SWEDEN

The coastal cod population is not extinct

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

 

IMAGE: IN THE FJORDS, QUITE A NUMBER OF JUVENILE COD OF THE COASTAL ECOTYPE WERE CAUGHT. HOWEVER, ONLY A FEW SPECIMENS OVER 40 CENTIMETRES LONG WERE FOUND IN THE NETS. view more 

CREDIT: HÅKAN WENNHAGE

The rumour that the coastal cod is extinct is not true. Through DNA analyses, researchers at the University of Gothenburg have identified that there are still juvenile coastal cod off the west coast of Sweden. However, it is still difficult to find any mature adult cod in the area.

By genetically analysing cod collected by test fishing, researchers from the University of Gothenburg and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) have found that there are two distinct types of cod living in the waters along Sweden’s west coast. These types of cod belong to the same species – the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) – but they are different ‘ecotypes’, genetically adapted to different environments or lifestyles. The two types of cod found off the west coast are known as ‘offshore cod’ and ‘coastal cod’, because one has its origins far out to sea, while the other resides close to the coast throughout its life. These two types of cod rarely mate with each other.

Coastal cod remain in the fjords

Many people have long believed that the west coast’s coastal cod have been completely fished out. But this new study, published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, shows that there is still a cod population that spends all its life off the west coast of Sweden.

"Our analyses show that a high proportion of juvenile cod in the fjords and near the west coast of Sweden are coastal cod. That shows that there is still something left to save. But in the test fishing, you get very, very few adult cod. In test fishing near the coast, only a handful of cod over 40 centimetres in length were found,” says Simon Henriksson, researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

For the study, the researchers collected juvenile, decimetre-long, cod from over 100 different sites in the Skagerrak, the Kattegat and the Sound (Öresund), and analysed them genetically. Their results show that the cod stock in the area is not just made up of offshore cod, but is a mixture of both ecotypes. Offshore cod are found mainly far off the coast and the coastal cod closer to the shore. In the fjords of West Sweden, the proportion of coastal cod is very high, which is a little unexpected given the theory that they were virtually extinct.

"In some places both offshore and coastal cod are found in the same fjord, but they appear to live at different depths. Offshore cod live at slightly greater depths, while coastal cod are more common in shallow waters,” says Simon Henriksson.

Uncertain where the coastal cod go after reaching adulthood

Adult offshore cod spawn in the North Sea or the Outer Skagerrak, and then strong ocean currents carry their eggs and larvae into Swedish waters. Sweden’s west coast acts as a nursery for offshore cod, which at the age of two to four migrate back to the offshore banks to spawn.  

Where the coastal cod go after reaching adulthood remains an unanswered question, given that no spawning coastal cod are found in the fjords, despite the presence of juvenile cod there. Because coastal cod are also found in the Kattegat, the Sound and the Danish Straits, one theory is that their eggs and larvae drift with the currents from there and into the fjords of the Swedish west coast. This could explain the relatively large proportion of juvenile coastal cod found in the test fishing, despite a lack of adult coastal cod.

"In another study from 2019, cod eggs were found in the fjords, which seems to indicate that adult coastal cod do actually spawn in the fjords. But since we cannot see any genetic difference among coastal cod from different areas, we do not know for sure whether there are local spawning populations,” says Simon Henriksson.

The new study shows that the ecotypes display several differences in genes involved in environmental adaptation. This indicates that the differences in where they live may be because they are genetically adapted to different environments. For example, the ecotypes appear to be adapted to different physical conditions such as oxygen concentrations, salinity, and temperature. There are also genetic differences suggesting that the ecotypes differ in terms of foraging, as well as migratory and social behaviours.

Cod populations continuing to decline in Swedish seas

Unfortunately, the results of the genetic analysis do not mean that cod populations are recovering. On the contrary, the numbers of adult and juvenile cod are continuing to decline in all Swedish seas. However, the new results show that we need to account for the fact that there are two different types of cod, that differ genetically and geographically, if we are going to try to rebuild cod stocks along the west coast.

Map over test fishing results

The proportion of cod from each stock differs in different marine areas. The coastal cod (orange) is most common in the Sound and in the fjords of West Sweden. Further away from the coast, virtually only offshore cod (blue) are found.

