Early exposure to cannabis compounds reduces later neural activity in zebrafish: study

New U of A research has implications for prenatal development in humans.

UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

Research News

 

Zebrafish exposed to the leading cannabinoids found in cannabis in the earliest stages of development suffer a significant drop in neural activity later in life, according to a University of Alberta study that has implications for prenatal development in humans.

Richard Kanyo, the lead author on the study and post-doctoral fellow in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, said despite the popular narrative that the health benefits of cannabis are many, it turns out there is a surprisingly large knowledge gap.

"Once the legalization happened, people got really excited about it and there's a lot of bias in the media about positive effects, so we began wondering about the negative implications," said Kanyo.

Kanyo teamed up with Declan Ali, a biological sciences researcher in the Faculty of Science, whose lab had an ongoing interest in how certain chemicals and compounds alter development in young animals "when their neurons are contacting each other and trying to communicate."

For the study, developing zebrafish embryos were left to incubate for 10 hours in a solution containing one of the two main active cannabinoids found in cannabis--tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or cannabidiol (CBD)--or a combination of these two compounds, immediately after fertilization.

Ali explained that 10 hours represents a period in animal development that includes a stage of development known as gastrulation, when the multiplying cells start to form multiple tissue layers. In zebrafish it happens between five and 10 hours after the egg has been fertilized; in humans it lasts about a week and occurs roughly three weeks after egg fertilization.

The amount of drug used would be equivalent to someone consuming cannabis or the active compounds every day for two to three weeks at the very start of a pregnancy.

On the fourth day of development, Kanyo looked at brain activity using cutting-edge fluorescing calcium sensors that measure calcium, which is increased in active neurons.

He found that neural activity decreased by 60 to 70 per cent in the group bathed in THC and by more than 70 per cent in the group immersed in CBD. The decrease was even more pronounced in zebrafish that developed in a solution containing both compounds.

"The interesting part is when combined, like how it is found in a cannabis edible or cigarette, we needed much less to get the same reduction in neural activity," said Kanyo.

Ali said the concentrations used in the experiment are a little bit on the high side for just a single cigarette, to make up for the fact that the compounds have to work their way through an outer egg casing to get to the embryo.

"By the time that happens, we don't know what the exact concentrations are, but they're definitely going to be much lower than what we put in the baths themselves."

Compared with one of the control compounds, MS222, a local anesthetic that blocks activity along nerves, the drop in neural activity on the high end of the concentrations tested was the equivalent to the drop in animals that have been anesthetized, Kanyo noted.

At five days after fertilization, when the larvae slowly begin to swim, the reduction in activity compared with normally developed zebrafish was about 20 per cent for CBD and THC individually, but 80 per cent or higher when in combination.

"This reduction in locomotion is consistent with earlier studies as well," said Ali.

Ali said the research follows earlier studies showing that exposure of young organisms to THC and CBD, either alone or in combination, could have a detrimental impact on overall brain and neural activity that could be manifested in different ways.

And though more work is needed to better understand the mechanism behind the effects on neural activity, Ali said people who are thinking of having children would certainly want to limit exposure to any of these compounds in the same way they would limit exposure to nicotine and alcohol.

"We're not saying that these compounds are bad for you," he said. "I think in some contexts--pain relief or reducing seizures--there's a great potential there.

"However, what we're seeing is cannabis is not all good for everyone all the time and probably should not be taken during pregnancy."

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The study, "Medium-throughput zebrafish optogenetic platform identifies deficits in subsequent neural activity following brief early exposure to cannabidiol and Δ?-tetrahydrocannabinol," was published in Scientific Reports.

Researchers make first-ever discovery of Zika virus RNA in free-ranging African bats

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

 

IMAGE: CSU'S DR. ANNA FAGRE (RIGHT) SAID WHILE OTHER STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT BATS ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO ZIKA VIRUS IN CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTAL SETTINGS, DETECTION OF NUCLEIC ACID IN BATS IN THE... view more 

CREDIT: RON BEND/CSUA team of Colorado State University scientists, led by veterinary postdoctoral fellow Dr. Anna Fagre, has detected Zika virus RNA in free-ranging African bats. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a molecule that plays a central role in the function of genes.

