Richard Franki

New COVID-19 cases in children declined for a second consecutive week, even as emergency department visit rates started rising for those aged 12-15 years.

The 7-day average percentage of ED visits with diagnosed COVID, which had reached a post-Omicron high of 3.5% in late July for those aged 12-15, began to fall and was down to 3.0% on Aug. 12. That trend reversed, however, and the rate was up to 3.6% on Aug. 19, the last date for which data are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That change of COVID fortunes cannot yet be seen for all children. The 7-day average ED visit rate for those aged 0-11 years peaked at 6.8% during the last week of July and has continued to fall, dropping from 5.7% on Aug. 12 to 5.1% on Aug. 19. Children aged 16-17 years seem to be taking a middle path: Their ED-visit rate declined from late July into mid-August but held steady over the last week, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.

There is a hint of the same trend regarding new admissions among children aged 0-17 years. The national rate, which had declined in recent weeks, ticked up from 0.42 to 0.43 new admissions per 100,000 population over the last week of available data, the CDC said.
 

Weekly cases fall below 80,000

New cases in general were down by 8.5% from the previous week, dropping from 87,902 for the week of Aug. 5-11 to 79,525 for Aug. 12-18. That marked the second straight week with fewer cases after a 4-week period that saw weekly totals increase from almost 68,000 to nearly 97,000, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The AAP and CHA put the cumulative number of child COVID-19 cases at just under 14.4 million since the pandemic began, which represents 18.4% of cases among all ages. The CDC estimates that there have been almost 14.7 million cases in children aged 0-17 years, as well as 1,750 deaths, of which 14 were reported in the last week (Aug. 16-22).

The CDC age subgroups indicate that children aged 0-4 years have experienced fewer cases (2.9 million) than children aged 5-11 years (5.6 million cases) and 12-15 (3.0 million cases) but more deaths: 548 so far, versus 432 for 5- to 11-year-olds and 437 for 12- to 15-year-olds, the COVID Data Tracker shows. Those aged 0-4 make up 6% of the total U.S. population, compared with 8.7% and 5.1%, respectively, for the older children.

Most younger children still not vaccinated

Although it may not qualify as a big push to vaccinate children before the start of the new school year, first-time vaccinations did rise somewhat in late July and August for children aged 5-17 years. Among children younger than 5 years, though, initial doses of the vaccine fell during the second full week of August, especially in 2- to 4-year-olds, based on the CDC data.

Through almost 2 months of vaccine eligibility, 4.8% of children under age 5 have received at least one dose and 0.9% are fully vaccinated as of Aug. 17. The current rates are 37.8% (one dose) and 30.4% (completed) for those aged 5-11 and 70.5% and 60.3% for 12- to 17-year-olds.

New COVID-19 cases in children declined for a second consecutive week, even as emergency department visit rates started rising for those aged 12-15 years.

The 7-day average percentage of ED visits with diagnosed COVID, which had reached a post-Omicron high of 3.5% in late July for those aged 12-15, began to fall and was down to 3.0% on Aug. 12. That trend reversed, however, and the rate was up to 3.6% on Aug. 19, the last date for which data are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That change of COVID fortunes cannot yet be seen for all children. The 7-day average ED visit rate for those aged 0-11 years peaked at 6.8% during the last week of July and has continued to fall, dropping from 5.7% on Aug. 12 to 5.1% on Aug. 19. Children aged 16-17 years seem to be taking a middle path: Their ED-visit rate declined from late July into mid-August but held steady over the last week, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.

There is a hint of the same trend regarding new admissions among children aged 0-17 years. The national rate, which had declined in recent weeks, ticked up from 0.42 to 0.43 new admissions per 100,000 population over the last week of available data, the CDC said.
 

Weekly cases fall below 80,000

New cases in general were down by 8.5% from the previous week, dropping from 87,902 for the week of Aug. 5-11 to 79,525 for Aug. 12-18. That marked the second straight week with fewer cases after a 4-week period that saw weekly totals increase from almost 68,000 to nearly 97,000, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The AAP and CHA put the cumulative number of child COVID-19 cases at just under 14.4 million since the pandemic began, which represents 18.4% of cases among all ages. The CDC estimates that there have been almost 14.7 million cases in children aged 0-17 years, as well as 1,750 deaths, of which 14 were reported in the last week (Aug. 16-22).

The CDC age subgroups indicate that children aged 0-4 years have experienced fewer cases (2.9 million) than children aged 5-11 years (5.6 million cases) and 12-15 (3.0 million cases) but more deaths: 548 so far, versus 432 for 5- to 11-year-olds and 437 for 12- to 15-year-olds, the COVID Data Tracker shows. Those aged 0-4 make up 6% of the total U.S. population, compared with 8.7% and 5.1%, respectively, for the older children.

Most younger children still not vaccinated

Although it may not qualify as a big push to vaccinate children before the start of the new school year, first-time vaccinations did rise somewhat in late July and August for children aged 5-17 years. Among children younger than 5 years, though, initial doses of the vaccine fell during the second full week of August, especially in 2- to 4-year-olds, based on the CDC data.

Through almost 2 months of vaccine eligibility, 4.8% of children under age 5 have received at least one dose and 0.9% are fully vaccinated as of Aug. 17. The current rates are 37.8% (one dose) and 30.4% (completed) for those aged 5-11 and 70.5% and 60.3% for 12- to 17-year-olds.

New COVID-19 cases in children declined for a second consecutive week, even as emergency department visit rates started rising for those aged 12-15 years.

The 7-day average percentage of ED visits with diagnosed COVID, which had reached a post-Omicron high of 3.5% in late July for those aged 12-15, began to fall and was down to 3.0% on Aug. 12. That trend reversed, however, and the rate was up to 3.6% on Aug. 19, the last date for which data are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That change of COVID fortunes cannot yet be seen for all children. The 7-day average ED visit rate for those aged 0-11 years peaked at 6.8% during the last week of July and has continued to fall, dropping from 5.7% on Aug. 12 to 5.1% on Aug. 19. Children aged 16-17 years seem to be taking a middle path: Their ED-visit rate declined from late July into mid-August but held steady over the last week, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.

There is a hint of the same trend regarding new admissions among children aged 0-17 years. The national rate, which had declined in recent weeks, ticked up from 0.42 to 0.43 new admissions per 100,000 population over the last week of available data, the CDC said.
 

Weekly cases fall below 80,000

New cases in general were down by 8.5% from the previous week, dropping from 87,902 for the week of Aug. 5-11 to 79,525 for Aug. 12-18. That marked the second straight week with fewer cases after a 4-week period that saw weekly totals increase from almost 68,000 to nearly 97,000, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The AAP and CHA put the cumulative number of child COVID-19 cases at just under 14.4 million since the pandemic began, which represents 18.4% of cases among all ages. The CDC estimates that there have been almost 14.7 million cases in children aged 0-17 years, as well as 1,750 deaths, of which 14 were reported in the last week (Aug. 16-22).

The CDC age subgroups indicate that children aged 0-4 years have experienced fewer cases (2.9 million) than children aged 5-11 years (5.6 million cases) and 12-15 (3.0 million cases) but more deaths: 548 so far, versus 432 for 5- to 11-year-olds and 437 for 12- to 15-year-olds, the COVID Data Tracker shows. Those aged 0-4 make up 6% of the total U.S. population, compared with 8.7% and 5.1%, respectively, for the older children.

Most younger children still not vaccinated

Although it may not qualify as a big push to vaccinate children before the start of the new school year, first-time vaccinations did rise somewhat in late July and August for children aged 5-17 years. Among children younger than 5 years, though, initial doses of the vaccine fell during the second full week of August, especially in 2- to 4-year-olds, based on the CDC data.

Through almost 2 months of vaccine eligibility, 4.8% of children under age 5 have received at least one dose and 0.9% are fully vaccinated as of Aug. 17. The current rates are 37.8% (one dose) and 30.4% (completed) for those aged 5-11 and 70.5% and 60.3% for 12- to 17-year-olds.

Taking ‘not enough hours in the day’ to new heights

It’s no secret that there’s a big doctor shortage in the United States. Going through medical school is long, expensive, and stressful, and it’s not like those long, stressful hours stop once you finally do get that degree. There is, however, an excellent reason to take that dive into doctorhood: You’ll gain mastery over time itself.

A study from the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and Imperial College London has revealed the truth. By using data pulled from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the researchers found that primary care physicians who see an average number of patients and follow all the current national guidelines for preventive care, chronic disease care, and acute care – plus administrative tasks – must work 26.7 hours a day. That works out to 14.1 hours of preventive care, 7.2 hours of chronic disease care, 2.2 hours of acute care, and 3.2 hours of documentation and inbox management.

liseykina/thinkstockphotos

Astute readers may note that this is a bit more than the traditional 8-hour workday. It is, in fact, more hours than there actually are in a day. As it turns out, Doctor Strange is more of a documentary than …

Hang on, we’re receiving word that doctors are not in fact wizards who can bend time and space to their will, nor are they sitting on a stash of Time-Turners they saved from the Ministry of Magic before Voldemort destroyed them all. They are, according to the study, overworked and overburdened with too many things and too little time. This is why outcomes haven’t improved despite technological advances and why burnout is so common. We’d be burned out too, having to work temporally impossible hours.

The study authors suggested a team-based approach to medicine that would spread the workload out to nurses, physician assistants, dietitians, etc., estimating that about two-thirds of what a primary care physician does can be handled by someone else. A team-based approach would reduce the physician’s required hours down to 9.3 hours a day, which is at least physically possible. It’s either that or we make the day longer, which sounds like the plot of an episode of Futurama. Swap overwork for global warming and a longer day for a longer year and it is actually the plot of an episode of Futurama.
 

After a hard day of thinking, brains need their rest

Do you ever feel like you have no more capacity to think or make any more decisions after a long day at work? Do you need a few extra cups of coffee to even make it through the day, even though you’re mostly just sitting around talking and typing? Have we got the research for you: Mental exhaustion is an actual thing. Imagine that double whammy of having a job that’s physically and mentally demanding.

A recent study in Current Biology explained why we feel so exhausted after doing something mentally demanding for several hours. Over that time, glutamate builds up in synapses of the prefrontal cortex, which affects our decision making and leads to cognitive lethargy. Your brain eventually becomes more interested in tasks that are less mentally fatiguing, and that’s probably why you’re reading this LOTME right now instead of getting back to work.

“Our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration – accumulation of noxious substances – so fatigue would indeed be a signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of brain functioning,” senior author Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University, Paris, said in a written statement.

©thinkstockphotos.com

The group of researchers conducted studies by using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to look at two groups of people over the course of a workday: One group had mentally tasking jobs and one didn’t. Those who had to think harder for their jobs had more signs of fatigue, such as reduced pupil dilation and glutamate in synapses of the prefrontal cortex. They also looked for more rewards that required less thinking.

For those whose mentally exhausting jobs probably won’t get better or change, the researchers suggest getting as much rest as possible. Those who don’t have that option will have to continue drinking those 7 cups of coffee a day. ... and reading LOTME.

Hmm, might be a new tagline for us in there somewhere. LOTME: Tired brains love us? When you’re too tired to think, think of LOTME? You can’t spell mental exhaustion without L-O-T-M-E?
 

Testosterone shows its warm and fuzzy side

Stereotypically, men are loud, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. The hair coming out of our faces is kind of a dead giveaway, right? We grunt, we scratch, we start wars, we watch sports on TV. But why? It’s the testosterone. Everyone knows that. Testosterone makes men aggressive … or does it?

Since this sort of research generally isn’t done with actual men, investigators at Emory University used Mongolian gerbils. The advantage being that males exhibit cuddling behavior after females become pregnant and they don’t watch a lot of sports on TV. They introduced a male and female gerbil, who then formed a pair bond and the female became pregnant. When the male started displaying cuddling behaviors, the researchers injected him with testosterone, expecting to see his antisocial side.

“Instead, we were surprised that a male gerbil became even more cuddly and prosocial with his partner. He became like ‘super partner,’ ” lead author Aubrey Kelly, PhD, said in a written statement from the university.

Aubrey Kelly

For the next experiment, the female was removed and another male was introduced to a male who had already received a testosterone injection. That male was surprisingly unaggressive toward the intruder, at least initially. Then he received a second injection of testosterone. “It was like they suddenly woke up and realized they weren’t supposed to be friendly in that context,” Dr. Kelly said.

The testosterone seemed to influence the activity of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” the investigators suggested. “It’s surprising because normally we think of testosterone as increasing sexual behaviors and aggression. But we’ve shown that it can have more nuanced effects, depending on the social context.”

The researchers were not as surprised when their use of the phrase “super partner” led to a bidding war between DC and Marvel. Then came the contact from the Department of Defense, wondering about weaponized testosterone: Would it be possible for some sort of bomb to turn Vlad “the Impaler” Putin into Vlad “the Cuddler” Putin?
 

Are instruments spreading the sounds of COVID?

COVID restrictions are practically a thing of the past now. With more people laxed on being in close proximity to each other and the CDC not even recommending social distancing anymore, live concerts and events are back in full swing. But with new variants on the rise and people being a little more cautious, should we be worried about musical instruments spreading COVID?

Yes and no.

