Culture

Plastic is practical, cheap and incredibly popular. Every year, more than 350 million tonnes are produced worldwide. These plastics contain a huge variety of chemicals that may be released during their lifecycles - including substances that pose a significant risk to people and the environment. However, only a small proportion of the chemicals contained in plastic are publicly known or have been extensively studied.

A team of researchers led by Stefanie Hellweg, ETH Professor of Ecological Systems Design, has for a first time compiled a comprehensive database of plastic monomers, additives and processing aids for use in the production and processing of plastics on the world market, and systematically categorized them on the basis of usage patterns and hazard potential. The study, just published in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology, provides an enlightening but worrying insight into the world of chemicals that are intentionally added to plastics.

A high level of chemical diversity

The team identified around 10,500 chemicals in plastic. Many are used in packaging (2,489), textiles (2,429) and food-contact applications (2,109); some are for toys (522) and medical devices, including masks (247). Of the 10,500 substances identified, the researchers categorized 2,480 substances (24 percent) as substances of potential concern.

"This means that almost a quarter of all the chemicals used in plastic are either highly stable, accumulate in organisms or are toxic. These substances are often toxic to aquatic life, cause cancer or damage specific organs," explains Helene Wiesinger, doctoral student at the Chair of Ecological Systems Design and lead author of the study. About half are chemicals with high production volumes in the EU or the US.

"It is particularly striking that many of the questionable substances are barely regulated or are ambiguously described," continues Wiesinger.

In fact, 53 percent of all the substances of potential concern are not regulated in the US, the EU or Japan. More surprisingly, 901 hazardous substances are approved for use in food contact plastics in these regions. Finally, scientific studies are lacking for about 10 percent of the identified substances of potential concern.

Plastic monomers, additives and processing aids

Plastics are made of organic polymers built up from repeating monomer units. A wide variety of additives, such as antioxidants, plasticisers and flame retardants, give the polymer matrix the desired properties. Catalysts, solvents and other chemicals are also used as processing aids in production.

"Until now, research, industry and regulators have mainly concentrated on a limited number of dangerous chemicals known to be present in plastics," says Wiesinger. Today, plastic packaging is seen as a main source of organic contamination in food, while phthalate plasticisers and brominated flame retardants are detectable in house dust and indoor air. Earlier studies have already indicated that significantly more plastic chemicals used worldwide are potentially hazardous.

Nevertheless, the results of the inventory came as an unpleasant surprise to the researchers. "The unexpectedly high number of substances of potential concern is worrying," says Zhanyun Wang, senior scientist in Hellweg's group. Exposure to such substances can have a negative impact on the health of consumers and workers and on polluted ecosystems. Problematic chemicals can also affect recycling processes and the safety and quality of recycled plastics.

Wang stresses that even more chemicals in plastics could be problematic. "Recorded hazard data are often limited and scattered. For 4,100 or 39 percent of all the substances we identified, we were not able to categorize them due to a lack of hazard classifications" he says.

A lack of data and transparency

The two researchers identified the lack of transparency in chemicals in plastics and dispersed data silos as a main problem. In over two and a half years of detective work, they combed through more than 190 publicly accessible data sources from research, industry and authorities and identified 60 sources with sufficient information about intentionally added substances in plastics. "We found multiple critical knowledge and data gaps, in particular for the substances and their actual uses. This ultimately hinders consumers' choice of safe plastic products", they say.

Wiesinger and Wang are pursuing the goal of a sustainable circular plastic economy. They see an acute need for effective global chemicals management; such a system would have to be transparent and independent, and oversee all hazardous substances in full. The two researchers say that open and easy access to reliable information is crucial.

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Mental distress tends to be lower in the summer when compared to the fall, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

"Our results suggest that summertime is associated with better diet quality, higher exercise frequency and improved mood. This is important for the post-COVID era as we are getting into the summer season," said Lina Begdache, assistant professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University.

Begdache had previously published research suggesting that mental distress and exercise frequency are associated with different dietary and lifestyle patterns. In a new study, Begdache and colleagues wanted to investigate the nature of the associations between diet quality, sleep quality, exercise, seasonal changes and mental distress among men and women based on age-groups -- reflective of brain maturity -- to potentially describe their intricate role in mental distress.

"Taken all together, our results confirmed the hypothesis that risk factors for mental distress are dynamic," said Begdache. "They also suggest that improving one factor may positively impact all others. For instance, if it is hard to improve diet or up exercise frequency, starting with adjusting the sleep cycle may ease the task. Likewise, upping exercise frequency may improve diet and sleep quality. This virtuous cycle will eventually lead to improving mental wellbeing, according to our results.

Additionally, our results support the notion of personalizing therapies based on gender and age-groups."

The researchers collected daily data on diet, sleep, overall well-being, exercise and mental distress from individuals of different ages and followed them for four weeks in the summer and fall, for two years. The reason for the seasonal change was to account for alterations in circadian rhythm.

The researchers found the following:

- Good quality diet was associated with mental well-being.

- Good sleep quality was associated with mental and overall well-being, as well as with higher diet quality and exercise frequency.

- Seasonal changes had an impact on diet quality and mental health. - Mental distress tended to be lower in the summer when compared to the fall.

- Seasonal changes were associated with alterations in diet quality and mental wellbeing.

"The association between diet, sleep, exercise, and seasonal changes in relation to mental distress is complex and multidimensional. These variables are intertwined in a way that a shift in one factor may alter directionality of others and, consequently, impact mood," said Begdache. "Therefore, it is crucial to recognize the dynamic relationships between these lifestyle factors and mental distress to provide the groundwork necessary for nutritionists and healthcare professionals to improve prophylactic and therapeutic approaches."

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is often used to determine the chemical composition of materials. It was developed in the 1960s and is accepted as a standard method in materials science. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, however, have shown that the method is often used erroneously.

"It is, of course, an ideal in research that the methods used are critically examined, but it seems that a couple of generations of researchers have failed to take seriously early signals that the calibration method was deficient. This was the case also for a long time in our own research group. Now, however, we hope that XPS will be used with greater care", says Grzegorz Greczynski, senior lecturer in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linköping University.

