Tech

The study entitled 'Seagrass meadows support global fisheries production' published in Conservation Letters, provides evidence that a fifth of the world's biggest fisheries, such as Atlantic Cod and Walleye Pollock are reliant on healthy seagrass meadows. The study also demonstrates the prevalence of seagrass associated fishing globally.

The study, carried out in partnership with Dr Leanne Cullen-Unsworth at Cardiff University and Dr Lina Mtwana Nordlund at Stockholm University, demonstrates for the first time that seagrasses should be recognised and managed to maintain and maximise their role in global fisheries production.

Dr Cullen-Unsworth said: "The chasm that exists between coastal habitat conservation and fisheries management needs to be filled to maximise the chances of seagrass meadows supporting fisheries, so that they can continue to support human wellbeing".

Seagrasses are marine flowering plants that form extensive meadows in shallow seas on all continents except Antarctica. The distribution of seagrass, from the intertidal to about 60m depth in clear waters, makes seagrass meadows an easily exploitable fishing habitat.

Dr Unsworth said: "Seagrass meadows support global fisheries productivity by providing nursery habitat for commercial fish stocks such as tiger prawns, conch, Atlantic cod and white spotted spinefoot".

The authors also explain how seagrasses support fisheries in adjacent and deep water habitats, by creating expansive fishery habitat rich in fauna, and by providing trophic support to adjacent fisheries. Seagrasses are also described to support fisheries by promoting the health of connected habitats (e.g. Coral reefs).

The research article examined the links between seagrass and fisheries and the need for an integrated approach to their management governed at local, regional and international levels. The research presents a series of policy-relevant observations and recommendations that recognise the role of seagrass in global fisheries.

Seagrass nursery habitats for fish stocks. This research highlights the need to expand research into nursery habitat links to mature exploited fish stocks. Large-scale international strategies such as the European Union Fisheries Policy need to formally acknowledge the significance of seagrass meadows (and other habitats) as nursery grounds from which off-shore fisheries are stocked, says Dr Unsworth.

Seagrass as key fishing grounds. Seagrass meadows provide a fishery resource that is directly exploited by small scale subsistence and artisanal fisheries as well as large scale commercial enterprises but in many parts of the world, seagrass situated fisheries are often unreported and unregulated and more needs to be done to record this vital resource, says co-author Dr Nordlund.

Seagrass provides shallow water habitat for harvesting invertebrates. Gleaning, fishing in water shallow enough to walk in, occurs around the globe. Seagrass invertebrate fisheries provide a source of essential protein for some of the most vulnerable people in tropical coastal communities., says Dr Nordlund. Invertebrate gleaning activity is expanding globally and although it's a significant global activity, often conducted by women and children, it is not usually included in fishery statistics and rarely considered in resource management strategies are commonly unreported, unregulated or poorly enforced. This substantial and widespread fishery needs to be considered with regional and local management planning.

Seagrass trophic support for fisheries. Seagrass meadows export vast quantities of living material, organic matter and associated animal biomass. This can benefit a range of near and far shore fisheries. Seagrass can also subsidise whole food webs in the deep sea benefiting larger fisheries productivity.

The potential value of seagrass meadows for food security. The potential value of seagrass meadows in supporting food security remains largely underappreciated, says co-author Dr Cullen-Unsworth. In particular there is disparity between the significant economic benefits supplied by the seagrass nurseries and the poor levels of funding and management afforded to prevent seagrass degradation. Fisheries modelling and management approaches tend not to consider the functional role of shallow coastal seagrass in supporting fish stocks.

Dr Unsworth said: "The coastal distribution of seagrass means it is vulnerable to a multitude of both land and sea based threats, such as land runoff, coastal development, boat damage and trawling. There is a global rapid decline of seagrass and when seagrass is lost there is strong evidence globally that fisheries and their stocks often become compromised with profound negative economic consequences. To make a change, awareness of seagrasses role in global fisheries production must pervade the policy sphere. We urge that seagrass requires targeted management to maintain and maximise their role in global fisheries production."

Each time a blood vessel splits into smaller vessels, red blood cells (RBCs) are presented with the same decision: Take the left capillary or the right. While one might think RBCs would divide evenly at every fork in the road, it is known that at some junctures, RBCs seem to prefer one vessel over the other. One new computer model looks to determine why RBCs behave this way, untangling one of the biggest mysteries in our vascular system

A pair of researchers from Rutgers University has demonstrated a new direct numerical simulation in Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, which predicts the flow of RBCs through the body's networks of capillaries. By constructing a network of virtual capillaries, the team found that not only can the flow through so-called mother vessels sometimes become skewed, leading to an uneven distribution of RBCs in daughter vessels, but these junctions also switch between an even and uneven flow over time.

"This is the biological problem that has immense significance in healthy states and disease states," said Prosenjit Bagchi, one of the authors of the paper. "These phenomena have been known for centuries, but in terms of high-fidelity computational modeling, there has not been much."

Bagchi likens the partitioning of blood cells at bifurcations along blood vessels to cars in traffic where, sometimes, detours happen. Anything from an injury, to a blocked capillary, to a tumor creating new vessels to feed itself can lead to a blood vessel falling out of use. "When it comes to blood vessels, we use or lose it," Bagchi said. "If a city sees that nobody is driving on a particular road, they will stop keeping up with it and might discard it. Microvascular networks are constantly changing their architecture, even in the aging process."

A prominent method to model red blood cell partitioning, called plasma skimming, renders red blood cells as infinitesimally tiny dots that move through a blood vessel. Bagchi's group was surprised to learn how much this technique underpredicts the partitioning behavior and leads to highly nonuniform distribution of cells in a network. By considering the effect of the cell size, known as cell screening, the team modelled flow with much less heterogeneity in cell distribution.

