, the more unequal a competition, the deeper it is. In deeper competitions, then, the competitors are more stratified by their skill and status. So it might be surprising to learn that, in this context, human games and sports end up at the shallow end of the spectrum.

But this is by design, said Mark Newman, U-M professor of physics and complex systems.

"A game like basketball, for example, is not actually a shallow sport," Newman said. "There's a huge range of abilities and you can play at many different levels. But people don't because there wouldn't be any point having the average high schooler going against an NBA professional."

Even within the NBA, worse teams have better odds to draft better young players onto their teams as a pathway to improvement, Jerdee pointed out.

"Saying something is shallow may have a negative connotation, but you could also say it's more competitive, less predictable or more exciting," Jerdee said. "They're all describing the same thing."

While humans have norms and structures to promote parity and exciting competitions, other animals do not.

Consider chickens, the animal responsible for the expression "pecking order." Within a flock, there is a clear hierarchy where stronger birds peck those lower in the order with very little risk of "losing" the competition or being bested in a display of dominance.

So, using Jerdee and Newman's assessment, basketball has a depth of less than 1 layer while chickens' hierarchy is closer to 20 layers. The social hierarchy of hyenas is even more rigid and predictable, with a depth of more than 100 layers.

Competitive interactions in human society, including university rankings and social hierarchies within high school friend groups, land between sports and animal competitions in terms of depth.

Beyond assessing the depth of a competition, the new model can also predict the "winner" of certain competitions. The method could thus be used to assess university rankings, to project consumer preference, or to predict the outcome of sporting events, even between competitors who have never met before.

To demonstrate this predictive capability, the team showed that the 2022 U-M football team would have had an 89% chance of beating the University of Wisconsin had they played one another.

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adn2654

Article Title

Luck, skill, and depth of competition in games and social hierarchies

Article Publication Date

6-Nov-2024

Research finds coyotes thriving despite human and predator pressures

Nationwide coyote surveys highlight how hunting may increase, rather than reduce, local coyote numbers

University of New Hampshire

Nationwide coyote survey shows hunting may increase, rather than reduce, coyote numbers — image:
Researchers from the University of New Hampshire used data from over 4500 camera traps to study coyotes across multiple different habitats and found that human hunting did not reduce populations but instead led to an increase in coyote numbers, perhaps due to reproduction and immigration rates.
view more
Credit: Snapshot USA

DURHAM, N.H.—(November 6, 2024)—Research led by the University of New Hampshire sheds light on how coyotes, North America’s most successful predators, are responding to various environmental pressures, including human development, hunting and competition with larger carnivores. Surprisingly, the study’s findings suggest that human hunting practices may actually contribute to increasing the number of coyotes.

“Intensive coyote removal can obviously reduce populations in the short-term, but removal can also result in younger coyote populations with higher reproduction and immigration rates,” said Remington Moll, assistant professor of natural resources and the environment and lead author. “In our study, we detected more coyotes in places where hunting was allowed. This trend occurred over several years, suggesting that, on average, hunting did not reduce coyote abundance and perhaps increased it locally in certain areas.”

Published in the journal Ecography, the study, one of the largest-scale studies of coyote populations to date, explored the complex dynamics shaping coyote populations across wide range of diverse habitats—from rural to suburban. It used data from over 4,500 cameras set up across the country by the Snapshot USA project, a national project that collects wildlife data from coordinated camera arrays across the contiguous United States. The data was combined with satellite-derived habitat metrics and analyzed using various advanced modeling techniques which allowed the team to evaluate the effects of habitat type, competition with larger carnivores, hunting practices and suburban expansion on coyote populations—providing the researchers with a clearer understanding of how coyotes respond to varying environmental pressures.

“Our work suggests that promoting the recovery of large carnivores, especially in certain habitats, is more likely to reduce coyote numbers than people directly hunting them,” said Roland Kays, a research professor with North Carolina State University’s College of Natural Resources and study co-author. “With this data, we can now map them out across the country to provide the first abundance map of our country’s most important predator—an effort that could help in both conservation and coyote management.”

