Sleep improves ability to recall complex events

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN

Sleep helps consolidate our memory of complex associations, thus supporting the ability to complete memories of whole events.

 

Researchers had known for some time that sleep consolidates our memories of facts and episodic events. However, the research to date has concentrated mainly on simple associations – that is to say, connections between elements, such as we make when learning new vocabulary. “But in real life, events are generally made up of numerous components – for example, a place, people, and objects – which are linked together in the brain,” explains Dr. Nicolas Lutz from LMU’s Institute of Medical Psychology. These associations can vary in strength and some elements might be connected with each other only indirectly. “Thanks to the neural connections that underlie these associations, a single cue word is often all it takes for somebody to recall not only individual aspects of an event but multiple aspects at once.” This process, which is known as pattern completion, is a fundamental feature of episodic memory. Lutz is lead author of a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which investigated the effect of sleep on memory of such complex events.

After the study participants had learned events with complex associations, in one condition they spent the night in a sleep laboratory, where they were allowed to sleep as usual, while in another condition, they had to stay up all night. In both conditions, the participants were allowed to spend the following night at home to recover. Then they were tested on how well they could recall different associations between elements of the learned events. “We were able to demonstrate that sleep specifically consolidates weak associations and strengthens new associations between elements that were not directly connected with each other during learning. Moreover, the ability to remember multiple elements of an event together, after having been presented with just a single cue, was improved after sleep compared to the condition in which the participants had stayed awake,” summarizes Nicolas Lutz. This demonstrates the importance of sleep for completing partial information and processing complex events in the brain.

By monitoring the brain activity of the study participants during sleep, the authors of the study were also able to show that the improvement in memory performance is connected with so-called sleep spindles – bursts of neural oscillatory activity during sleep, which are associated with the active consolidation of memory contents. This occurs through reactivation of the underlying neural structures while sleeping. “This finding suggests that sleep spindles play an important role in the consolidation of complex associations, which underlie the completion of memories of whole events,” says Professor Luciana Besedovsky, lead researcher of the study.

According to Lutz and Besedovsky, the identified effects of sleep on memory can be seen as an important adaptation of the human brain, because they help people draw a more coherent picture of their environment, which in turn enables them to make more comprehensive predictions of future events. “And so our results reveal a new function by which sleep can offer an evolutionary advantage,” reckons Luciana Besedovsky. “Furthermore, they open up new perspectives on how we store and access information about complex multielement events.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2314423121 

ARTICLE TITLE

Sleep shapes the associative structure underlying pattern completion in multielement event memory

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Feb-2024

 

Durham University scientists discover the real-life impacts of northern elephant seal bottleneck

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DURHAM UNIVERSITY

New research of northern elephant seals has revealed their reproductive and foraging success has been affected by a population bottleneck which nearly caused their extinction and could make them vulnerable as the environment changes in the future.

The northern elephant seal is an iconic species living along the very accessible Pacific coastline of Mexico and North America, hauling out on beaches to breed. For much of the 19th century, they were hunted for the oil derived from their blubber. They were thought extinct after the last few that could be found were taken in 1892.

Fortunately, around 20 had survived, and they made a remarkable comeback. Now less than 150 years later, there are over 200,000 of them in an apparently healthy and stable population. 

Research, led by Durham University, in collaboration with researchers in the USA and China, revealed that despite an apparent full recovery, the bottleneck has compromised key genes associated with reproductive success and the seals’ ability to forage efficiently. 

The research team analysed nearly 270 northern elephant seals exploring their entire genetic make-up and comparing pre- and post-bottleneck seals. Their results showed an extreme direct loss of diversity due to the bottleneck event and found the overall fitness in the modern population had been impacted.

Researchers found three categories of post-bottleneck impact, including a reduction in diversity, lower female and male reproductive success, as well as lower dive performance. Together, leaving the species vulnerable to environmental stresses that could occur in the future.

A critical aspect of elephant seal life history is their extensive deep diving foraging excursions when they accumulate fat stores to facilitate fasting during the breeding season. The research showed that individuals affected by the bottleneck at specific relevant genes, were less proficient divers.