CREDIT

Simon Henriksson

The sampling was carried out at over 100 different sites along the Swedish coast and in the fjords, from the Sound in the south to the Koster Islands in the north. Sampling was done both near the coast and further out to sea, in the Skagerrak and the Kattegat.

CREDIT

Håkan Wennhage

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JOURNAL

ICES Journal of Marine Science

DOI

10.1093/icesjms/fsac220 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Mixed origin of juvenile Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) along the Swedish west coast

Latin American and Caribbean researchers detail colonialism in ornithology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA

A new paper in Ornithological Applications, published by Oxford University Press, reviews multiple ways in which the field of ornithology systemically excludes researchers and research from Latin America and the Caribbean, despite this region harboring the most bird species on Earth. The paper, signed by 124 ornithologists (including professional scientists, naturalists, park rangers, and technicians) from 19 countries, also explains what the field might do to start addressing the problems identified.

A major barrier to advancing ornithology, says the paper, is the marginalization of researchers from the Global South, meaning Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and most of Asia. Latin America and the Caribbean is home to 3700 bird species, across habitats from lowland tropical rainforest to the High Andes. It also includes more than 40 countries and a human population comparable to that of Europe. Yet of the 10 papers published in a recent special feature about the region (in Advances in Neotropical Ornithology), only three included authors affiliated with an institution within the region. Such discrepancies are widespread in peer-reviewed scientific journals and, the authors argue, result from a long history of colonialism that scientists continue to sweep under the proverbial rug.

The paper explains that language hegemony, publication costs, and North-biased views of what is novel exclude many excellent ornithologists from publishing in global-scope journals and dramatically reduce the extent to which their work is cited.

The authors noted that reviewers and editors rarely ask scholars from Europe, Canada, or the United States to translate, learn, or cite theory and case studies from Latin America or Africa, but they routinely expect scholars from the Global South to frame their work in the context of research from Europe or North America.

The paper argues that such systemic barriers are not only unjust to researchers from the Global South; they are also detrimental to ornithological scholarship and bird conservation. Scientific rigor, the authors point out, is not simply the sum of individually rigorous research articles, but an emergent property of a collection of complementary studies from a diversity of regions and perspectives. For example, patterns of bird sexual behavior and nest orientation, initially purported to be global, turned out to hold only in the northern hemisphere when researchers included data from Latin America and the Caribbean.

The authors noted that the geographical and cultural richness of ornithological knowledge, and conceptualizations of birds, are inherent even in bird names. Indigenous Peoples and other communities in Latin America tend to name birds for their behavior (e.g., in Mupuzungun, “küchag”―which leaves waste after eating), vocalizations (“fio-fio”), or the time of year they are present, reflecting both knowledge of their ecology and an unambiguous method of species identification (calls and songs).

In contrast, their English names, and, increasingly, Spanish derivatives, reflect broad, often ambiguous taxonomic categories, a general geographic location (“Patagonian Sierra Finch”), or the appearance of museum specimens (“White-crested Elaenia”), which are not always useful and can even be misleading in field identification. The authors argue that ornithologists―in the Global North and South―have set back their own field by suppressing the rich and nuanced ornithological knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and other communities across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The authors of the paper recognize that there is no easy recipe to eliminate all of the injustices in science that arise from centuries of colonialism, but they encourage all scientists to notice, question, and interrupt the systems that perpetuate existing hierarchies of class, race, gender, and geography.

To begin addressing the long legacy of colonialism in science, they suggest that researchers worldwide ensure that they read and cite work from the Global South, especially work by Indigenous, Black, and Brown women. They propose that institutions should adopt new policies and assessment criteria that encourage researchers to step back from top-down positions and support collective leadership that includes people outside academia.

The authors urge global-scope journals to maintain or create options for free or low-cost publication, to offer the option of a submission and review process in Spanish, and to ensure that papers about birds in Latin America and the Caribbean include the full participation of authors from the region, from the design of the study to the interpretation of the results. They also propose that global-scope ornithological journals should adjust their criteria for publication with the aim to publish all scientifically robust and ethically rigorous ornithology research submitted by first authors based in Latin America or the Caribbean, including negative results and articles on basic biology.