A study published in Physics of Fluids looked at wind instruments specifically and how much aerosol is produced and dispersed when playing them. For the study, the investigators measured fog particles with a laser and aerosol concentration with a particle counter to see how fast these particles decay in the air from the distance of the instrument.

PxHere

Musicians in an orchestra typically would sit close together to produce the best sound, but with COVID that became an issue, senior author Paulo Arratia of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, noted in a separate written statement. By looking at the distance traveled by the particles coming from a single instrument and how quickly they decayed, they could determine if sitting in close proximity is an actual threat.

Well, the threat was no greater than talking to someone face to face. Particle exit speeds were lower than for a cough or a sneeze, and the maximum decay length was 2 meters from the instrument’s opening.

But that’s just one instrument: What kind of impact does a whole orchestra have on a space? The researchers are looking into that too, but for now they suggest that musicians continue to stay 6 feet away from each other.

So, yeah, there is a threat, but it’s probably safer for you to see that orchestra than have someone sneeze on you.

Music to our ears.

Taking ‘not enough hours in the day’ to new heights

It’s no secret that there’s a big doctor shortage in the United States. Going through medical school is long, expensive, and stressful, and it’s not like those long, stressful hours stop once you finally do get that degree. There is, however, an excellent reason to take that dive into doctorhood: You’ll gain mastery over time itself.

A study from the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and Imperial College London has revealed the truth. By using data pulled from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the researchers found that primary care physicians who see an average number of patients and follow all the current national guidelines for preventive care, chronic disease care, and acute care – plus administrative tasks – must work 26.7 hours a day. That works out to 14.1 hours of preventive care, 7.2 hours of chronic disease care, 2.2 hours of acute care, and 3.2 hours of documentation and inbox management.

liseykina/thinkstockphotos

Astute readers may note that this is a bit more than the traditional 8-hour workday. It is, in fact, more hours than there actually are in a day. As it turns out, Doctor Strange is more of a documentary than …

Hang on, we’re receiving word that doctors are not in fact wizards who can bend time and space to their will, nor are they sitting on a stash of Time-Turners they saved from the Ministry of Magic before Voldemort destroyed them all. They are, according to the study, overworked and overburdened with too many things and too little time. This is why outcomes haven’t improved despite technological advances and why burnout is so common. We’d be burned out too, having to work temporally impossible hours.

The study authors suggested a team-based approach to medicine that would spread the workload out to nurses, physician assistants, dietitians, etc., estimating that about two-thirds of what a primary care physician does can be handled by someone else. A team-based approach would reduce the physician’s required hours down to 9.3 hours a day, which is at least physically possible. It’s either that or we make the day longer, which sounds like the plot of an episode of Futurama. Swap overwork for global warming and a longer day for a longer year and it is actually the plot of an episode of Futurama.
 

After a hard day of thinking, brains need their rest

Do you ever feel like you have no more capacity to think or make any more decisions after a long day at work? Do you need a few extra cups of coffee to even make it through the day, even though you’re mostly just sitting around talking and typing? Have we got the research for you: Mental exhaustion is an actual thing. Imagine that double whammy of having a job that’s physically and mentally demanding.

A recent study in Current Biology explained why we feel so exhausted after doing something mentally demanding for several hours. Over that time, glutamate builds up in synapses of the prefrontal cortex, which affects our decision making and leads to cognitive lethargy. Your brain eventually becomes more interested in tasks that are less mentally fatiguing, and that’s probably why you’re reading this LOTME right now instead of getting back to work.

“Our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration – accumulation of noxious substances – so fatigue would indeed be a signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of brain functioning,” senior author Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University, Paris, said in a written statement.

©thinkstockphotos.com

The group of researchers conducted studies by using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to look at two groups of people over the course of a workday: One group had mentally tasking jobs and one didn’t. Those who had to think harder for their jobs had more signs of fatigue, such as reduced pupil dilation and glutamate in synapses of the prefrontal cortex. They also looked for more rewards that required less thinking.

For those whose mentally exhausting jobs probably won’t get better or change, the researchers suggest getting as much rest as possible. Those who don’t have that option will have to continue drinking those 7 cups of coffee a day. ... and reading LOTME.

Hmm, might be a new tagline for us in there somewhere. LOTME: Tired brains love us? When you’re too tired to think, think of LOTME? You can’t spell mental exhaustion without L-O-T-M-E?
 

Testosterone shows its warm and fuzzy side

Stereotypically, men are loud, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. The hair coming out of our faces is kind of a dead giveaway, right? We grunt, we scratch, we start wars, we watch sports on TV. But why? It’s the testosterone. Everyone knows that. Testosterone makes men aggressive … or does it?

Since this sort of research generally isn’t done with actual men, investigators at Emory University used Mongolian gerbils. The advantage being that males exhibit cuddling behavior after females become pregnant and they don’t watch a lot of sports on TV. They introduced a male and female gerbil, who then formed a pair bond and the female became pregnant. When the male started displaying cuddling behaviors, the researchers injected him with testosterone, expecting to see his antisocial side.

“Instead, we were surprised that a male gerbil became even more cuddly and prosocial with his partner. He became like ‘super partner,’ ” lead author Aubrey Kelly, PhD, said in a written statement from the university.

Aubrey Kelly

For the next experiment, the female was removed and another male was introduced to a male who had already received a testosterone injection. That male was surprisingly unaggressive toward the intruder, at least initially. Then he received a second injection of testosterone. “It was like they suddenly woke up and realized they weren’t supposed to be friendly in that context,” Dr. Kelly said.

The testosterone seemed to influence the activity of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” the investigators suggested. “It’s surprising because normally we think of testosterone as increasing sexual behaviors and aggression. But we’ve shown that it can have more nuanced effects, depending on the social context.”

The researchers were not as surprised when their use of the phrase “super partner” led to a bidding war between DC and Marvel. Then came the contact from the Department of Defense, wondering about weaponized testosterone: Would it be possible for some sort of bomb to turn Vlad “the Impaler” Putin into Vlad “the Cuddler” Putin?
 

Are instruments spreading the sounds of COVID?

COVID restrictions are practically a thing of the past now. With more people laxed on being in close proximity to each other and the CDC not even recommending social distancing anymore, live concerts and events are back in full swing. But with new variants on the rise and people being a little more cautious, should we be worried about musical instruments spreading COVID?

Yes and no.

A study published in Physics of Fluids looked at wind instruments specifically and how much aerosol is produced and dispersed when playing them. For the study, the investigators measured fog particles with a laser and aerosol concentration with a particle counter to see how fast these particles decay in the air from the distance of the instrument.

PxHere

Musicians in an orchestra typically would sit close together to produce the best sound, but with COVID that became an issue, senior author Paulo Arratia of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, noted in a separate written statement. By looking at the distance traveled by the particles coming from a single instrument and how quickly they decayed, they could determine if sitting in close proximity is an actual threat.

Well, the threat was no greater than talking to someone face to face. Particle exit speeds were lower than for a cough or a sneeze, and the maximum decay length was 2 meters from the instrument’s opening.

But that’s just one instrument: What kind of impact does a whole orchestra have on a space? The researchers are looking into that too, but for now they suggest that musicians continue to stay 6 feet away from each other.

So, yeah, there is a threat, but it’s probably safer for you to see that orchestra than have someone sneeze on you.

Music to our ears.

Taking ‘not enough hours in the day’ to new heights

It’s no secret that there’s a big doctor shortage in the United States. Going through medical school is long, expensive, and stressful, and it’s not like those long, stressful hours stop once you finally do get that degree. There is, however, an excellent reason to take that dive into doctorhood: You’ll gain mastery over time itself.

A study from the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and Imperial College London has revealed the truth. By using data pulled from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the researchers found that primary care physicians who see an average number of patients and follow all the current national guidelines for preventive care, chronic disease care, and acute care – plus administrative tasks – must work 26.7 hours a day. That works out to 14.1 hours of preventive care, 7.2 hours of chronic disease care, 2.2 hours of acute care, and 3.2 hours of documentation and inbox management.

liseykina/thinkstockphotos

Astute readers may note that this is a bit more than the traditional 8-hour workday. It is, in fact, more hours than there actually are in a day. As it turns out, Doctor Strange is more of a documentary than …

Hang on, we’re receiving word that doctors are not in fact wizards who can bend time and space to their will, nor are they sitting on a stash of Time-Turners they saved from the Ministry of Magic before Voldemort destroyed them all. They are, according to the study, overworked and overburdened with too many things and too little time. This is why outcomes haven’t improved despite technological advances and why burnout is so common. We’d be burned out too, having to work temporally impossible hours.

The study authors suggested a team-based approach to medicine that would spread the workload out to nurses, physician assistants, dietitians, etc., estimating that about two-thirds of what a primary care physician does can be handled by someone else. A team-based approach would reduce the physician’s required hours down to 9.3 hours a day, which is at least physically possible. It’s either that or we make the day longer, which sounds like the plot of an episode of Futurama. Swap overwork for global warming and a longer day for a longer year and it is actually the plot of an episode of Futurama.
 

After a hard day of thinking, brains need their rest

Do you ever feel like you have no more capacity to think or make any more decisions after a long day at work? Do you need a few extra cups of coffee to even make it through the day, even though you’re mostly just sitting around talking and typing? Have we got the research for you: Mental exhaustion is an actual thing. Imagine that double whammy of having a job that’s physically and mentally demanding.

A recent study in Current Biology explained why we feel so exhausted after doing something mentally demanding for several hours. Over that time, glutamate builds up in synapses of the prefrontal cortex, which affects our decision making and leads to cognitive lethargy. Your brain eventually becomes more interested in tasks that are less mentally fatiguing, and that’s probably why you’re reading this LOTME right now instead of getting back to work.

“Our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration – accumulation of noxious substances – so fatigue would indeed be a signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of brain functioning,” senior author Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University, Paris, said in a written statement.

©thinkstockphotos.com

The group of researchers conducted studies by using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to look at two groups of people over the course of a workday: One group had mentally tasking jobs and one didn’t. Those who had to think harder for their jobs had more signs of fatigue, such as reduced pupil dilation and glutamate in synapses of the prefrontal cortex. They also looked for more rewards that required less thinking.

For those whose mentally exhausting jobs probably won’t get better or change, the researchers suggest getting as much rest as possible. Those who don’t have that option will have to continue drinking those 7 cups of coffee a day. ... and reading LOTME.

Hmm, might be a new tagline for us in there somewhere. LOTME: Tired brains love us? When you’re too tired to think, think of LOTME? You can’t spell mental exhaustion without L-O-T-M-E?
 

Testosterone shows its warm and fuzzy side

Stereotypically, men are loud, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. The hair coming out of our faces is kind of a dead giveaway, right? We grunt, we scratch, we start wars, we watch sports on TV. But why? It’s the testosterone. Everyone knows that. Testosterone makes men aggressive … or does it?

Since this sort of research generally isn’t done with actual men, investigators at Emory University used Mongolian gerbils. The advantage being that males exhibit cuddling behavior after females become pregnant and they don’t watch a lot of sports on TV. They introduced a male and female gerbil, who then formed a pair bond and the female became pregnant. When the male started displaying cuddling behaviors, the researchers injected him with testosterone, expecting to see his antisocial side.

“Instead, we were surprised that a male gerbil became even more cuddly and prosocial with his partner. He became like ‘super partner,’ ” lead author Aubrey Kelly, PhD, said in a written statement from the university.

Aubrey Kelly

For the next experiment, the female was removed and another male was introduced to a male who had already received a testosterone injection. That male was surprisingly unaggressive toward the intruder, at least initially. Then he received a second injection of testosterone. “It was like they suddenly woke up and realized they weren’t supposed to be friendly in that context,” Dr. Kelly said.

The testosterone seemed to influence the activity of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” the investigators suggested. “It’s surprising because normally we think of testosterone as increasing sexual behaviors and aggression. But we’ve shown that it can have more nuanced effects, depending on the social context.”

The researchers were not as surprised when their use of the phrase “super partner” led to a bidding war between DC and Marvel. Then came the contact from the Department of Defense, wondering about weaponized testosterone: Would it be possible for some sort of bomb to turn Vlad “the Impaler” Putin into Vlad “the Cuddler” Putin?
 

Are instruments spreading the sounds of COVID?

COVID restrictions are practically a thing of the past now. With more people laxed on being in close proximity to each other and the CDC not even recommending social distancing anymore, live concerts and events are back in full swing. But with new variants on the rise and people being a little more cautious, should we be worried about musical instruments spreading COVID?

Yes and no.

A study published in Physics of Fluids looked at wind instruments specifically and how much aerosol is produced and dispersed when playing them. For the study, the investigators measured fog particles with a laser and aerosol concentration with a particle counter to see how fast these particles decay in the air from the distance of the instrument.

PxHere

Musicians in an orchestra typically would sit close together to produce the best sound, but with COVID that became an issue, senior author Paulo Arratia of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, noted in a separate written statement. By looking at the distance traveled by the particles coming from a single instrument and how quickly they decayed, they could determine if sitting in close proximity is an actual threat.

Well, the threat was no greater than talking to someone face to face. Particle exit speeds were lower than for a cough or a sneeze, and the maximum decay length was 2 meters from the instrument’s opening.

