Chronic diseases (NCDs) are a global health epidemic and almost 80% of them occur in low- and middle-income countries. While the WHO have developed policies to combat chronic diseases, research shows that, in certain regions, they are not having the desired effect, leaving fragile health systems increasingly overwhelmed. In order to combat this, thanks to a Horizon Europe grant, Amsterdam UMC is set to lead a global consortium with the aim of developing interventions that work in practice.  Consortium leader and Professor of Global Migration, Ethnicity and Health at Amsterdam UMC, Charles Agyemang notes that, ...

Perfect noncaloric replacements for sugar and high fructose corn syrup just don’t exist yet. For example, some alternatives have a lingering sweet aftertaste and lack a sugar-like mouthfeel, leaving consumers unsatisfied. Now, researchers in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry propose adding blends of nutritionally important mineral salts to make noncaloric sweeteners seem more like the real thing. Taste-testers indicated that these blends gave zero- and low-calorie drinks a better ...

Keeping up with the journeys of wolves and welfare of wild horses has never been easier. With a GPS wildlife tracker powered by an animal's own movements, University of Copenhagen researchers have solved a problem faced by biologists and wildlife managers seeking to track wild animals year after year: dead batteries. The wolf’s comeback in Europe has preoccupied people all across the continent over the last years. Where is it? What is its range? What does it live on? The only way to get solid answers to these questions is through GPS tracking. In ...

Statement Highlights: Nearly 1 in 3 Black adults may develop peripheral artery disease (PAD), compared to about 1 in 5 Hispanic or white adults. If amputation is necessary for treatment, Black, Hispanic and American Indian adults experience lower survival rates and worse quality of life after amputation compared to white adults. Multiple social, economic and health variables contribute to disparities by sex, race and ethnicity in the development, diagnosis and treatment of PAD. Opportunities to address disparities include greater focus on prevention in health care systems, ...

This new work focused on a particular subset of E. coli with a specific capsule - the extracellular barrier that surrounds a bacterium - which scientists have called K1. E. coli with this type of capsule are known to cause invasive diseases such as bloodstream or kidney infections, and meningitis in newborns.  This is because this particular cover allows them to mimic molecules already present in human tissues and enter the body unnoticed.  The researchers present evidence that targeting the capsule can be used ...

New research published in the CABI journal Human-Animal Interactions has revealed that only 30% of show horse owners surveyed in Australia agreed with a ban on the trimming of facial hair prior to its implementation in July 2022. The research found that when asked if facial hair trimming should be banned in all equine competitions, most disciplines broadly agreed (60.5% to 84.6%) apart from showing with only 22.9% of respondents agreeing with a ban. Indeed, some who took part in the research also believed that horses did ...

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have demonstrated that silver retains antimicrobial activity for longer when it is impregnated into ‘bioactive glass’, and shown for the first time how this promising combination delivers more long-lasting antimicrobial wound protection than conventional alternatives.  Bioactive glasses are a unique class of synthetic biomaterials made from silicone and have been used for some years in bone grafting.    Silver has long been known to prevent or reduce the growth ...

Receiving an autism diagnosis in your 20, 30s, 40s, 50s or even 60s may seem daunting, but a new study from psychologists in Bath and London finds that the link between the age at which someone gets diagnosed has little bearing on their quality of life. So-called ‘late diagnosis’ for autism has hit the headlines recently thanks to autism campaigner Christine McGuiness. Whereas autism is usually diagnosed in childhood, it is increasing being diagnosed in adults and especially among women. Parents often wonder if their child finding out they are autistic earlier or later will have an impact on their lives in the long term. Whilst many people who discover they are autistic as adults ...

Toronto, ON, June 15, 2023 – The rate of hospital encounters for benzodiazepine-related toxicity rose by 67 per cent for young adults (aged 19 to 24) and 44 per cent for youth (aged 18 or below) in Ontario between 2013 and 2020, according to a new study from ICES and Unity Health Toronto. Though there was an overall decline of 7 per cent in the provincial rate of benzodiazepine toxicity, this was largely driven by reductions in rates among people aged 35 years and older. Benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed to treat anxiety ...

The climate crisis is turning the temperature up all over the world, but in southern Africa, the rise has been particularly concerning. Wild animals dependent on delicate ecosystems which are already dry, so that food and water scarcity limits their ability to cope with increased heat, are at serious risk. Scientists studied the behavior of three different species of antelope with overlapping ranges in Namibia to try to understand how animals of different sizes and behaviors adapt to the heat. “Even the indigenous wildlife, adapted to hot and arid conditions, shows sensitivity to extreme heat,” said Paul Berry of the University of Potsdam, lead author of the study in ...

Teacher talk seems intuitive – the expert imparts knowledge onto novices, who passively receive expertise like a car or machine receives parts at every station on an assembly line. In reality, an effective teacher in an era of dynamic and higher literacies is less of a factory worker and more of an active negotiator who tries to understand where their students are coming from in order to reach them. The language classroom amplifies this challenge where the negotiation not only centers on the knowledge itself but the means of communication for that knowledge. ...

New research shows that some of the best tools to decrease COVID-19 mortality rates weren’t found in the ER, but rather at the bank. A study of COVID-19 mortality rates across 142 nations has demonstrated a surprisingly strong link between access to formal financial services and lower COVID-19 mortality rates. In fact, it’s proved to be as strong a predictor of lower COVID-19 death rates as several comorbidities are of higher COVID-19 death rates.  “The reduction is surprisingly large, similar in magnitude to, but opposite in direction from, the mortality risks associated with higher rates of lung cancer and hypertension,” says Todd Watkins, ...