Males fight to control large harems of females for mating, but the study found that some males had acquired genetic defects that impaired their reproductive potential.  For females, it was an overall loss of diversity that reduced their lifetime reproductive success.

Professor Rus Hoelzel, in the Department of Biosciences - Durham University, said: “In this study we looked at genetic variation across entire genomes from pre- and post-bottleneck northern elephant seals. We found that the fitness of post-bottleneck seals has been significantly impacted from increased inbreeding, the retention of genes that have lost their function, and the distortion of the frequency of genetic types across the population.

“So far, the species has recovered remarkably well, but these findings call into question how susceptible it might be to environmental stresses in the future.”

The study ‘Genomics of post-bottleneck recovery in the northern elephant seal’ has been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, part of the Nature portfolio. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Office of Naval Research.

ENDS

Media Information

Interviews

Research lead Professor Rus Hoelzel, in the Department of Biosciences, Durham University, is available for interview; please contact at a.r.hoelzel@durham.ac.uk or on tel: +44 (0)191 334 1325.

Alternatively, please contact Durham University Communications Office on communications.team@durham.ac.uk or +44(0)191 334 8623. 

Image available

The following image is available to download via this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/e8g16ya89q6lavxah1hl5/h?rlkey=2u1aor1doi496c7wci1w04bmh&dl=0

Image caption: Pup northern elephant seal on a beach in California, with adult females in the background.

Image credit: Dan Costa, University of California

Alternatively, please contact Durham University Communications Office on communications.team@durham.ac.uk or +44(0)191 334 8623.

Source information

A. Rus Hoelzel, et al. Genomics of post-bottleneck recovery in the northern elephant seal. Nature Ecology & Evolution; DOI ref: 10.1038/s41559-024-02337-4. Once the paper has been published online, it will be available at the following URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02337-4

A copy of this paper is available from Durham University Communications Office on communications.team@durham.ac.uk or +44(0)191 334 8623.

About Durham University

Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.

We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.

We conduct research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2024).

We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).

For more information about Durham University visit: www.durham.ac.uk/about/

END OF MEDIA RELEASE – Issued by Durham University Communications Office.

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-024-02337-4 

 

Weedy rice gets competitive boost from its wild neighbors

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

 

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WORKING WITH PARTNERS IN CHINA, MALAYSIA AND THAILAND, BIOLOGISTS IN ARTS & SCIENCES AT WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS DETERMINED THAT WEEDY RICE IS CROSSBREEDING WITH WILD RICE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. HERE, WEEDY RICE RISES TALLER THAN CULTIVATED RICE IN FIELDS IN MALAYSIA. 

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CREDIT: BK SONG

Rice feeds the world. But a look-alike weed has many ways of getting ahead.

Weedy rice is an agricultural pest with a global economic impact. It is an aggressive weed that outcompetes cultivated rice and causes billions of dollars in yield losses worldwide. In the U.S. alone, crop losses attributed to weedy rice could feed an additional 12 million people annually.

A study from Washington University in St. Louis offers new insights into genetic changes that give weedy rice its edge over cultivated rice in tropical regions of the world. Writing in Nature Communications, researchers report that one of weedy rice’s secret weapons is its promiscuity: Weedy rice readily crossbreeds with naturally occurring wild rice that grows nearby.

Biologist Kenneth Olsen, a George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, worked with partners in China, Malaysia and Thailand to conduct this research. The scientists analyzed whole-genome sequences from 217 wild, weedy and cultivated rice samples and found that wild rice hybridization with weeds has contributed substantially to the evolution of Southeast Asian weedy rice.

“In the case of rice, the barriers to gene flow between the crop and its wild relatives are quite low compared to other crop species,” Olsen said. “These porous borders in rice can facilitate the evolution and adaptation of weedy crop relatives.”

Overall, the genetic diversity of rice planted in Southeast Asia is higher than in the United States. There is a huge market demand for rice in this part of the world, and climate and environmental factors also play a role in the choices that farmers make when planting rice.