But that’s just one instrument: What kind of impact does a whole orchestra have on a space? The researchers are looking into that too, but for now they suggest that musicians continue to stay 6 feet away from each other.

So, yeah, there is a threat, but it’s probably safer for you to see that orchestra than have someone sneeze on you.

Music to our ears.

New child cases of COVID-19 made at least a temporary transition from slow increase to decrease, and emergency department visits and new admissions seem to be following a downward trend.

There were almost 87,000 new cases reported during the week of Aug. 5-11, which is down by 10% from the previous week after 4 consecutive weeks of increases, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. For some historical perspective, the latest weekly count falls below last year’s Delta surge figure of 121,000 (Aug. 6-12) but above the summer 2020 total of 26,000 (Aug. 7-13).

Measures of serious illness finally head downward

The prolonged rise in ED visits and new admissions over the last 5 months, which continued even through late spring when cases were declining, seems to have peaked, CDC data suggest.

That upward trend, driven largely by continued increases among younger children, peaked in late July, when 6.7% of all ED visits for children aged 0-11 years involved diagnosed COVID-19. The corresponding peaks for older children occurred around the same time but were only about half as high: 3.4% for 12- to 15-year-olds and 3.6% for those aged 16-17, the CDC reported.

The data for new admissions present a similar scenario: an increase starting in mid-April that continued unabated into late July despite the decline in new cases. By the time admissions among children aged 0-17 years peaked at 0.46 per 100,000 population in late July, they had reached the same level seen during the Delta surge. By Aug. 7, the rate of new hospitalizations was down to 0.42 per 100,000, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
 

The vaccine is ready for all students, but …

As children all over the country start or get ready to start a new school year, the only large-scale student vaccine mandate belongs to the District of Columbia. California has a mandate pending, but it will not go into effect until after July 1, 2023. There are, however, 20 states that have banned vaccine mandates for students, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

Nonmandated vaccination of the youngest children against COVID-19 continues to be slow. In the approximately 7 weeks (June 19 to Aug. 9) since the vaccine was approved for use in children younger than 5 years, just 4.4% of that age group has received at least one dose and 0.7% are fully vaccinated. Among those aged 5-11 years, who have been vaccine-eligible since early November of last year, 37.6% have received at least one dose and 30.2% are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.

New child cases of COVID-19 made at least a temporary transition from slow increase to decrease, and emergency department visits and new admissions seem to be following a downward trend.

There were almost 87,000 new cases reported during the week of Aug. 5-11, which is down by 10% from the previous week after 4 consecutive weeks of increases, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. For some historical perspective, the latest weekly count falls below last year’s Delta surge figure of 121,000 (Aug. 6-12) but above the summer 2020 total of 26,000 (Aug. 7-13).

Measures of serious illness finally head downward

The prolonged rise in ED visits and new admissions over the last 5 months, which continued even through late spring when cases were declining, seems to have peaked, CDC data suggest.

That upward trend, driven largely by continued increases among younger children, peaked in late July, when 6.7% of all ED visits for children aged 0-11 years involved diagnosed COVID-19. The corresponding peaks for older children occurred around the same time but were only about half as high: 3.4% for 12- to 15-year-olds and 3.6% for those aged 16-17, the CDC reported.

The data for new admissions present a similar scenario: an increase starting in mid-April that continued unabated into late July despite the decline in new cases. By the time admissions among children aged 0-17 years peaked at 0.46 per 100,000 population in late July, they had reached the same level seen during the Delta surge. By Aug. 7, the rate of new hospitalizations was down to 0.42 per 100,000, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
 

The vaccine is ready for all students, but …

As children all over the country start or get ready to start a new school year, the only large-scale student vaccine mandate belongs to the District of Columbia. California has a mandate pending, but it will not go into effect until after July 1, 2023. There are, however, 20 states that have banned vaccine mandates for students, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

Nonmandated vaccination of the youngest children against COVID-19 continues to be slow. In the approximately 7 weeks (June 19 to Aug. 9) since the vaccine was approved for use in children younger than 5 years, just 4.4% of that age group has received at least one dose and 0.7% are fully vaccinated. Among those aged 5-11 years, who have been vaccine-eligible since early November of last year, 37.6% have received at least one dose and 30.2% are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.

New child cases of COVID-19 made at least a temporary transition from slow increase to decrease, and emergency department visits and new admissions seem to be following a downward trend.

There were almost 87,000 new cases reported during the week of Aug. 5-11, which is down by 10% from the previous week after 4 consecutive weeks of increases, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. For some historical perspective, the latest weekly count falls below last year’s Delta surge figure of 121,000 (Aug. 6-12) but above the summer 2020 total of 26,000 (Aug. 7-13).

Measures of serious illness finally head downward

The prolonged rise in ED visits and new admissions over the last 5 months, which continued even through late spring when cases were declining, seems to have peaked, CDC data suggest.

That upward trend, driven largely by continued increases among younger children, peaked in late July, when 6.7% of all ED visits for children aged 0-11 years involved diagnosed COVID-19. The corresponding peaks for older children occurred around the same time but were only about half as high: 3.4% for 12- to 15-year-olds and 3.6% for those aged 16-17, the CDC reported.

The data for new admissions present a similar scenario: an increase starting in mid-April that continued unabated into late July despite the decline in new cases. By the time admissions among children aged 0-17 years peaked at 0.46 per 100,000 population in late July, they had reached the same level seen during the Delta surge. By Aug. 7, the rate of new hospitalizations was down to 0.42 per 100,000, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
 

The vaccine is ready for all students, but …

As children all over the country start or get ready to start a new school year, the only large-scale student vaccine mandate belongs to the District of Columbia. California has a mandate pending, but it will not go into effect until after July 1, 2023. There are, however, 20 states that have banned vaccine mandates for students, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

Nonmandated vaccination of the youngest children against COVID-19 continues to be slow. In the approximately 7 weeks (June 19 to Aug. 9) since the vaccine was approved for use in children younger than 5 years, just 4.4% of that age group has received at least one dose and 0.7% are fully vaccinated. Among those aged 5-11 years, who have been vaccine-eligible since early November of last year, 37.6% have received at least one dose and 30.2% are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.

Stress, meet weight gain. Weight gain, meet stress

You’re not eating differently and you’re keeping active, but your waistline is expanding. How is that happening? Since eating healthy and exercising shouldn’t make you gain weight, there may be a hidden factor getting in your way. Stress. The one thing that can have a grip on your circadian rhythm stronger than any bodybuilder.

Francesca Bellini/iStock/Getty Images

Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine published two mouse studies that suggest stress and other factors that throw the body’s circadian clocks out of rhythm may contribute to weight gain.

In the first study, the researchers imitated disruptive condition effects like high cortisol exposure and chronic stress by implanting pellets under the skin that released glucocorticoid at a constant rate for 21 days. Mice that received the pellets had twice as much white and brown fat, as well as much higher insulin levels, regardless of their unchanged and still-healthy diet.

In the second study, they used tagged proteins as markers to monitor the daily fluctuations of a protein that regulates fat cell production and circadian gene expression in mouse fat cell precursors. The results showed “that fat cell precursors commit to becoming fat cells only during the circadian cycle phase corresponding to evening in humans,” they said in a written statement.

“Every cell in our body has an intrinsic cell clock, just like the fat cells, and we have a master clock in our brain, which controls hormone secretion,” said senior author Mary Teruel of Cornell University. “A lot of forces are working against a healthy metabolism when we are out of circadian rhythm. The more we understand, the more likely we will be able to do something about it.”

So if you’re stressing out that the scale is or isn’t moving in the direction you want, you could be standing in your own way. Take a chill pill.
 

Who can smell cancer? The locust nose

If you need to smell some gas, there’s nothing better than a nose. Just ask a scientist: “Noses are still state of the art,” said Debajit Saha, PhD, of Michigan State University. “There’s really nothing like them when it comes to gas sensing.”

Derrick L. Turner

And when it comes to noses, dogs are best, right? After all, there’s a reason we don’t have bomb-sniffing wombats and drug-sniffing ostriches. Dogs are better. Better, but not perfect. And if they’re not perfect, then human technology can do better.

Enter the electronic nose. Which is better than dogs … except that it isn’t. “People have been working on ‘electronic noses’ for more than 15 years, but they’re still not close to achieving what biology can do seamlessly,” Dr. Saha explained in a statement from the university.

Which brings us back to dogs. If you want to detect early-stage cancer using smell, you go to the dogs, right? Nope.

Here’s Christopher Contag, PhD, also of Michigan State, who recruited Dr. Saha to the university: “I told him, ‘When you come here, we’ll detect cancer. I’m sure your locusts can do it.’ ”

Yes, locusts. Dr. Contag and his research team were looking at mouth cancers and noticed that different cell lines had different appearances. Then they discovered that those different-looking cell lines produced different metabolites, some of which were volatile.

Enter Dr. Saha’s locusts. They were able to tell the difference between normal cells and cancer cells and could even distinguish between the different cell lines. And how they were able to share this information? Not voluntarily, that’s for sure. The researchers attached electrodes to the insects’ brains and recorded their responses to gas samples from both healthy and cancer cells. Those brain signals were then used to create chemical profiles of the different cells. Piece of cake.

The whole getting-electrodes-attached-to-their-brains thing seemed at least a bit ethically ambiguous, so we contacted the locusts’ PR office, which offered some positive spin: “Humans get their early cancer detection and we get that whole swarms-that-devour-entire-countrysides thing off our backs. Win win.”
 

Bad news for vampires everywhere

Pop culture has been extraordinarily kind to the vampire. A few hundred years ago, vampires were demon-possessed, often-inhuman monsters. Now? They’re suave, sophisticated, beautiful, and oh-so dramatic and angst-filled about their “curse.” Drink a little human blood, live and look young forever. Such monsters they are.

eakkachaister/Thinkstock

It does make sense in a morbid sort of way. An old person receiving the blood of the young does seem like a good idea for rejuvenation, right? A team of Ukrainian researchers sought to find out, conducting a study in which older mice were linked with young mice via heterochronic parabiosis. For 3 months, old-young mice pairs were surgically connected and shared blood. After 3 months, the mice were disconnected from each other and the effects of the blood link were studied.

For all the vampire enthusiasts out there, we have bad news and worse news. The bad news first: The older mice received absolutely no benefit from heterochronic parabiosis. No youthfulness, no increased lifespan, nothing. The worse news is that the younger mice were adversely affected by the older blood. They aged more and experienced a shortened lifespan, even after the connection was severed. The old blood, according to the investigators, contains factors capable of inducing aging in younger mice, but the opposite is not true. Further research into aging, they added, should focus on suppressing the aging factors in older blood.

Of note, the paper was written by doctors who are currently refugees, fleeing the war in Ukraine. We don’t want to speculate on the true cause of the war, but we’re onto you, Putin. We know you wanted the vampire research for yourself, but it won’t work. Your dream of becoming Vlad “Dracula” Putin will never come to pass.
 

Hearing is not always believing

Have you ever heard yourself on a voice mail, or from a recording you did at work? No matter how good you sound, you still might feel like the recording sounds nothing like you. It may even cause low self-esteem for those who don’t like how their voice sounds or don’t recognize it when it’s played back to them.

Hiroshi Imamizu, University of Tokyo

Since one possible symptom of schizophrenia is not recognizing one’s own speech and having a false sense of control over actions, and those with schizophrenia may hallucinate or hear voices, not being able to recognize their own voices may be alarming.

A recent study on the sense of agency, or sense of control, involved having volunteers speak with different pitches in their voices and then having it played back to them to gauge their reactions.

“Our results demonstrate that hearing one’s own voice is a critical factor to increased self-agency over speech. In other words, we do not strongly feel that ‘I’ am generating the speech if we hear someone else’s voice as an outcome of the speech. Our study provides empirical evidence of the tight link between the sense of agency and self-voice identity,” lead author Ryu Ohata, PhD, of the University of Tokyo, said in a written statement.

As social interaction becomes more digital through platforms such as FaceTime, Zoom, and voicemail, especially since the pandemic has promoted social distancing, it makes sense that people may be more aware and more surprised by how they sound on recordings.

So, if you ever promised someone something that you don’t want to do, and they play it back to you from the recording you made, maybe you can just say you don’t recognize the voice. And if it’s not you, then you don’t have to do it.
 

Stress, meet weight gain. Weight gain, meet stress

You’re not eating differently and you’re keeping active, but your waistline is expanding. How is that happening? Since eating healthy and exercising shouldn’t make you gain weight, there may be a hidden factor getting in your way. Stress. The one thing that can have a grip on your circadian rhythm stronger than any bodybuilder.

Francesca Bellini/iStock/Getty Images

Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine published two mouse studies that suggest stress and other factors that throw the body’s circadian clocks out of rhythm may contribute to weight gain.

In the first study, the researchers imitated disruptive condition effects like high cortisol exposure and chronic stress by implanting pellets under the skin that released glucocorticoid at a constant rate for 21 days. Mice that received the pellets had twice as much white and brown fat, as well as much higher insulin levels, regardless of their unchanged and still-healthy diet.