The group's work casts new light on a longstanding assumption that blood vessel bifurcations either distribute RBCs proportionately or disproportionately with respect to flow. Instead, their findings revealed that vessels can switch between even and uneven partitioning, based on factors including upstream mechanisms that shift RBCs to one side of the mother vessel, bunching up of RBCs at bifurcation points, or changes in flow resistance in the daughter vessels.

Bagchi said he hopes his findings and model will prove to be a helpful tool for researchers looking to better understand blood flow in microvascular networks. In the future, his team is looking towards other particles, including how drug particles are distributed, to accurately predict their transport through capillary networks.

A chance to switch to renewable sources for heating, electricity and fuel, while also providing new opportunities for several industries to produce large numbers of renewable products. This is the verdict of researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, who now, after ten years of energy research into gasification of biomass, see an array of new technological achievements.

"The potential is huge! Using only the already existing Swedish energy plants, we could produce renewable fuels equivalent to 10 percent of the world's aviation fuel, if such a conversion were fully implemented," says Henrik Thunman, Professor of Energy Technology at Chalmers.

How to implement a switch from fossil-fuels to renewables is a tricky issue for many industries. For heavy industries, such as oil refineries, or the paper and pulp industry, it is especially urgent to start moving, because investment cycles are so long. At the same time, it is important to get the investment right because you may be forced to replace boilers or facilities in advance, which means major financial costs. Thanks to long-term strategic efforts, researchers at Sweden´s Chalmers University of Technology have now paved the way for radical changes, which could be applied to new installations, as well as be implemented at thousands of existing plants around the globe.

The solution presented involves widespread gasification of biomass. This technology itself is not new. Roughly explained, what is happening is that at high temperatures, biomass is converted into a gas. This gas can then be refined into end-products which are currently manufactured from oil and natural gas. The Chalmers researchers have shown that one possible end-product is biogas that can replace natural gas in existing gas networks.

Previously, the development of gasification technology has been hampered by major problems with tar being released from the biomass, which interferes with the process in several ways. Now, the researchers from Chalmers' division of Energy Technology have shown that they can improve the quality of the biogas through chemical processes, and the tar can also be managed in completely new ways. This, in combination with a parallel development of heat-exchange materials, provides completely new possibilities for converting district heating boilers to biomass gasifiers.

"What makes this technology so attractive to several industries is that it will be possible to modify existing boilers, which can then supplement heat and power production with the production of fossil-free fuels and chemicals.", says Martin Seemann, Associate Professor in Energy Technology at Chalmers.

"We rebuilt our own research boiler in this way in 2007, and now we have more than 200 man-years of research to back us up," says Professor Henrik Thunman. "Combined with industrial-scale lessons learned at the GoBiGas (Gothenburg Biomass Gasification) demonstration project, launched in 2014, it is now possible for us to say that the technology is ready for the world."

The plants which could be converted to gasification are power and district heating plants, paper and pulp mills, sawmills, oil refineries and petrochemical plants.

"The technical solutions developed by the Chalmers researchers are therefore relevant across several industrial fields", says Klara Helstad, Head of the Sustainable Industry Unit at the Swedish Energy Agency. "Chalmers´ competence and research infrastructure have played and crucial role for the demonstration of advanced biofuels within the GoBiGas-project."

Researchers report important new insights into evolution following a study of mitochondrial DNA from about 5 million specimens covering about 100,000 animal species.

Mining "big data" insights from the world's fast-growing genetic databases and reviewing a large literature in evolutionary theory, researchers at The Rockefeller University in New York City and the Biozentrum at the University of Basel in Switzerland, published several conclusions today in the journal Human Evolution. Among them:

In genetic diversity terms, Earth's 7.6 billion humans are anything but special in the animal kingdom. The tiny average genetic difference in mitochondrial sequences between any two individual people on the planet is about the same as the average genetic difference between a pair of the world's house sparrows, pigeons or robins. The typical difference within a species, including humans, is 0.1% or 1 in 1,000 of the "letters" that make up a DNA sequence.

Genetic variation - the average difference in mitochondria DNA between two individuals of the same species - does not increase with population size. Because evolution is relentless, however, the lack of genetic variation offers insights into the timing of a species' emergence and its maintenance.

The mass of evidence supports the hypothesis that most species, be it a bird or a moth or a fish, like modern humans, arose recently and have not had time to develop a lot of genetic diversity. The 0.1% average genetic diversity within humanity today corresponds to the divergence of modern humans as a distinct species about 100,000 - 200,000 years ago - not very long in evolutionary terms. The same is likely true of over 90% of species on Earth today.

Genetically the world "is not a blurry place." Each species has its own specific mitochondrial sequence and other members of the same species are identical or tightly similar. The research shows that species are "islands in sequence space" with few intermediate "stepping stones" surviving the evolutionary process.

Among 1st "big data" insights from a growing collection of mitochondrial DNA

"DNA barcoding" is a quick, simple technique to identify species reliably through a short DNA sequence from a particular region of an organism. For animals, the preferred barcode regions are in mitochondria - cellular organelles that power all animal life. (See also http://bit.ly/2HGduvD)

The new study, "Why should mitochondria define species?" (online at http://bit.ly/2LnPK1g) relies largely on the accumulation of more than 5 million mitochondrial barcodes from more than 100,000 animal species, assembled by scientists worldwide over the past 15 years in the open access GenBank database maintained by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The researchers have made novel use of the collection to examine the range of genetic differences within animal species ranging from bumblebees to birds and reveal surprisingly minute genetic variation within most animal species, and very clear genetic distinction between a given species and all others.