“Farmers in mainland Southeast Asia — including Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam — and most of the island regions of Indonesia, Philippines and parts of Malaysia grow a wide range of lowland and upland rice varieties,” said B.K. Song, a Malaysian weedy rice researcher who is another corresponding author of the new study. “These include modern elite varieties and traditional landraces.”

Southeast Asian rice farmers have moved toward using some of the same mechanized planting technologies that are used by industrial rice farmers in the U.S. today.

But once in the ground, rice seedlings planted in Southeast Asia rub elbows with wild rice plants that are still found alongside cultivated rice fields today. This is something that doesn’t happen in U.S. rice fields.

“The common wild rice progenitor, Oryza rufipogon, is not present in the temperate zones, including the United States, northeastern Asia and Europe,” Song said. “Crossing between cultivated and wild rice in U.S. fields is impossible.”

In their new study, Olsen and his colleagues determined that hybridization between wild rice and weedy rice in Southeast Asia has enabled some weeds to become better adapted as agricultural weeds, giving them a competitive advantage over cultivated rice plants. For example, some of the weeds are highly effective at dispersing their seeds in rice fields because they carry wild rice gene copies that result in freely shattering seeds from the grain stalk.

The genomic results also indicated that Southeast Asian weedy rice has developed its tricks through many different evolutionary pathways running in parallel, including some weeds that de-domesticated, or became feral, after getting a start as cultivated rice, in addition to those that changed as a result of crossing with wild rice.

“Our study highlights how adaptive introgression — in other words, gene flow — from wild species can contribute to agricultural weed evolution,” Olsen said. “We’ve known that this process occurs for some time. But this is the first study to provide a detailed genomic characterization of the phenomenon.

“It’s important to recognize that crop domestication is an incremental evolutionary process, and not a single-step event,” he said. “Likewise, I think we run the risk of oversimplifying the picture by categorizing every rice plant as wild or weed or crop. The true dynamics are much more complex.”

And so, a global battle against weedy rice continues, with as many fronts as there are fields.

Tonapha Pusadee, another study co-author, said: “In Thailand, there are many ways to manage the weedy rice invasion in cultivated rice fields. For example, some farmers cut the panicles or use a chemical to eliminate the weed

When weedy rice and wild rice hybridize, weedy rice can develop freely shattering seed, which gives the weed an advantage. 

CREDIT

BK Song

Weedy rice in Thailand.

CREDIT

Chanya Maneechote

CAPTION

Rice fields in Thailand.

Rice farmers in Thailand.

CREDIT

Kenneth Olsen

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-45447-0 

ARTICLE TITLE

Porous borders at the wild-crop interface promote weed adaptation in Southeast Asia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Feb-2024

 

Artificial intelligence recognizes patterns in behaviour

Neuroscientists Create AI Tool To Analyze, Catalogue Behavior

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITATSKLINIKUM BONN

 

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THE OPEN-SOURCE PLATFORM A-SOID DEVELOPED BY RESEARCHERS FROM CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, THE UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL BONN AND THE UNIVERSITY OF BONN CAN LEARN AND PREDICT BEHAVIORS, JUST FROM VIDEO.

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CREDIT: MATTHEW SALYERS/CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University Hospital Bonn and the University of Bonn have created an open-source platform known as A-SOiD that can learn and predict user-defined behaviors, just from video. The results of the study have now been published in the journal "Nature Methods".

“This technique works great at learning classifications for a variety of animal and human behaviors,” said Eric Yttri, Eberly Family Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon. “This would not only work on behavior but also the behavior of anything if there are identifiable patterns: stock markets, earthquakes, proteomics. It’s a powerful pattern recognition machine.”

Unlike many artificial intelligence (AI) programs, A-SOiD is not a black box. Instead, the researchers allowed the program to re-learn what it did wrong. They first trained the program with a fraction of the dataset, with a focus on the program’s weaker beliefs. If the program was not certain, the algorithm would reinforce the belief of that training data.