In the second study, they used tagged proteins as markers to monitor the daily fluctuations of a protein that regulates fat cell production and circadian gene expression in mouse fat cell precursors. The results showed “that fat cell precursors commit to becoming fat cells only during the circadian cycle phase corresponding to evening in humans,” they said in a written statement.

“Every cell in our body has an intrinsic cell clock, just like the fat cells, and we have a master clock in our brain, which controls hormone secretion,” said senior author Mary Teruel of Cornell University. “A lot of forces are working against a healthy metabolism when we are out of circadian rhythm. The more we understand, the more likely we will be able to do something about it.”

So if you’re stressing out that the scale is or isn’t moving in the direction you want, you could be standing in your own way. Take a chill pill.
 

Who can smell cancer? The locust nose

If you need to smell some gas, there’s nothing better than a nose. Just ask a scientist: “Noses are still state of the art,” said Debajit Saha, PhD, of Michigan State University. “There’s really nothing like them when it comes to gas sensing.”

Derrick L. Turner

And when it comes to noses, dogs are best, right? After all, there’s a reason we don’t have bomb-sniffing wombats and drug-sniffing ostriches. Dogs are better. Better, but not perfect. And if they’re not perfect, then human technology can do better.

Enter the electronic nose. Which is better than dogs … except that it isn’t. “People have been working on ‘electronic noses’ for more than 15 years, but they’re still not close to achieving what biology can do seamlessly,” Dr. Saha explained in a statement from the university.

Which brings us back to dogs. If you want to detect early-stage cancer using smell, you go to the dogs, right? Nope.

Here’s Christopher Contag, PhD, also of Michigan State, who recruited Dr. Saha to the university: “I told him, ‘When you come here, we’ll detect cancer. I’m sure your locusts can do it.’ ”

Yes, locusts. Dr. Contag and his research team were looking at mouth cancers and noticed that different cell lines had different appearances. Then they discovered that those different-looking cell lines produced different metabolites, some of which were volatile.

Enter Dr. Saha’s locusts. They were able to tell the difference between normal cells and cancer cells and could even distinguish between the different cell lines. And how they were able to share this information? Not voluntarily, that’s for sure. The researchers attached electrodes to the insects’ brains and recorded their responses to gas samples from both healthy and cancer cells. Those brain signals were then used to create chemical profiles of the different cells. Piece of cake.

The whole getting-electrodes-attached-to-their-brains thing seemed at least a bit ethically ambiguous, so we contacted the locusts’ PR office, which offered some positive spin: “Humans get their early cancer detection and we get that whole swarms-that-devour-entire-countrysides thing off our backs. Win win.”
 

Bad news for vampires everywhere

Pop culture has been extraordinarily kind to the vampire. A few hundred years ago, vampires were demon-possessed, often-inhuman monsters. Now? They’re suave, sophisticated, beautiful, and oh-so dramatic and angst-filled about their “curse.” Drink a little human blood, live and look young forever. Such monsters they are.

eakkachaister/Thinkstock

It does make sense in a morbid sort of way. An old person receiving the blood of the young does seem like a good idea for rejuvenation, right? A team of Ukrainian researchers sought to find out, conducting a study in which older mice were linked with young mice via heterochronic parabiosis. For 3 months, old-young mice pairs were surgically connected and shared blood. After 3 months, the mice were disconnected from each other and the effects of the blood link were studied.

For all the vampire enthusiasts out there, we have bad news and worse news. The bad news first: The older mice received absolutely no benefit from heterochronic parabiosis. No youthfulness, no increased lifespan, nothing. The worse news is that the younger mice were adversely affected by the older blood. They aged more and experienced a shortened lifespan, even after the connection was severed. The old blood, according to the investigators, contains factors capable of inducing aging in younger mice, but the opposite is not true. Further research into aging, they added, should focus on suppressing the aging factors in older blood.

Of note, the paper was written by doctors who are currently refugees, fleeing the war in Ukraine. We don’t want to speculate on the true cause of the war, but we’re onto you, Putin. We know you wanted the vampire research for yourself, but it won’t work. Your dream of becoming Vlad “Dracula” Putin will never come to pass.
 

Hearing is not always believing

Have you ever heard yourself on a voice mail, or from a recording you did at work? No matter how good you sound, you still might feel like the recording sounds nothing like you. It may even cause low self-esteem for those who don’t like how their voice sounds or don’t recognize it when it’s played back to them.

Hiroshi Imamizu, University of Tokyo

Since one possible symptom of schizophrenia is not recognizing one’s own speech and having a false sense of control over actions, and those with schizophrenia may hallucinate or hear voices, not being able to recognize their own voices may be alarming.

A recent study on the sense of agency, or sense of control, involved having volunteers speak with different pitches in their voices and then having it played back to them to gauge their reactions.

“Our results demonstrate that hearing one’s own voice is a critical factor to increased self-agency over speech. In other words, we do not strongly feel that ‘I’ am generating the speech if we hear someone else’s voice as an outcome of the speech. Our study provides empirical evidence of the tight link between the sense of agency and self-voice identity,” lead author Ryu Ohata, PhD, of the University of Tokyo, said in a written statement.

As social interaction becomes more digital through platforms such as FaceTime, Zoom, and voicemail, especially since the pandemic has promoted social distancing, it makes sense that people may be more aware and more surprised by how they sound on recordings.

So, if you ever promised someone something that you don’t want to do, and they play it back to you from the recording you made, maybe you can just say you don’t recognize the voice. And if it’s not you, then you don’t have to do it.
 

Stress, meet weight gain. Weight gain, meet stress

You’re not eating differently and you’re keeping active, but your waistline is expanding. How is that happening? Since eating healthy and exercising shouldn’t make you gain weight, there may be a hidden factor getting in your way. Stress. The one thing that can have a grip on your circadian rhythm stronger than any bodybuilder.

Francesca Bellini/iStock/Getty Images

Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine published two mouse studies that suggest stress and other factors that throw the body’s circadian clocks out of rhythm may contribute to weight gain.

In the first study, the researchers imitated disruptive condition effects like high cortisol exposure and chronic stress by implanting pellets under the skin that released glucocorticoid at a constant rate for 21 days. Mice that received the pellets had twice as much white and brown fat, as well as much higher insulin levels, regardless of their unchanged and still-healthy diet.

In the second study, they used tagged proteins as markers to monitor the daily fluctuations of a protein that regulates fat cell production and circadian gene expression in mouse fat cell precursors. The results showed “that fat cell precursors commit to becoming fat cells only during the circadian cycle phase corresponding to evening in humans,” they said in a written statement.

“Every cell in our body has an intrinsic cell clock, just like the fat cells, and we have a master clock in our brain, which controls hormone secretion,” said senior author Mary Teruel of Cornell University. “A lot of forces are working against a healthy metabolism when we are out of circadian rhythm. The more we understand, the more likely we will be able to do something about it.”

So if you’re stressing out that the scale is or isn’t moving in the direction you want, you could be standing in your own way. Take a chill pill.
 

Who can smell cancer? The locust nose

If you need to smell some gas, there’s nothing better than a nose. Just ask a scientist: “Noses are still state of the art,” said Debajit Saha, PhD, of Michigan State University. “There’s really nothing like them when it comes to gas sensing.”

Derrick L. Turner

And when it comes to noses, dogs are best, right? After all, there’s a reason we don’t have bomb-sniffing wombats and drug-sniffing ostriches. Dogs are better. Better, but not perfect. And if they’re not perfect, then human technology can do better.

Enter the electronic nose. Which is better than dogs … except that it isn’t. “People have been working on ‘electronic noses’ for more than 15 years, but they’re still not close to achieving what biology can do seamlessly,” Dr. Saha explained in a statement from the university.

Which brings us back to dogs. If you want to detect early-stage cancer using smell, you go to the dogs, right? Nope.

Here’s Christopher Contag, PhD, also of Michigan State, who recruited Dr. Saha to the university: “I told him, ‘When you come here, we’ll detect cancer. I’m sure your locusts can do it.’ ”

Yes, locusts. Dr. Contag and his research team were looking at mouth cancers and noticed that different cell lines had different appearances. Then they discovered that those different-looking cell lines produced different metabolites, some of which were volatile.

Enter Dr. Saha’s locusts. They were able to tell the difference between normal cells and cancer cells and could even distinguish between the different cell lines. And how they were able to share this information? Not voluntarily, that’s for sure. The researchers attached electrodes to the insects’ brains and recorded their responses to gas samples from both healthy and cancer cells. Those brain signals were then used to create chemical profiles of the different cells. Piece of cake.

The whole getting-electrodes-attached-to-their-brains thing seemed at least a bit ethically ambiguous, so we contacted the locusts’ PR office, which offered some positive spin: “Humans get their early cancer detection and we get that whole swarms-that-devour-entire-countrysides thing off our backs. Win win.”
 

Bad news for vampires everywhere

Pop culture has been extraordinarily kind to the vampire. A few hundred years ago, vampires were demon-possessed, often-inhuman monsters. Now? They’re suave, sophisticated, beautiful, and oh-so dramatic and angst-filled about their “curse.” Drink a little human blood, live and look young forever. Such monsters they are.

eakkachaister/Thinkstock

It does make sense in a morbid sort of way. An old person receiving the blood of the young does seem like a good idea for rejuvenation, right? A team of Ukrainian researchers sought to find out, conducting a study in which older mice were linked with young mice via heterochronic parabiosis. For 3 months, old-young mice pairs were surgically connected and shared blood. After 3 months, the mice were disconnected from each other and the effects of the blood link were studied.

For all the vampire enthusiasts out there, we have bad news and worse news. The bad news first: The older mice received absolutely no benefit from heterochronic parabiosis. No youthfulness, no increased lifespan, nothing. The worse news is that the younger mice were adversely affected by the older blood. They aged more and experienced a shortened lifespan, even after the connection was severed. The old blood, according to the investigators, contains factors capable of inducing aging in younger mice, but the opposite is not true. Further research into aging, they added, should focus on suppressing the aging factors in older blood.

Of note, the paper was written by doctors who are currently refugees, fleeing the war in Ukraine. We don’t want to speculate on the true cause of the war, but we’re onto you, Putin. We know you wanted the vampire research for yourself, but it won’t work. Your dream of becoming Vlad “Dracula” Putin will never come to pass.
 

Hearing is not always believing

Have you ever heard yourself on a voice mail, or from a recording you did at work? No matter how good you sound, you still might feel like the recording sounds nothing like you. It may even cause low self-esteem for those who don’t like how their voice sounds or don’t recognize it when it’s played back to them.

Hiroshi Imamizu, University of Tokyo

Since one possible symptom of schizophrenia is not recognizing one’s own speech and having a false sense of control over actions, and those with schizophrenia may hallucinate or hear voices, not being able to recognize their own voices may be alarming.

A recent study on the sense of agency, or sense of control, involved having volunteers speak with different pitches in their voices and then having it played back to them to gauge their reactions.

“Our results demonstrate that hearing one’s own voice is a critical factor to increased self-agency over speech. In other words, we do not strongly feel that ‘I’ am generating the speech if we hear someone else’s voice as an outcome of the speech. Our study provides empirical evidence of the tight link between the sense of agency and self-voice identity,” lead author Ryu Ohata, PhD, of the University of Tokyo, said in a written statement.

As social interaction becomes more digital through platforms such as FaceTime, Zoom, and voicemail, especially since the pandemic has promoted social distancing, it makes sense that people may be more aware and more surprised by how they sound on recordings.

So, if you ever promised someone something that you don’t want to do, and they play it back to you from the recording you made, maybe you can just say you don’t recognize the voice. And if it’s not you, then you don’t have to do it.
 

New cases of COVID-19 rose among children for the fourth consecutive week, but the size of the increase declined for the second consecutive week, based on data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

After new child cases jumped by 22% during the week of July 15-21, the two successive weeks have produced increases of 3.9% (July 22-29) and 1.2% (July 30-Aug. 4). The latest weekly count from all states and territories still reporting was 96,599, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report, noting that several states have stopped reporting child cases and that others are reporting every other week.

Vaccine’s summer rollout gets lukewarm reception

As a group, children aged 0-4 years have not exactly flocked to the COVID-19 vaccine. As of Aug. 2 – about 6 weeks since the vaccine was authorized for children aged 6 months to 4 years – just 3.8% of those eligible had received at least one dose. Among children aged 5-11 the corresponding number on Aug. 2 was 37.4%, and for those aged 12-17 years it was 70.3%, the CDC data show.

That 3.8% of children aged less than 5 years represents almost 756,000 initial doses. That compares with over 6 million children aged 5-11 years who had received at least one dose through the first 6 weeks of their vaccination experience and over 5 million children aged 12-15, according to the COVID Data Tracker.

rfranki@mdedge.com

New cases of COVID-19 rose among children for the fourth consecutive week, but the size of the increase declined for the second consecutive week, based on data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

After new child cases jumped by 22% during the week of July 15-21, the two successive weeks have produced increases of 3.9% (July 22-29) and 1.2% (July 30-Aug. 4). The latest weekly count from all states and territories still reporting was 96,599, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report, noting that several states have stopped reporting child cases and that others are reporting every other week.