"If a Martian landed on Earth and met a flock of pigeons and a crowd of humans, one would not seem more diverse than the other according to the basic measure of mitochondrial DNA," says Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University, where the research was led by Senior Research Associate Mark Stoeckle and Research Associate David Thaler of the University of Basel, Switzerland.

"At a time when humans place so much emphasis on individual and group differences, maybe we should spend more time on the ways in which we resemble one another and the rest of the animal kingdom."

Says Dr. Stoeckle: "Culture, life experience and other things can make people very different but in terms of basic biology, we're like the birds."

"By determining the genetic variety within species of the animal kingdom, made possible only recently by the burgeoning number of DNA sequences, we've documented the absence of human exceptionalism."

Says. Dr. Thaler: "Our approach combines DNA barcodes, which are broad but not deep, from the entire animal kingdom with more detailed sequence information available for the entire mitochondrial genome of modern humans and a few other species. We analyzed DNA barcode sequences from thousands of modern humans in the same way as those from other animal species."

"One might have thought that, due to their high population numbers and wide geographic distribution, humans might have led to greater genetic diversity than other animal species," he adds. "At least for mitochondrial DNA, humans turn out to be low to average in genetic diversity."

"Experts have interpreted low genetic variation among living humans as a result of our recent expansion from a small population in which a sequence from one mother became the ancestor for all modern human mitochondrial sequences," says Dr. Thaler.

"Our paper strengthens the argument that the low variation in the mitochondrial DNA of modern humans also explains the similar low variation found in over 90% of living animal species - we all likely originated by similar processes and most animal species are likely young."

Genetic variation does not increase with population

The study results represent a surprise given predictions found in textbooks, and based on mathematical models of evolution, that the bigger the population of a species, the greater the genetic variation one expects to find.

"Is genetic diversity related to the size of the population?" asks Dr. Stoeckle. "The answer is no. The mitochondrial diversity within 7.6 billion humans or 500 million house sparrows or 100,000 sandpipers from around the world is about the same."

The paper notes, however, that evolution is relentless, that species are always changing, and, therefore, the degree of variation within a given species offers a clue into how long ago it emerged distinctly -- in other words, the older the species the greater the average genetic variation between its members.

Evolutionary bottlenecks: the fresh new beginning of a species

While asteroids and ice ages have played major roles in evolutionary history, scientists speculate that another great driver may have been the microbial world, notably viruses, which periodically cull populations, leaving behind only those able to survive the deadly challenge.

"Life is fragile, susceptible to reductions in population from ice ages and other forms of environmental change, infections, predation, competition from other species and for limited resources, and interactions among these forces," says Dr. Thaler. Adds Dr. Thaler, "The similar sequence variation in many species suggests that all of animal life experiences pulses of growth and stasis or near extinction on similar time scales."

"Scholars have previously argued that 99% of all animal species that ever lived are now extinct. Our work suggests that most species of animals alive today are like humans, descendants of ancestors who emerged from small populations possibly with near-extinction events within the last few hundred thousand years."

'Islands in sequence space'

Another intriguing insight from the study, says Mr. Ausubel, is that "genetically, the world is not a blurry place. It is hard to find 'intermediates' - the evolutionary stepping stones between species. The intermediates disappear."

Dr. Thaler notes: "Darwin struggled to understand the absence of intermediates and his questions remain fruitful."

"The research is a new way to show that species are 'islands in sequence space.' Each species has its own narrow, very specific consensus sequence, just as our phone system has short, unique numeric codes to tell cities and countries apart."

Adds Dr. Thaler: "If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies. They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space."

The researchers say that with the bones or teeth of an ancient hominid, like those found in southern France or northern Spain, scientists might shed further light on the rate of evolution of the human species.

"It would be very exciting if over the next few years physical anthropologists and others were able to compare mitochondrial DNA from hominid species over the last 500,000 years," says Dr. Stoeckle.

New research has shown that older people with very low heart disease risks also have very little frailty, raising the possibility that frailty could be prevented.

The largest study of its kind, led by the University of Exeter, found that even small reductions in risk factors helped to reduce frailty, as well as dementia, chronic pain, and other disabling conditions of old age.

Many perceive frailty to be an inevitable consequence of ageing - but the study, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences found that severe frailty was 85% less likely in those with near ideal cardiovascular risk factors.

It also found that those with fewer heart disease risk factors were much less likely to have other conditions unrelated to the heart - including chronic pain, incontinence, falls, fractures, and dementia.

Dr João Delgado, of the University of Exeter Medical School, joint lead author of the study, said: "This study indicates that frailty and other age-related diseases could be prevented and significantly reduced in older adults. Getting our heart risk factors under control could lead to much healthier old ages. Unfortunately, the current obesity epidemic is moving the older population in the wrong direction, however our study underlines how even small reductions in risk are worthwhile."
The study analysed data from more than 421,000 people aged 60-69 in both GP medical records and in the UK Biobank research study. Participants were followed up over ten years.

The researchers analysed six factors that could impact on heart health. They looked at uncontrolled high blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels, plus being overweight, doing little physical activity and being a current smoker.

The international research team involved the UConn Center on Aging at UConn Health in Connecticut, USA, and the National Institute on Aging, USA.

The project was funded by the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research. They analysed data from participants using GP medical records (Clinical Practice Research Datalink) and healthy volunteers (UK Biobank).

