To track cardiovascular health, doctors measure blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugar, among a number of other cardiovascular disease risk factors. Such measures can help predict whether a person is at risk of heart attack or stroke. But there is no blood test that can accurately assess the degree to which a person’s arteries may be narrowing or at risk of blockage.
Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that high levels of a specific protein circulating in the blood accurately detect a severe type of peripheral artery disease that narrows the arteries in the legs and can raise the risk of heart attack and stroke. The protein, called circulating fatty acid synthase (cFAS), is an enzyme that manufactures saturated fatty acids. Until recently, fatty acid synthase was thought to be found only inside cells. The new study suggests that fatty acid synthase also circulates in the bloodstream and may have an important role in the plaque formation characteristic of cardiovascular disease.
The study appears online in the journal Scientific Reports.
About 12 million people in the U.S. have some form of peripheral artery disease, a narrowing of the arteries in the legs, and about 1 million of these patients develop a severe form called chronic limb-threatening ischemia. These patients often undergo vascular surgery to open up their peripheral arteries in an effort to improve blood flow to the legs. In severe cases, patients may need to have the diseased leg amputated.
“These patients are at risk of losing their legs, which is devastating to quality of life,” said senior author Mohamed A. Zayed, MD, PhD, an associate professor of surgery and of radiology. “They lose their capacity to walk, and about half of them die within the next two years. We need to identify these patients sooner, so we can help treat them aggressively much earlier in the disease course. Our data suggest that levels of cFAS in the blood could be an accurate predictor for which patients are at high risk of the severe forms of this condition.”
Zayed and his colleagues collected blood samples from 87 patients before they underwent vascular surgery to treat chronic limb-threatening ischemia. The researchers found that cFAS levels in the blood were independently associated with the disease. A diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes and smoking status also were strongly and independently correlated with chronic limb-threatening ischemia. When all three of these factors were considered together, they could predict the presence of the disease with 83% accuracy.

Researchers at the University of Bonn have shed light on the function of the enzyme SLK for the development of nerve cells in the brain. If it is missing, the neurons’ branches are less abundant. In addition, it is then more difficult to inhibit the activity of the cells. This is consistent with the fact that there is less SLK in diseased brain tissue from epilepsy patients. Epileptic seizures are characterized by overexcitation of neuron clusters. The findings may help to improve treatment of the disease. The study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
SLK belongs to the large group of kinases. These enzymes are extremely important: They attach phosphate groups (which are small molecular residues with a phosphorus atom in the center) to proteins and thus alter their activity. Kinases are involved in the regulation of almost all life processes in animals.
The kinase SLK was already known to play an important role in embryonic development: One of its effects is on the growth of cells and their migration in the body; these processes are also essential for the maturation of neurons. “We therefore investigated what function SLK performs in nerve cells,” explains Prof. Dr. Albert Becker from the Institute of Neuropathology at the University of Bonn.
The researchers inhibited the production of the SLK protein in neurons of mice. “This changed the appearance of the neurons,” says Anne Quatraccioni, who is doing her doctorate at the Institute of Neuropathology in the research group of Prof. Dr. Susanne Schoch McGovern: “The dendrites, which are the extensions that receive signals from other neurons and conduct them to the cell body, branched less.”
SLK deficiency makes neurons more excitable
The dendrites resemble a kind of tree dotted with tiny contact points, the synapses. This is where extensions of other nerve cells dock and transmit electrical impulses to the tree. The observed “thinning” did not affect the thick main branches, but exclusively the smallest shoots. The synapses on these small branches are called excitatory: Signals received there have an arousing effect. This means that they increase the probability that the neuron will in turn generate an electrical signal, in other words, that it will “fire.”
When there are fewer side branches, the synapses could concentrate in a smaller area and thereby gain influence, making the neuron easier to excite (since the synapses are excitatory). “Surprisingly, however, we did not find an increased density of excitatory synapses,” Quatraccioni points out. “Nevertheless, the affected neurons were more excitable. But there had to be other reasons.”
The cause is not to be found in the delicate twigs, but in the thick main branches. Numerous synapses are also located there, but of a different type: They have an inhibitory effect. Any signal received by these synapses prevents the nerve cell from firing. “The mice initially formed a normal amount of these inhibitory synapses,” Quatraccioni explains. “However, after a few days of life, their density began to decrease. This loss kept progressing.”