Vaccine’s summer rollout gets lukewarm reception

As a group, children aged 0-4 years have not exactly flocked to the COVID-19 vaccine. As of Aug. 2 – about 6 weeks since the vaccine was authorized for children aged 6 months to 4 years – just 3.8% of those eligible had received at least one dose. Among children aged 5-11 the corresponding number on Aug. 2 was 37.4%, and for those aged 12-17 years it was 70.3%, the CDC data show.

That 3.8% of children aged less than 5 years represents almost 756,000 initial doses. That compares with over 6 million children aged 5-11 years who had received at least one dose through the first 6 weeks of their vaccination experience and over 5 million children aged 12-15, according to the COVID Data Tracker.

rfranki@mdedge.com

New cases of COVID-19 rose among children for the fourth consecutive week, but the size of the increase declined for the second consecutive week, based on data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

After new child cases jumped by 22% during the week of July 15-21, the two successive weeks have produced increases of 3.9% (July 22-29) and 1.2% (July 30-Aug. 4). The latest weekly count from all states and territories still reporting was 96,599, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report, noting that several states have stopped reporting child cases and that others are reporting every other week.

Vaccine’s summer rollout gets lukewarm reception

As a group, children aged 0-4 years have not exactly flocked to the COVID-19 vaccine. As of Aug. 2 – about 6 weeks since the vaccine was authorized for children aged 6 months to 4 years – just 3.8% of those eligible had received at least one dose. Among children aged 5-11 the corresponding number on Aug. 2 was 37.4%, and for those aged 12-17 years it was 70.3%, the CDC data show.

That 3.8% of children aged less than 5 years represents almost 756,000 initial doses. That compares with over 6 million children aged 5-11 years who had received at least one dose through the first 6 weeks of their vaccination experience and over 5 million children aged 12-15, according to the COVID Data Tracker.

rfranki@mdedge.com

Individuals of nonwhite race/ethnicity are underrepresented in cosmetic clinical trials. Individuals of nonwhite race/ethnicity are not underrepresented in cosmetic clinical trials, according to a recent literature review. The explanation for those contradictory conclusions comes down to money, or, more specifically, the source of the money.

Among the cosmetic studies funded by industry, non-Whites represented about 25% of the patient populations. That proportion, however, rose to 62% for studies that were funded by universities/governments or had no funding source reported, Lisa Akintilo, MD, and associates said in their review.

“Lack of inclusion of diverse patient populations is both a medical and moral issue as conclusions of such homogeneous studies may not be generalizable. In the realm of cosmetic dermatology, diverse research cohorts are needed to identify potential disparities in therapies for cosmetic concerns and fully investigate effective treatments for all,” wrote Dr. Akintilo of New York University and coauthors.

Data from the U.S. Census show that non-Hispanic Whites made up 60% of the population in 2019, with that proportion falling to about 50% by 2045, the investigators noted. A report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons showed that about 34% of cosmetic patients identified as skin of color in 2020.

The availability of data was an issue in the review of the literature from 1990 to 2020, as 55% of the 318 randomized controlled trials that were reviewed did not include any information on racial/ethnic diversity and the other 143 studies offered only enough to determine White/non-White status, they explained.

That limitation meant that those 143 studies had to form the basis of the funding analysis, which also indicated that the studies with funding outside of industry were significantly more likely (odds ratio, 7.8) to have more than 50% non-White participants, compared with the industry-funded trials. The projects with industry backing, however, had a larger mean sample size than did those without: 139 vs. 81, Dr. Akintilo and associates said.

“The protocols of cosmetic trials should be questioned, as many target Caucasian‐centric treatment goals that may not be in alignment with the goals of skin of color patients,” they wrote. “It is important for cosmetic providers to recognize the well-established anatomical variations between different races and ethnicities and how they can inform desired cosmetic procedures.”

The investigators said that they had no conflicts of interest.

rfranki@mdedge.com

Individuals of nonwhite race/ethnicity are underrepresented in cosmetic clinical trials. Individuals of nonwhite race/ethnicity are not underrepresented in cosmetic clinical trials, according to a recent literature review. The explanation for those contradictory conclusions comes down to money, or, more specifically, the source of the money.

Among the cosmetic studies funded by industry, non-Whites represented about 25% of the patient populations. That proportion, however, rose to 62% for studies that were funded by universities/governments or had no funding source reported, Lisa Akintilo, MD, and associates said in their review.

“Lack of inclusion of diverse patient populations is both a medical and moral issue as conclusions of such homogeneous studies may not be generalizable. In the realm of cosmetic dermatology, diverse research cohorts are needed to identify potential disparities in therapies for cosmetic concerns and fully investigate effective treatments for all,” wrote Dr. Akintilo of New York University and coauthors.

Data from the U.S. Census show that non-Hispanic Whites made up 60% of the population in 2019, with that proportion falling to about 50% by 2045, the investigators noted. A report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons showed that about 34% of cosmetic patients identified as skin of color in 2020.

The availability of data was an issue in the review of the literature from 1990 to 2020, as 55% of the 318 randomized controlled trials that were reviewed did not include any information on racial/ethnic diversity and the other 143 studies offered only enough to determine White/non-White status, they explained.

That limitation meant that those 143 studies had to form the basis of the funding analysis, which also indicated that the studies with funding outside of industry were significantly more likely (odds ratio, 7.8) to have more than 50% non-White participants, compared with the industry-funded trials. The projects with industry backing, however, had a larger mean sample size than did those without: 139 vs. 81, Dr. Akintilo and associates said.

“The protocols of cosmetic trials should be questioned, as many target Caucasian‐centric treatment goals that may not be in alignment with the goals of skin of color patients,” they wrote. “It is important for cosmetic providers to recognize the well-established anatomical variations between different races and ethnicities and how they can inform desired cosmetic procedures.”

The investigators said that they had no conflicts of interest.

rfranki@mdedge.com

Individuals of nonwhite race/ethnicity are underrepresented in cosmetic clinical trials. Individuals of nonwhite race/ethnicity are not underrepresented in cosmetic clinical trials, according to a recent literature review. The explanation for those contradictory conclusions comes down to money, or, more specifically, the source of the money.

Among the cosmetic studies funded by industry, non-Whites represented about 25% of the patient populations. That proportion, however, rose to 62% for studies that were funded by universities/governments or had no funding source reported, Lisa Akintilo, MD, and associates said in their review.

“Lack of inclusion of diverse patient populations is both a medical and moral issue as conclusions of such homogeneous studies may not be generalizable. In the realm of cosmetic dermatology, diverse research cohorts are needed to identify potential disparities in therapies for cosmetic concerns and fully investigate effective treatments for all,” wrote Dr. Akintilo of New York University and coauthors.

Data from the U.S. Census show that non-Hispanic Whites made up 60% of the population in 2019, with that proportion falling to about 50% by 2045, the investigators noted. A report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons showed that about 34% of cosmetic patients identified as skin of color in 2020.

The availability of data was an issue in the review of the literature from 1990 to 2020, as 55% of the 318 randomized controlled trials that were reviewed did not include any information on racial/ethnic diversity and the other 143 studies offered only enough to determine White/non-White status, they explained.

That limitation meant that those 143 studies had to form the basis of the funding analysis, which also indicated that the studies with funding outside of industry were significantly more likely (odds ratio, 7.8) to have more than 50% non-White participants, compared with the industry-funded trials. The projects with industry backing, however, had a larger mean sample size than did those without: 139 vs. 81, Dr. Akintilo and associates said.

“The protocols of cosmetic trials should be questioned, as many target Caucasian‐centric treatment goals that may not be in alignment with the goals of skin of color patients,” they wrote. “It is important for cosmetic providers to recognize the well-established anatomical variations between different races and ethnicities and how they can inform desired cosmetic procedures.”

The investigators said that they had no conflicts of interest.

rfranki@mdedge.com

Black and Hispanic adults are diagnosed with hypertension at a significantly younger age than are white adults, and they also are more likely than Whites to be unaware of undiagnosed high blood pressure, based on national survey data collected from 2011 to 2020.

“Earlier hypertension onset in Black and Hispanic adults may contribute to racial and ethnic CVD disparities,” Xiaoning Huang, PhD, and associates wrote in JAMA Cardiology, also noting that “lower hypertension awareness among racial and ethnic minoritized groups suggests potential for underestimating differences in age at onset.”

Overall mean age at diagnosis was 46 years for the overall study sample of 9,627 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys over the 10 years covered in the analysis. Black adults, with a median age of 42 years, and Hispanic adults (median, 43 years) were significantly younger at diagnosis than White adults, who had a median age of 47 years, the investigators reported.

“Earlier age at hypertension onset may mean greater cumulative exposure to high blood pressure across the life course, which is associated with increased risk of [cardiovascular disease] and may contribute to racial disparities in hypertension-related outcomes,” said Dr. Huang and associates at Northwestern University, Chicago.

The increased cumulative exposure can be seen when age at diagnosis is stratified “across the life course.” Black/Hispanic adults were significantly more likely than White/Asian adults to be diagnosed at or before 30 years of age, and that difference continued to at least age 50 years, the investigators said.

Many adults unaware of their hypertension

There was a somewhat different trend among those in the study population who reported BP at or above 140/90 mm Hg but did not report a hypertension diagnosis. Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults all were significantly more likely than White adults to be unaware of their hypertension, the survey data showed.

Overall, 18% of those who did not report a hypertension diagnosis had a BP of 140/90 mm Hg or higher and 38% had a BP of 130/80 mm Hg or more. Broken down by race and ethnicity, 16% and 36% of Whites reporting no hypertension had BPs of 140/90 and 130/80 mm Hg, respectively; those proportions were 21% and 42% for Hispanics, 24% and 44% for Asians, and 28% and 51% for Blacks, with all of the differences between Whites and the others significant, the research team reported.

One investigator is an associate editor for JAMA Cardiology and reported receiving grants from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. None of the other investigators reported any conflicts.

Black and Hispanic adults are diagnosed with hypertension at a significantly younger age than are white adults, and they also are more likely than Whites to be unaware of undiagnosed high blood pressure, based on national survey data collected from 2011 to 2020.

“Earlier hypertension onset in Black and Hispanic adults may contribute to racial and ethnic CVD disparities,” Xiaoning Huang, PhD, and associates wrote in JAMA Cardiology, also noting that “lower hypertension awareness among racial and ethnic minoritized groups suggests potential for underestimating differences in age at onset.”

Overall mean age at diagnosis was 46 years for the overall study sample of 9,627 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys over the 10 years covered in the analysis. Black adults, with a median age of 42 years, and Hispanic adults (median, 43 years) were significantly younger at diagnosis than White adults, who had a median age of 47 years, the investigators reported.

“Earlier age at hypertension onset may mean greater cumulative exposure to high blood pressure across the life course, which is associated with increased risk of [cardiovascular disease] and may contribute to racial disparities in hypertension-related outcomes,” said Dr. Huang and associates at Northwestern University, Chicago.

The increased cumulative exposure can be seen when age at diagnosis is stratified “across the life course.” Black/Hispanic adults were significantly more likely than White/Asian adults to be diagnosed at or before 30 years of age, and that difference continued to at least age 50 years, the investigators said.

Many adults unaware of their hypertension

There was a somewhat different trend among those in the study population who reported BP at or above 140/90 mm Hg but did not report a hypertension diagnosis. Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults all were significantly more likely than White adults to be unaware of their hypertension, the survey data showed.

Overall, 18% of those who did not report a hypertension diagnosis had a BP of 140/90 mm Hg or higher and 38% had a BP of 130/80 mm Hg or more. Broken down by race and ethnicity, 16% and 36% of Whites reporting no hypertension had BPs of 140/90 and 130/80 mm Hg, respectively; those proportions were 21% and 42% for Hispanics, 24% and 44% for Asians, and 28% and 51% for Blacks, with all of the differences between Whites and the others significant, the research team reported.

One investigator is an associate editor for JAMA Cardiology and reported receiving grants from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. None of the other investigators reported any conflicts.

Black and Hispanic adults are diagnosed with hypertension at a significantly younger age than are white adults, and they also are more likely than Whites to be unaware of undiagnosed high blood pressure, based on national survey data collected from 2011 to 2020.

“Earlier hypertension onset in Black and Hispanic adults may contribute to racial and ethnic CVD disparities,” Xiaoning Huang, PhD, and associates wrote in JAMA Cardiology, also noting that “lower hypertension awareness among racial and ethnic minoritized groups suggests potential for underestimating differences in age at onset.”

Overall mean age at diagnosis was 46 years for the overall study sample of 9,627 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys over the 10 years covered in the analysis. Black adults, with a median age of 42 years, and Hispanic adults (median, 43 years) were significantly younger at diagnosis than White adults, who had a median age of 47 years, the investigators reported.

“Earlier age at hypertension onset may mean greater cumulative exposure to high blood pressure across the life course, which is associated with increased risk of [cardiovascular disease] and may contribute to racial disparities in hypertension-related outcomes,” said Dr. Huang and associates at Northwestern University, Chicago.

The increased cumulative exposure can be seen when age at diagnosis is stratified “across the life course.” Black/Hispanic adults were significantly more likely than White/Asian adults to be diagnosed at or before 30 years of age, and that difference continued to at least age 50 years, the investigators said.