Because A-SOiD was taught to focus on the algorithm’s uncertainty rather than treating all data the same, Alex Hsu, a recent Ph.D. alumnus from Carnegie Mellon, said that it avoids common biases found in other AI models.

AI tool does justice to every class in a data set

“It’s a different way of feeding data in,” Hsu said. “Usually, people go in with the entire data set of whatever behaviors they’re looking for. They rarely understand that the data can be imbalanced, meaning there could be a well-represented behavior in their set and a poorly represented behavior in their set. This bias could then propagate from the prediction process to the experimental findings. Our algorithm takes care of data balancing by only learning from weaker. Our method is better at fairly representing every class in a data set.”

Because A-SOiD is trained in a supervised fashion, it can be very precise. If given a dataset, it can determine the difference between a person’s normal shiver and the tremors of a patient with Parkinson’s disease. It also serves as a complementary method to their unsupervised behavior segmentation platform, B-SOiD, released two years ago.

Besides being an effective program, A-SOiD is highly accessible, capable of running on a normal computer and is available as open source on GitHub.

A-SOiD is accessible for everyone in science

Jens Tillmann, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Bonn at the University Hospital Bonn, said that the idea of having this program open to all researchers was part of its impact.

“This project wouldn’t have been possible without the open science mindset that both of our labs, but also the entire community of neuroethology have shown in recent years,” Tillmann said. “I am excited to be part of this community and look forward to future collaborative projects with other experts in the field.”

Yttri and Martin K. Schwarz, principal investigator at the University Hospital Bonn and member of the Transdisciplinary Research Areas (TRA) "Life & Health" at the University of Bonn, plan on using A-SOiD in their own labs to further investigate the relationship between the brain and behavior. Yttri plans to use A-SOiD in conjunction with other tools to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying spontaneous behaviors. Schwartz will use A-SOiD in conjunction with other behavioral modalities for a fine-grained analysis of known behaviors in social interactions.

Both Yttri and Schwarz said they hope that A-SOiD will be used by other researchers across disciplines and countries.

“A-SOiD is an important development allowing an AI-based entry into behavioral classification and thus an excellent unique opportunity to better understand the causal relationship between brain activity and behavior,” Schwarz said. “We also hope that the development of A-SOiD will serve as an efficient trigger for forthcoming collaborative research projects focusing on behavioral research in Europe but also across the Atlantic.”

Link to A-SOiD: https://github.com/YttriLab/A-SOID

Promotion:
The research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG); Project ID 227953431 - SFB 1089 of the University of Bonn.

Publication:
Jens F. Tillmann, Alexander I. Hsu, Martin K. Schwarz and Eric A. Yttri; A-SOiD, an active learning platform for expert-guided, data efficient discovery of behavior; Nature Methods; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02200-1

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JOURNAL

Nature Methods

DOI

10.1038/s41592-024-02200-1 

ARTICLE TITLE

A-SOiD, an active learning platform for expert-guided, data efficient discovery of behavior

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Feb-2024

 

Butterfly and moth genomes mostly unchanged despite 250 million years of evolution

Comparison of over 200 high-quality butterfly and moth genomes reveals key insights into their biology, evolution and diversification Cookie settings over the last 250 million years, as well as clues for conservation.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WELLCOME TRUST SANGER INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: 

BUTTERFLY FLYING NEXT TO FLOWER

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CREDIT: SAM EBDON / WELLCOME SANGER INSTITUTE

The most extensive analysis of its kind reveals how butterfly and moth chromosomes have remained largely unchanged since their last common ancestor over 250 million years ago. This stability exists despite the incredible diversity seen today in wing patterns, sizes, and caterpillar forms across over 160,000 species globally.

Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators at the University of Edinburgh analysed and compared over 200 high-quality chromosome-level genomes across butterflies and moths to better understand their evolutionary history.

They further uncovered rare groups of species that broke these genetic norms and underwent genetic rearrangements, including chromosome fusions – where two chromosomes merge – and fissions – where a chromosome splits.