According to Fagre, the new research is a first-ever in science. It also marks the first time scientists have published a study on the detection of Zika virus RNA in any free-ranging bat.

The findings have ecological implications and raise questions about how bats are exposed to Zika virus in nature. The study was recently published in Scientific Reports, a journal published by Nature Research.

Fagre, a researcher at CSU's Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, said while other studies have shown that bats are susceptible to Zika virus in controlled experimental settings, detection of nucleic acid in bats in the wild indicates that they are naturally infected or exposed through the bite of infected mosquitoes.

"This provides more information about the ecology of flaviviruses and suggests that there is still a lot left to learn surrounding the host range of flaviviruses, like Zika virus," she said. Flaviviruses include viruses such as West Nile and dengue and cause several diseases in humans.

CSU Assistant Professor Rebekah Kading, senior author of the study, said she, Fagre and the research team aimed to learn more about potential reservoirs of Zika virus through the project.

The team used 198 samples from bats gathered in the Zika Forest and surrounding areas in Uganda and confirmed Zika virus in four bats representing three species. Samples used in the study date back to 2009 from different parts of Uganda, years prior to the large outbreaks of Zika virus in 2015 to 2017 in North and South Americas.

"We knew that flaviviruses were circulating in bats, and we had serological evidence for that," said Kading. "We wondered: Were bats exposed to the virus or could they have some involvement in transmission of Zika virus?"

The virus detected by the team in the bats was most closely related to the Asian lineage Zika virus, the strain that caused the epidemic in the Americas following outbreaks in Micronesia and French Polynesia. The first detection of the Asian lineage Zika virus in Africa was in late 2016 in Angola and Cape Verde.

"Our positive samples, which are most closely related to the Asian lineage Zika virus, came from bats sampled from 2009 to 2013," said Fagre. "This could mean that the Asian lineage strain of the virus has been present on the African continent longer than we originally thought, or it could mean that there was a fair amount of viral evolution and genomic changes that occurred in African lineage Zika virus that we were not previously aware of."

Fagre said the relatively low prevalence of Zika virus in the bat samples indicates that bats may be incidental hosts of Zika virus infection, rather than amplifying hosts or reservoir hosts.

"Given that these results are from a single cross-sectional study, it would be risky and premature to draw any conclusions about the ecology and epidemiology of this pathogen, based on our study," she said. "Studies like this only tell one part of the story."

The research team also created a unique assay for the study, focusing on a specific molecular component that flaviviruses possess called subgenomic flavivirus RNA, sfRNA. Most scientists that search for evidence of Zika virus infection in humans or animals use PCR, polymerase chain reaction, to identify bits of genomic RNA, the nucleic acid that results in the production of protein, said Fagre.

Kading said her team will continue their research to try and learn more about how long these RNA fragments persist in tissues, which will allow them to approximate when these bats were infected with Zika virus.

"There is always a concern about zoonotic viruses," she said. "The potential for another outbreak is there and it could go quiet for a while. We know that in the Zika forest, where the virus was first found, the virus is in non-human primates. There are still some questions with that as well. I don't think Zika virus has gone away forever."

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Additional co-authors of the study include Juliette Lewis, Megan Miller, Brian Foy, Tony Schountz and John Anderson (Colorado State University); Eric Mossel (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colorado); Julius Lutwama, Luke Nyakarahuka and Teddy Nakayiki (Uganda Virus Research Institute); Robert Kityo, Betty Nalikka (Makerere University); Brian Amman, Jonathan Towner and Tara Sealy (CDC, Atlanta).

 

Global research team develops fine-scale risk maps to tackle malaria in Haiti

TELETHON KIDS INSTITUTE

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IMAGE: HEALTH WORKERS INVOLVED IN DATA COLLECTION FOR THE PROJECT TO MAP MALARIA OUTBREAKS IN HAITI. view more 

CREDIT: ALYSSA YOUNG

Researchers from Telethon Kids Institute and Curtin University in Perth and Tulane University in New Orleans have developed sophisticated data modelling that could help eradicate malaria in Haiti.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean - beset by natural disasters - and is one of the few countries in the region that have not mostly wiped out the mosquito-borne disease.