Grzegorz Greczynski and his colleague in the department, Professor Lars Hultman, have shown that XPS can give misleading analysis results due to an erroneous assumption during calibration. The results have been published in Scientific Reports.

XPS is used to determine the chemical composition of materials. It is a standard method in materials science, and more than 12,000 scientific articles with results obtained by XPS are published each year. The technique was developed during the 1960s by Professor Kai Siegbahn at Uppsala University to become a useful and powerful method for chemical analysis, and the work led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1981.

"The pioneering work that led to the Nobel Prize is not in question here. When the technique was developed initially, the error was comparatively small, due to the low calibration precision of the spectrometers used at the time. However, as spectroscopy developed rapidly and spread to other scientific fields, the instruments have been improved to such a degree that the underlying error has grown into a significant obstacle to future development", says Lars Hultman.

What the researchers have discovered is that the original method is being used wrongly, through an erroneous assumption used in the calibration process. When calibrating the experiment, the signal from elemental carbon accumulating on the sample surface is often used.

It turns out that the carbon-based compounds that are formed naturally by condensation onto most samples give rise to signals that depend on the surroundings and the substrate onto which they are attached, in other words, the sample itself. This means that a unique signal is not produced, and large errors arise when a more or less arbitrary value is used as reference to calibrate the measuring instrument.

Criticism against the method was raised as early as the 1970s and a bit into the 1980s. After that, however, knowledge about the error fell into oblivion. Lars Hultman suggests that several factors have interacted to allow the error to pass unnoticed for nearly 40 years. He believes that the dramatic increase in the number of journals that digital publishing has made possible is one such factor, while deficient reviewing procedures are another.

"Not only has a rapidly growing number of scientists failed to be critical, it seems that there is a form of carelessness among editors and reviewers for the scientific journals. This has led to the publishing of interpretations of data that are clearly in conflict with basic physics. You could call it a perfect storm. It's likely that the same type of problem with deficient critical assessment of methods is present in several scientific disciplines, and in the long term this risks damaging research credibility", says Lars Hultman.

Grzegorz Greczynski hopes that their discovery can not only continue to improve the XPS technique, but also contribute to a more critical approach within the research community.

"Our experiments show that the most popular calibration method leads to nonsense results and the use of it should therefore be terminated. There exist alternatives that can give more reliable calibration, but these are more demanding of the user and some need refinement. However, it is just as important to encourage people to be critical of established methods in lab discussions, in the development department, and in seminars", Grzegorz Greczynski concludes.

When a University of Michigan-led research team reported last year that North American migratory birds have been getting smaller over the past four decades and that their wings have gotten a bit longer, the scientists wondered if they were seeing the fingerprint of earlier spring migrations.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that birds are migrating earlier in the spring as the world warms. Perhaps the evolutionary pressure to migrate faster and arrive at breeding grounds earlier led to the physical changes the U-M-led team observed.

"We know that bird morphology has a major effect on the efficiency and speed of flight, so we became curious whether the environmental pressure to advance spring migration would lead to natural selection for longer wings," said U-M evolutionary biologist Marketa Zimova.

In a new study scheduled for publication June 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology, Zimova and her colleagues test for a link between the observed morphological changes and earlier spring migration, which is an example of timing shifts biologists call phenological changes.

Unexpectedly, they found that the morphological and phenological changes are happening in parallel but appear to be unrelated or "decoupled."

"We found that birds are changing in size and shape independently of changes in their migration timing, which was surprising," said Zimova, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the U-M Institute for Global Change Biology.

Both the new study and the 2020 paper that described the changes in body size and wing length were based on analyses of some 70,000 bird specimens from 52 species at the Field Museum. The birds were collected after colliding with Chicago buildings during spring and fall migrations between 1978 and 2016.

In addition to its finding about the decoupling of morphological and phenological changes, the new study is believed to be the first to use museum specimens from building collisions to examine long-term trends in bird migration timing. Several previous reports relied on data from bird-banding studies or, more recently, the analysis of weather radar records.

The U-M-led team confirmed previous findings about earlier spring migration and provided new insights about fall bird migrations in North America, which have been less studied. Specifically, they found that the earliest spring migrants are now arriving nearly five days sooner than they did four decades ago, while the earliest fall migrants are heading south about 10 days earlier than they used to.

Notably, the last fall stragglers now depart about a week later than they used to so that, overall, the duration of the fall migration season has been stretched considerably.

"It is unusual to have a dataset that can provide insights into multiple aspects of global change--such as phenology and morphology--at the same time," said U-M evolutionary biologist and ornithologist Ben Winger, a senior author of the study.

"I was impressed that the collision data so clearly showed evidence of advancing spring migration. The collision monitors in Chicago have been collecting these data on bird building collisions for 40 years and, meanwhile, the birds have been changing the timing of their migratory patterns in ways that were imperceptible until the dataset as a whole was examined," said Winger, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an assistant curator at the Museum of Zoology.

Last year in the journal Ecology Letters, the U-M-led team reported that nearly all of the 52 bird species in their study experienced both declines in body size and simultaneous increases in wing length over the four-decade period.

At the time, they linked the measured body-size reductions to warmer temperatures at the birds' breeding grounds. Since smaller bodies are more efficient at dissipating heat, perhaps smaller birds gained a competitive advantage and were favored by natural selection. Alternatively, the body-size reductions could be the result of a process called developmental plasticity, the ability of an individual to modify its development in response to changing environmental conditions.

The researchers also suggested that the observed increases in wing length helped compensate for the smaller body size, allowing the birds to maintain migration by increasing flight efficiency.

But the previous study did not test to see whether the changes in body size and wing length were driven by climate-related shifts in migration timing. In the new study, they tested for that link.

For each of the 52 species, the researchers estimated temporal trends in morphology and changes in the timing of migration. Then they tested for associations between species-specific rates of phenological and morphological change, taking into account the potential effects of migratory distance and breeding latitude.

They found no evidence that rates of phenological change across years, or migratory distance and breeding latitude, are predictive of rates of concurrent changes in morphological traits.

"Scientifically, this is really the most interesting and novel finding," said U-M evolutionary biologist and ornithologist Brian Weeks, a senior author of the new Journal of Animal Ecology study.

Advances in phenology, such as flowering plants blooming earlier in the spring, and changes in morphology, including body size reductions, are among the most commonly described biological responses to global warming temperatures.