SLK therefore appears to be important in maintaining normal levels of inhibitory synapses. Without the kinase, the affected neurons become increasingly difficult to inhibit over time. This fits in with the fact that the researchers were able to detect SLK deficiency in the nerve cells of brain tissue from epilepsy patients. During epileptic seizures, whole areas of the brain are overexcited, meaning that the neurons fire too easily.
Explanation for declining drug efficacy?
The findings could also explain why the effects of the drugs diminish over time in some sufferers. “Perhaps this effect is not due to resistance to the drugs, but to the progressive loss of the inhibitory synapses,” says Prof. Dr. Susanne Schoch McGovern. The findings therefore provide new insights into how the disease develops.
They could also have therapeutic relevance: “We often try to prevent neuronal overexcitation with drugs that stimulate inhibitory synapses,” explains Schoch McGovern. “This might be the wrong strategy in the case of an SLK deficiency: At some point, there are so few inhibitory synapses left that this no longer works. It is probably more promising in these patients to intervene on the excitatory side, that is, to inhibit the excitatory synapses.”
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For humans and animals, many aspects of normal behavior and physiology rely on the proper functioning of the body’s circadian clocks.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Your brain sends signals to your body to release different hormones at certain times of the day. For example, you get a boost of the hormone cortisol — nature’s built-in alarm system — right before you usually wake up.
But hormone release actually relies on the interconnected activity of clocks in more than one part of the brain. New research from Washington University in St. Louis shows how daily release of glucocorticoids depends on coordinated clock-gene and neuronal activity rhythms in neurons found in two parts of the hypothalamus, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and paraventricular nucleus (PVN).
The new study, conducted with freely behaving mice, is published Oct. 1 in Nature Communications.
“Normal behavior and physiology depends on a near 24-hour circadian release of various hormones,” said Jeff Jones, who led the study as a postdoctoral research scholar in biology in Arts & Sciences and recently started work as an assistant professor of biology at Texas A&M University. “When hormone release is disrupted, it can lead to numerous pathologies, including affective disorders like anxiety and depression and metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity.
“We wanted to understand how signals from the central biological clock — a tiny brain area called the SCN — are decoded by the rest of the brain to generate these diverse circadian rhythms in hormone release,” said Jones, who worked with Erik Herzog, the Viktor Hamburger Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and senior author of the new study.

BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter Reece Parkinson started training for an ultra-marathon in 2020, but everything went wrong. So wrong that the film he made then was called How NOT to Run 55 Miles.A problem with his knee and restrictions on his training due to Covid meant it was always going to be an enormous challenge, but a shock diagnosis of type 1 diabetes just days before he was due to run forced him to pull out and question whether he would ever be able to complete the challenge.But six months later Reece has got back to training and – whilst still getting to grips with his condition – thinks he’s ready to take on his first ultra-marathon. He’s found a new race, a rugged and brutal 50-mile course around a military training area in a remote part of mid-Wales. Reece wants to prove he can do it regardless of diabetes, but is it possible just months after being diagnosed with a life-changing condition?Video by Jim Farthing, Matt Wareham, and Woody Morris.Watch the full documentary, How to Run 50 Miles, on iPlayer.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesAustralia will reopen its international border from November, giving long-awaited freedoms to vaccinated citizens and their relatives.Since March 2020, Australia has had some of the world’s strictest border rules – even banning its own people from leaving the country.The policy has been praised for helping to suppress Covid, but it has also controversially separated families.”It’s time to give Australians their lives back,” PM Scott Morrison said.People would be eligible to travel when their state’s vaccination rate hit 80%, he told a press briefing on Friday.Travel would not immediately be open to foreigners, but the government said it was working “towards welcoming tourists back to our shores”.At present, people can leave Australia only for exceptional reasons such as essential work or visiting a dying relative.Entry is permitted for citizens and others with exemptions, but there are tight caps on arrival numbers. This has left tens of thousands stranded overseas.On Friday, Mr Morrison said Australia’s mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine – which costs each traveller A$3,000 ($1,600; $2,100) – would be phased out. It will be replaced by seven days of home quarantine for vaccinated travellers. When unvaccinated travellers are later given permission to enter, they must do 14 days.Demand for flights is expected to be high and airlines have already warned of delays in resuming services.Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra are currently in lockdown due to outbreaks of the virus. That has helped prompt a surge in the vaccine uptake in recent months.The lives upended by Australia’s sealed borderThe Australians who are trapped in the UKNew South Wales – which includes Sydney – is on track to be first state to cross the 80% threshold, in a few weeks. Victoria – containing Melbourne – is not far behind.But states such as Queensland and Western Australia have threatened to keep their borders closed until vaccine rates are even higher.These states have managed to maintain Covid rates at or near zero, after shutting their borders to states with infections.This is a hugely anticipated announcement for thousands of Australians both here and overseas. No doubt it’s an emotional moment for many, after nearly two years of isolation. Australia’s strict border policy has been credited for its success especially early in the pandemic, but the Delta variant has changed everything.Western Australia and Queensland are still going for an elimination policy, meaning they have been quickest to close their borders to other parts of Australia. It’s a very different picture in NSW, the most populous state, where the policy has changed from elimination to vaccination. All of that is going to make the practicalities of reopening international borders quite tricky. Airlines have already said they’re not ready for the ramping up of services this reopening will require. And with so many details still vague in terms of restrictions and proof of vaccination, this could be a potential headache for border authorities too. NSW or Victoria may allow their fully vaccinated residents to travel abroad and come back to home quarantine but Western Australia, for example, will most likely be reticent to do that and take on increased risk. So you could have a scenario where it could be easier for people in some states to travel to London for a vacation than it is to go to Perth!Key vaccination thresholds are also part of Australia’s broader plan to emerge from lockdowns and “live with the virus”.Sydney – site of Australia’s largest airport – is due to come out of a 13-week lockdown on 11 October.Do you want to travel to and from Australia? Have you been trying to do so for some time? Get in touch using the form below. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSayUpload pictures or videoPlease read our terms & conditions and privacy policy

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An international panel of experts from four renowned diabetes research centers, including UT Southwestern Medical Center, has reviewed current literature and is recommending a pivotal change in treatment of Type 2 diabetes to focus on obesity first and glucose control second.
“It’s known that obesity contributes to the progression of diabetes. What’s new is that instead of focusing exclusively on lowering blood sugar, we recommend the primary approach to the treatment of Type 2 diabetes be on the treatment of obesity,” said first author Ildiko Lingvay, M.D., M.P.H., M.S.C.S., Professor of Internal Medicine and Population and Data Sciences at UT Southwestern, ranked as one of the nation’s top 25 hospitals for diabetes and endocrinology care.
The researchers state that dropping 15% or more of body weight can have a disease-modifying effect in Type 2 diabetes, an outcome that is unattainable by any other glucose-lowering intervention. The new focus would require updating current treatment guidelines and providing significant provider education, they note. The panel’s recommendations are published in The Lancet and were presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes conference.
The current approach to diabetes treatment relies on clinical studies from the 1980s, which found that lowering blood sugar results in fewer complications from the disease. These early results supported treating blood glucose as the key target, said Dr. Lingvay.
“The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t address the core problem and does not offer an opportunity to reverse the disease,” said Dr. Lingvay, who leads an active clinical research program in the Division of Endocrinology at UT Southwestern. “We propose using a proactive approach. Let’s address the cause of the disease — obesity.”
This latest finding continues Dr. Lingvay’s careerlong effort to investigate the best means to provide the most effective clinical care to patients with Type 2 diabetes. As an early-career faculty member in 2005, Dr. Lingvay participated in UT Southwestern’s first class of the Clinical & Translational Research Scholars Program, a rigorous multiyear program designed for clinical research fellows and junior faculty who are on track to obtain extramural grant funding and who show great promise toward becoming independently funded investigators. She went on to receive a National Institutes of Health Career Development Award to study the role of pancreatic triglyceride accumulation in beta-cell failure and Type 2 diabetes.
According to the American Diabetes Association, Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease caused by obesity or by abnormalities in metabolism. More than 10% of the U.S. population has been diagnosed with diabetes, and 1.5 million more are diagnosed each year.