Dr Janice Atkins, of the University of Exeter Medical School, joint lead author of the study, said: "A quarter (26%) of participants from UK Biobank, made of predominantly healthy volunteers, had near perfect cardiovascular risk factors compared to only 2.4% of the population via GP records. This highlights the huge potential for improvement in cardiovascular risk factors of the general population in the UK."

It is the first largescale study to show that older people with near-ideal cardiovascular risk factor profiles have better outcomes on a number of factors that are not directly linked to heart-disease.

Dr. George Kuchel, Director of the UConn Center on Aging at UConn Health, co-researcher on the study, said: "Individuals with untreated cardiovascular disease or other common chronic diseases appear to age faster and with more frailty. In the past, we viewed ageing and these common chronic diseases as being both inevitable and unrelated to each other. Now our growing body of scientific evidence on ageing shows what we have previously considered as inevitable might be prevented or delayed through earlier and better recognition and treatment of cardiac disease.

"This overall approach working at the interface of ageing and varied chronic diseases could be transformative in helping adults to maintain function and independence in late life, adding life to their years as opposed to just years to their life."

Dr Ivan Pavlov, Programme Manager for Systems Medicine at the MRC, said: "These findings are relevant to us all because they re-emphasise the importance of a healthy lifestyle for better quality of life in old age. These new results also show that age-related conditions may share common risk factors or mechanisms with cardiovascular diseases. We're living longer so it's crucial that we recognise this by taking care of our bodies and monitoring our risk for disease even earlier in life."

Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, destroying up to 80% of them, new research by a joint Swansea University and Indian team has shown.

The team made the discovery while they were testing out a new method of producing a type of nanoparticle called quantum dots. These are tiny particles which measure less than 10 nanometres. A human hair is 40,000 nanometres thick.

Although nanoparticles are already used in healthcare, quantum dots have only recently attracted researchers' attention. Already they are showing promise for use in different applications, from computers and solar cells to tumour imaging and treating cancer.

Quantum dots can be made chemically, but this is complicated and expensive and has toxic side effects. The Swansea-led research team were therefore exploring a non-toxic plant-based alternative method of producing the dots, using tea leaf extract.

Tea leaves contain a wide variety of compounds, including polyphenols, amino acids, vitamins and antioxidants. The researchers mixed tea leaf extract with cadmium sulphate (CdSO4) and sodium sulphide (Na2S) and allowed the solution to incubate, a process which causes quantum dots to form. They then applied the dots to lung cancer cells.

They found:

Tea leaves are a simpler, cheaper and less toxic method of producing quantum dots, compared with using chemicals, confirming the results of other research in the field.

Quantum dots produced from tea leaves inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells. They penetrated into the nanopores of the cancer cells and destroyed up to 80% of them. This was a brand new finding, and came as a surprise to the team.

The research, published in Applied Nano Materials, is a collaborative venture between Swansea University experts and colleagues from two Indian universities.

Dr Sudhagar Pitchaimuthu of Swansea University, lead researcher on the project, and a Ser Cymru-II Rising Star Fellow, said:

"Our research confirmed previous evidence that tea leaf extract can be a non-toxic alternative to making quantum dots using chemicals.

The real surprise, however, was that the dots actively inhibited the growth of the lung cancer cells. We hadn't been expecting this.

The CdS quantum dots derived from tea leaf extract showed exceptional fluorescence emission in cancer cell bioimaging compared to conventional CdS nanoparticles.

Quantum dots are therefore a very promising avenue to explore for developing new cancer treatments.

They also have other possible applications, for example in anti-microbial paint used in operating theatres, or in sun creams."

Dr Pitchaimuthu outlined the next steps for research:

"Building on this exciting discovery, the next step is to scale up our operation, hopefully with the help of other collaborators. We want to investigate the role of tea leaf extract in cancer cell imaging, and the interface between quantum dots and the cancer cell.

We would like to set up a "quantum dot factory" which will allow us to explore more fully the ways in which they can be used."

Stimulating the brain to alter its intrinsic reward system shows promise in the treatment of obesity, according to results presented in Barcelona at the European Society of Endocrinology annual meeting, ECE 2018. The technique has yielded positive results after just a single treatment session, revealing its potential to become a safer alternative to treat obesity, avoiding invasive surgery and drug side effects.

Obesity is a global epidemic, with approximately 650 million adults and 340 million children and adolescents currently considered obese, and the disease contributing to an estimated 2.8 million deaths per year worldwide. It has been reported that, in some obesity cases, the reward system in the brain may be altered, causing a greater reward response to food than in normal weight individuals. This can make patients more vulnerable to craving, and can lead to weight gain. This dysfunction in the reward system can also be seen in cases of addiction to substances, e.g. drugs or alcohol, or behaviours, e.g. gambling.

Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (dTMS) is a medical treatment that uses magnetic energy to stimulate neurons in specific areas of the brain. It is used to treat depression and addictive behaviours, and previous studies have suggested that dTMS could be a good option to reduce drug and food cravings. However, the potential mechanism driving these changes had not been investigated until now.

In this study, Professor Livio Luzi and colleagues, from the Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Policlinico San Donato, Italy, investigated the effects of dTMS on appetite and satiety in obese people. They studied the effects of a single 30 minute session of dTMS, at high or low frequency, on blood markers potentially associated with food reward in a group of 40 obese patients. They found that high frequency dTMS significantly increased blood levels of beta-endorphins - neurotransmitters involved in producing heightened feelings of reward after food ingestion - compared to low frequency dTMS or controls.

"For the first time, this study is able to suggest an explanation of how dTMS could alter food cravings in obese subjects" says Professor Luzi. "We also found that some blood markers potentially associated with food reward, for example glucose, vary according to gender, suggesting male/female differences in how vulnerable patients are to food cravings, and their ability to lose weight."