The groundwork for such change is already in place: ornithology in Latin America and the Caribbean is now underpinned by regional institutions, conservation programs, and a rapidly growing cadre of students, professionals, and non-academics based in this region, who creatively propel the discipline. Today locally driven and government-funded research, scientific societies, universities, scientific collections, non-governmental organizations, community-science projects, international collaborations, and contributions from independent naturalists, birding clubs, tour guides, environmental licensing studies, Indigenous communities, and park rangers make ornithological research in the Neotropics possible.

 “Colonialism still has profound impacts in our society, whether people feel comfortable with that or not, said Letícia Soares of Saint Louis University, one of the lead authors of the publication. “We (researchers in the Neotropics) often enforce the colonialist perspectives. Field biology has such a strong enforced stereotype of having been pioneered by white European males. Disrupting this narrative should be a commitment of everyone in the field. Then we can walk toward acknowledgment, justice, and reconciliation, both in ornithology and other field sciences.”

The paper, “Neotropical ornithology: Reckoning with historical assumptions, removing systemic barriers, and reimagining the future,” is available (at midnight on February 7th) at: https://academic.oup.com/condor/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/ornithapp/duac046.

Direct correspondence to: 
Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza
Universidad Veracruzana
Instituto de Biotecnología y Ecología Aplicada
Xalapa, Ver., México 91090
ruelas.uv@gmail.com

To request a copy of the study, please contact:
Daniel Luzer 
daniel.luzer@oup.com

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JOURNAL

Ornithological Applications

DOI

10.1093/ornithapp/duac046 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Neotropical ornithology: Reckoning with historical assumptions, removing systemic barriers, and reimagining the future

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Feb-2023

Using environmental DNA for to survey the populations of endangered species

Scientists surveyed ’bitterling fish,' an endangered freshwater species, using a new semi-quantitative system that uses environmental DNA

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OKAYAMA UNIVERSI

 

IMAGE: R. A . SUIGENSIS IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES FACING LOCAL EXTINCTION IN THEIR NATURAL HABITATS IN JAPAN. SCIENTISTS AT OKAYAMA UNIVERSITY HAVE DEVELOPED A NOVEL ENVIRONMENTAL DNA SURVEY METHOD THAT CAN AID CONSERVATION EFFORTS FOR THIS SPECIES. view more 

CREDIT: KAZUYOSHI NAKATA

Changes in river systems, overfishing and the appearance of new, invasive species can lead to a drastic decline in the number of native fish inhabiting aquatic ecosystems. In the Ashida river basin in Japan, the bitterling fish (Rhodeus atremius suigensis), which was previously found in abundance, is now facing local extinction. This is concerning, considering that it is recognized as an indicator species for the conservation of fish diversity in freshwater ecosystems. Conservation efforts to protect native aquatic fauna require field studies of large areas to understand the habitat needs and population density of different species. This is a challenging task, requiring substantial time and effort. To overcome this obstacle, scientists usually focus on small areas and trace the DNA discarded by living organisms into their environment. This environmental DNA (or eDNA) can be analyzed to identify species that recently visited the area, in a non-invasive and time-efficient manner.

 

Recently, scientists from the Okayama University in Japan used eDNA to survey not only the presence but also the distribution and population density of R. a. suigensis in the Ashida river basin in Fukuyama, Japan. They employed a semi-quantitative eDNA analysis method using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. They developed DNA primers that detected a stretch of the mitochondrial DNA of R. a. suigensis, which made their analysis highly specific to only this particular species. Their findings were published in the Journal of Landscape and Ecological Engineering on 23 November 2022.

 

“We first confirmed the utility of this analysis in aquarium experiments, before performing field surveys.” says Prof. Kazuyoshi Nakata from Okayama University, who led the study. “We set fish traps at 48 points in an agricultural channel in the Ashida river basin and examined the relationship between fish presence and eDNA concentration.” The research team also included Ms. Kanoko Otsuki, Dr. Mayuko Hamada, and Prof. Tatsuya Sakamoto from Okayama University, and Dr. Noriyuki Koizumi from the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization.