Bariatric surgery can be effective for patients with obesity, but not all patients have access to this option. “It’s hard to achieve sustained weight loss. Most lifestyle interventions result in progressive weight loss over six months, followed by a plateau and weight regain over one to three years,” added Dr. Lingvay. “New weight loss medications and those in the pipeline will help patients succeed in managing their weight over the long term.”
The researchers also stressed the importance of advocating for insurance coverage that supports treatment of obesity and diabetes, and working in public health to increase access to care and reduce disparities.
The authors’ disclosures are listed in the manuscript.
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Adolescents can speed their recovery after a sport-related concussion and reduce their risk of experiencing protracted recovery if they engage in aerobic exercise within 10 days of getting injured, according to a new University at Buffalo study.
Published Sept. 30 in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, the randomized controlled trial conducted by researchers at UB’s Concussion Management Clinic reproduces and expands on the team’s 2019 study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
The new study shows for the first time that sub-symptom threshold aerobic exercise — meaning exercise that doesn’t exacerbate symptoms — when initiated within 10 days reduced a participant’s risk of persistent post-concussion symptoms by 48%.
“The study clearly demonstrates that strict physical rest until symptoms spontaneously resolve is no longer an acceptable way to treat sport-related concussion in adolescents,” said John J. Leddy, MD, first author, clinical professor of orthopaedics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, and director of the UB Concussion Management Clinic at UBMD Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.
Prescribing physical activity
“Our findings show that to accelerate recovery and reduce the risk of delayed recovery, physicians should not only permit, but they should consider prescribing sub-symptom threshold physical activity early after sport-related concussion,” he said.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have compared how well different Alzheimer’s biomarkers predict the progression of the disease and its effect on the memory. They found that early accumulation of tau proteins in the brain as measured by PET scanner was more effective at predicting memory impairment than biomarkers in the cerebrospinal fluid or amyloid plaque in the brain. The results are published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Over 50 million people around the world suffer from dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and is characterised by an accumulation of the proteins beta-amyloid (Ab) and tau in the brain, followed by a continuous progression in memory decline. The pathological progression can take different forms and it is difficult to predict how quickly the symptoms will develop in any particular individual. Moreover, the presence of Ab in a person’s brain — known as amyloid plaque — does not necessarily mean that the he or she will develop Alzheimer’s dementia.
“There’s been a rapid development of different Alzheimer’s biomarkers in recent years, enabling us to measure and detect early signs of the disease in patients,” says the study’s first author Marco Bucci, researcher at the Center for Alzheimer Research, part of the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet. “But we still need to find tests that can predict the development of the disease with greater specificity, so that we can improve not only its diagnosis but also its prognosis and treatment.”
Some biomarkers identify accumulations of A? or tau, while others are used to measure the loss of nerve function (neurodegeneration). Protein accumulation and neurodegeneration can be measured in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma, or through brain imaging using positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Current guidelines for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease with biomarkers endorse the interchangeability of brain imaging methods and analyses of CSF biomarkers (pTau and Ab), but this has been mooted. There is also a lack of longitudinal studies showing how the biomarkers are linked to gradual cognitive impairment.
“Our study shows that the presence of amyloid plaque in the brain and changes in concentrations of Ab and pTau in the CSF can be detected early during the course of the disease, but they do not seem to have any correlation with later memory loss,” says Dr Bucci. “However, our results show that the presence of tau in the brain measured by a PET scanner is linked to a rapid decline, especially of the episodic memory, which is often affected at an early stage of the disease. Our observation suggests that tau PET should be recommended for the clinical prognostic assessment of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients.”
The results are based on brain imaging (PET and MRI) and CSF analyses in a group of 282 participants comprising people with mild cognitive impairment, people with Alzheimer’s dementia and healthy controls. 213 of the participants were also monitored for three years with tests of episodic memory (i.e. short term memory related to daily events).
“Our findings show that the concentration of tau in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease plays an important part in its pathological progression and may become a key target for future drug treatments,” says principal investigator Agneta Nordberg, professor at the Center for Alzheimer Research, Karolinska Institutet.