Telethon Kids Institute researcher Associate Professor Ewan Cameron led the team, using a range of different health data to create a complete picture of where malaria infections are taking place in Haiti. This information has been used to directly inform Haiti's national response to malaria.

The team's findings have been published in the journal eLife.

Director of the Malaria Risk Stratification at Telethon Kids Institute and an Associate Professor at Curtin University, Dr Cameron said the team used mathematical modelling to work out where people diagnosed with malaria were most likely to reside.

"Monthly counts of malaria cases arriving at local health facilities are routinely gathered by the Haitian health system, but these data don't record at a granular level where those patients live, or where they were most likely to be infected," he said.

"Most people will be bitten in or around their homes, so the interventions we have to fight malaria aim to interrupt transmission there, whether that's spraying for mosquitos or delivering bed nets and anti-malarial medications.

"By using a wide range of data - from satellite images of the terrain to hand-written medical logs - we've been able to develop a fine-scale malaria risk map to help public health experts find these at-risk populations."

Almost 9,000 cases of malaria were reported in Haiti in 2019 and determining which areas are most at risk is a crucial line of defence against infection.

Dr Cameron said this fine-scale data could be the final piece of the puzzle that helps stamp out malaria in Haiti.

"Haiti is seen as a place where malaria eradication can be achieved," he said.

"Neighbouring countries like the Dominican Republic are much wealthier and have been able to reduce malaria to really negligible amounts but, working with fewer resources, Haiti has not yet been able to achieve the same results.

"We hope that this work can help the country to better target its interventions and work towards that goal."

Researcher Alyssa Young from Tulane University in New Orleans, working in Haiti, said accessing some of the more remote parts of the island to gather data was a significant challenge.

"During the rainy season, some of the health facilities we visited were out in really remote locations," she said.

"They'd often be a small building on a remote beach - that was the community health facility. But the people who work at those facilities were incredible, and very committed to the goal of eliminating malaria in Haiti."

Telethon Kids Institute epidemiologist and the Kerry Stokes Chair of Child Health at Curtin University, Professor Pete Gething, said the team hopes to be able to contribute to the goal of eliminating malaria in Haiti.

"Haiti is really the last bastion of malaria in the whole of Mesoamerica, just a stones-throw from the US, so it's a really interesting place," he said.

"We're making maps that are being used by Haiti's malaria control program to fundamentally change where they're targeting their interventions."

The research in Haiti is part of a collaboration that has been operating since 2017, funded by the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

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Social media influencing grows more precarious in digital age

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - Inflencing millions of people on social media and being paid handsomely is not as easy as it looks, according to new Cornell University research.

Algorithm vagaries are just one of several challenges social media content creators face, according to study author Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell.

"I think [our research] is a cautionary tale for aspiring creators as well as the broader public," Duffy said. "The people hoping to work as full-time YouTubers, Instagrammers, and TikTokers are led to believe it's easy and democratic. I disagree: if you look at who makes it as an influencer, for instance, they are not all that dissimilar to traditional celebrity exemplars, with a few exceptions. Social media celebrity remains lopsided."

Duffy and her collaborators interviewed 30 aspiring and professional content creators on a range of social media platforms - including Instagram YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest and Twitter - to learn about their experiences within and across platforms, including their pursuit of visibility and their understanding of the forces at play in their quest for metrics success.

In general, study participants all spoke the same language: They wished to have their content "seen," to "build an audience" and "get attention," to craft "posts that get more traction" and, in terms of metrics, "do well."

Relying on public sentiment and its taste for the flavor of the week is by no means a 21st century phenomenon. Content creators have for decades relied on opinion research - be it Nielsen ratings or newspaper subscription figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation - to help guide creative decision making.