Many studies of plant and animal adaptive responses to climate warming have looked at either phenological or morphological changes, but few have been able to examine both at the same time. The depth of the Field Museum dataset enabled the U-M-led team to examine multiple responses to climate warming simultaneously and to test for connections between them.

"It is often assumed that morphological changes driven by climate and changes in the timing of migration must interact to either facilitate or constrain adaptive responses to climate change," said Weeks, an assistant professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability. "But this has never to my knowledge been tested empirically at a significant scale, until now, due to lack of data."

So, if increased wing length is not responsible for the earlier arrival of migratory birds in Chicago each spring, then what is? Previous studies suggest that shorter, less frequent stopovers during the northbound trek may be a factor.

"And there might be other adjustments that allow birds to migrate faster that we haven't thought about--maybe some physiological adaptation that might allow faster flight without causing the birds to overheat and lose too much water," Zimova said.

First and only report to interview large sample of workers in garment supply chain (1200 workers across 302 factories and four countries) found an increase in risk of forced labour during pandemic

This risk has been exacerbated by the response of retail companies, and there is little evidence most have acted in line with their social responsibilities to support their supply chain workers, despite many accessing pandemic recovery funds

A new comprehensive system was used during the study to look for the indicators that someone is vulnerable to forced labour

The recovery from the pandemic should include support for supply chain workers to mitigate the deterioration of their living and working conditions

Deteriorating living and working conditions for workers in garment supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the risk of forced labour, according to a new report from the University of Sheffield.

'The Unequal Impacts of Covid-19 on Global Garment Supply Chains' has found that workers in Ethiopia, Honduras, India, and Myanmar who produce many of the clothes we buy from our favourite brands in the UK and Europe were severely affected by the pandemic.

Both those that were fortunate enough to remain employed, and those that lost their jobs during the past year and found new work, reported a sharp decline in their earnings and working conditions; and both groups experienced being at increased risk of forced labour during this time.

The study is the largest to directly involve the voices of those employed to make the clothes we buy in the UK during the pandemic alongside interviews with retailers and analysis of company documentation. Previous ones have focused solely on the impact for the multinational corporations (MNCs) which own major fashion brands and retailers. It uses a comprehensive new system to look for the indicators that someone is vulnerable to forced labour.

Professor Genevieve LeBaron, from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, said: "There is no commonly held definition of what constitutes forced labour, and unlike the public perceptions of modern slavery, people may not be held against their will or trafficked unknowingly into their situation.

"They may end up in a job that they are unable to leave due to a number of reasons; false promises and deception to keep a person working in increasing worsening conditions, threat of penalties against the worker or their family if they left, or sometimes bonding a person into debt to the manufacturer through poor pay, leaving them struggling to cover their basic needs for housing and food."

The study found that both groups of workers experienced indicators of forced labour, with the situation clearly deteriorating during the pandemic. It highlighted that many companies fell far short of their commitments to good practice; including sourcing sustainable goods from manufacturers with fair working conditions, pay and no use of exploitation.

The commercial actions of companies during the pandemic has brought to light how many business models within the garment industry are fundamentally at odds with these commitments, and that current government regulation does not go far enough to protect the workers.

Although the study found there were examples of some companies acting in ways that honoured their social commitments, this was mainly from companies that had direct ownership of factories, or long-standing partnerships with manufacturers that were crucial to protect. In these cases, workers were more likely to retain a job through the pandemic.

Professor LeBaron said: "It appears many companies in the garment industry accessed emergency funding during the pandemic, but also provided little to no evidence that they honoured the social responsibilities most brands we recognise have to the workers in their supply chains at the same time.

"At the beginning of the pandemic, millions of pounds worth of cancelled orders forced many manufacturers in places like Ethiopia to lay off staff, who then became vulnerable to exploitation during the desperate search to find a new job.

Those lucky enough to retain their job reported experiencing worsening working conditions and pay, exacerbating the already troubling inequalities between the countries who benefit from their labour and the workers themselves."

Already some manufacturers are pursuing legal action against companies which cancelled orders worth millions of pounds during the pandemic, and there is increasing discussion about whether the conduct of clothing brands during the pandemic was legal.

The report calls for governments to increase the governance of supply chains and for retailers to address the damage done during the pandemic.

Professor LeBaron added: "Our report shows that retail companies tried to offset the potential damage of the pandemic by shifting losses onto their suppliers and workers who would least afford it. Most of these companies have very deep pockets and need to act immediately to address the social challenges their pandemic responses have created.

"Banning the sale of below-cost price and forced labour made goods, ensuring companies relieve the supply chain pressures that cause suppliers to use unfair labour practices, and requiring brands to report on public bail out funds received and how these have been used, would be a good start to force retailers to be more transparent about how they work; helping tackle the increasing inequality experienced by supply chain workers that satisfy our demand for high-end, and fast fashions and helping consumers make more sustainable and ethical choices when shopping."

Jakub Sobik, Communications Director at the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (the Modern Slavery PEC), which funded the research under its call on the impact of Covid-19 on modern slavery across the world, said:

"This report highlights the unequal impact of Covid-19 across complex business supply chains and the need to do more to protect workers producing garments sold across the world from exploitation.

"Businesses should consider how their actions can rectify the situation and develop different responses for the future, while working with governments to ensure a level playing field for all businesses, incentivising those which apply good practice already."

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers identified a new gene that may be linked to certain neurodevelopmental disorders and intellectual disabilities. The researchers believe that finding genes involved in certain types of developmental disorders, provide an important first step in determining the cause of these disorders and ultimately in developing potential therapies for treating them. The paper was recently published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

About 3 percent of the world's population has intellectual disability. Up to half the cases are due to genetics, however, because many thousands of genes contribute to brain development, it has been difficult to identify the specific cause for each patient.

Once the researchers identified the gene, they worked with collaborators to give clinical diagnoses to 10 other families around the world, who had relatives with this condition. The researchers also used zebrafish to show the gene's role in development and survival, demonstrating its importance in helping the brain's neurons function properly.

"Our goal is to find as many of these genes required for brain function and take this knowledge back to patients and families to provide a clinically relevant genetic diagnosis," says Saima Riazuddin, PhD, MPH, MBA, Professor of Otorhinolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at UMSOM.