The findings, published today (21 February) in Nature Ecology and Evolution, shed light on the tight constraints governing genome evolution in these ecologically vital insects. They also offer insights into factors that have enabled select species to defy these rules of evolution. These insights that can inform and enhance conservation efforts by guiding targeted strategies, monitoring ecosystem health, adapting to climate change, and incorporating genetic information into broader conservation initiatives.

The work is part of the Darwin Tree of Life Project1, aiming to sequence all 70,000 species in Britain and Ireland, and contributes to the larger Earth BioGenome Project to sequence all 1.6 million named species on Earth2.

The study raises broader questions about how chromosomal changes shape biodiversity over time. The researchers will continue focused efforts to sequence all 11,000 European butterfly and moth species as part of the newly launched Project Psyche3.

Butterflies and moths - collectively called Lepidoptera - represent 10 per cent of all described animal species and are hugely important pollinators and herbivores in many ecosystems.

In this new study, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators set out to understand the processes that drive the evolution of chromosomes of this highly diverse group.

They identified 32 ancestral chromosome building blocks, named "Merian elements" after the pioneering 17th century entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian4, that have stayed intact across most butterfly and moth species since their last common ancestor over 250 million years ago.

With the exception of a single ancient fusion event between two chromosomes that led to the 31 chromosomes seen in most species today5, chromosomes of most current species directly correspond to these ancestral Merian elements. The team found not only were chromosomes incredibly stable, but the order of genes within them was too.

The team found some species with minor changes, mainly involving fusions of small autosomes6 and the sex chromosome. This highlights the role of chromosome length as a driver of evolutionary change.

However, researchers uncovered a rare subset of species such as the blue butterflies – Lysandra – and the group containing cabbage white butterflies – Pieris – that have defied these genome structure constraints. These groups underwent extensive chromosome reshuffling, including breakage of chromosomes, and large scale reshuffling through fission and fusion.

The work increases understanding of factors that lead to genetic diversity within these insects. This can guide efforts to protect and preserve specific species facing unique challenges and environmental changes tied to climate change.

Charlotte Wright, first author of the study at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “The chromosomes of most butterflies and moths living today can be traced directly back to the 32 ancestral Merian elements that were present 250 million years ago. It is striking that despite species diversifying extensively, their chromosomes have remained remarkably intact. This challenges the idea that stable chromosomes may limit species diversification. Indeed, this feature might be a base for building diversity. We hope to find clues in rare groups that have evaded these rules.”

Professor Mark Blaxter, senior author of the study and Head of the Tree of Life programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “Studies like this, which allow us to delve into these evolutionary processes, are only possible with initiatives like the Darwin Tree of Life project generating high-quality, publicly available genome assemblies. We are amplifying these efforts in Project Psyche, aiming to sequence all 11,000 butterfly and moth species in Europe with collaborators across the continent. As vital pollinators, herbivores, and food sources of various ecosystems, as well as powerful indicators of ecosystem health, a deeper understanding of butterfly and moth biology through Project Psyche will inform future studies on adaptation and speciation for biodiversity conservation.”

ENDS

Contact details:
Jelena Pupavac
Press Office
Wellcome Sanger Institute
Cambridge, CB10 1SA
Email: press.office@sanger.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

1. This work is part of the Darwin Tree of Life project aiming to sequence the genomes of 70,000 species of eukaryotic organisms in Britain and Ireland. It is a collaboration between biodiversity, genomics and analysis partners that is transforming the way we do biology, conservation and biotechnology. https://www.darwintreeoflife.org/
2. The Earth BioGenome Project is a global network of initiatives and institutes ultimately aiming to sequence all 1.6 million named species on the planet, to drive solutions for preserving biodiversity. https://www.earthbiogenome.org/
3. Project Psyche will sequence the genomes of all 11,000 European Lepidopteran species, helping to conserve, protect and drive innovation. https://www.projectpsyche.org/
4. For more information on the life of entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/animals/maria-sibylla-merian-pioneering-artist-flora-and-fauna
5. This happened on the evolutionary branch leading to Ditrysia, the most diverse Lepidoptera group, containing over 98 per cent of all described species of butterflies and moths.
6. Autosomes are the non-sex chromosomes carrying genetic information that influences traits such as colouration and wing pattern, distinct from those determining the insect's sex.