Since the current study only measures changes in blood markers, the next steps for the research group include using brain imaging studies to directly identify how high frequency dTMS changes the structure and function of the obese brain, both short and long term, and extending this treatment to a larger population of obese patients.

"Given the distressing effects of obesity in patients, and the socioeconomic burden of the condition, it is increasingly urgent to identify new strategies to counteract the current obesity trends. dTMS could present a much safer and cheaper alternative to treat obesity compared to drugs or surgery", Professor Luzi adds.

While household air pollution from solid fuel stoves has previously been associated with child mortality, this is the first study to investigate the association between household air pollution and lung development beginning in utero and to identify the most harmful times during pregnancy for exposure to this pollution. The study was presented at the 2018 American Thoracic Society International Conference.

Approximately 40 percent of the world's population burn solid fuels, such as coal and wood, to meet their cooking and heating needs. These fuels are typically used in combustion cookstoves that burn their fuel inefficiently, leading to the release of numerous airborne pollutants.

"Our research suggests that children, especially girls, born to mothers with increased household air pollution exposures during pregnancy have impaired lung function measurable at birth," said lead author Alison Lee, MD, MS, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York. "Exposures during the second and third trimesters appear to have the largest impact. These findings have implications for future respiratory health."

The GRAPHS study group recruited Ghanaian women during early pregnancy, and randomized them to one of three groups: two cookstove interventions and one control group. The control group used a three-stone fire, the traditional means of cooking in Ghana; intervention group one was given BioLite Stoves, improved combustion efficiency biomass stoves; and intervention group two was given LPG gas stoves, similar to those used in the U.S.

"Households were given the intervention stove, but in some cases preferentially or simultaneously used their three-stone fire," Dr. Lee said. "Because our analyses looked at the effect of in utero CO exposures and not the source, this was not a problem, and we were still able to gather the data we needed."

Four 72-hour CO measurements were taken for each study participant, and calculated to estimate weekly CO exposures. Four hundred of the women's infant children were then given lung function tests one month after their birth. The researchers applied statistical models to estimate the association between average lung function and in utero CO exposure. These models were adjusted statistically to rule out variables that may have affected results such as birth weight and gestational age at birth.

Dr. Lee and colleagues found a significant association between increased prenatal CO exposure and decreased lung function. Infants whose mothers were exposed to CO in the second and third trimester were at highest risk for reduced lung function when they were tested at the age of one month.

"Women are commonly the primary cooks and continue to cook while pregnant, so a child's exposure to household air pollution begins in utero," said Dr. Lee. "Importantly, we know that lung function development progresses rapidly over gestation and alterations in lung development secondary to toxic maternal exposures impair lung development with lasting effects. Lung function at birth has been shown to predict lung function through adulthood and increase risk for future respiratory symptoms and disease."

Everyday products carry environmental chemicals that may be making us fat by interfering with our hormones, according to research presented in Barcelona at the European Society of Endocrinology annual meeting, ECE 2018. Following recommendations on how to avoid these chemicals could help minimise exposure and potentially reduce the risk of obesity and its complications.

Obesity increasingly affects millions of people worldwide, with cases rising sharply in young children and babies - a trend which is not explained by evolving diets and lifestyles alone. The condition contributes to an estimated 2.8 million deaths per year worldwide and leads to many other health complications, which are a large financial burden on healthcare systems.

Chemicals that interfere with how our bodies store and process fat are referred to as 'obesogens', and have been suggested as a possible contributor to the increasing number of obesity cases. Obesogens reprogram how our cells work in two main ways: they can promote fat accumulation through increasing the number and size of fat cells or by increasing appetite, or they can make it more difficult to lose fat by changing our ability to burn calories. Previous studies have identified these chemicals in many everyday products, such as pesticides, plastics, flame retardants, repellent coatings on kitchen utensils and clothes, and artificial sweeteners. This comprehensive analysis aims to highlight to health professionals, and the public, the main sources of obesogens, and includes specific recommendations on minimising exposure.

Dr Ana Catarina Sousa and her research group, from the Universities of Aveiro and Beira Interior, Portugal, reviewed existing and new epidemiological surveys and animal studies, and showed that the most important sources of exposure to obesogens indoors are diet, house dust, and everyday products such as cleaning chemicals, kitchenware or cosmetics. Diet samples in some of the studies showed, for example, that obesogens such as tributyltin - a chemical in anti-fouling paint banned a decade ago, and cadmium - a metal widespread in the environment associated with certain cancers, can still be found in food products, in some cases at high concentrations.

"Obesogens can be found almost everywhere, and our diet is a main source of exposure, as some pesticides and artificial sweeteners are obesogens. Equally, they are present in plastics and home products, so completely reducing exposure is extremely difficult - but to significantly reduce it is not only feasible, but also very simple", Dr Sousa says.

Based on the findings of the review, the researchers suggest specific recommendations to reduce obesogen exposure. The recommendations include:

Choosing fresh food over processed products with long lists of ingredients on the label - the longer the list, the more likely the product is to contain obesogens

Buying fruit and vegetables produced without pesticides, such as certified organic or local pesticide-free products

Reducing the use of plastic, especially when heating or storing food. Instead, use glass or aluminium containers for your food and drinks.

Removing shoes when entering the house to avoid bringing in contaminants in the sole of shoes

Vacuuming often, using high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters and dust your house frequently using a damp cloth.