Coyotes are the most successful carnivores on the continent. Having spread throughout the eastern United States, coyotes come into regular contact with humans. However, until now, the factors influencing the number of coyotes across suburban, rural and wild landscapes have remained largely unclear.

Other key findings include that the presence of larger carnivores, such as black bears and pumas, influenced coyote numbers in a habitat-dependent manner. For example, black bears had a stronger limiting effect on coyotes in forested areas, whereas pumas exerted a similar influence in more open environment. Coyote abundance was highest in grasslands and agricultural landscapes—regions that provide ample prey and shelter. And, the impact of urbanization on coyote populations varied by scale: at smaller, local scales, urban development tended to reduce coyote numbers due to increased human presence and habitat fragmentation. However, at larger, suburban scales, coyote populations thrived, benefiting from the fragmented habitats and edges that offer access to both natural and human-modified resources.

The study also highlighted significant regional variation in coyote populations across the United States, with particularly high numbers in the southwestern U.S. and lower populations in the northeast, reflecting the diverse ecological and geographical factors at play.

Other co-authors include Austin Green, Science Research Initiative at the University of Utah and Maximilian Allen, Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.

This work as funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, the NH Agricultural Experiment Station and the state of New Hampshire. Additional support came from the Illinois Natural History Survey, the University of Illinois, the Global Change and Sustainability Center at the University of Utah and Sageland Collaborative.

PHOTOS FOR DOWNLOAD

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/coyote_pics-3.jpg

Caption: Researchers from the University of New Hampshire and North Carolina State University used data from over 4500 camera traps to study coyotes across multiple different habitats including alpine mountains, forests, grasslands and suburban/urban settings.

Photo credit: Snapshot USA

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/coyote_pics-6.jpg

Caption: Researchers studied coyote habitat using data from over 4500 camera traps that were a part of the Snapshot USA Network and located in different habitats across the United States.

Photo credit: Snapshot USA

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/coyote_pics-2.jpg

Caption: The UNH research team found that human hunting did not reduce coyote populations but instead led to an increase in coyote numbers, perhaps due to reproduction and immigration rates.

Photo credit: Snapshot USA

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/northern-nh-coyote-unh-attribution.png

Caption: The researchers used data from over 4500 camera traps, including this one in northern N.H., to locate different coyote habitats across the United States and found that the presence of large carnivores, such as black bears and pumas, played an important part in limiting coyote numbers in a habitat dependent manner.

Photo credit: Snapshot USA

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/coyote_pics-7.jpg

Caption: Research led by the University of New Hampshire assessed coyote abundance in different habitats across the United States and what factors influenced population size.

Photo credit: Snapshot USA

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About UNH
The University of New Hampshire inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation and world. More than 16,000 students from 50 states and 87 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top-ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. A Carnegie Classification R1 institution, UNH partners with NASA, NOAA, NSF, and NIH, and received over $250 million in competitive external funding in FY24 to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.

Journal

Ecography

ECOLOGY

How gophers brought Mount St. Helens back to life in one day

Diggers kick-started decades of soil recovery after volcanic eruption

University of California - Riverside

Unhappy gopher — image:
An unhappy gopher and plant near the gopher enclosure fence in 1982.
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Credit: Michael Allen/UCR

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, lava incinerated anything living for miles around. As an experiment, scientists dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours. The benefits from that single day were undeniable -- and still visible 40 years later.

Once the blistering blast of ash and debris cooled, scientists theorized that, by digging up beneficial bacteria and fungi, gophers might be able to help regenerate lost plant and animal life on the mountain. Two years after the eruption, they tested this theory.

“They’re often considered pests, but we thought they would take old soil, move it to the surface, and that would be where recovery would occur,” said UC Riverside’s Michael Allen.

They were right. But the scientists did not expect the benefits of this experiment would still be visible in the soil today, in 2024. A paper out this week in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes details an enduring change in the communities of fungi and bacteria where gophers had been, versus nearby land where they were never introduced.

“In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction,” said UCR microbiologist Michael Allen. “Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?”