Dr. Riazuddin and her team collaborate regularly with several scientists in Pakistan studying a group of 350 families geographically isolated, which as a result has led to inbreeding resulting in genetic disorders such as neurodevelopmental disorder and intellectual disability.

The team focused on one particular family with two brothers and an uncle with symptoms of intellectual disability, delayed speech and other developmental milestones and epilepsy. Other members of the family with similar symptoms had since passed in childhood or early adulthood. Dr. Riazuddin and her team identified the gene AP1G1 as the culprit.

Then through collaboration with 27 other institutions, her team was able to identify ten other families with the variations in the same gene that led to growth retardation and intellectual disability. These families lived in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States.

To determine the gene's role in development, the researchers engineered zebrafish without Ap1g1. These zebrafish embryos all began to die off by the fourth day. When the researchers added back mutated versions of the genes, like those found in the families with neurodevelopment disorder and intellectual disability, they observed a spectrum of symptoms with some zebrafish embryos dying off, some with major structural defects, and others with only minor tail deformities.

The gene AP1G1 contains the blueprints to make the protein Adaptor Protein 1 gamma 1 (AP1γ1). This protein is one of five pieces that makes up the Adaptor Protein Complex, which builds transport vesicles to move materials around cells.

"Think of these transport vesicles as little vehicles like trucks that have to load, transport, and unload their cargo around the cells (e.g. neurons) to provide the necessary supplies for the cell to function," says Dr. Riazuddin.

Dr. Riazuddin's team made normal and mutant versions of AP1G1 which they put in mammalian cells with cargo molecules labeled in red. The cells with the mutant versions of AP1G1 had vesicles that were delayed in delivering their cargo or did not make their deliveries at all.

"Improving clinical diagnosis of these developmental disorders may eventually provide new targets for therapies, in order to one day be able to treat these conditions allowing more people to live independently," says E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

People who struggle with social anxiety might experience increased distress related to mask-wearing during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic.

A paper authored by researchers from the University of Waterloo's Department of Psychology and Centre for Mental Health Research and Treatment also has implications for those who haven't necessarily suffered from social anxiety in the past.

"The adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health outcomes, including anxiety and depression, have been well-documented," said David Moscovitch, professor of clinical psychology and co-author of the paper. "However, little is known about effects of increased mask-wearing on social interactions, social anxiety, or overall mental health.

"It is also possible that many people who didn't struggle with social anxiety before the pandemic may find themselves feeling more anxious than usual as we emerge out of the pandemic and into a more uncertain future -- especially within social situations where our social skills are rusty and the new rules for social engagement are yet to be written."

Social anxiety is characterized by negative self-perception and fear that one's appearance or behaviour will fail to conform with social expectations and norms. Social anxiety disorder is an extreme manifestation that affects up to 13 per cent of the population.

The researchers reviewed existing literature addressing three factors that they hypothesized might contribute to social anxiety associated with mask-wearing: hypersensitivity to social norms, bias in the detection of social and emotional facial cues, and propensity for self-concealment as a form of safety behaviour.

"We found that mask-wearing by people with social anxiety is likely to be influenced by their perception of social norms and expectations, which may or may not be consistent with public-health guidelines and can vary widely by region and context," said Sidney Saint, an undergraduate psychology student at Waterloo and lead author of the paper.

The paper also highlights that people with social anxiety have difficulty detecting ambiguous social cues and are likely to interpret them negatively. These individuals also tend to worry about sounding incomprehensible or awkward. "We believe that both issues are likely to be magnified during interactions with masks," Saint said.

Another highlighted impact is that masks can function as a type of self-concealment strategy that enables people with social anxiety to hide their self-perceived flaws. Therefore, the desire for self-concealment may motivate their use of masks over and above their desire to protect themselves from contagion. "Due to their self-concealing function, masks may be difficult for some people to discard even when mask-wearing is no longer required by public health mandates," Saint said.

In addition to contributing insights to guide clinicians toward effective assessment and treatment, the paper shows that people with social anxiety may be particularly vulnerable to periods of norm transitions where expectations for mask-wearing are in flux or become a matter of personal choice.

Team used Argonne’s GREET model to simulate changes, predict outcomes.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory participated in a study that shows innovation in technologies and agricultural practices could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from grain production by up to 70% within the next 15 years.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the study identifies a combination of readily adoptable technological innovations that can significantly reduce emissions and fit within current production systems and established grain markets.

The study, “Novel technologies for emission reduction complement conservation agriculture to achieve negative emissions from row crop production,” maintains that reductions in GHG emissions could be attained through digital agriculture, crop and microbial genetics and electrification. The new technologies, when implemented, promise to drive the decarbonization of agriculture while supporting farm resilience and maintaining profitability and productivity. 

Technologies were grouped across three phases: optimize, replace and redesign. The team used Argonne’s GREET® model to simulate adoption of the new technologies for holistic greenhouse gas emission reductions of grain production. Argonne developed GREET (the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies Model), a one-of-a-kind lifecycle analytical tool now used worldwide by government, industry and the science community.

The study offers insights for the development of possible new approaches for agriculture decarbonization and suggests entry points for public and private investment based on a timeline of expected returns on investments in new technologies.

“Our study emphasizes the importance of a two-pronged approach — reducing farming emissions and maximizing soil carbon storage — to addressing the climate crisis through agriculture. Practices that enhance soil carbon storage continue to gain momentum. Complementing this approach by developing and broadly applying emission reduction technologies, including seed genetics, is critical to achieving net negative production,” said Dan Northrup, lead author of the study and director of special projects at Benson Hill, a St Louis based company leveraging the natural genetic diversity of plants to develop more healthy and sustainable food choices.

Argonne Energy Systems Division’s senior scientist Michael Wang, who leads the Systems Assessment Center and is one of the study’s principal investigators, added, “Our holistic assessment of agriculture decarbonization highlights technical areas and focus points so that U.S. agriculture will be a solution to the climate challenge.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Instagram users who detect self-promotion or corporate marketing in a post embracing the body positivity movement may be turned off by that dual messaging, new research suggests.