 

The researchers found that eDNA concentrations vary according to the downstream channel distance from the point where specimens of R. a. suigensis were captured—the greater the distance, the lower the eDNA concentration. “Our results serve as a reference to how far and how much downstream eDNA can be detected, which will be useful to guide future conservation surveys,” says Prof. Nakata.

 

Thus, the researchers could verify that the concentrations of eDNA were indicative of the distribution and abundance of R. a. suigensis. Since this technique requires only the sampling of water in the field, even local residents can help carry out ecological surveys. Future conservation efforts can apply the information obtained from these surveys to design appropriate strategies.

 

This technique is highly scalable and can be replicated for larger areas. Further, with the development of corresponding molecular tools, such as specific primers, this technique can be modified to survey other endangered species as well. This will help in not only the promotion of the conservation of endangered species, but also contribute invaluably towards awareness regarding the importance of biodiversity conservation with the involvement of local communities.

 

About Okayama University, Japan

As one of the leading universities in Japan, Okayama University aims to create and establish a new paradigm for the sustainable development of the world. Okayama University offers a wide range of academic fields, which become the basis of the integrated graduate schools. This not only allows us to conduct the most advanced and up-to-date research, but also provides an enriching educational experience.

Website: https://www.okayama-u.ac.jp/index_e.html

 

About Professor Kazuyoshi Nakata

Dr. Kazuyoshi Nakata is a Professor at the Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science at Okayama University, Japan. His areas of interest include conservation, ecology, and civil engineering, with a focus on endangered or invasive freshwater animals including fish, crustaceans and frogs etc. He has published articles on various topics across these subjects. Prof. Nakata was previously associated with Hokkaido University.

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JOURNAL

Landscape and Ecological Engineering

DOI

10.1007/s11355-022-00531-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Quantitative PCR method to detect an extremely endangered bitterling fish (<span style="font-style:italic">Rhodeus atremius suigensis</span>) using environmental DNA

New insecticidal compounds remain effective against target species while reducing bee toxicity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

 

IMAGE: A BEE AND THE MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF THE COMPOUND RESEARCHED. view more 

CREDIT: CHEN ZHAO/SOUTH CHINA AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY

Researchers at South China Agricultural University have developed new insecticidal compounds that show significantly reduced bee toxicity without reducing effectiveness against target pests – in this case, the diamondback moth and red imported fire ant. 

Arylpyrazole insecticides such as fipronil display broad-spectrum insecticidal activity against insect pests, but their high toxicity to honeybees prohibits their agronomic use. In this study, published on 7 February in the SCI journal Pest Management Science, the researchers designed and synthesised a series of new spiro-pyrazolo quinazoline derivatives intended to reduce the toxicity of arylpyrazole analogs to bees.

Spiro motifs are compounds that have at least two molecular rings with only one common atom. They are ubiquitous in natural products and bioactive molecules, but despite their wide application in other fields, between 2010 and 2021 there were fewer than 140 reports of their pesticidal activity. Speaking to SCI, Professor Hanhong Xu, Professor Chen Zhao, and Dr Guankai Yao explained:

‘With high specificity and diversity in structures, spiro motifs have been widely used in pharmaceuticals, asymmetric catalysis, optical materials, flame-retardant materials, polymeric adhesives, etc. However, only a few spiro-containing compounds have become representative pesticides on the market at present, such as spirodiclofen and spirotetramat by Bayer. 

‘The reasons include the difficulty of synthesis and relatively limited pest species that they are effective against, which bring about high cost for production and field application. Meanwhile, many spiro compounds possess chiral isomerism. Thus, when assessing their efficacy and safety, it is necessary to fully consider the different bioactivities, toxicities, and environmental behaviors of isomers, leading to long R&D cycles.’

The team employed scaffold hopping techniques – an agrochemical discovery strategy widely used to find novel candidates to improve activity levels and/or avoid adverse toxicity. This technique has been successfully used in herbicide research, for example, leading to discovery of the cellulose-biosynthesis inhibitor indaziflam. 