In 1983, Allen and Utah State University’s James McMahon helicoptered to an area where the lava had turned the land into collapsing slabs of porous pumice. At that time, there were only about a dozen plants that had learned to live on these slabs. A few seeds had been dropped by birds, but the resulting seedlings struggled.

After scientists dropped a few local gophers on two pumice plots for a day, the land exploded again with new life. Six years post-experiment, there were 40,000 plants thriving on the gopher plots. The untouched land remained mostly barren.

All this was possible because of what isn’t always visible to the naked eye. Mycorrhizal fungi penetrate into plant root cells to exchange nutrients and resources. They can help protect plants from pathogens in the soil, and critically, by providing nutrients in barren places, they help plants establish themselves and survive.

“With the exception of a few weeds, there is no way most plant roots are efficient enough to get all the nutrients and water they need by themselves. The fungi transport these things to the plant and get carbon they need for their own growth in exchange,” Allen said.

A second aspect of this study further underscores how critical these microbes are to the regrowth of plant life after a natural disaster. On one side of the mountain was an old-growth forest. Ash from the volcano blanketed the trees, trapping solar radiation and causing needles on the pine, spruce, and Douglas firs to overheat and fall off. Scientists feared the loss of the needles would cause the forest to collapse.

That is not what happened. “These trees have their own mycorrhizal fungi that picked up nutrients from the dropped needles and helped fuel rapid tree regrowth,” said UCR environmental microbiologist and paper co-author Emma Aronson. “The trees came back almost immediately in some places. It didn’t all die like everyone thought.”

On the other side of the mountain, the scientists visited a forest that had been clearcut prior to the eruption. Logging had removed all the trees for acres, so naturally there were no dropped needles to feed soil fungi.

“There still isn’t much of anything growing in the clearcut area,” Aronson said. “It was shocking looking at the old growth forest soil and comparing it to the dead area.”

These results underscore how much there is to learn about rescuing distressed ecosystems, said lead study author and University of Connecticut mycologist Mia Maltz, who was a postdoctoral scholar in Aronson’s lab at UCR when the study began.

“We cannot ignore the interdependence of all things in nature, especially the things we cannot see like microbes and fungi,” Maltz said.

Gophers and plants thriving in the once barren area scarred by the volcanic eruption, 2012.

Credit

Mike Allen/UCR

Journal

Frontiers in Microbiomes

DOI

10.3389/frmbi.2024.1399416

Article Publication Date

3-Nov-2024

Variation in the measurement of sexual orientations is associated with sexual orientation-related mental health disparities

Differences in sexual orientation response choices between national population-based health surveys in the US underestimate mental health disparities

American Public Health Association

Mental Health Disparities Associated with Response Choices in Sexual Orientation Surveys — image:
Sexual minority groups report relatively more mental health issues than heterosexual people, and identifying sexual minorities through efficient survey questions helps bridge mental health disparities in society.
view more
Credit: patrickdevries2003 from Openverse: https://openverse.org/image/d9c34c31-c62b-413c-8014-cdb2a24bb2ca?q=lgbt

Sexual orientation—dictated by factors like sexual identity, attraction and behavior—is challenging to measure comprehensively. This is reflected in variations in the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people recorded across surveys using different measurement approaches. Most approaches focus on ‘sexual identity’ to understand mental health disparities, but differences in perceived notions of ‘identity’ and ‘attraction/behavior’ are prevalent. For instance, some individuals report same-sex attraction but identify as 'heterosexual' in surveys. This suggests an ‘invisible’ sexual minority group—those who do not align with traditional labels, yet experience similar mental stress as other sexual minorities—remaining unrecognized by policies aimed at mental health support.