In the study, women viewed experimental Instagram posts that borrowed body positive messages from actual users and contained body positive hashtags, such as #bopo. The posts all featured the same initial body positive sentiment, but some posts also asked viewers to either like and follow their profiles and others advertised products or services.

Researchers found that participants who spotted self-promotion or advertising considered the posts less morally appropriate and not altogether sincere in their support of the body positivity movement in comparison to non-promotional posts.

Self-promotion was consistently perceived by study participants to be less negative than corporate advertising, but the viewers did not go so far as to consider any marketing messages offensive or inappropriate, the findings showed.

"If companies are going to use body positive imagery, it's a balancing act between trying to seem authentic - and hopefully be authentic - with what they're trying to push," said Kyla Brathwaite, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in communication at The Ohio State University.

"But seeing so much body positivity content coupled with advertising might make viewers wary about the movement - or see the movement as something that's appearance-centered."

Brathwaite conducted the study with co-author David DeAndrea, associate professor of communication at Ohio State. The open-access article is published in the journal Communication Monographs.

Before the "body positive" phrase was coined and body positivity-related hashtags emerged on Instagram, the fat acceptance movement advocated for the rights and dignity of fat people. Now, as then, the body positivity movement decries society's fixation on young, thin, white bodies and calls for acceptance and appreciation of bodies of all shapes, sizes, colors, appearances and abilities.

After encountering the "fitspiration" and "thinspiration" messages pushing exercise and dieting on social media and more recently observing the growth of the body positivity movement, Brathwaite "started hearing a voice in my head saying people are co-opting the movement and trying to sell me things."

With millions of hashtagged posts combined with widespread sponsored content on Instagram, the platform became an attractive candidate for study.

"Our hope was to try to speak more broadly to prosocial movements online in general," DeAndrea said. "They're most effective when they seem genuinely grassroots. Then you have companies that recognize this and are trying to piggyback off the goodwill of the movement to help themselves."

The researchers recruited 851 women from TurkPrime (now CloudResearch) ranging in age from 18 to 89.

Each participant viewed a total of 10 experimental Instagram posts, all of which included two body positive messages that functioned as the basis of posts in the study that represented movement-supporting user content: "We won't be distracted by comparison if we are captivated by purpose" and "Be done shrinking your mind, body and soul. Take up space." The messages also featured hashtags such as #allbodiesaregoodbodies and #bopo.

Messages representing user-generated self-promotion added encouragement to like, comment or visit a YouTube channel. Corporate-sponsored messages either focused on appearance-centered items by adding language promoting a fitness plan and "flaw-blurring" facial products or, in a control condition, marketed a clothing line using language that made no mention of appearance.

An analysis of viewer reactions showed that the higher the participants' recognition of promotional cues in the experimental messages, the more likely they were to attribute posters' motivation to something other than an embrace of body positivity.

The researchers also wanted to gauge how images associated with messages influenced viewers' perceptions, and tested this by featuring photos of either average- or plus-sized women in the messages. The more that participants perceived women's bodies on posts to be plus-sized, the more they rated the messages as morally appropriate and believed the messages were exclusively shared to promote body positivity.

"One could assume that consumers viewing a campaign that's talking about body positivity but not featuring women the movement is supposed to support may be questioning the motives of these companies," Brathwaite said.

The researchers noted that the results suggest meshing the movement with marketing has potential pitfalls for both body positivity itself and for companies that give a nod to the movement in their ads.

"The question is whether you can walk that tightrope of promoting the movement while selling the product," DeAndrea said. "It does seem that people didn't find these messages or images inappropriate, but it can still be done in a way that might minimize any degree to which the movement is undermined, and from a company perspective, minimize any chances for blowback based on exploitation of the movement."

In a retrospective study believed to be one of the largest of its kind, researchers say they have successfully charted the health risks, growth patterns, and medical and surgical outcomes of 1,374 people with the most common form of dwarfism, called achondroplasia, seen over a 60-year period at four academic medical centers, including Johns Hopkins Medicine. The findings, according to the researchers, not only affirm some long-standing views and trends in the care of those with the condition, but also offer a standardized baseline, a blueprint investigators hope will serve to speed diagnosis and improve patients' quality of life and health.

Achondroplasia is caused by a rare genetic mutation that alters the activity of the fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) gene involved in bone growth. Occurring in about 20,000 live births in the U.S. each year, the condition is marked by short stature, bowed legs, disproportionately large head and other musculoskeletal problems that cause pain, sleep problems and other symptoms.

Among other findings, the new study affirms that the vast majority -- at least two-thirds -- of those with the condition are born to parents of normal stature and bone development, meaning that the genetic mutation mostly arises spontaneously and randomly.

"We aimed to provide more uniformity of information about treatments in this field, because more precise information has great potential to improve therapies that alleviate symptoms and health problems among people with achondroplasia," says Julie Hoover-Fong, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Greenberg Center for Skeletal Dysplasias and professor of genetic medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

A summary of the findings appeared in the May 18 issue of Genetics in Medicine.

Hoover-Fong says she and her colleagues had talked about doing this type of "look-back," or retrospective review of patient information for more than a decade, and began to do so in earnest in 2017. The data included medical records from 1,374 children and adults diagnosed with achondroplasia seen between 1957 and 2017 at one of four medical centers: The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the University of Wisconsin. There were an equal number of females and males, and 77.6% were white, 5.4% each were Black and Asian, 7.5% were Hispanic, 0.07% were Native American, 1.7% were a mix of more than one race or ethnicity, 1.7% were of unknown race or ethnicity and 0.4% were other ethnicities including those of middle eastern, African or South American descent.

"We collected everything we could find about patients who had been seen in our achondroplasia clinics, including archives, hard-copy charts and electronic medical records," says Hoover-Fong, who noted that medical centers transitioned through many types of medical record-keeping systems during the 60-year timeframe. The research team focused on four specific areas of study: anthropometry (growth), surgical history, sleep-disordered breathing and radiographic studies completed.

The challenge, says Hoover-Fong, was to identify comparable patterns and measures of physical traits, symptoms, therapies and outcomes.

One focus was on patterns of growth, including weight gain and head circumference among the patients from birth through adulthood, says Hoover-Fong, which are important for clinicians who need to know if their patients are growing as they should and for ensuring that different populations are evaluated appropriately in clinical trials of new therapies. Their database could be further improved by conducting similar analyses of information in people with achondroplasia worldwide.