Many adults unaware of their hypertension

There was a somewhat different trend among those in the study population who reported BP at or above 140/90 mm Hg but did not report a hypertension diagnosis. Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults all were significantly more likely than White adults to be unaware of their hypertension, the survey data showed.

Overall, 18% of those who did not report a hypertension diagnosis had a BP of 140/90 mm Hg or higher and 38% had a BP of 130/80 mm Hg or more. Broken down by race and ethnicity, 16% and 36% of Whites reporting no hypertension had BPs of 140/90 and 130/80 mm Hg, respectively; those proportions were 21% and 42% for Hispanics, 24% and 44% for Asians, and 28% and 51% for Blacks, with all of the differences between Whites and the others significant, the research team reported.

One investigator is an associate editor for JAMA Cardiology and reported receiving grants from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. None of the other investigators reported any conflicts.

Finding a fiber of good moral fiber

If you’ve ever wandered into the supplement aisle at your local grocery store, you’ve probably noticed an overabundance of fiber supplements that claim to do this for you and benefit that. Since there’s no Food and Drug Administration regulation on fiber supplements, manufacturers are free to (and do) make whatever wild claims they like. And much like choosing which of 500 shows to watch on Netflix, when you’re spoiled for choice, it can be difficult to pick.

Duke University Photo

Enter a team of molecular geneticists and microbiologists from Duke University. They can’t tell you what show to watch next, but they can tell you which fiber to choose, thanks to their new study. And the answer? Yes.

Well that’s not very helpful, but let us explain. For their study, a group of 28 received three of the main fiber supplements (inulin, dextrin, and galactooligosaccharides) for a week each, followed by a week off of fibers for their gut to return to baseline until they’d received all three. Those who consumed the least fiber at baseline saw the greatest benefit from fiber supplementation, with no appreciable difference between the three types. It was the same story for study participants who already consumed enough fiber; because their guts already hosted a more-optimal microbiome, the type of supplement didn’t matter. The benefits were the same across the board.

In an additional study, the Duke researchers found that gut microbiomes reacted to new fiber within a day, being primed to consume fiber on the first dose and digesting it more quickly on the second fiber dose.

The results, the researchers pointed out, make sense, since the average American only consumes 20%-40% of their daily recommended supply of fiber. Our digestive systems aren’t picky; they just want more, so go out there and choose whatever fiber you’d like. Do that, and then feel free to eat as many double bacon cheeseburgers as you’d like. That is the pinnacle of diet right there. Dietitians literally could not complain about it.
 

Jarlsberg vs. Camembert: This time it’s skeletal

Fiber is fabulous, of course, but the road to dietary health and wellness fulfillment takes us to many other, equally wondrous places. Hey, look! This next exit is covered with cheese.

PxHere

All the cheeses are here, from Abbaye de Belloc to Zwitser, and there, right between the jalapeno cheddar and the Jermi tortes you’ll find Jarlsberg, a mild, semisoft, nutty-flavored cheese that comes from Jarlsberg in eastern Norway. A recent study also suggests that Jarlsberg may help to prevent osteopenia and osteoporosis.

A group of Norwegian investigators gathered together 66 healthy women and gave them a daily portion of either Jarlsberg or Camembert for 6 weeks, at which point the Camembert group was switched to Jarlsberg for another 6 weeks.

The research team choose Camembert because of its similarity to Jarlsberg in fat and protein content. Jarlsberg, however, also is rich in vitamin K_{2, which is important for bone health,} and a substance known as DHNA, which “might combat bone thinning and increase bone tissue formation,” they said in a Eurekalert release.

After the first 6 weeks, blood levels of osteocalcin; vitamin K_{2; and} PINP, a peptide involved in bone turnover, were significantly higher in the Jarlsberg group only. All those measures rose significantly after the switch from Camembert to Jarlsberg, while levels of total and LDL cholesterol “fell significantly in the Camembert group after they switched to Jarlsberg,” the team added.

But wait! There’s more! HbA1c fell significantly among those initially eating the Jarlsberg but rose sharply in those eating Camembert. Do you see where this is going? After the Camembert group made the switch to Jarlsberg, their HbA1c levels fell significantly as well.

So it’s not just a cheese thing: The effects are specific to Jarlsberg. Can you guess what we’re having for lunch? Double bacon and fiber Jarlsbergers. Mmm, Jarlsburgers.
 

Luck be a lady: The mother of twins

It’s widely believed that women who have twins must be more fertile, giving birth to more than one child at a time. Some studies have supported the idea, but more recent work is refuting that claim. In actuality, it might just be more statistics and luck than fertility after all.

Michael Blackburn/istockphoto

Those earlier studies supporting fertility didn’t specify whether the chances of twin births were based on the ability to produce more than one egg at a time or on the number of births that women had overall. Looking at 100,000 preindustrial European births, before contraception was available, researchers from Norway, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom found that the number of total births, twins included, makes all the difference.

“When a woman gives birth several times, the chances increase that at least one of these births will be a twin birth,” investigator Gine Roll Skjærvø of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology said in a written statement.

Since twins occur in 1%-3% of all births, the more births that a woman has, the better her chances of giving birth to twins. The researchers compared it to playing the lottery. You buy enough tickets, eventually your numbers are going to come up. Despite that, however, they found that women who give birth to twins give birth less often than those who don’t have twins. Which raises the idea of sheer luck.

The researchers said that there’s still a lot to uncover in twin births, noting that “uncritically comparing groups of women with and without twins can trick us into believing the opposite of what is really true. These groupings may either hide the effects of twinning and fertility genes where they exist, or vice versa, create the illusion of these if they do not exist.”

For now, this new research claims that it’s basically a lottery. And women who give birth to twins hit the jackpot.
 

Those with low wages may be earning future memory loss

Not only are low wages detrimental to our souls, hopes, and dreams, but a new study shows that low wages also are linked to quicker memory decline later in life. Sustained low wages not only cause stress and food insecurity in the lives of many, but they also can cause diseases such as depression, obesity, and high blood pressure, which are risk factors for cognitive aging.

Nicola Barts/Pexels

The study was conducted using records from the Health and Retirement Study for the years 1992-2016 and focused on 2,879 adults born between 1936 and 1941. The participants were divided into three groups: those who never earned low wages, those who sometimes did, and those who always did.

The investigators found that workers who earned sustained low wages – defined as an hourly wage lower than two-thirds of the federal median wage for the corresponding year – “experienced significantly faster memory decline in older age” than did those who never earned low wages.

There are signs of inflation everywhere we look these days, but many people are not earning higher wages to compensate for the extra expenses. “Increasing the federal minimum wage, for example to $15 per hour, remains a gridlock issue in Congress,” lead author Katrina Kezios of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a statement released by the university.

If only salaries would rise instead of prices for once.

Finding a fiber of good moral fiber

If you’ve ever wandered into the supplement aisle at your local grocery store, you’ve probably noticed an overabundance of fiber supplements that claim to do this for you and benefit that. Since there’s no Food and Drug Administration regulation on fiber supplements, manufacturers are free to (and do) make whatever wild claims they like. And much like choosing which of 500 shows to watch on Netflix, when you’re spoiled for choice, it can be difficult to pick.

Duke University Photo

Enter a team of molecular geneticists and microbiologists from Duke University. They can’t tell you what show to watch next, but they can tell you which fiber to choose, thanks to their new study. And the answer? Yes.

Well that’s not very helpful, but let us explain. For their study, a group of 28 received three of the main fiber supplements (inulin, dextrin, and galactooligosaccharides) for a week each, followed by a week off of fibers for their gut to return to baseline until they’d received all three. Those who consumed the least fiber at baseline saw the greatest benefit from fiber supplementation, with no appreciable difference between the three types. It was the same story for study participants who already consumed enough fiber; because their guts already hosted a more-optimal microbiome, the type of supplement didn’t matter. The benefits were the same across the board.

In an additional study, the Duke researchers found that gut microbiomes reacted to new fiber within a day, being primed to consume fiber on the first dose and digesting it more quickly on the second fiber dose.

The results, the researchers pointed out, make sense, since the average American only consumes 20%-40% of their daily recommended supply of fiber. Our digestive systems aren’t picky; they just want more, so go out there and choose whatever fiber you’d like. Do that, and then feel free to eat as many double bacon cheeseburgers as you’d like. That is the pinnacle of diet right there. Dietitians literally could not complain about it.
 

Jarlsberg vs. Camembert: This time it’s skeletal

Fiber is fabulous, of course, but the road to dietary health and wellness fulfillment takes us to many other, equally wondrous places. Hey, look! This next exit is covered with cheese.

PxHere

All the cheeses are here, from Abbaye de Belloc to Zwitser, and there, right between the jalapeno cheddar and the Jermi tortes you’ll find Jarlsberg, a mild, semisoft, nutty-flavored cheese that comes from Jarlsberg in eastern Norway. A recent study also suggests that Jarlsberg may help to prevent osteopenia and osteoporosis.

A group of Norwegian investigators gathered together 66 healthy women and gave them a daily portion of either Jarlsberg or Camembert for 6 weeks, at which point the Camembert group was switched to Jarlsberg for another 6 weeks.

The research team choose Camembert because of its similarity to Jarlsberg in fat and protein content. Jarlsberg, however, also is rich in vitamin K_{2, which is important for bone health,} and a substance known as DHNA, which “might combat bone thinning and increase bone tissue formation,” they said in a Eurekalert release.

After the first 6 weeks, blood levels of osteocalcin; vitamin K_{2; and} PINP, a peptide involved in bone turnover, were significantly higher in the Jarlsberg group only. All those measures rose significantly after the switch from Camembert to Jarlsberg, while levels of total and LDL cholesterol “fell significantly in the Camembert group after they switched to Jarlsberg,” the team added.

But wait! There’s more! HbA1c fell significantly among those initially eating the Jarlsberg but rose sharply in those eating Camembert. Do you see where this is going? After the Camembert group made the switch to Jarlsberg, their HbA1c levels fell significantly as well.

So it’s not just a cheese thing: The effects are specific to Jarlsberg. Can you guess what we’re having for lunch? Double bacon and fiber Jarlsbergers. Mmm, Jarlsburgers.
 

Luck be a lady: The mother of twins

It’s widely believed that women who have twins must be more fertile, giving birth to more than one child at a time. Some studies have supported the idea, but more recent work is refuting that claim. In actuality, it might just be more statistics and luck than fertility after all.

Michael Blackburn/istockphoto

Those earlier studies supporting fertility didn’t specify whether the chances of twin births were based on the ability to produce more than one egg at a time or on the number of births that women had overall. Looking at 100,000 preindustrial European births, before contraception was available, researchers from Norway, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom found that the number of total births, twins included, makes all the difference.

“When a woman gives birth several times, the chances increase that at least one of these births will be a twin birth,” investigator Gine Roll Skjærvø of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology said in a written statement.

Since twins occur in 1%-3% of all births, the more births that a woman has, the better her chances of giving birth to twins. The researchers compared it to playing the lottery. You buy enough tickets, eventually your numbers are going to come up. Despite that, however, they found that women who give birth to twins give birth less often than those who don’t have twins. Which raises the idea of sheer luck.

The researchers said that there’s still a lot to uncover in twin births, noting that “uncritically comparing groups of women with and without twins can trick us into believing the opposite of what is really true. These groupings may either hide the effects of twinning and fertility genes where they exist, or vice versa, create the illusion of these if they do not exist.”

For now, this new research claims that it’s basically a lottery. And women who give birth to twins hit the jackpot.
 

Those with low wages may be earning future memory loss

Not only are low wages detrimental to our souls, hopes, and dreams, but a new study shows that low wages also are linked to quicker memory decline later in life. Sustained low wages not only cause stress and food insecurity in the lives of many, but they also can cause diseases such as depression, obesity, and high blood pressure, which are risk factors for cognitive aging.

Nicola Barts/Pexels

The study was conducted using records from the Health and Retirement Study for the years 1992-2016 and focused on 2,879 adults born between 1936 and 1941. The participants were divided into three groups: those who never earned low wages, those who sometimes did, and those who always did.

The investigators found that workers who earned sustained low wages – defined as an hourly wage lower than two-thirds of the federal median wage for the corresponding year – “experienced significantly faster memory decline in older age” than did those who never earned low wages.

There are signs of inflation everywhere we look these days, but many people are not earning higher wages to compensate for the extra expenses. “Increasing the federal minimum wage, for example to $15 per hour, remains a gridlock issue in Congress,” lead author Katrina Kezios of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a statement released by the university.

If only salaries would rise instead of prices for once.

Finding a fiber of good moral fiber

If you’ve ever wandered into the supplement aisle at your local grocery store, you’ve probably noticed an overabundance of fiber supplements that claim to do this for you and benefit that. Since there’s no Food and Drug Administration regulation on fiber supplements, manufacturers are free to (and do) make whatever wild claims they like. And much like choosing which of 500 shows to watch on Netflix, when you’re spoiled for choice, it can be difficult to pick.

Duke University Photo

Enter a team of molecular geneticists and microbiologists from Duke University. They can’t tell you what show to watch next, but they can tell you which fiber to choose, thanks to their new study. And the answer? Yes.