Removing or minimising carpet at home or work, as they tend to accumulate more dust

Avoiding cleaning products when possible, or choose those that do not contain obesogens

Further studies are needed in order to provide unequivocal evidence of how obesogens contribute to the obesity epidemic. "These are baby steps to achieve an obesogen-free lifestyle but a really good start. Essentially, watch your diet and get rid of the dust at home", Dr Sousa comments. "Adults ingest about 50mg of dust every day, and children twice as much, so keeping the house clean is a very effective measure. And use a humid cloth to dust your furniture, rather than a cleaning product that may contain more of these chemicals."

Further work in Dr. Sousa's research group includes a case control study to evaluate obesogen levels in Portuguese obese patients. Additionally, they intend to launch a new cohort study to monitor obesogen levels in urine and hair of pregnant women, and in their children, to further determine how obesogens affect their obesity risk.

MAYWOOD, IL - A Loyola Medicine study has found that new ultrasound guidelines can reliably identify pediatric patients who should be biopsied for thyroid cancer.

The study by radiologist Jennifer Lim-Dunham, MD, and colleagues was presented May 18 during the Society for Pediatric Radiology's annual meeting in Nashville.

Thyroid cancer is a common cause of cancer in teenagers, and the incidence is increasing for reasons that are unclear. Adolescents have a 10-fold greater incidence than younger children, and the disease is five times more common in girls than boys.

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland at the base of the neck that secretes hormones needed for regulation of growth, development and metabolism. Cancer may occur within lumps in the thyroid called nodules.

Thyroid nodules typically are found during routine physical exams or on imaging tests such as CT scans done for other reasons. A definitive diagnosis requires a percutaneous fine-needle aspiration biopsy - a minimally invasive procedure in which a physician uses a very small needle to withdraw cells from the nodule. The cells are sent to a pathologist, who makes the diagnosis.

Since most nodules are benign, not all of them require biopsy. Ultrasound exams are used to identify those nodules that look suspicious enough to require biopsy. In 2017, the American College of Radiology (ACR) released a system for grading nodules on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being benign and 5 being highly suspicious of cancer. The grades are based on ultrasound features, such as how white or black the nodule appears (echogenicity), whether the edges of the nodule are jagged or smooth and whether there are white dots inside the nodule (echogenic foci).

In the Loyola study, two radiologists used the ACR system to retrospectively grade 74 thyroid nodules from 62 pediatric patients. The ACR grading system proved to be accurate and reproducible. For every one unit increase in the 1-to-5 ACR scale, nodules were 2.63 times more likely to have a malignant diagnosis confirmed by biopsy or surgery.

The findings should reassure physicians and parents that the ACR system can be reliably used to differentiate between thyroid nodules in children that require biopsy and those that do not, Dr. Lim-Dunham said.

An earlier study led by Dr. Lim-Dunham found that a different set of thyroid nodule ultrasound guidelines from the American Thyroid Association also are reliable in children.

The new study is titled "Malignancy Risk Stratification of Pediatric Thyroid Nodules Using ACR Thyroid Imaging, Reporting and Data System (ACR TI-RADS)."

PHILADELPHIA - Dogs born June through August are at higher risk of heart disease than those born other months, rising in July to 74 percent higher risk, according to a study published this week in Scientific Reports from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A correlation to outdoor air pollution may be the culprit.

The birth month difference in risk was marginal among breeds that are genetically predisposed to the disease, suggesting that heart disease acquired later in life may be birth season dependent among all dog breeds.

Breeds not genetically predisposed to cardiovascular disease, such as Norfolk terrier, Berger Picard, American Staffordshire terrier, English toy spaniel, Bouvier des flandres, Border terrier, and Havanese were found to be at highest risk. Also, breeds born frequently in July -- Norfolk terrier and Berger Picard - were at increased heart disease risk.

Overall, dogs have a 0.3 to 2 percent risk of developing heart disease depending on breed. The research team found that risk climbs to the greatest level in dogs born in July, who have a 74 percent greater risk of heart disease than would typically be expected.

"It's important to study dogs because the canine heart is a remarkably similar model to the human cardiovascular system," said Mary Regina Boland, PhD, an assistant professor of Informatics in Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics. "Also, humans and dogs share their lives together and are exposed to similar environmental effects, so seeing this birth season-cardiovascular disease relationship in both species illuminates mechanisms behind this birth-season disease relationship."

The Penn team studied data from the Orthopaedic Foundation of Animals on 129,778 canines encompassing 253 different breeds.

Since the significant association between birth season and cardiovascular disease was found in dogs that are not genetically predisposed to the condition, the authors say the effect supports an environmental mechanism. This period between June through August is also a peak period for exposure to fine air particulates - such as those produced by factory pollution - a finding echoed in a September 2017 Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association human study reported on in the Penn Medicine News Blog.

For both dogs and humans, outside air pollution during pregnancy and at the time of birth appears to play a role in later development of heart disease. In the prior study, the team investigated data from 10.5 million patients from around the world, including the United States, South Korea and Taiwan. One of their key findings was a link between first-trimester exposure to fine air particulates and nine percent increased risk of the heart rhythm irregularity known as atrial fibrillation (Afib) later in life. Afib afflicts two percent of people under 65 in the United States - a total of 5.5 million people. People exposed to peak air pollution during the first trimester of their mother's pregnancy were found to be at a nine percent higher risk than usual.

Taken together, the two study findings lead the authors to suggest that pollution is a possible mechanism for the increased risk. Because dogs' pregnancies are shorter then humans (lasting only 2 months), the proposed mechanism is still thought to be through the mother's inhalation of air pollution effecting the uterine environment, which in turn effects the developing cardiovascular system of the baby or puppy.

Only breeders who chose to provide their dogs' data publicly were included in the study (some breeders and owners may choose not to disclose this data). Also, some variables that influence cardiovascular disease risk, such as diet and exercise, were unavailable in the dataset.