To improve the inclusivity and relevance of current sexual orientation measurements, Assistant Professor Dr. Nicole F. Kahn from University of Washington and a research team published their study in the American Journal of Public Health on November 6, 2024. Dr. Kahn explains, “The purpose of this study was to describe and compare responses from respondents asked to complete 2 different survey questions designed to measure sexual orientation and understand how variation in responses to these questions are associated with mental health outcomes”. The team hypothesized that measures using a broader continuum of sexuality would identify more sexual minority (SM) respondents than those using narrower labels, and that individuals identifying as heterosexual on one survey and SM on another would show mental health patterns similar to SM respondents in both surveys.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) comprises a cohort of adolescent school students who were followed from 1994–1995 (wave I) until 2016–2019 (wave V), with wave VI ongoing. Between 2020 and 2021, participants from the Add Health study were invited to complete the Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health Across the Life Course (SOGI-SES) survey. Dr. Kahn notes, “Participants who identified as mostly heterosexual, bisexual, mostly homosexual or homosexual; reported same-sex partners at waves III, IV or V; or were discordant on sex assigned at birth and gender expression (e.g., androgynous or gender nonconforming) at wave V were all solicited for participation in SOGI-SES. We refer to these respondents as sexual and gender minorities (SGMs)”.

In the study, respondents answered two questions on sexual orientation: one from the Add Health survey providing a continuum ranging from ‘100% heterosexual’ to ‘not sexually attracted to either males or females,’ second from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) offering fewer options. Those identifying as “heterosexual (straight)” on both surveys were classified as such, while those choosing non-heterosexual options in both were categorized as sexual minorities. A third group, termed ‘undetected sexual minorities,’ included those who marked ‘100% heterosexual (straight)’ in one survey but a sexual minority option in the other. Mental health outcomes were assessed by asking respondents whether they had ever been diagnosed with conditions like depression, anxiety or panic disorders. Gender was assigned based on alignment between sex at birth and current gender identity.

Of the 2,576 respondents, Dr. Kahn observed, “A larger proportion of cisgender male (93.9%) and cisgender female respondents (91.2%) identified as ‘straight’ in response to the NHIS question compared with cisgender males (92.2%) and cisgender females (79.1%) who identified as ‘100% heterosexual’ in response to the Add Health question.” This study finds that Add health questions were able to detect more SMs than the NHIS questions (14.4% vs 6.8%). Interestingly, cisgender females were significantly more likely to be undetected by NHIS than cisgender males (12.8% vs 2.6%). With respect to the mental health outcomes, SMs and undetected SMs were more likely to report a depression diagnosis than heterosexual respondents. Similarly, anxiety or panic disorder diagnoses were significantly different only between SMs and heterosexual or straight respondents among both cisgender male (46.3% vs 30.1%) and cisgender female respondents (54.7% vs 37.1%).

Current measures of sexual orientation may lead to underestimation of the SM population, thereby underestimating the health disparities they experience. “Further research on other measures that consider response options that reflect a broader continuum of sexuality are needed to inform health policy and service planning to meet the needs of the sexual minority population,” concludes Dr. Kahn.

Journal

American Journal of Public Health

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2024.307839

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Assessment of Health Disparities and Sexual Orientation Response Choices Used in Two US National Population Based Health Surveys, 2020–2021

Article Publication Date

6-Nov-2024

VANITY, VANITY, ALL IS VANITY

Social media likes and comments linked to young men’s obsession with perfect pecs and a six-pack

THE TRUMP VOTER

University of South Australia

Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are fuelling unrealistic, unhealthy obsessions with a lean and muscular physique among many young men, according to a new Australian study.

Men who place higher importance on receiving likes and positive comments on their posts are significantly more likely to experience symptoms of what is termed “muscle dysmorphia” (MD) – a belief that their bodies are small and weak, even though many of them have a good physique.

In an online survey of almost 100 men, aged between 18-34, all admitted to viewing celebrity, fashion, and fitness content on social media sites, but the link with MD was only significant when it came to the interactive feedback men received on these platforms.

University of South Australia Psychology (Honours) graduate Luigi Donnarumma, who led the study published in New Media & Society, says the findings link appearance-based feedback on social media to body image concerns among men.

“Previous research has largely focused on women, but we’re now seeing that men are also vulnerable to the pressures of online body ideals,” Donnarumma says.

“Muscle dysmorphia is an emerging issue, and our study shows that social media isn’t just a platform for sharing content: it’s a powerful source of social validation that can significantly impact how young men perceive their bodies.”