Asked about their choice of the diamondback moth (P. xylostella) and imported red fire ant (S. invicta) as target pests in this study, the researchers noted:

‘The diamondback moth is among the world’s top-ten pests that severely damage cruciferous vegetables and reduce the yield. The red fire ant is one of the world’s worst invasive alien species, threatening human health and the ecosystem. Respectively, being representative of Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera pests, insecticidal activity against the diamondback moth and red imported fire ant usually indicates similar results for other pests with similar species. In fact, further studies in our lab have revealed excellent insecticidal activity of our compounds against the fall armyworm and the Asian citrus psylla.’

Results showed that most of the compounds displayed good insecticidal activity – and some comparable with that of fipronil – against the target pests, making them promising insecticide candidates. Remarkably, the bee toxicity study confirmed that one new compound, “5f” showed much lower acute oral toxicity with an LD50 value (1.15 μg bee−1) that was three to four 3–4 orders of magnitude that of fipronil (0.0012 μg bee−1). 

‘Fipronil is a landmark product in the field of insecticides but has been banned for usage due to its high toxicity to non-target organisms, especially honeybees. During the past twenty years, a series of studies have been conducted in our group on the structural modification of fipronil, aiming for enhanced bioavailability and reduced toxicity. The combination of the spiro motif, as reported in this research paper, is one of our new attempts, and the significance of reduction on bee toxicity is within our expectation. There will be follow-up results on the relevant mechanism’, Professor Zhao explained.

In order to meet the requirements of industrial production, the researchers will need to further improve the yields and scalability of the molecules. The team is currently working on the optimisation of the synthesis process and the screening of isomers with enhanced bioactivity to reduce the cost of production.

‘We will keep working on the structural optimisation of our molecules, as well as the development of simple and efficient strategies for constructing spiro motifs. We hope that more compounds with excellent pesticidal activity could be discovered in the future, and similar spiro structures could occupy a larger share of the pesticide market’, the researchers said. 

 

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JOURNAL

Pest Management Science

DOI

10.1002/ps.7287 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Design, synthesis, and biological activity of novel spiro-pyrazolo[1,5-a]quinazolines derivatives as potential insecticides

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Feb-2023

 Surprises in sea turtle genes could help them adapt to a rapidly changing world

Collaborative, international research effort led by UMass Amherst unveils the highest quality map of sea turtles’ genomes, giving scientists a head-start on conservation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

 

IMAGE: GREEN TURTLES, SUCH AS THIS ONE, HAVE EVOLVED TO HAVE MORE GENES DEDICATED TO IMMUNITY. view more 

CREDIT: RALPH PACE

February 7, 2023

Surprises in Sea Turtle Genes Could Help Them Adapt to a Rapidly Changing World

Collaborative, international research effort led by UMass Amherst unveils the highest quality map of sea turtles’ genomes, giving scientists a head-start on conservation

AMHERST, Mass. – Around 100 million years ago, a group of land-dwelling turtles took to the oceans, eventually evolving into the sea turtles that we know today. However, the genetic foundations that have enabled them to thrive in oceans throughout the world have remained largely unknown. In research recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of 48 researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and the Vertebrate Genome Project revealed an incredibly detailed genetic map of two species—green and leatherback turtles—which is packed with surprises that might hold the key to their survival in a rapidly changing world.

A single species’ genome contains the genetic set of instructions used to build that species, and sequencing any species’ genome is an enormous amount of work. This is akin to translating an entire library into a language that scientists can read and has only been possible in the last few decades. For green sea turtles, a “draft” genome, including approximately 100,000 pieces of genetic information, has been available since 2013, “but” says Blair Bentley, a postdoctoral researcher in environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the lead author of the new research, “these pieces of genetic information weren’t precisely mapped out. It was as if you walked into a library and found 100,000 pages lying on the floor.”

To more precisely catalogue the turtles’ genomes, the international team turned to new technologies including long read sequencing—a technique recently named 2022 Method of the Year by the journal Nature. This has made it possible to sequence genomes from virtually any living species and to do so with far more accuracy than was previously possible. Sequencing of the turtles’ genomes was performed both at Rockefeller University, in the Vertebrate Genome Laboratory (VGL), led by Erich Jarvis, who chairs the VGP, and Olivier Fedrigo who is director of the VGL, and at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics by Eugene Myers—all coauthors on the new study. “These advances allowed us to do the equivalent of shelving everything according to the Dewey Decimal System so that we can begin to understand how everything fits together,” says Bentley.