But nowadays, Duffy said, the science of determining what an audience likes and wants comes with a new twist: The tenuous nature of the platforms themselves.

"These [influencers and creators], they don't know if Instagram is going to be there when they wake up," she said. "And they don't know if TikTok is going to be banned the next day in the U.S. It's a much more accelerated, intensified form of precarity in the era of Google and Facebook."

Duffy and her collaborators view the "nested" precarities akin to a Russian matryoshka doll, with the outermost doll being capitalism itself, followed by the markets, the platform ecology and algorithms as the innermost doll. The promise of being seen, and talked about, is what drives many to the world of social media influencing. But it's not all that it appears, Duffy said.

"Despite the romanticism of social media creative careers, they are structured by various levels of precarity," she said. "Some of these precarities well predate the rise of social media, but one of the most novel forms is the precarity of these algorithmic systems."

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The study, "The Nested Precarities of Creative Labor on Social Media," published June 2 in Social Media & Society.

For more information, check out this Cornell Chronicle story.

Plastic waste in the sea mainly drifts near the coast

UNIVERSITY OF BERN

Research News

 

The pollution of the world's oceans with plastic waste is one of the major environmental problems of our time. However, very little is known about how much plastic is distributed globally in the ocean. Models based on ocean currents have so far suggested that the plastic mainly collects in large ocean gyres. Now, researchers at the University of Bern have calculated the distribution of plastic waste on a global scale while taking into account the fact that plastic can get beached. In their study, which has just been published in the "Environmental Research Letters" scientific journal, they come to the conclusion that most of the plastic does not end up in the open sea. Far more of it than previously thought remains near the coast or ends up on beaches. "In all the scenarios we've calculated," says Victor Onink, the study's lead author, "about 80 percent of floating plastic waste drifts no more than 10 kilometers from the coast five years after it entered the ocean."

Much of this plastic also washes ashore. The study's authors conclude that between a third to virtually all of the buoyant plastic washed into the sea is stranded. This has serious consequences for the environment, as coastal ecosystems are particularly sensitive to plastic pollution. Polluted coasts also dramatically lose their value for tourism.

The Nile pollutes the Mediterranean Sea

The proportion of stranded plastic is highest in the regions of the world with the largest sources of plastic waste. These include areas such as Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean. Concentrations are lowest in sparsely populated regions such as the polar regions, the coast of Chile and parts of the coast of Australia. For physics doctoral student Victor Onink, there are two reasons why there is so much plastic waste in the Mediterranean: On the one hand, a lot of plastic enters the Mediterranean Sea, particularly through the Nile. On the other hand, this sea is relatively small and closed. These factors also contribute to the high concentration of plastic.

Plastic waste must not be allowed to enter the sea in the first place

The Bernese ocean modellers also investigated the question of what proportion of the stranded plastic waste comes from where. Their answer: a lot of beached plastic is from local sources, especially when the local sources are large. Ocean currents also play a major role in the distribution of waste. Regions with a high proportion of plastic originating locally include the coasts of China, Indonesia and Brazil. Conversely, regions were also identified where an above-average proportion of plastic escapes to the open sea. These include the eastern United States, eastern Japan and Indonesia. "In these places, it would be particularly effective to collect plastic waste before it can escape into the open ocean," Victor Onink points out.

The Bernese researcher takes a more skeptical view of initiatives to collect plastic from the ocean itself, which receive a great deal of media attention. "The concentration of plastic appears relatively low in the open ocean," Victor Onink points out. "It makes you wonder if resources are really being used most efficiently with these kinds of projects." Instead, it might be more effective to prevent plastic from reaching the open ocean in the first place, such as by fishing plastic out of large rivers or removing plastic from coastlines.

Rapidly reducing waste volumes

The new research results show where in the world such measures are particularly needed. "With our modelling, we present solid estimates of where the biggest problems with plastic waste in the sea are in the world," says Victor Onink. Now it is first and foremost a matter of finding political solutions to rapidly reduce the amount of waste. A reminder: Depending on the calculations, 1 to 13 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year.