Well that’s not very helpful, but let us explain. For their study, a group of 28 received three of the main fiber supplements (inulin, dextrin, and galactooligosaccharides) for a week each, followed by a week off of fibers for their gut to return to baseline until they’d received all three. Those who consumed the least fiber at baseline saw the greatest benefit from fiber supplementation, with no appreciable difference between the three types. It was the same story for study participants who already consumed enough fiber; because their guts already hosted a more-optimal microbiome, the type of supplement didn’t matter. The benefits were the same across the board.

In an additional study, the Duke researchers found that gut microbiomes reacted to new fiber within a day, being primed to consume fiber on the first dose and digesting it more quickly on the second fiber dose.

The results, the researchers pointed out, make sense, since the average American only consumes 20%-40% of their daily recommended supply of fiber. Our digestive systems aren’t picky; they just want more, so go out there and choose whatever fiber you’d like. Do that, and then feel free to eat as many double bacon cheeseburgers as you’d like. That is the pinnacle of diet right there. Dietitians literally could not complain about it.
 

Jarlsberg vs. Camembert: This time it’s skeletal

Fiber is fabulous, of course, but the road to dietary health and wellness fulfillment takes us to many other, equally wondrous places. Hey, look! This next exit is covered with cheese.

PxHere

All the cheeses are here, from Abbaye de Belloc to Zwitser, and there, right between the jalapeno cheddar and the Jermi tortes you’ll find Jarlsberg, a mild, semisoft, nutty-flavored cheese that comes from Jarlsberg in eastern Norway. A recent study also suggests that Jarlsberg may help to prevent osteopenia and osteoporosis.

A group of Norwegian investigators gathered together 66 healthy women and gave them a daily portion of either Jarlsberg or Camembert for 6 weeks, at which point the Camembert group was switched to Jarlsberg for another 6 weeks.

The research team choose Camembert because of its similarity to Jarlsberg in fat and protein content. Jarlsberg, however, also is rich in vitamin K_{2, which is important for bone health,} and a substance known as DHNA, which “might combat bone thinning and increase bone tissue formation,” they said in a Eurekalert release.

After the first 6 weeks, blood levels of osteocalcin; vitamin K_{2; and} PINP, a peptide involved in bone turnover, were significantly higher in the Jarlsberg group only. All those measures rose significantly after the switch from Camembert to Jarlsberg, while levels of total and LDL cholesterol “fell significantly in the Camembert group after they switched to Jarlsberg,” the team added.

But wait! There’s more! HbA1c fell significantly among those initially eating the Jarlsberg but rose sharply in those eating Camembert. Do you see where this is going? After the Camembert group made the switch to Jarlsberg, their HbA1c levels fell significantly as well.

So it’s not just a cheese thing: The effects are specific to Jarlsberg. Can you guess what we’re having for lunch? Double bacon and fiber Jarlsbergers. Mmm, Jarlsburgers.
 

Luck be a lady: The mother of twins

It’s widely believed that women who have twins must be more fertile, giving birth to more than one child at a time. Some studies have supported the idea, but more recent work is refuting that claim. In actuality, it might just be more statistics and luck than fertility after all.

Michael Blackburn/istockphoto

Those earlier studies supporting fertility didn’t specify whether the chances of twin births were based on the ability to produce more than one egg at a time or on the number of births that women had overall. Looking at 100,000 preindustrial European births, before contraception was available, researchers from Norway, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom found that the number of total births, twins included, makes all the difference.

“When a woman gives birth several times, the chances increase that at least one of these births will be a twin birth,” investigator Gine Roll Skjærvø of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology said in a written statement.

Since twins occur in 1%-3% of all births, the more births that a woman has, the better her chances of giving birth to twins. The researchers compared it to playing the lottery. You buy enough tickets, eventually your numbers are going to come up. Despite that, however, they found that women who give birth to twins give birth less often than those who don’t have twins. Which raises the idea of sheer luck.

The researchers said that there’s still a lot to uncover in twin births, noting that “uncritically comparing groups of women with and without twins can trick us into believing the opposite of what is really true. These groupings may either hide the effects of twinning and fertility genes where they exist, or vice versa, create the illusion of these if they do not exist.”

For now, this new research claims that it’s basically a lottery. And women who give birth to twins hit the jackpot.
 

Those with low wages may be earning future memory loss

Not only are low wages detrimental to our souls, hopes, and dreams, but a new study shows that low wages also are linked to quicker memory decline later in life. Sustained low wages not only cause stress and food insecurity in the lives of many, but they also can cause diseases such as depression, obesity, and high blood pressure, which are risk factors for cognitive aging.

Nicola Barts/Pexels

The study was conducted using records from the Health and Retirement Study for the years 1992-2016 and focused on 2,879 adults born between 1936 and 1941. The participants were divided into three groups: those who never earned low wages, those who sometimes did, and those who always did.

The investigators found that workers who earned sustained low wages – defined as an hourly wage lower than two-thirds of the federal median wage for the corresponding year – “experienced significantly faster memory decline in older age” than did those who never earned low wages.

There are signs of inflation everywhere we look these days, but many people are not earning higher wages to compensate for the extra expenses. “Increasing the federal minimum wage, for example to $15 per hour, remains a gridlock issue in Congress,” lead author Katrina Kezios of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a statement released by the university.

If only salaries would rise instead of prices for once.

New pediatric COVID-19 cases increased for the third straight week as a substantial number of children under age 5 years started to receive their second doses of the vaccine.

Despite the 3-week trend, however, there are some positive signs. The new-case count for the latest reporting week (July 22-28) was over 95,000, but the 3.9% increase over the previous week’s 92,000 cases is much smaller than that week’s (July 15-21) corresponding jump of almost 22% over the July 8-14 total (75,000), according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

On the not-so-positive side is the trend in admissions among children aged 0-17 years, which continue to climb steadily and have nearly equaled the highest rate seen during the Delta surge in 2021. The rate on July 29 was 0.46 admissions per 100,000 population, and the highest rate over the course of the Delta surge was 0.47 per 100,000, but the all-time high from the Omicron surge – 1.25 per 100,000 in mid-January – is still a long way off, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A similar situation is occurring with emergency department visits, but there is differentiation by age group. Among those aged 0-11 years, visits with diagnosed COVID made up 6.5% of all their ED visits on July 25, which was well above the high (4.0%) during the Delta surge, the CDC said.

That is not the case, however, for the older children, for whom rates are rising more slowly. Those aged 12-15 have reached 3.4% so far this summer, as have the 16- to 17-years-olds, versus Delta highs last year of around 7%, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker. As with admissions, though, current rates are well below the all-time Omicron high points, the CDC data show.
 

Joining the ranks of the fully vaccinated

Over the last 2 weeks, the first children to receive the COVID vaccine after its approval for those under age 5 years have been coming back for their second doses. Almost 50,000, about 0.3% of all those in that age group, had done so by July 27. Just over 662,000, about 3.4% of the total under-5 population, have received at least one dose, the CDC said.

Meanwhile, analysis of “data from the first several weeks following availability of the vaccine in this age group indicate high variability across states,” the AAP said in its weekly vaccination report. In the District of Columbia, 20.7% of all children under age 5 have received an initial dose as of July 27, as have 15.5% of those in Vermont and 12.5% in Massachusetts. No other state was above 10%, but Mississippi, at 0.7%, was the only one below 1%.

The older children, obviously, have a head start, so their numbers are much higher. At the state level, Vermont has the highest initial dose rate, 69%, for those aged 5-11 years, while Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming, at 17%, are looking up at everyone else in the country. Among children aged 12-17 years, D.C. is the highest with 100% vaccination – Massachusetts and Rhode Island are at 98% – and Wyoming is the lowest with 40%, the AAP said.

rfranki@mdedge.com

New pediatric COVID-19 cases increased for the third straight week as a substantial number of children under age 5 years started to receive their second doses of the vaccine.

Despite the 3-week trend, however, there are some positive signs. The new-case count for the latest reporting week (July 22-28) was over 95,000, but the 3.9% increase over the previous week’s 92,000 cases is much smaller than that week’s (July 15-21) corresponding jump of almost 22% over the July 8-14 total (75,000), according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

On the not-so-positive side is the trend in admissions among children aged 0-17 years, which continue to climb steadily and have nearly equaled the highest rate seen during the Delta surge in 2021. The rate on July 29 was 0.46 admissions per 100,000 population, and the highest rate over the course of the Delta surge was 0.47 per 100,000, but the all-time high from the Omicron surge – 1.25 per 100,000 in mid-January – is still a long way off, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A similar situation is occurring with emergency department visits, but there is differentiation by age group. Among those aged 0-11 years, visits with diagnosed COVID made up 6.5% of all their ED visits on July 25, which was well above the high (4.0%) during the Delta surge, the CDC said.

That is not the case, however, for the older children, for whom rates are rising more slowly. Those aged 12-15 have reached 3.4% so far this summer, as have the 16- to 17-years-olds, versus Delta highs last year of around 7%, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker. As with admissions, though, current rates are well below the all-time Omicron high points, the CDC data show.
 

Joining the ranks of the fully vaccinated

Over the last 2 weeks, the first children to receive the COVID vaccine after its approval for those under age 5 years have been coming back for their second doses. Almost 50,000, about 0.3% of all those in that age group, had done so by July 27. Just over 662,000, about 3.4% of the total under-5 population, have received at least one dose, the CDC said.

Meanwhile, analysis of “data from the first several weeks following availability of the vaccine in this age group indicate high variability across states,” the AAP said in its weekly vaccination report. In the District of Columbia, 20.7% of all children under age 5 have received an initial dose as of July 27, as have 15.5% of those in Vermont and 12.5% in Massachusetts. No other state was above 10%, but Mississippi, at 0.7%, was the only one below 1%.

The older children, obviously, have a head start, so their numbers are much higher. At the state level, Vermont has the highest initial dose rate, 69%, for those aged 5-11 years, while Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming, at 17%, are looking up at everyone else in the country. Among children aged 12-17 years, D.C. is the highest with 100% vaccination – Massachusetts and Rhode Island are at 98% – and Wyoming is the lowest with 40%, the AAP said.

rfranki@mdedge.com

New pediatric COVID-19 cases increased for the third straight week as a substantial number of children under age 5 years started to receive their second doses of the vaccine.

Despite the 3-week trend, however, there are some positive signs. The new-case count for the latest reporting week (July 22-28) was over 95,000, but the 3.9% increase over the previous week’s 92,000 cases is much smaller than that week’s (July 15-21) corresponding jump of almost 22% over the July 8-14 total (75,000), according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

On the not-so-positive side is the trend in admissions among children aged 0-17 years, which continue to climb steadily and have nearly equaled the highest rate seen during the Delta surge in 2021. The rate on July 29 was 0.46 admissions per 100,000 population, and the highest rate over the course of the Delta surge was 0.47 per 100,000, but the all-time high from the Omicron surge – 1.25 per 100,000 in mid-January – is still a long way off, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A similar situation is occurring with emergency department visits, but there is differentiation by age group. Among those aged 0-11 years, visits with diagnosed COVID made up 6.5% of all their ED visits on July 25, which was well above the high (4.0%) during the Delta surge, the CDC said.

That is not the case, however, for the older children, for whom rates are rising more slowly. Those aged 12-15 have reached 3.4% so far this summer, as have the 16- to 17-years-olds, versus Delta highs last year of around 7%, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker. As with admissions, though, current rates are well below the all-time Omicron high points, the CDC data show.
 

Joining the ranks of the fully vaccinated

Over the last 2 weeks, the first children to receive the COVID vaccine after its approval for those under age 5 years have been coming back for their second doses. Almost 50,000, about 0.3% of all those in that age group, had done so by July 27. Just over 662,000, about 3.4% of the total under-5 population, have received at least one dose, the CDC said.

Meanwhile, analysis of “data from the first several weeks following availability of the vaccine in this age group indicate high variability across states,” the AAP said in its weekly vaccination report. In the District of Columbia, 20.7% of all children under age 5 have received an initial dose as of July 27, as have 15.5% of those in Vermont and 12.5% in Massachusetts. No other state was above 10%, but Mississippi, at 0.7%, was the only one below 1%.

The older children, obviously, have a head start, so their numbers are much higher. At the state level, Vermont has the highest initial dose rate, 69%, for those aged 5-11 years, while Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming, at 17%, are looking up at everyone else in the country. Among children aged 12-17 years, D.C. is the highest with 100% vaccination – Massachusetts and Rhode Island are at 98% – and Wyoming is the lowest with 40%, the AAP said.

rfranki@mdedge.com

Exercise in a pill? Sign us up

You just got home from a long shift and you know you should go to the gym, but the bed is calling and you just answered. We know sometimes we have to make sacrifices in the name of fitness, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Unless our prayers have been answered. There could be a pill that has the benefits of working out without having to work out.

In a study published in Nature, investigators reported that they have identified a molecule made during exercise and used it on mice, which took in less food after being given the pill, which may open doors to understanding how exercise affects hunger.

©Rido/Fotolia.com

Gonorrhea and grandparents: A match made in prehistoric heaven

*Editorial note: LOTME takes no responsibility for any unfortunate imagery the reader may have experienced from the above headline.

Old people are the greatest. Back pains, cognitive decline, aches in all the diodes down your left side, there’s nothing quite like your golden years. Notably, however, humans are one of the few animals who experience true old age, as most creatures are adapted to maximize reproductive potential. As such, living past menopause is rare in the animal kingdom.