Once Bentley and his co-authors had correctly organized and annotated the genetic data, they started finding surprises. The first is that, though greens and leatherbacks diverged from a common ancestor about 60 million years ago, their genomes are remarkably similar.

Similar, but not the same. “It’s those differences that make them unique,” says Lisa Komoroske, professor of environmental conservation at UMass and one of the paper’s two senior authors. And it’s those differences that may hold the key to each species’ long-term survival, especially considering that populations of both greens and leatherbacks have seen precipitous declines due to human activity.

It turns out that green turtles have evolved more genes dedicated to immunity, suggesting an immune system that is better prepared for new pathogens, as well as more olfactory receptors—they have better senses of smell. The leatherback genome also shows that they lower genetic diversity and have historically had lower population levels. “This is both a blessing and a curse,” says Komoroske, “because it means that, while leatherbacks are a resilient species, there isn’t much genetic diversity for them to evolve to meet the challenges of their rapidly changing environment.” Insights such as these will help conservation biologists make more informed decisions about how best to protect these animals as they face the challenges of adapting to our rapidly changing planet.

Furthermore, the more time Bentley and Komoroske spent in the turtles’ genomes, the more it became clear that much of the genetic differences between the two species is to be found, not on the macrochromosomes, but on what was once considered to be “genetic junk”: microchromosomes, or small genetic bits that seem not to exist in mammals but are characteristic of avian and reptilian genomes. “We found most of the divergences between the green and the leatherbacks on these microchromosomes,” says Camila Mazzoni, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and the study’s other senior author, “and our work feeds into the growing scholarship on the importance of microchromosomes in vertebrate evolution.”

“The only way we could do this work at all was through an incredible collaborative network that brought scientists from different fields together with organizations like the Vertebrate Genome Project and NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center, supported by funders from around the world,” says Komoroske. Indeed, the research was supported by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Vertebrate Genomes Project, Sanger Institute, São Paolo Research Foundation, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Generalitat de Catalunya, la Caixa Foundation, Vienna Science and Technology Fund, City of Vienna, Welsh Government Sêr Cymru II, European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant, the Florida Sea Turtle Grants Program, and individual international donors.

 

Contacts: Lisa Komoroske, lkomoroske@umass.edu

                 Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu

 

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2201076120 

ARTICLE TITLE

Divergent sensory and immune gene evolution in sea turtles with contrasting demographic and life histories

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Feb-2023

THIRD WORLD U$A

Dental service use falls, oral health worsens after people become eligible for Medicare

For nearly 1 in 20 adults, Medicare eligibility was associated with the loss of all their teeth

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

Half of all older adults in the U.S. lack dental insurance and, in 2018, nearly half of older adults received no dental care. A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, examined changes in dental care and oral health after older adults become eligible for Medicare, the traditional version of which covers medical services, but not dental care. Among more than 97,000 people, the researchers found a dramatic drop in the percentage of people receiving restorative dental care and an almost 5 percentage point increase the number people who lost all their teeth after they turned 65 and became eligible for Medicare. Their results are published in Health Affairs.

“Older adults have the lowest rates of dental insurance in the U.S. and cost is a major barrier for many in seeking dental care,” said corresponding author Lisa Simon, MD, DMD, a resident in the Brigham’s Department of Medicine. “We know that Medicare, by covering medical services, improves health outcomes and reduces racial health inequities among older adults, but it has the exact opposite effect for dental care.”

With very limited exceptions, traditional Medicare does not cover dental services. Medicare Advantage plans can offer dental services, but the extent of coverage varies. Federal efforts to expand Medicare dental coverage have not passed and policy debates about dental benefits are ongoing.

Simon and colleagues analyzed national data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys from 2010 to 2019, examining changes in dental insurance and oral health care immediately after respondents became eligible for Medicare. The surveys included community-dwelling adults ages 50 to 85.