The findings also confirmed evidence from previous studies that children with achondroplasia are more likely than the general population to be born preterm. Some 12.7% (174 of 1,374) of the study population was born prematurely. In the overall U.S. population, preterm births occur approximately 9.8% of the time. Most of the premature achondroplasia patients were born to mothers of average stature.

"Premature births in this population could be due at least partially to the large size of the fetus' head," says Hoover-Fong.

Analysis of trends in treatments revealed that limb-lengthening surgeries and use of growth hormone were relatively uncommon among patients, at only 1.2%. The surgeries can have a high complication rate, and are more common outside the U.S. where there are few or less-stringent laws providing protections and accommodations afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act, says Hoover-Fong. Growth hormone, which come with the risk of serious side effects such as weight gain and diabetes, are not typically used among people with achondroplasia in the U.S. or most other countries except Japan.

By contrast, nearly 80%, or 1,094 of the patients in the study, had undergone at least one surgical procedure on ears, nose and throat, brain, foramen magnum (the opening at the base of the skull), spine or extremities to relieve pain, pressure, fluid buildup or other symptoms. More than half the achondroplasia patients had surgeries to insert pressure-equalizing tubes in the ears or to remove tonsils and adenoids. Such procedures are far less frequent in the general population of children of average stature (between 0.7 and 6.8%).

Among the achondroplasia patients, there were a "tremendous number" of X-rays and MRIs -- 10,727 -- likely a factor of the high number of surgical procedures, Hoover-Fong says.

Sleep apnea occurred among 38.4% of the achondroplasia patients, likely due to distorted bone growth in the head and throat. The prevalence of apnea among those with average stature is also high -- as much as 22%, according to some studies. "Medical professional societies have given resounding evidence and support that a series of evaluations, including an overnight stay at a sleep center, are necessary to properly assess sleep apnea in people with craniofacial differences, including those with achondroplasia. Yet, clinicians meet a lot of resistance from insurance companies to reimburse these evaluations," says Hoover-Fong.

The researchers' data also shows that, with the availability of molecular diagnostic tools, fewer patients with achondroplasia are going undiagnosed in recent times. Still, some children go a day, even up to a month without a diagnosis.

"Because those born with achondroplasia need early interventions, clinicians should have an immediate, definitive diagnosis right away," says Hoover-Fong. "We still have a lot of education to do so that more health care professionals can provide continual care for achondroplasia patients."

According to Hoover-Fong, more long-term, prospective studies are needed to improve pain management and well-being in patients, while reducing health care costs and increasing access to care.

A method for making ultrathin sensors for monitoring the health of crops could help farmers grow more food without putting extra demands on the land.

Intensive agriculture is already contributing to widespread biodiversity loss and climate change, yet growing populations continue to put pressure on farmers to produce more food. The challenge now lies in increasing agricultural output without clearing more land or applying excessive fertilizers. Precision farming is a promising solution that involves real-time monitoring of plant needs and responding to them with just the right amount of water, light or nutrients.

"Precision farming typically relies on soil-based sensors or drones fitted with special cameras," says Ph.D. student Abdullah Bukhamsin, "but they cannot capture changes in the plant early enough to enable intervention." Previous research has shown that measuring bioimpedance -- how easily an electrical current passes through organic tissues -- can reveal physiological information about a plant, from its nitrogen and water content to the presence of fungal infections or metal contaminants.

Plants, however, have a thick outer layer that blocks electrical signals, and bioimpedance sensors must pierce the surface without affecting the properties they wish to measure. It remains difficult to manufacture instruments tiny and thin enough to do this job.

Now, an efficient method for making silicone molds that can be used to manufacture such ultrathin microneedles has been developed by Bukhamsin and a multidisciplinary team of KAUST researchers led by Khaled Salama. These delicate needles can be released intact by submerging the mold in trichloromethane. "The swelling causes the mold to expand ever so slightly, thereby gently pushing the trapped structure out," says Bukhamsin.

The reusable molds could enable cost-effective, mass-production of microneedles in various plant-friendly polymers. When the team tested their microneedle on an Arabidopsis thaliana leaf, the puncture hole sealed within four days and the plant was not harmed.

"In our tests, the impedance measurements were closely related to how much light a plant has been exposed to and how dehydrated it is," says Bukhamsin. "This bioimpedance data could be used alongside shading technologies and an irrigation system that responds to the actual needs of the crops, thereby avoiding overwatering." Unexpectedly, this relationship was almost identical in other crops, including date palm and barley. "This is promising as it highlights the versatility of the approach and its potential applicability across different plants," he adds.

"Next, we will explore what other environmental factors affect the impedance of plants," says Salama, "and how we can use electrochemical measurements to quantify hormone levels in different plant species." Such detailed data could feed into even more finely tuned precision farming in the future.

Research has found that training stroke survivors to walk at a faster speed during recovery can help improve the brain function that enables people to walk and perform another task simultaneously, known as dual-task walking. The research, led by academics at Oxford Brookes University, was funded by the Stroke Association.

People who've had a stroke often struggle to walk and do tasks that involve thinking at the same time, for example, activities such as walking and holding a conversation, or planning what to do next. To effectively walk in the community, cognitive effort is needed to navigate safely and deal with distractions. Many people fail to regain this ability after a stroke.

Dual-task training did not directly improve ability

To improve the ability to walk and think at the same time, rehabilitation approaches have been to directly practice walking and doing something that requires thinking at the same time, known as dual-task training. A previously-run randomised controlled trial led by Oxford Brookes University and the University of Oxford found that this training did not improve people's ability to dual-task walk any more than just walking training.

Researchers believed that a reason why people struggle with dual-task walking after a stroke may be linked to their walking automaticity - the pattern our brains run which means we don't have to think about walking. This pattern is linked to the cyclic pattern of walking whereby one step 'signals' the next step to follow. If someone walks very slowly this pattern could be disrupted so that walking becomes more like independent steps, rather than a cycle.

Secondary analysis found faster walkers improved dual-task walking

The new research analysed data from the previously-run trial to compare how people who walked slowly and people who walked at faster speeds responded to dual-task training.