CDC/John Martin Jr.

This is where the “grandmother hypothesis” comes in: Back in Ye Olde Stone Age, women who lived into old age could provide child care for younger women, because human babies require a lot more time and attention than other animal offspring. But how did humans end up living so long? Enter a group of Californian researchers, who believe they have an answer. It was gonorrhea.

When compared with the chimpanzee genome (as well as with Neanderthals and Denisovans, our closest ancestors), humans have a unique mutated version of the CD33 gene that lacks a sugar-binding site; the standard version uses the sugar-binding site to protect against autoimmune response in the body, but that same site actually suppresses the brain’s ability to clear away damaged brain cells and amyloid, which eventually leads to diseases like dementia. The mutated version allows microglia (brain immune cells) to attack and clear out this unwanted material. People with higher levels of this mutated CD33 variant actually have higher protection against Alzheimer’s.

Interestingly, gonorrhea bacteria are coated in the same sugar that standard CD33 receptors bind to, thus allowing them to bypass the body’s immune system. According to the researchers, the mutated CD33 version likely emerged as a protection against gonorrhea, depriving the bacteria of their “molecular mimicry” abilities. In one of life’s happy accidents, it turned out this mutation also protects against age-related diseases, thus allowing humans with the mutation to live longer. Obviously, this was a good thing, and we ran with it until the modern day. Now we have senior citizens climbing Everest, and all our politicians keep on politicking into their 70s and 80s ... well, everything has its drawbacks.
 

Parents raise a glass to children’s food addiction

There can be something pretty addicting about processed foods. Have you ever eaten just one french fry? Or taken just one cookie? If so, your willpower is incredible. For many of us, it can be a struggle to stop.

© Aleksandr Stennikov/Fotolia.com

A recent study from the University of Michigan, which considered the existence of an eating phenotype, suggests our parents’ habits could be to blame.

By administering a series of questionnaires that inquired about food addiction, alcohol use disorders, cannabis use disorder, nicotine/e-cigarette dependence, and their family tree, investigators found that participants with a “paternal history of problematic alcohol use” had higher risk of food addiction but not obesity.

Apparently about one in five people display a clinically significant addiction to highly processed foods. It was noted that foods like ice cream, pizza, and french fries have high amounts of refined carbs and fats, which could trigger an addictive response.

Lindzey Hoover, a graduate student at the university who was the study’s lead author, noted that living in an environment where these foods are cheap and accessible can be really challenging for those with a family history of addiction. The investigators suggested that public health approaches, like restriction of other substances and marketing to kids, should be put in place for highly processed foods.

Maybe french fries should come with a warning label.
 

A prescription for America’s traffic problems

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Do you ever feel nostalgic about things that really weren’t very pleasant in the first place? Take, for instance, the morning commute. Here in the Washington area, more than 2 years into the COVID era, the traffic is still not what it used to be … and we kind of miss it.

PhotoDisk

Nah, not really. That was just a way to get everyone thinking about driving, because AAA has something of an explanation for the situation out there on the highways and byways of America. It’s drugs. No, not those kinds of drugs. This time it’s prescription drugs that are the problem. Well, part of the problem, anyway.

AAA did a survey last summer and found that nearly 50% of drivers “used one or more potentially impairing medications in the past 30 days. … The proportion of those choosing to drive is higher among those taking multiple medications.” How much higher? More than 63% of those with two or more prescriptions were driving within 2 hours of taking at least one of those meds, as were 71% of those taking three or more.

The 2,657 respondents also were asked about the types of potentially impairing drugs they were taking: 61% of those using antidepressants had been on the road within 2 hours of use at least once in the past 30 days, as had 73% of those taking an amphetamine, AAA said.

So there you have it. That guy in the BMW who’s been tailgating you for the last 3 miles? He may be a jerk, but there’s a good chance he’s a jerk with a prescription … or two … or three.

Exercise in a pill? Sign us up

You just got home from a long shift and you know you should go to the gym, but the bed is calling and you just answered. We know sometimes we have to make sacrifices in the name of fitness, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Unless our prayers have been answered. There could be a pill that has the benefits of working out without having to work out.

In a study published in Nature, investigators reported that they have identified a molecule made during exercise and used it on mice, which took in less food after being given the pill, which may open doors to understanding how exercise affects hunger.

©Rido/Fotolia.com

Gonorrhea and grandparents: A match made in prehistoric heaven

*Editorial note: LOTME takes no responsibility for any unfortunate imagery the reader may have experienced from the above headline.

Old people are the greatest. Back pains, cognitive decline, aches in all the diodes down your left side, there’s nothing quite like your golden years. Notably, however, humans are one of the few animals who experience true old age, as most creatures are adapted to maximize reproductive potential. As such, living past menopause is rare in the animal kingdom.

CDC/John Martin Jr.

This is where the “grandmother hypothesis” comes in: Back in Ye Olde Stone Age, women who lived into old age could provide child care for younger women, because human babies require a lot more time and attention than other animal offspring. But how did humans end up living so long? Enter a group of Californian researchers, who believe they have an answer. It was gonorrhea.

When compared with the chimpanzee genome (as well as with Neanderthals and Denisovans, our closest ancestors), humans have a unique mutated version of the CD33 gene that lacks a sugar-binding site; the standard version uses the sugar-binding site to protect against autoimmune response in the body, but that same site actually suppresses the brain’s ability to clear away damaged brain cells and amyloid, which eventually leads to diseases like dementia. The mutated version allows microglia (brain immune cells) to attack and clear out this unwanted material. People with higher levels of this mutated CD33 variant actually have higher protection against Alzheimer’s.

Interestingly, gonorrhea bacteria are coated in the same sugar that standard CD33 receptors bind to, thus allowing them to bypass the body’s immune system. According to the researchers, the mutated CD33 version likely emerged as a protection against gonorrhea, depriving the bacteria of their “molecular mimicry” abilities. In one of life’s happy accidents, it turned out this mutation also protects against age-related diseases, thus allowing humans with the mutation to live longer. Obviously, this was a good thing, and we ran with it until the modern day. Now we have senior citizens climbing Everest, and all our politicians keep on politicking into their 70s and 80s ... well, everything has its drawbacks.
 

Parents raise a glass to children’s food addiction

There can be something pretty addicting about processed foods. Have you ever eaten just one french fry? Or taken just one cookie? If so, your willpower is incredible. For many of us, it can be a struggle to stop.

© Aleksandr Stennikov/Fotolia.com

A recent study from the University of Michigan, which considered the existence of an eating phenotype, suggests our parents’ habits could be to blame.

By administering a series of questionnaires that inquired about food addiction, alcohol use disorders, cannabis use disorder, nicotine/e-cigarette dependence, and their family tree, investigators found that participants with a “paternal history of problematic alcohol use” had higher risk of food addiction but not obesity.

Apparently about one in five people display a clinically significant addiction to highly processed foods. It was noted that foods like ice cream, pizza, and french fries have high amounts of refined carbs and fats, which could trigger an addictive response.

Lindzey Hoover, a graduate student at the university who was the study’s lead author, noted that living in an environment where these foods are cheap and accessible can be really challenging for those with a family history of addiction. The investigators suggested that public health approaches, like restriction of other substances and marketing to kids, should be put in place for highly processed foods.

Maybe french fries should come with a warning label.
 

A prescription for America’s traffic problems

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Do you ever feel nostalgic about things that really weren’t very pleasant in the first place? Take, for instance, the morning commute. Here in the Washington area, more than 2 years into the COVID era, the traffic is still not what it used to be … and we kind of miss it.

PhotoDisk

Nah, not really. That was just a way to get everyone thinking about driving, because AAA has something of an explanation for the situation out there on the highways and byways of America. It’s drugs. No, not those kinds of drugs. This time it’s prescription drugs that are the problem. Well, part of the problem, anyway.

AAA did a survey last summer and found that nearly 50% of drivers “used one or more potentially impairing medications in the past 30 days. … The proportion of those choosing to drive is higher among those taking multiple medications.” How much higher? More than 63% of those with two or more prescriptions were driving within 2 hours of taking at least one of those meds, as were 71% of those taking three or more.

The 2,657 respondents also were asked about the types of potentially impairing drugs they were taking: 61% of those using antidepressants had been on the road within 2 hours of use at least once in the past 30 days, as had 73% of those taking an amphetamine, AAA said.

So there you have it. That guy in the BMW who’s been tailgating you for the last 3 miles? He may be a jerk, but there’s a good chance he’s a jerk with a prescription … or two … or three.

Exercise in a pill? Sign us up

You just got home from a long shift and you know you should go to the gym, but the bed is calling and you just answered. We know sometimes we have to make sacrifices in the name of fitness, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Unless our prayers have been answered. There could be a pill that has the benefits of working out without having to work out.

In a study published in Nature, investigators reported that they have identified a molecule made during exercise and used it on mice, which took in less food after being given the pill, which may open doors to understanding how exercise affects hunger.

©Rido/Fotolia.com

Gonorrhea and grandparents: A match made in prehistoric heaven

*Editorial note: LOTME takes no responsibility for any unfortunate imagery the reader may have experienced from the above headline.

Old people are the greatest. Back pains, cognitive decline, aches in all the diodes down your left side, there’s nothing quite like your golden years. Notably, however, humans are one of the few animals who experience true old age, as most creatures are adapted to maximize reproductive potential. As such, living past menopause is rare in the animal kingdom.

CDC/John Martin Jr.

This is where the “grandmother hypothesis” comes in: Back in Ye Olde Stone Age, women who lived into old age could provide child care for younger women, because human babies require a lot more time and attention than other animal offspring. But how did humans end up living so long? Enter a group of Californian researchers, who believe they have an answer. It was gonorrhea.

When compared with the chimpanzee genome (as well as with Neanderthals and Denisovans, our closest ancestors), humans have a unique mutated version of the CD33 gene that lacks a sugar-binding site; the standard version uses the sugar-binding site to protect against autoimmune response in the body, but that same site actually suppresses the brain’s ability to clear away damaged brain cells and amyloid, which eventually leads to diseases like dementia. The mutated version allows microglia (brain immune cells) to attack and clear out this unwanted material. People with higher levels of this mutated CD33 variant actually have higher protection against Alzheimer’s.

Interestingly, gonorrhea bacteria are coated in the same sugar that standard CD33 receptors bind to, thus allowing them to bypass the body’s immune system. According to the researchers, the mutated CD33 version likely emerged as a protection against gonorrhea, depriving the bacteria of their “molecular mimicry” abilities. In one of life’s happy accidents, it turned out this mutation also protects against age-related diseases, thus allowing humans with the mutation to live longer. Obviously, this was a good thing, and we ran with it until the modern day. Now we have senior citizens climbing Everest, and all our politicians keep on politicking into their 70s and 80s ... well, everything has its drawbacks.
 

Parents raise a glass to children’s food addiction

There can be something pretty addicting about processed foods. Have you ever eaten just one french fry? Or taken just one cookie? If so, your willpower is incredible. For many of us, it can be a struggle to stop.

© Aleksandr Stennikov/Fotolia.com

A recent study from the University of Michigan, which considered the existence of an eating phenotype, suggests our parents’ habits could be to blame.

By administering a series of questionnaires that inquired about food addiction, alcohol use disorders, cannabis use disorder, nicotine/e-cigarette dependence, and their family tree, investigators found that participants with a “paternal history of problematic alcohol use” had higher risk of food addiction but not obesity.

Apparently about one in five people display a clinically significant addiction to highly processed foods. It was noted that foods like ice cream, pizza, and french fries have high amounts of refined carbs and fats, which could trigger an addictive response.

Lindzey Hoover, a graduate student at the university who was the study’s lead author, noted that living in an environment where these foods are cheap and accessible can be really challenging for those with a family history of addiction. The investigators suggested that public health approaches, like restriction of other substances and marketing to kids, should be put in place for highly processed foods.

Maybe french fries should come with a warning label.
 

A prescription for America’s traffic problems

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Do you ever feel nostalgic about things that really weren’t very pleasant in the first place? Take, for instance, the morning commute. Here in the Washington area, more than 2 years into the COVID era, the traffic is still not what it used to be … and we kind of miss it.

PhotoDisk

Nah, not really. That was just a way to get everyone thinking about driving, because AAA has something of an explanation for the situation out there on the highways and byways of America. It’s drugs. No, not those kinds of drugs. This time it’s prescription drugs that are the problem. Well, part of the problem, anyway.

AAA did a survey last summer and found that nearly 50% of drivers “used one or more potentially impairing medications in the past 30 days. … The proportion of those choosing to drive is higher among those taking multiple medications.” How much higher? More than 63% of those with two or more prescriptions were driving within 2 hours of taking at least one of those meds, as were 71% of those taking three or more.

The 2,657 respondents also were asked about the types of potentially impairing drugs they were taking: 61% of those using antidepressants had been on the road within 2 hours of use at least once in the past 30 days, as had 73% of those taking an amphetamine, AAA said.

So there you have it. That guy in the BMW who’s been tailgating you for the last 3 miles? He may be a jerk, but there’s a good chance he’s a jerk with a prescription … or two … or three.