The team found that both traditional Medicare and Medical Advantage beneficiaries experienced immediate and long-term reductions in dental services use after Medicare enrollment. While the total number of annual dental visits did not change, the number of visits for restorative procedures, such as fillings or crowns, decreased by 8.7 percent. Adults also experienced an increase in complete edentulism—loss of all teeth—which puts people at higher risk of poor nutrition, lower quality of life and progression of cognitive impairment.

“Loss of teeth can have a number of negative downstream effects,” said Simon. “It’s associated with many geriatric conditions, including frailty and cognitive function.”

The authors note that the survey data used did not allow them to follow participants over long periods and the changes detected could be confounded by other life changes at age 65, such as retirement or receipt of Social Security income. Using other forms of survey data could help investigators focus on at-risk populations, such as adults living in long-term care facilities, and could help to identify and compare what dental benefit Medicare Advantage programs offer.

“Without dental coverage for adults who are eligible Medicare, we are seeing a rise in loss of teeth after age 65 among nearly 1 in 20 adults, which represents millions of Americans,” said Simon. “Our findings capture the magnitude of the problem but also point to the opportunity to improve oral health care access and outcomes, should policy makers expand Medicare coverage to include dental services.”

Disclosures: Simon received funding for consulting work with the CareQuest Foundation and the PrimaryCare Collaborative in 2020 and 2021.

Funding: This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Grant No. K23 AG058806), the Office of the Director, NIH (NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, DP5-OD024564).

Paper cited: Simon L et al. “Dental Services Use: Medicare Beneficiaries Experience Immediate And Long-Term Reductions After Enrollment” Health Affairs DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01899

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JOURNAL

Health Affairs

DOI

10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01899 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Dental Services Use: Medicare Beneficiaries Experience Immediate And Long-Term Reductions After Enrollment

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Feb-2023

COI STATEMENT

Simon received funding for consulting work with the CareQuest Foundation and the PrimaryCare Collaborative in 2020 and 2021.

WHY IT'S BECOME A BILLIONAIRES HIDE AWAY

NZ one of few island nations with potential to produce enough food in a nuclear winter

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

 

IMAGE: NICK WILSON view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

New Zealand is one of only a few island nations that could continue to produce enough food to feed its population in a nuclear winter, researchers have found.

In a new study Professor Nick Wilson, from the University of Otago and independent researcher Dr Matt Boyd, from Adapt Research in New Zealand, say five island nations, including New Zealand, could be well placed to continue to produce food despite the reduced sunlight and cooler temperatures caused by soot in the atmosphere following a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia (an island continent), Iceland, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands were also likely to have robust food self-sufficiency, even in an extreme nuclear winter.

Their research is published in the international journal Risk Analysis.

Professor Wilson says while New Zealand was likely to continue to be able to produce enough food, its production and distribution was still threatened by the country’s extreme dependence on imported commodities, such as refined fuel.

The researchers investigated the impact of abrupt sunlight reducing scenarios caused by nuclear war, super volcano eruptions or asteroid impacts on agricultural production globally. They applied published crop models under ‘nuclear winter’ conditions to 38 island nations, combining this with other methods to estimate the food calorie supply. They also assessed a range of resilience factors that might protect countries from the impacts of a nuclear winter.

Dr Boyd says although some other nations would likely be able to produce enough food, other factors, such as the collapse of industry and social functioning placed their resilience in doubt.

Professor Wilson says the findings are consistent with a 1980s study on the impact of nuclear war on New Zealand, although the country’s resilience has declined since then as its dependence on  imported diesel and digital infrastructure has grown.

“Islands such as New Zealand are often very dependent on imports of refined liquid fuel, may lack energy self-sufficiency and are susceptible to breakdowns and shortages of critical commodities. While New Zealand could divert a high proportion of its dairy exports to supply the local market, it lacks the ability to manufacture many replacement parts for farm and food processing machinery.”

Dr Boyd says the findings of the study reinforce the precarious position many countries would find themselves in during a global catastrophe.