"When we compared slower walkers and people who walked at a faster pace - still slower, but closer to walking speeds we expect to see in people who have not had a stroke - both increased their walking speeds after the training," said Dr Johnny Collett, Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Centre for Movement, Occupational and Rehabilitation Sciences at Oxford Brookes University.

"However, those who could walk faster at the beginning of the training also improved their ability to walk and think at the same time."

Advanced brain imaging tracked responses to training

As part of the new research, scientists at the University of Oxford used advanced imaging to track how people's brains responded to the training. Changes found in the brain supported the findings that people with stroke who walked slower, had a less automatic control of walking. Those who walked at a faster pace had changes in the brain consistent with adaptations that may be necessary for controlling gait in more complex environments.

"These findings show that, for those who walk slowly, initially focusing on improving walking speed may increase their capacity to improve dual-task walking," added Dr Collett. "Greater consideration of walking automaticity may help to better tailor intervention and direct a staged approach of increasing complexity to make people better able to walk in the community."

An important part of rehabilitation

Dr Rubina Ahmed, Director for Research and Policy at the Stroke Association said "Stroke strikes every 5 minutes and has devastating physical and mental impacts. Whilst four out of five stroke survivors recover the ability to walk, most find it hard outside of hospital which has a big impact on their well-being and independence. By funding this research our charity has helped to highlight that training focused on walking speeds could be an important part of rehabilitation for some stroke survivors' recoveries. Research like this is key to finding new treatments and improving stroke care, so that stroke survivors can regain the mobility and independence they need to rebuild their lives."

The paper, Dual-task walking and automaticity after Stroke: Insights from a secondary analysis and imaging sub-study of a randomised controlled trial, is published in Clinical Rehabilitation.

The research team used data from world renowned health study Children of the 90s, to answer three research questions:

Is school enjoyment patterned by biological sex at birth, socioeconomic background of cognition?

How does school enjoyment relate to GCSE achievement?

Does school enjoyment relate to social or sex differences in GCSE achievement?

The team found that pupil's school enjoyment measured at six years old is patterned by their sex and cognitive ability but not their family's socioeconomic background. For example, girls were twice as likely to report enjoying school than boys. School enjoyment strongly related to GCSE achievement at age 16 even after consideration of their socioeconomic background and cognitive ability. Pupils who reported enjoying school at age 6 went on to score on average 14.4 more GCSE points, equivalent to almost a three-grade increase across all GCSE's and were 29 per cent more likely to obtain five plus GCSE's grade A*- Cs including Maths and English than those who did not enjoy school.

Lead author Dr Tim Morris said: "While it is intuitive that a pupil's school enjoyment relates to their education, it is quite remarkable that school enjoyment as early as age six is so strongly linked to GCSE's 10 years later. That this link persists even after considering family and pupil factors provides support that a lack of school enjoyment may have long lasting effects on pupil's educational outcomes."

"Research into methods for improving school enjoyment and the effectiveness of interventions in this area could have beneficial effects for children."

Professor Nic Timpson, Principal Investigator for Children of the 90s said: "This is an important piece of research which shows how Children of the 90s data has helped inform our understanding of educational attainment as well as health/wellbeing."

Scientists studying a common childhood cancer have made a major breakthrough which could lead to a cure for some youngsters who would not have survived the condition.

An international study, involving Newcastle University, UK, has for the first time found a genetic marker in tumours from patients with high-risk neuroblastoma.

Research, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, has identified that alterations in the neuroblastoma's ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase) gene are associated with a significantly poorer prognosis for children with high-risk disease.

Experts say that by identifying this important genetic marker it means patients should be put on ALK inhibitors at the time of diagnosis with the hope of a cure.

Personalised treatment

Professor Deborah Tweddle, from the Newcastle University Centre for Cancer and Honorary Consultant at The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, led the UK part of the study.

She said: "By identifying ALK as a genetic marker associated with the likelihood of a poorer outcome within the high-risk group of patients, it means we can treat these patients differently from the outset.

"Most excitingly there are new treatments that target the ALK protein itself, used in other cancers that can now be used for patients with high-risk neuroblastoma with ALK gene abnormalities.

"This research is an excellent example of personalised medicine. By treating those patients with an ALK genetic abnormality with an ALK inhibitor we are tailoring the treatment to the patients' individual tumour type.

"By combining an ALK inhibitor with the other treatments we currently give for high-risk neuroblastoma we hope to be able to cure more patients with this aggressive childhood cancer."

Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the nervous system that mainly affects children under five. It often begins in the adrenal gland, but in around half of cases has spread throughout the body when it is diagnosed - in these high-risk cases survival is only approximately 50 percent.

Sadly, barely half of the children live beyond five years after diagnosis, despite treatment including high dose chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

Several European countries took part in the study and the UK-arm of the trial has been based at Newcastle University with the test being carried out within the Newcastle Genetics Lab, supported by grants from Solving Kids Cancer and Neuroblastoma UK.

Study's findings

Experts carried out ALK testing on as many neuroblastomas as possible from patients treated on the high-risk trial and pooled this data with that from national genetic reference labs from 19 other countries.

The study showed that ALK mutations are present in about 14% of patients newly diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, and nearly 4% have amplification of this gene.

More importantly, these abnormalities are associated with a lower rate of survival and they are therefore important prognostic markers that could be targeted by treatment.

Professor Tweddle added: "As part of the next European clinical trial for high-risk neuroblastoma, we are going to treat all patients with an ALK abnormality found in their tumour with an ALK inhibitor in addition to standard treatment."

The breakthrough comes at the launch of the Newcastle University Cancer Fund, a new fundraising effort to inspire the next generation of cancer researchers to train and work at Newcastle for the benefit of people living with cancer locally as well as sending their research worldwide.

The Fund will work with cancer researchers at the very earliest stages of their studies and see them through to the point where they become established cancer researchers.

Patient case study

Happy schoolboy, Alexander Mohammed, is living life to the full as he enjoys fishing and outdoor activities with his family.

But five years ago, it was a very different story as the youngster, of Gosforth, Newcastle, was given the devastating diagnosis of neuroblastoma.

For almost two years Alexander had intensive treatment which included many aggressive cycles of chemotherapy at the Great North Children's Hospital in Newcastle.