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Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research

The Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) is one of the strategic centers of the University of Bern. It brings together researchers from 14 institutes and four faculties. The OCCR conducts interdisciplinary research right on the frontline of climate change research. The Oeschger Centre was founded in 2007 and bears the name of Hans Oeschger (1927-1998), a pioneer of modern climate research, who worked in Bern.

http://www.oeschger.unibe.ch

 

Less aviation during the global lockdown had a positive impact on the climate

Scientific study by scientists at Leipzig University, Imperial College London and the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in Paris

UNIVERSITÄT LEIPZIG

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IMAGE: PORTRAIT OF JOHANNES QUAAS, PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL METEOROLOGY AT LEIPZIG UNIVERSITY view more 

CREDIT: KATARINA WERNEBURG

They studied the extent to which cirrus clouds caused by aircraft occurred during the global hard lockdown between March and May 2020, and compared the values with those during the same period in previous years. The study was led by Johannes Quaas, Professor of Theoretical Meteorology at Leipzig University, and has now been published in the renowned journal "Environmental Research Letters".

Cirrus clouds, known for their high, wispy strands, contribute to warming the climate. When cirrus clouds occur naturally, large ice crystals form at an altitude of about 36 kilometres, in turn reflecting sunlight back into space - albeit to a small extent. However, they also prevent radiated heat from escaping the atmosphere, and thus have a net heating effect. This is the dominant effect in cirrus clouds.

When the weather conditions are right, condensation trails form behind aircraft. These may persist and spread to form larger cirrus clouds. In this case, their effect on the climate is much greater than that of narrow contrails alone.

The researchers led by Professor Quaas analysed satellite images of clouds in the northern hemisphere, between 27° and 68° North, in the period from March to May 2020. They then compared these with images from the same period in previous years. "Crucially, our studies reveal a clear causal relationship. Since clouds vary considerably depending on the weather, we would not have been able to detect the effects of air traffic in this way under normal circumstances. The period of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to compare clouds in air traffic corridors at very different traffic levels.

Analysis of the data collected showed that nine per cent fewer cirrus clouds formed during the global lockdown, and that the clouds were also two per cent less dense," said Professor Quaas. "The study clearly demonstrates that aircraft contrails lead to additional cirrus clouds and have an impact on global warming." According to Professor Quaas, the data collected confirmed previous estimates based only on climate models: "Our study may improve the ability to simulate these effects in climate models."

Despite the team's findings, there has still not been enough research into the impact of aviation on global warming. A European research collaboration involving Professor Quaas's research group is currently investigating the precise mechanisms in detail. "The tough global lockdown has been helpful in terms of our research. In order to mitigate or even avoid the warming effect on the climate, flight routes could be adapted in the future to avoid cirrus cloud formation, for example by separating flight corridors," said the Professor of Theoretical Meteorology at Leipzig University.

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Tree choices important for addressing climate change

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

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IMAGE: CLOUDS IN THE RAINFOREST VALLEYS OF RWANDA, AFRICA. view more 

CREDIT: JOHAN UDDLING

Tree species in Africa's upland mountain rainforests can adapt both photosynthesis and leaf metabolism to warming. But the ability to do so varies from species to species, according to studies from a new doctoral dissertation.

The vitality and composition of tomorrow's tropical forests depend on how trees can adapt their internal physiological processes to an increasingly hot and - in many places - drier climate.

Myriam Mujawamariya has now demonstrated in a doctoral dissertation that tree species from Africa's upland mountain rainforests can adapt both photosynthesis and leaf metabolism to warming. However, this ability varies among different species groups.

Slow-growing "climax species" trees, such as Carapa grandiflora, which is the favourite species of chimpanzees, and Entandrophragma excelsum, are dominant in older, closed forests. They are not as good at adapting as pioneer species, such as Harungana montana, which is most common early in the development of a forest stand.

"The research findings offer a new understanding of the ongoing shift in species composition that has been observed in tropical forests in several regions in the world," says Myriam Mujawamariya.