The study was financed by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, the Swedish Research Council, Region Stockholm, the Swedish Brain Fund, the Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation, the Centre for Innovative Medicine and the Swedish Society for Medical Research. There are no reported conflicts of interest.
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After recovering from a traumatic brain injury, a writer seeks to reclaim the mental transcendence that comes from running.I only began to understand why I was so stubbornly devoted to running when I couldn’t do it anymore. That’s where I was when I woke up in an emergency room on the morning of April 6, 2020, with a traumatic brain injury sustained during a dumb middle-of-the-night fall.The last thing I remember I’d gone downstairs to the kitchen at 4 a.m. to get a snack. My husband heard a crash and found me unconscious, blood pooling from a large gash at the back of my head. When I woke up six hours later in an E.R., my left side was a bit weak, but more important, my muscles on that side couldn’t properly coordinate basic movements.At first, my steps were jerky and off balance, like those of a marionette. A tentative snails-pace walk was doable, but the faster I moved the more awkward my gait became. Running was, literally, a non-starter.In the two days before the accident — a weekend — I had run 4 miles around Washington’s famous Mall, because, well, I was angry and frustrated and didn’t know what else to do. My mother was dying of Covid-19 in a locked-down elder care community in New York, and a former colleague who was about my age had just died of the disease. My son and his roommates in Brooklyn also had Covid-19. I couldn’t see friends or shop without fear, and I was learning to direct a 60-person newsroom covering the Administration’s tepid response to an evolving pandemic remotely and from my bedroom.But running on the Mall that day, the sky was a glorious blue and the marble of the Washington Monument and the Capitol glistened. Lockdowns meant there were no tourist mobs. The cherry blossoms, in full bloom, didn’t care that the world was being ravaged by disease and hatred. And in their presence — for 40-minutes — neither did I.At 63, I’d ignored decades of advice from doctors that I should give up running and find a more suitable hobby. That was in part because during a brief career as a college soccer player, I’d had most of the cartilage in my right knee surgically removed after a small tear, leaving me (in theory) at high risk of degenerative arthritis. (At the time, orthopedists considered the medial meniscus a vestigial organ, like an appendix. So once it was damaged, they just whipped it out.)Over the years, I had tried and rejected multiple exercise alternatives — yoga, Pilates, spinning, biking, Zumba, barre, elliptical. But I was as stubborn as a smoker who keeps puffing despite the risk of lung cancer. Running — through marriages, raising kids, job changes, life on three continents — had remained the one constant in my life. Though I never had the slightest desire for a coach or to do sprints to improve my form or get faster. I have only ever signed up for two races, and both were just to accompany friends. Competition and speed were not my thing.When friends asked me why I kept running against medical advice I easily ticked off practical reasons: I needed exercise. It was a great way to get a sense of the cities I visited as a reporter. With a busy job and two kids, time was precious and hours unpredictable; I could run whenever I found a window. When I ran with my girlfriends it was a great way to gossip and catch up, while exercising and being outdoors for a bit each day. (Three birds with one stone — you can’t say that about a spinning class, right?)But my accident, and not being able to run these last 18 months of pandemic, helped me appreciate the deeper reasons behind my stubborn devotion, which it turns out are more spiritual than pragmatic.I run because during that one brief interval, in a hectic world filled with responsibilities and worries, running turns off my thinking brain and allows it to roam free and float in the moment. When I run alone, as I mostly do (or did, and hope to again), I prefer to run the same route, because that way I’m familiar with every random tree root, metal grate and trail segment prone to mud or puddles, so I don’t have to think about being careful. At what pace? No idea and it doesn’t matter.In that mental state, I absorb the world I too often forget — whether the beauty of the Capitol and the majesty of the Hudson River, or the smaller things, like the tinkling of the tacky carousel in front of the Smithsonian. And problems are solved seemingly out-of-the blue. The perfect sentence to start an article I’ve been struggling with. A birthday gift for a friend who has everything. How to resolve a sibling conflict. When I finish the three to four miles, I feel physically tired but emotionally energized — excited about plans now waiting to be activated.The need to recapture that emotional sustenance running provides is what’s motivated me through months of tedious physical therapy and rehab.Physical rehab from a head injury is the opposite of running’s mental freedom. You have to think every single time you plant your foot to walk and consciously strategize how to avoid a small root or rock on a sidewalk. Turn your head