The 10-year-old is now in remission and is monitored every six months under the care of Professor Deborah Tweddle.

Alexander's dad Raphael, a doctor, 43, said: "When Alexander was diagnosed with cancer it was such a shock and not something that we were expecting as he did not have the classic symptoms of neuroblastoma.

"It was difficult to watch him go through the intensive treatment, but he was so brave and to see how well he is doing now is fantastic as he has been in remission for four years.

"To hear of this major breakthrough into the treatment of the condition for children offers real hope of personalised treatment options in the future so that more youngsters lives can be saved."

Researchers from the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the University of Bonn have examined the way in which SARS-CoV-2 reprograms the metabolism of the host cell in order to gain an overall advantage. According to their report in Nature Communications*, the researchers were able to identify four substances which inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in the host cell: spermine and spermidine, substances naturally found in the body; MK-2206, an experimental cancer drug; and niclosamide, a tapeworm drug. Charité is currently conducting a trial to determine whether niclosamide is also effective against COVID-19 in humans.

Viral replication depends on host cell machinery and the use of the host's molecular building blocks. In order to avoid detection by the immune system, viruses also have to ensure that they can evade cellular surveillance systems. To do this, they manipulate various processes in the infected host cell - and every virus pursues a different strategy. This is why a team of researchers led by PD Dr. Marcel Müller of Charité's Institute of Virology and Dr. Nils Gassen of the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Clinic and Outpatient Clinic at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) have investigated the way in which SARS-CoV-2 reprograms host cells for its own benefit. Their key finding was as follows: The new coronavirus slows down the cell's own recycling mechanism, a process known as autophagy. The purpose of this 'auto-digestion' mechanism is to enable the cell to dispose of damaged cell materials and waste products while recycling usable molecular building blocks for incorporation into new cellular structures.

"In our study, we were able to show that at the same time as using the cell's building blocks for its own benefit, SARS-CoV-2 deceives the cell by simulating a nutrient-rich status, thereby slowing cellular recycling," explains first author Dr. Gassen. As part of this work, the researchers undertook a detailed analysis of SARS-CoV-2 infected cells and the lung tissue of COVID-19 patients, studying cellular metabolism and the processing of molecular signals. "It is likely that SARS-CoV-2 uses this to avoid dismantling by the cell. After all, viruses are also subject to autophagic disposal," adds the study's last author, DZIF researcher PD Dr. Müller. He adds: "The same reprogramming strategy is also used by the MERS coronavirus, whose autophagy-inhibiting action we were able to demonstrate more than a year ago. However, there are other coronaviruses which, quite in contrast to this, induce autophagy. These mainly infect animals."

When results from the study suggested that the recycling mechanism might be a potential target for COVID-19 therapy, the researchers tested whether substances which induce cellular recycling also reduce the replication of SARS-CoV-2 inside infected cells. Interestingly, the researchers found four substances which proved effective - all of them already in use in humans. These included the polyamine spermidine, an autophagy-enhancing metabolite which is produced in all human cells and by bacteria in the human gut. It occurs naturally in foods such as wheat germ, soya, mushrooms, and mature cheese and is freely available as a food supplement. When the researchers added spermidine to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, this resulted in an 85 percent reduction in the numbers of virus particles produced. Similar results were produced by spermine, another polyamine which occurs naturally in the body. This derivative of spermidine was found to reduce viral replication by more than 90 percent in human lung cells and in a human gut model comprising clusters of cells known as 'organoids'.

"The obvious effects produced by spermidine and, in particular, spermine are certainly encouraging. For one thing, substances which occur naturally in the body are less likely to induce side effects," says PD Dr. Müller. "Having said that, we worked with pure forms of these substances which are not suitable for medical use. Spermidine, in particular, has to be used at relatively high concentrations to achieve an appreciable effect in cell culture. Many questions therefore remain to be answered before we can consider polyamines as a potential treatment against COVID-19: When used in the body, will it be possible to achieve blood levels high enough to inhibit viral replication in the respiratory tract? And, if yes: would administration before or during the infection be advisable? Are there any side effects? Even so, our findings from cell culture are a good starting point for research involving animal models. Self-medication is not advisable, one of the reasons being that viruses also use polyamines to help boost replication; the correct dosage is therefore crucial. The same applies to fasting, which can stimulate the body's autophagy process. Given that the body needs energy to mount an immune response, it remains unclear whether fasting is advisable in SARS-CoV-2 infected patients."

The third substance to prove effective against SARS-CoV-2 was the 'AKT inhibitor' MK-2206. The substance is currently at the clinical trial stage and undergoing testing for its tolerability and efficacy against a range of different cancers. In the current study, MK-2206 reduced the production of infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus by approximately 90%. It did so at plasma concentrations which had already been achieved during a previous study. "Based on our data, I would consider MK-2206 as an interesting treatment candidate against COVID-19 which, after a careful analysis of risks and benefits, would justify further study in clinical trials," explains PD Dr. Müller.

The most pronounced antiviral effect was associated with niclosamide, which the researchers had shown to be effective against the MERS coronavirus during an earlier study. The tapeworm drug was found to reduce the production of infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles by more than 99 percent. "Niclosamide showed the strongest effect in our cell culture-based experiments. What is more, it has been licensed for use against tapeworm infections in humans for a very long time and is well tolerated at potentially relevant doses," says PD Dr. Müller. He adds: "Out of the four new candidate substances, we consider it to be the most promising one. This is why we are now conducting a clinical trial at Charité to test whether niclosamide might also have a positive effect on people with COVID-19. I am delighted at this development. It shows how quickly findings from basic research can reach patients if research and clinical practice are closely interlinked and work together in an efficient manner."

The Phase II clinical trial - entitled 'NICCAM' - is being led by Prof. Dr. Martin Witzenrath, Deputy Head of Charité's Department of Infectious Diseases and Respiratory Medicine. The study will test the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of niclosamide combined with camostat (another licenced drug) in patients recently (within the last few days) diagnosed with COVID-19. The study is currently recruiting and looking for participants. Potential participants wishing to find out more information on the study should contact the team at 'Charité Research Organisation' on +49 30 450 539 210 or by emailing patienten@charite-research.org.