Men were significantly more vulnerable than women to overdose deaths involving opioid and stimulant drugs in 2020-2021, according to a new study analyzing death records data from across the United States. The study found that men had a 2–3 times greater rate of overdose mortality from opioids (like fentanyl and heroin) and psychostimulants (like methamphetamine and cocaine). While it has been known that men use drugs at higher rates than women, the researchers found that this alone does not explain the gap in overdose deaths, noting that biological, behavioral, and social factors likely ...

Sea sponges are essential to marine ecosystems. They play critical roles in the ocean, as they provide shelter and food to a plethora of marine creatures, recycle nutrients by filtering thousands of litres of sea water daily, and are hosts to microbes that may be the key to some of the most pressing medical challenges we face today. Now, scientists from UNSW have discovered that when a tropical sea sponge is exposed to warmer temperatures, it loses an important microbe, which could explain why the sponge tissue dies. The latest study, published today in ISME Communications, has revealed that by exposing sea sponges ...

Journals from BMJ Press Release: Embargoed 23:30 hours UK (BST) time Wednesday 14 June 2023 Please click on links for full articles and contact authors direct for further comment - details can be found under Notes for Editors. Please remember to credit the relevant journal - this assures your audience it is from a reputable source.     BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPORTS MEDICINE Externally peer reviewed? Yes Evidence type: Consensus Statement Subjects: People Latest Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport includes: -New and updated age appropriate tools to aid identification ...

The same type of machine learning methods used to pilot self-driving cars and beat top chess players  could help type-1 diabetes sufferers keep their blood glucose levels in a safe range. Scientists at the University of Bristol have shown that reinforcement learning, a type of machine learning in which a computer program learns to make decisions by trying different actions, significantly outperforms commercial blood glucose controllers in terms of safety and effectiveness. By using offline reinforcement learning, where the algorithm learns from patient records, the researchers improve ...

Insulin production has, for the last 50 or so years, come with some risks to the patient. Even so, the medication is lifesaving for the estimated 537 million adults living with diabetes worldwide, with that number expected to grow. Recent clinical studies show that injection via insulin pens can cause insulin to reach the bloodstream so quickly that hypoglycemia, or blood sugar levels that dip below the healthy range, may result. Automated insulin pumps can deliver precise insulin and minimize this risk but are expensive and available only to a small portion of diabetes patients around the world. Now, a plant-based, oral delivery of proinsulin could address these drawbacks, ...

Staffing levels likely drive the differences in hospitalizations and emergency department visits among nursing homes, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Studies show that nursing homes serving high proportions of Black residents may experience poor healthcare outcomes. To better understand the environmental and structural characteristics of nursing homes that may lead to these outcomes, the researchers examined data from 14,121 U.S. nursing homes using multiple ...

By Rebekah Orton Thomas Edison famously tried hundreds of materials and failed thousands of times before discovering that carbonized cotton thread burned long and bright in an incandescent light bulb. Experiments are often time consuming (Edison’s team spent 14 months) and expensive (the winning combination cost about $850,000 in today’s money). Expenses and time increase exponentially when developing the quantum materials that will revolutionize modern electronics and computing. To make quantum material discovery possible, researchers turn to detailed databases as their virtual laboratory. A new database of understudied quantum materials ...

New research shows that polyphenolic compounds, which are commonly found in fruits and vegetables, can be combined with sugar molecules to create potential life-saving drugs. Polyphenols are a class of compounds found in many plant-based foods. Polyphenols help prevent cellular damage in the body and can help to prevent diseases such as cancer or heart disease. However, many of them do not dissolve in water, making it difficult to fully take advantage of their health benefits. Biological Engineering Professor Jixun Zhan and his graduate students Jie Ren and Caleb Barton recently published a comprehensive ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A six-month study of healthy older men demonstrated that daily multivitamin/multimineral supplementation had a positive effect on key nutrition biomarkers. The research led by Oregon State University’s Tory Hagen and Alexander Michels also showed that the changes in nutrition status could have direct connections to cellular function, measured by the oxygen consumption of the study participants’ blood cells. The findings, published in the journal Nutrients, suggest that supplementation may be a key tool to help people stay healthier as they age. “Many older adults take ...

Hundreds of human skulls and mandibles recovered from the Crenshaw site in southwest Arkansas are the remains of ancestors of the Caddo Nation and not foreign enemies, according to a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Collaborating with the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma, researchers at the University of Arkansas and Arkansas Archeological Survey tested lead and strontium isotopes in the teeth of human remains and compared them to ancient animal teeth from several surrounding regions to determine that the 700-year-old human remains were local ...

Many men in northern Europe over the age of 60 suffer from the so-called Viking disease, which means that the fingers lock in a bent position. Now researchers at Karolinska Institutet, together with colleagues, have used data from over 7,000 affected individuals to look for genetic risk factors for the disease. The findings, which have been published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, show that three of the strongest risk factors are inherited from Neanderthals. Up to 30 percent of men in northern Europe over 60 suffer from ...

Three young patients with relapsed T-cell leukaemia have now been treated with base-edited T-cells, as part of a ‘bench-to-bedside’ collaboration between UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH). The data from the NHS clinical trial, published in The New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the MRC, shows how donor CAR T cells were engineered using cutting edge gene editing technology to change single letters of their DNA code so they could fight leukaemia. The experience of using the cells in three patients is shared, and includes 13-year-old Alyssa from Leicester, who last year was the first person in the world to ...

A recent study by researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, and Scripps Research Institute has discovered fluorescent dye FM 1-43 as an effective and versatile tool to visualize PIEZO2 ion channel activity in mechanosensory neurons. The study, published in Neuron, was led by Dr. Kara Marshall, assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, with Dr. Ardem Patapoutian, Nobel Laureate and professor at Scripps Research Institute. Mechanosensation is the ability ...