Preliminary data suggest that the difference in physiological adaptability between climax and pioneer species is reflected in the corresponding shifts of the trees' growth and survival in a warmer climate.

If so, this has major consequences. Climax species grow slower, but ultimately result in bigger trees than pioneer species. Many animals also rely on the generally larger seeds and fruits of climax species.

A warmer forest with fewer climax species will contain less carbon and fewer species, which is bad for the climate and for biodiversity.

In addition to the importance for the world's climate and biodiversity, the research findings also have more practical significance in Rwanda, where the studies were conducted.

Rwanda's biggest environmental problem is erosion, and right now, major initiatives are underway to plant more trees. Since Rwanda is densely populated, this has to be integrated into the agricultural landscape.

Because the goal is to increase the use of domestic tree species, knowledge of the species' climate sensitivity is important.

"Our results show that some climax species are in fact unsuitable, while most pioneer species and a few climax species have good potential - even in a hotter climate," says Myriam Mujawamariya.

By choosing suitable tree species, Rwanda will be better prepared to face threats to the climate and to support ecosystem services supplied by trees: soil stabilisation, climate regulation, biodiversity, bioenergy and many different products.

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About the research

The dissertation is presented at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, in collaboration with the University of Rwanda

Title: Climate Change sensitivity of Photosynthesis and Respiration in Tropical Trees

Contact: Myriam Mujawamariya, doctoral student who will be defending her dissertation on 16 June, +250-788 422 497 (does not speak Swedish), mmujawamariya@gmail.com

Johan Uddling, professor and supervisor, +46 (0)70-388 1357, johan.uddling@bioenv.gu.se

Facts about the study

The climate sensitivity of trees was studied by planting trees adapted to a cooler climate in Rwanda's upland tropical forests in three places with different climates and elevations above sea level. One step down along the height gradient corresponds with a possible future climate. The field experiment is called Rwanda TREE (TRopical Elevation Experiment) and consists of 20 species and 5,400 trees. To learn more about Rwanda TREE, visit the website http://www.rwandatree.com or watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkDvbwisqlQ.

New study explores link between

economic shock and physical inactivity

It's the first study to examine how job losses during the Great Recession affected levels of physical activity among young adults

DICKINSON COLLEGE

Research News

 

(Carlisle, Pa.) -- A new study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine finds critical links between job loss and physical inactivity in young adults during the U.S. Great Recession of 2008-09 that can be crucial to understanding the role of adverse economic shocks on physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first study to examine how job losses during the Great Recession affected the physical activity of young adults in the United States.

The study by Dickinson College economist Shamma Alam and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health economist Bijetri Bose looked at Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data for young adults age 18 to 27--a phase of development associated with maturation and significant social, psychological and economic changes. They found that job losses experienced by the individual during the Great Recession reduce the likelihood of physical exercise by a significant 6.3 percentage points. This as action plans established by the World Health Organization and United Nations call for a 10 percent reduction in physical inactivity by 2025 and 2030, respectively.

"Our study finds that young adults from the Great Recession, who form the core part of the millennial generation today, suffered from significantly lower physical activity, which typically leads to worse physical health outcomes such as increased obesity," said Alam. "The Great Recession--considered the longest since the Great Depression--presents enormous economic implications and lessons that are relevant for the current COVID-19 induced economic downturn."

While the Great Recession had a disproportionately high 19% unemployment rate among young adults, unemployment for young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic has been much higher, peaking in 2020 at approximately 33 percent for those age 16-19; 26 percent for those age 20-24; and 16 percent for those age 25-29. Additionally, according to Pew Research, young adults age 18-29 also have--more than any other age group-- used money from their savings or retirement account, borrowed money from friends or family and received unemployment benefits since the coronavirus hit in February 2020.

Alam suggested these known decreases in physical activity during significant economic downturns also could have implications for the mental health of young adults. "Physical activity significantly went down following job losses during a major recession like the Great Recession likely because of negative mental health outcomes suffered by the individuals. When individuals are worried about their jobs and livelihood, they do not feel like exercising. Therefore, we are likely to see similar effects on physical activity during the current COVID-19 induced recession," said Alam, adding that in addition to job losses, stay-at-home orders had negative effect on young adults' mental health, which may then negatively affect physical activity.