The researchers note that future studies may be valuable in shedding light into why specific breeds are more susceptible to cardiovascular disease, as well as further work on the effects of birth season on later risk of specific diseases.

Hospitalized patients who experience acute kidney injury face a 44 percent greater risk of heart failure during their first year after leaving the hospital, according to new Kaiser Permanente research published today in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Acute kidney injury is a sudden decline in the ability of the kidneys to perform their normal function of filtering waste products from blood. People who are hospitalized for a wide variety of conditions, from major surgery to severe infection, are at risk for acute kidney injury, which can increase a patient's long-term risk of death even after they are successfully treated and sent home.

"While Kaiser Permanente has had success in lowering rates of acute kidney injury in hospitalized patients, rates are rising nationwide, and even minor injury is linked to a higher risk of death," said Alan S. Go, MD, director of the Comprehensive Clinical Research Unit within the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research and lead author of the new study.

Earlier research by Dr. Go and colleagues linked hospitalized acute kidney injury to elevated risk of high blood pressure. In this new study, which adds to that body of work, the research team examined electronic health records of patients who were admitted to one of Kaiser Permanente's 21 hospitals in Northern California at some point between 2006 and 2013. They investigated whether the risk of various cardiovascular events within one year of leaving the hospital differed between patients who experienced acute kidney injury while hospitalized and those who did not.

Out of 146,931 hospitalized patients included in the analysis, 31,245 experienced acute kidney injury. To help ensure an accurate comparison, patients with acute kidney injury were statistically matched to patients without acute kidney injury, according to similar demographics, length of hospital stay, medications they took, how acutely ill they were and other characteristics.

Roughly 1 in 25 people who are hospitalized for any reason will experience heart failure within a year. The analysis found that even after accounting for remaining differences, patients who have an acute kidney injury during hospitalization experienced a 44 percent higher relative risk of heart failure within one year of discharge, compared to those without acute kidney injury. Rates of other cardiovascular events linked to atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries) did not differ significantly between the two groups.

"The number of atherosclerotic events in patients with acute kidney injury was lower than we expected," Dr. Go said. "Overall, our results highlight heart failure as a key risk for patients who experienced acute kidney injury in the hospital."

According to senior author Kathleen D. Liu, MD, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, the new findings suggest the need for doctors to be more vigilant in looking for signs of heart failure in patients who experienced acute kidney injury during hospitalization. "Earlier detection of heart failure symptoms in these patients could potentially save lives."

Meanwhile, Dr. Go and others are examining the mechanisms underlying the increased risk. "Kidney damage affects a number of biological pathways, including inflammation and mineral metabolism," Dr. Go said. "If we could understand how these changes increase risk of heart failure, we may be able to develop new strategies for prevention."

Most people are familiar with A, B, AB and O blood types, but there are hundreds of additional blood group "antigens" on red blood cells - substances that can trigger the body's immune response - that differ from person to person. Each year, up to 16 deaths reported to the Federal Drug Administration are attributed to mismatches in red blood cell antigens that are not related to differences in A, B and O blood groups. Currently, no method is available that can determine all blood antigens. But as whole genome sequencing becomes routine for patients, it may be possible to modernize therapy by identifying both rare donors and at-risk recipients before blood transfusions. In a new study, investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, as well as from the New York Blood Center have leveraged the MedSeq Project - the first randomized trial of whole genome sequencing in healthy adults - to develop and validate a computer program that can comprehensively and cost-effectively determine differences in individuals' blood types with more than 99 percent accuracy. The team's results are reported in The Lancet Haematology.

"Blood transfusion complications are common in patients needing chronic transfusion, but with current technology it is not cost effective to do blood typing for all antigens," said first author William Lane, MD, PhD, director of Clinical Laboratory Informatics and assistant director of the Tissue Typing Laboratory in the BWH Department of Pathology. "But the algorithm we have developed can be applied to type everyone for all relevant blood groups at a low cost once sequencing is obtained."

Blood transfusions are one of the most common procedures in medicine with more than 11 million units of blood transfused in the U.S. each year. Complications from blood transfusions can be life-threatening. When the body encounters foreign antigens on the donor cells, it can stimulate production of antibodies that can destroy the transfused donor cells. From birth, people have antibodies unique to their ABO blood type, but other antibodies against specific blood antigens can be stimulated during pregnancy from exposure to fetal cells or exposure to donor cells when receiving multiple blood transfusions.

"This approach has the potential to be one of the first routine clinical uses of genomics for medical care for patients needing blood transfusion," said co-first author Connie M. Westhoff, PhD, at the New York Blood Center. "It could prevent serious or even fatal complications because once patients are sensitized they have a life-long risk of hemolytic transfusion reactions if blood transfusion is needed in an emergency."

Today, most testing for blood donors and patients include only ABO and Rh matching, but more than 300 red blood cell antigens and 33 platelet antigens are known. To create a way to cost-effectively type many people for these antigens, Lane teamed up with scientists directing the MedSeq Project and experts in blood group genetics at the New York Blood Center to build a database and develop a computer software algorithm, known as bloodTyper, that could rapidly and accurately predict an individual's blood group antigen profile from genomic sequences. Lane, Westhoff and colleagues validated the software by comparing it to traditional, and more labor-intensive, methods. bloodTyper was more than 99 percent accurate when typing from the MedSeq Project participants' genomes. Lane notes that this work would not have been possible without access to samples from the MedSeq Project, and close collaboration with MedSeq's principal investigator, Robert Green, MD, MPH, and co-investigator, Heidi Rehm, PhD.