“New Zealand has the potential to preserve an industrial society through this kind of catastrophe, but it is not ‘plug-and-play’. A decent amount of strategic planning needs to happen and across a long period of time, but this planning would have benefits in dealing with a wide range of extreme risks.”

Dr Boyd says the findings show there is a need to analyse nuclear winter and other abrupt sunlight reducing scenarios as part of a comprehensive national risk assessment.

“We are not aware of any plan for this kind of global catastrophe, including whether priorities for rationing have been considered.

“With the Government expected to release New Zealand’s first National Security Strategy this year it is important that the catastrophic risks associated with abrupt sunlight reducing scenarios do not slip through the cracks.”

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JOURNAL

Risk Analysis

DOI

10.1111/risa.14072 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Island refuges for surviving nuclear winter and other abrupt sunlight-reducing catastrophes

Employing tradeoffs for more realistic COVID messaging

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Wash your hands. Wear a high-quality mask. Keep 6 feet between you and others. Meet outside when possible.

For nearly three years, the public has been inundated with rules, regulations and suggestions from public health officials on the best way to stay safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But with so many rules, and little direction about which matter more, people have been left to guesswork, which may have cost lives.

Economist Ori Heffetz, associate professor in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, and a colleague conducted an experiment with nearly 700 people in three countries to gauge the public’s perception of relative risk factors.

Among the conclusions: Talking 14 minutes longer was thought to be as risky as standing a foot closer; being indoors was thought as risky as standing three feet closer outdoors; and removing a properly worn mask, by either party, was thought as risky as standing four to five feet closer.

“Estimating Perceptions of the Relative COVID risk of Different Social-Distancing Behaviors From Respondents’ Pairwise Assessments” published Feb. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Heffetz’s co-author was Matthew Rabin, the Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics at Harvard University.

Heffetz and Rabin wanted to investigate the idea of tradeoffs in the context of people making decisions regarding their health.

“We wondered whether doctors and health officials are too reticent to indicate the relative importance of different measures,” said Heffetz, who’s also a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“Imagine someone talking to their dentist, where they ask if it’s more important to floss twice a day or brush more often,” he said.  “And the dentist always tells them, ‘Do both.’ But we want to understand what’s a big deal, what’s not so big, how do they compare?”

Their goal in this work: Helping to transform messaging, regarding COVID and other health and nonhealth domains, to more closely resemble the way most people make decisions.

“Think about weight loss, and the tradeoffs people make,” Heffetz said. “Nobody says, ‘Don’t eat anything but leaves.’ They’ll say, ‘Have your cup of coffee without cream, you’ll save so many calories,’ or ‘Indulge, and then spend two hours at the gym.’ We have a metric – calories – and we can use it to price things. And then we make our decisions. We can make our tradeoffs.”

For their experiment, conducted during the spring and summer of 2021, Heffetz and Rabin showed 676 online respondents in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Israel 30 pairs of five-second videos of acquaintances meeting. Respondents were asked to judge, for one of the two people designated, which of the two scenarios in each pair was riskier.

From their responses, the researchers were able to estimate people’s perceptions of how risks changed by the features of the conversation. They used videos rather than verbal descriptions in order to let people judge each depiction on their own, without any prompting.

“We wanted to do something that looks to respondents as realistic as possible,” Heffetz said. “And then we don’t draw their attention to any specific thing, we just show them the scenario. And if they notice the mask, the distance between the subjects, the cough or the hug … we let them pick what they think is important and then see what emerges.”

Heffetz and Rabin wondered if the messaging from health officials could have benefitted from a more nuanced set of guidelines.

“We only saw the list of things – ‘Do all of these things,’” Heffetz said. “But which one is more important, and less important? It was hard to get an answer. That may have cost lives, because people may have made the wrong decisions.”

But like the dentist, Heffetz said, health officials don’t want to tell you that one behavior may be more important than another. In a perfect world, people do them all because they’re all important.

“I’m sure some people do them all, but most of us often have to make a decision between two imperfect bundles,” he said. “And we would really like to know which one the professionals consider is the better choice in this case.

“Our results may suggest a major health-risk public-communications failure in terms of how behaviors compare in relative risk,” Heffetz said. “We think this would be something that maybe policymakers would listen to.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2219599120