The research found that 19% of the survey participants scored above the threshold for MD, suggesting that these young men were at significant risk of holding unrealistic ideals about their body.

Co-author UniSA lecturer Dr John Mingoia says the study highlights the need for more awareness of the psychological risks associated with social media use.

“Men are often exposed to hyper-muscular ideals online, particularly through fitness and celebrity content,” Dr Mingoia says. “When these posts attract a high volume of likes and positive comments, they reinforce the message that this is the body standard that men should strive for. Over time, this can lead to harmful behaviours such as excessive exercising, restricted eating, and even steroid use.”

The researchers suggest that taking less notice of social media posts may be one way to combat muscle dysmorphia, along with targeted mental health initiatives to address body issues in men.

“An investigation of the relationship between social networking site activities and muscle dysmorphia in young men” is published in New Media & Society. DOI: 10.1177/14614448241281

Journal

New Media & Society

DOI

10.1177/14614448241281

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

An investigation of the relationship between social networking site activities and muscle dysmorphia in young men

Using a fan and wetting the skin reduces risk of deadly cardiac strain in hot and humid weather

But older people should avoid using fans in very hot and dry conditions

University of Sydney

Using a fan and wetting the skin reduces risk of deadly cardiac strain in hot and humid weather

But older people should avoid using fans in very hot and dry conditions

New collaborative research from the University of Sydney and the Montreal Heart Institute has shown that using a fan in hot and humid weather reduces cardiac strain in older people, contradicting recommendations from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in the US.

The study, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at the efficacy of different low-cost cooling strategies – such as electric fans with and without spraying water on the skin – for older adults, who are known to be at a heightened health risk during hot summer weather.

Professor Ollie Jay, Director of the Heat and Health Research Centre and Thermal Ergonomics Laboratory in the Faculty of Medicine and Health said: “Health hazards from extreme heat are becoming increasingly common because of climate change. Older adults, especially those with heart disease, are at greater risk due to the strain that hot temperatures put on the heart. Understanding the impacts of different cooling strategies on the heart is important to help vulnerable people stay well during hot summer weather.”

The study exposed older participants with and without heart disease to two environments – one hot and humid (38°C and 60 percent humidity) and the other very hot and dry (45°C and 15 percent humidity); conditions chosen to represent the two most common heatwave extremes globally.

The team found that in hot and humid conditions, fan use with and without skin wetting reduced heat-induced cardiac strain in older people.

However, in the very hot and dry conditions, fan use had an adverse effect by tripling the increase in cardiac strain which could be fatal for someone with heart disease. This is because, although fans help sweat evaporate, in very hot and dry conditions the effect is small and counteracted by convection forcing more heat into the body. Instead, in these conditions, skin wetting used on its own was effective at reducing the work of the heart.

Co-author of the study Dr Daniel Gagnon from the Montreal Heart Institute said: “While air conditioning is an effective way of staying cool, it's not available to everyone, especially those most vulnerable to the heat such as the elderly and people with heart disease – so it's positive news that low-cost alternatives are effective.

“Importantly, the study has shown that the weather conditions affect the type of cooling strategy that should be used – a vital piece of information that will help older people to stay safe in heatwaves.”

Dr Georgia Chaseling, who led data collection in Montreal during her time as a post-doctoral researcher, and now co-leads the “Ageing and Chronic Diseases” priority research theme in the Heat and Health Research Centre at the University of Sydney adds: “The interventions that we tested seem simple, but they are necessarily so because we wanted to figure out which solutions people living in low-resource settings without access to air-conditioning should and should not be using.”

Research:

Chaseling, Georgia K., Gagnon, Daniel, Jay, Ollie, et al., ‘Simple strategies to reduce cardiac strain in older adults in extreme heat’ (New England Journal of Medicine, 2024)

DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2407812

Declaration: The authors declare no competing priorities.

Journal

New England Journal of Medicine

DOI

10.1056/NEJMc2407812

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Simple strategies to reduce cardiac strain in older adults in extreme heat

Article Publication Date

7-Nov-2024