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About the author

Shamma Alam is an assistant professor of economics at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. His research focuses on different aspects of international development, such as health economics and health measurements, fertility issues, agricultural economics, public finance, and microcredit. He served as a consultant at the World Bank in their economic policy, poverty and gender group, development data group, and East Asia and Pacific region group. He also previously served as a consultant in the agriculture policy team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition to teaching at Dickinson, Alam serves as a research associate at the CEQ Institute at Tulane University and contributes courses at the U.S. Army War College.

About Dickinson College

Dickinson is a nationally recognized liberal-arts college chartered in 1783 in Carlisle, Pa. The highly selective college is home to 2,200 students from across the nation and around the world. Defining characteristics of a Dickinson education include a focus on global education-at home and abroad-and study of the environment and sustainability, which is integrated into the curriculum and the campus and exemplifies the college's commitment to providing an education for the common good. http://www.dickinson.edu

 

Future Pandemic? Consider Radically Altering Animal Agriculture Practices

FAU Bioethicist Offers Plausible Solutions to Mitigate Zoonotic Risk from Agriculture and Food Production for Public Health

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: JUSTIN BERNSTEIN, PH.D., SENIOR AUTHOR AND AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY. view more 

CREDIT: ADAM BERNSTEIN

As early as the Neolithic period (circa 3900 BC), the domestication of animals likely led to the development of diseases including measles and smallpox. Since then, zoonotic disease has led to other major transnational outbreaks including HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS, and H1N1 swine flu, among others. Currently, more than half of all existing human pathogens, and almost three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases, are zoonotic in nature. COVID-19 is the latest and most impactful zoonotic event of the modern era, but it will certainly not be the last.

Given the breadth of these impacts and the fact that other zoonotic pandemics are highly likely - a matter of when and not if - the key public health ethics question that emerges is about whether it is ethically appropriate for governments to intervene to prevent future pandemics. And given that SARS, Swine Flu, and the Spanish Flu of 1918 (among other outbreaks of zoonotic diseases) all came from animal agriculture facilities, a concern with preventing future pandemics suggests re-examining the current global food system - in the name of protecting public health.

In an article published in the journal Food Ethics, Florida Atlantic University's Justin Bernstein, Ph.D., senior author, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy within the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and a member of the FAU Center for the Future Mind, which is sponsored by the FAU Brain Institute, and co-author Jan Dutkiewicz, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow at Concordia University, offer three plausible solutions to mitigate zoonotic risk associated with intensive animal agriculture. They explore incentivizing plant-based and cell-based animal source food alternatives through government subsidies, disincentivizing intensive animal source food production through the adoption of a "zoonotic tax," and eliminating intensive animal source food production through a total ban.

"Modern medicine has not only failed to catch up to the zoonotic threat, but in some ways is losing ground, due in part to growing global antibiotic resistance. So, from a public health ethics perspective, we should assess measures aimed at mitigating zoonotic risks," said Bernstein, whose expertise focuses on questions in moral and political philosophy and bioethics and the intersection of the two. "This is especially the case with systemic, predictable sources of zoonotic risk such as agriculture and food production. We argue that if the government may protect public health generally, then this permission extends to radically altering current animal agricultural practices."

The first, and arguably least intrusive public health intervention the authors offer, involves incentivizing alternative choices. Second, they suggest that public health disincentivizes the relevant behavior that poses a public health risk by attaching costs to it. Given that animal source food production can lead to the outbreak of zoonotic disease that can harm both consumers and non-consumers, the authors argue that the goal of disincentivizing both production and consumption could be achieved by a Pigouvian tax - a "zoonotic tax" - on meat.

The third and most intrusive kind of intervention involves the government restricting or eliminating choices. In the context of mitigating the risk of zoonotic pandemics, the authors say that governments might consider making intensive animal agriculture illegal. Of course, given the disruption to food supply chains and both local and national economies, such a ban would have to be carefully and gradually enacted.