"This report demonstrates a previously unanticipated use case and benefit that will accrue as whole genome sequencing become a routine part of medical care," said Green, one of the senior authors on the study, director of the Genomes2People Research Program at BWH and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Genome sequencing can now identify potential transfusion recipients who need rare blood types and the individuals who can safely provide them."

Turning genes on and off is an intricate process involving communication between many different types of proteins that interact with DNA.

These communications can go awry, resulting in conditions like cancer. Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have uncovered an unusual form of cross-talk between proteins that affect gene expression, suggesting new ways of inhibiting metastasis in cancer. The findings are published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

TRIM24 is an oncoprotein, meaning it is found at a higher abundance in many types of cancer cells than in healthy cells. Michelle Barton's lab at MD Anderson studies what this protein does. Previous research has shown that TRIM24 is, among other things, an epigenetic reader. This means that it detects certain chemical modifications of histones - proteins around which DNA is coiled - and induces other proteins to change their behavior in response, resulting in a different pattern of genes being turned on than if the histone had not been modified.

In the new study, Srikanth Appikonda, a former postdoctoral fellow in Barton's lab, found something unusual. Not only did TRIM24 "read" histone modifications, but the act of reading resulted in TRIM24 itself being modified with a small protein tag called SUMO. In other words, reading the message of the histone made the reader carry its own chemical message.

"This is the first time that we know of that the (histone) itself is imposing a code on the modifiers or readers," Barton said.

What does the addition of SUMO to TRIM24 accomplish? Appikonda, graduate student Kaushik Thakkar and the other team members performed experiments to see how the genes that TRIM24 turned on and off in cancer cells differed when TRIM24 didn't have SUMO attached.

They found that the SUMO-modified TRIM24 seemed to be regulating genes involved in adhesion between cells. This is important because cell adhesion determines whether cancer cells stay in one spot or can travel and metastasize through the body.

"That's really where these cell-adhesion molecules are coming into play, metastasis and migration of cancer cells," Barton said. Multiple proteins are involved in adhesion, and TRIM24 turned some off and some on. Therefore it's not yet clear what net effect TRIM24 has on metastasis in cancer patients. But understanding that TRIM24 is involved in this process gives researchers a place to look to understand how to stop it.

In the meantime, the SUMO modification also can be used as a possible marker in studies of other types of potential new drugs. Cancer researchers are often interested in disrupting TRIM24's interaction with histones, in order to prevent aberrant gene expression. By tracking whether TRIM24 has SUMO attached, researchers can test whether a potential drug has successfully blocked the interaction.

"The exciting thing about learning more about modifications of TRIM24, such as SUMO, is to be able to develop antibodies or other means to detect its presence," Barton said "(This) may be a better predictor of cancers in early stages or could be linked to potential for metastasis."

PITTSBURGH, May 17, 2018 - Smoking tobacco from a waterpipe, also known as a hookah, accounted for over half of the tobacco smoke volume consumed by young adult hookah and cigarette smokers in the U.S., a new University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine analysis discovered.

Toxicant exposures - such as tar, carbon monoxide and nicotine - were lower, yet substantial, for those young adults who smoked tobacco just using a hookah, compared to those who smoked both hookahs and cigarettes. The research, funded by the National Cancer Institute, is published today in the journal Tobacco Control.

In the U.S., waterpipe tobacco smoking rates are increasing and cigarette smoking rates are decreasing, especially among young adults.

"Most hookah smokers in the U.S. are not daily users, whereas many cigarette smokers smoke multiple times a day, so it may seem that the vast majority of public health and policy-related interventions should be directed at cigarette smoking," said lead author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., director of Pitt's Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health, and dean of Pitt's Honors College. "What our research shows is that hookah smoking contributes significantly to the burden of tobacco smoke-related toxicants inhaled by our young people. Therefore, public health and policy efforts should explicitly address hookah smoking in addition to cigarette smoking."

Primack and his colleagues analyzed data from 3,254 adults ages 18 to 30 who were randomly selected in March 2013 to complete a questionnaire about their tobacco use. The participants, who were from across the U.S., were 63 percent female, 17.5 percent Hispanic and 10.1 percent black.

The study combined self-reported frequency and quantity of tobacco consumption information with estimates from previous studies of the toxicants associated with cigarette and waterpipe tobacco smoking. The survey results were weighted so that the findings would be more representative of the true make-up of the U.S. population.

In the 30 days before completing the survey, about 1 in 20 participants reported hookah smoking, and about 3 percent reported smoking both cigarettes and hookah. Cigarette smoking was reported by 23.4 percent of participants, with most of them smoking close to every day of the previous 30 days.

Whereas smoking one cigarette involves about 10 to 12 puffs, each containing a volume of 50 milliliters of smoke, one 45- to 60-minute hookah session can involve 100 inhalations of about 500 milliliters each. This is why smoke loads can be so large for hookah users, even if they use infrequently.

Hookah smoking accounted for 54.9 percent of the smoke, 20.9 percent of tar, 10.3 percent of carbon monoxide and 2.4 percent of nicotine consumed by the participants in the previous 30 days.

"Smoking tobacco from a waterpipe attracts young users because it is flavored and sweetened, done in a social setting and is often less irritating compared to cigarette smoking. Besides being a direct source of toxicants itself, hookah smoking has been linked to transition to cigarette smoking," said Primack. "All of this, combined with our new findings around the volume of hookah smoke consumed, should guide future efforts to prevent young adults from becoming hookah smokers."

The authors note that more research is needed in this area, including comparisons of other forms of tobacco and nicotine use, such as cigars or e-cigarettes.