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-024-02329-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Comparative genomics reveals the dynamics of chromosome evolution in Lepidoptera

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Feb-2024

 

Climate change increases the risk of preterm births by 60% and will devastate children’s health without fast global action

Increased numbers of preterm births, higher incidence of respiratory disease and death, and more children in hospitals are some of the stark health outcomes the world is facing from the impacts of extreme climate change.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

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IMPACT OF TEMPERATURE EXTREMES ON CHILDREN'S HEALTH. CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY.

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CREDIT: IMPACT OF TEMPERATURE EXTREMES ON CHILDREN'S HEALTH. CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY.

Increased numbers of preterm births, higher incidence of respiratory disease and death, and more children in hospitals are some of the stark health outcomes the world is facing from the impacts of extreme climate change.

This morbid reality will devastate children’s health for generations without global action, according to alarming new research.

Scientists have spent decades warning the world about the risks of extreme temperatures, floods, and bushfires, but this new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment is the first to collect all the available scientific evidence for the effects of climate change on children’s health.

The data identified which particular climate-driven extremes are linked to certain detrimental health impacts for future generations.

The study led by Dr Lewis Weeda, a researcher with The University of Western Australia and the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre at Telethon Kids Institute , and Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology, Corey Bradshaw, from Flinders University shows that the risk of a preterm birth will increase by 60% on average from exposure to extreme temperatures.

The researchers reviewed the results of 163 health studies from around the world to inform planning by governments that could mitigate and improve health outcomes for future generations against the impacts of climate change.

Professor Corey Bradshaw said the global data have revealed a worrying increase in preterm birth rates that could cause lifelong complications for millions of children around the world.

“We’ve crunched the data to show how certain types of future weather events will worsen particular medical issues in the population,” he said.

“We identified many direct links between climate change and child health, the strongest of which was a 60% increased risk on average of preterm birth from exposure to temperature extremes. Respiratory diseases, mortality, and morbidity, among others, were also made worse by climate change.

“The effects of different air pollutants on children’s health outcomes were smaller compared to temperature effects, but most pollutants still had an effect of some type, so the news is concerning. The children’s health issues we identified depend on weather extremes — cold extremes give rise to respiratory diseases, while drought and extreme rainfall can result in stunted growth for a population.”

Most of the analysed studies were in high-income nations, despite the fact that children in lower-income countries are most likely to go without adequate access to healthcare, infrastructure, and stable food supply.

The research revealed that even advanced economies would not avoid the impacts of climate change on children’s health. The researchers warn that health risks vary across continents and depend on socio-economic circumstances.

“Given that climate influences childhood disease, social and financial costs will continue to rise as climate change progresses, placing increasing pressure on families and health services. For example, asthma has been estimated to cost as much as US$1.5 billion due to a single fire season in the future, while another study estimated the costs of a single case of childhood asthma at up to US$23,573 in the coming years,” Professor Bradshaw said.

Geography also dictated the health impacts of climate change according to the research. For example, in Australia, extreme temperatures have led to an increase in premature births on the East Coast, Northern Territory, and Western Australia and enhanced respiratory issues in Queensland, while similar temperatures have caused higher mortality rates in South Africa.  

Dr Weeda said action is required to protect children from climate-related disease.

“Our research recognises some important areas where children are most vulnerable to climate change,” he said. “The development of public health policies to counter these climate-related diseases, alongside efforts to reduce anthropogenic climate change, must be addressed if we are to protect current and future children.”

“Finding solutions and implementing climate adaptation and mitigation policies would positively impact multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Climate change is universal and adversely affecting all countries and people, and we must prepare societies for mounting threats to child health.”

CAPTION

Climate change impacts on children's health based on geographic location. Credit: Flinders University.

CREDIT

Flinders University

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JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170944 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

How climate change degrades child health: A systematic review and meta-analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Feb-2024