"While there are urgent short-term public health measures that can mitigate the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not lose sight of how to prevent the devastation of a future pandemic. In response to the current pandemic, a natural thought is to focus on what public health agencies and local governments should focus on contact tracing, more tests, social distancing and adequate personal protection equipment," said Bernstein. "Yet, while all of these approaches are invaluable, they are not truly preventative in that they do not address a root cause of future zoonotic risk: intensive animal agriculture."

The authors note that the threat of another pandemic may be the right kind of consideration to motivate people to seriously re-examine current dietary practices, especially when they have witnessed firsthand just how devastating a pandemic can be.

"The risk of infectious disease associated with animal agriculture is often overlooked. The COVID-19 pandemic forces us to pay attention to food production and evaluate how to reduce similar outbreaks in the future in the interest of global, collective public health," said Bernstein. "While the exact causes of this particular pandemic still require further investigation, we have highlighted the causal role of intensive animal agriculture in other pandemics and its contribution to increased risk of future zoonotic disease outbreaks."

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Income level, literacy, and access to health care rarely reported in clinical trials

ST. MICHAEL'S HOSPITAL

Research News

 

Clinical trials published in high-profile medical journals rarely report on income or other key sociodemographic characteristics of study participants, according to a new study that suggests these gaps may create blind spots when it comes to health care, especially for disadvantaged populations.

The study, publishing June 2 in JAMA Network Open, analyzed 10 per cent of 2,351 randomized clinical trials published in New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The BMJ, The Lancet and Annals of Internal Medicine between Jan. 1, 2014 and July 31, 2020.

The most commonly reported sociodemographic variables were sex and gender (in 98.7 per cent of trials) and race/ethnicity (in 48.5 per cent). All other sociodemographic data, such as income, literacy or education level, language or housing status were reported in less than 15 per cent of the trials.

"Randomized trials can only work for everyone if they include everyone," said Dr. Aaron Orkin, a researcher and Emergency Physician at St. Joseph's Health Centre of Unity Health Toronto who led the study. "The results of randomized trials affect everybody because they determine how we promote health and how we diagnose and treat disease.

"If trials don't report on the characteristics of the people being studied, there is no way to know that the study's findings will apply to all populations. Trials can only serve populations made vulnerable by social and economic policies if they are included."

The research found that education level or literacy was reported in 14.3 per cent of studies examined, 5.9 per cent reported income or socioeconomic status and 4.6 per cent included participants based on a social determinant of health, such as health insurance or employment status which are social factors that impact health. Of the 237 studies examined, only six (2.5 per cent) reported gender. No studies reported non-binary gender descriptors.

Dr. Orkin used the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine as an example to explain why these findings are important. Public health officials now know that communities who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 tend to also be those who face the most barriers in terms of access to vaccines.

"In Ontario, Manitoba and elsewhere, data on race, ethnicity, income and occupation were collected with cases of COVID-19, and this has informed the vaccine rollout," noted Dr. Andrew Pinto, a Scientist at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions of St. Michael's, who co-led the study and was a co-author. "We need to ensure data on these important social determinants of health are included in COVID-19 treatment and vaccine studies as well," he noted.

Similarly, recently, including women in cardiovascular trials after years of exclusion has led to the discovery that women have different heart disease symptoms and pathologies - something that was not known until women were included in randomized clinical trials about the disease.

"People who face discrimination or disadvantages should have confidence that research being done to benefit them is inclusive," said Dr. Nav Persaud, a scientist at MAP and co-author on the paper.

The authors argue that experiences and outcomes of a disease across cultures, races, income levels, living situations, genders, and other variables will be different. Studying a disease and its treatment in limited groups ultimately limits its applicability.

The authors hope to use the initial information reported in this study to focus on reporting of social determinants in trials in specific disease areas and to change standards in conducting research.

"Trials like the ones we studied have a great impact on clinical guidelines and often determine what gets funded. Inclusivity from the start is essential," Dr. Pinto said.

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