to observe the scenery, and it throws you off-balance.You concentrate on each muscle group so that it learns to move properly again. It involves tens of thousands of repetitions to teach your brain a simple movement, and there are hundreds of muscles that need to relearn their proper roles. Even a walk along the beach isn’t freeing — it involves hard work and concentration: heel strike first, then roll to the ball of the foot. Pay attention to hip muscles and adjust to stabilize for the tilt of the sand and the tiny push of an arriving wavelet.The good news is that the brain is miraculously pliable, often able to rewire its damaged circuits through intensive training — an ability called “neuroplasticity.” The bad news is that it’s a slow learner, nerves grow at 1 millimeter a day, and the brain takes time to search for workarounds to those circuits irreparably damaged. So healing can take years. My progress is slow but palpable, and I can’t know when or if it will stop.Today, with care, I can walk (if a tiny bit awkwardly) at a normal speed. I can swim, drive and cook dinner. I can navigate stairs without clutching the banister. Most patients my age might be content. Not me. Being able to run again is my Mt. Everest. (And to all the doctors who’ve discouraged my running: Studies in the last decade have shown that running may actually be beneficial to knees, maybe even preventing degenerative arthritis.)This month, after 18 months of endless physical therapy in hospitals, pools and gyms, I took my first little jogging steps on land, running small circles at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike while waiting for our car to charge. How fast? Not much faster than walking. But for me — and I suspect for most older Americans who cling to what is often regarded as an age-inappropriate habit — that was never the point anyway.

About one in four U.S. parents report that a child of theirs had to quarantine at home because of a possible exposure to Covid-19 since the beginning of the school year, according to the latest findings of a monthly survey about vaccine attitudes by the Kaiser Family Foundation.That is even as two-thirds of parents say they feel that their school is taking appropriate measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The report suggests that many parents are conflicted about which courses of action will keep their children both healthy and educated.Even among parents who have received at least one vaccine dose, 18 percent do not think schools should require all staff and students to wear masks, a view held by 63 percent of unvaccinated parents. Overall, 58 percent of parents say that schools should have comprehensive mask requirements, 35 percent say there should be no mask mandates at all, and 4 percent believe that only unvaccinated students and staff should be compelled to wear masks, according to the report.Over the summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all students, teachers and staff members in elementary and secondary schools wear masks, regardless of their vaccination status, to allow as many students as possible to return to in-person instruction.Kaiser conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,519 people from Sept. 13 to Sept. 22 — a time of surging Covid deaths — and was mostly completed before Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their coronavirus vaccine was safe and effective for children aged 5 to 11. No vaccine is currently authorized in the United States for children under 12. Of all the people who were polled, 414 identified themselves as parents of children 17 or younger, and were included in the analysis of parents’ responses.The Pfizer vaccine, already in use for older children and adults, was authorized in mid-May for children aged 12 to 15, and the report suggests that over time, parents of children in that age group and older are slowly becoming more comfortable with it. By the time of the September interviews, 48 percent said that their children between the ages 12 to 17 had gotten at least one dose, up from 41 percent in July. According to federal data, 57 percent of that age group has received at least one dose.And perhaps prompted by a constellation of factors, including rising numbers of children hospitalized because of the Delta variant as well as seeing older vaccinated children remain healthy, parents of children aged 5 to 11 increasingly report favoring the vaccine as well..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Thirty-four percent of those parents say now that they will have their children vaccinated as soon as they can, up from 26 percent in July. Commensurately, parental hesitation is beginning to melt: In September, with school open, 32 percent of parents of those younger children said they preferred to “wait and see” before making a decision about vaccinating them, down from 40 percent in July.Of note, the share of parents of children aged 5 to 17 who insist that they will “definitely not” vaccinate their children has scarcely budged in months, suggesting that they will be the most difficult to persuade. In April, 22 percent of parents of the older cohort, ages 12 to 17, said they would definitely not have their children get shots; in September, 21 percent reported holding the same view. Parents of younger children are similarly adamant: in July, 25 percent said “definitely not” position, and in September, 24 percent did.