The number of older adults who use cannabis is on the rise, and some health experts are concerned.For years, Harry B. Lebowitz spent the cocktail hour at his home in Delray Beach, Fla., sitting in his backyard overlooking a lake and smoking a joint while his partner relaxed with her vodka and club soda.Mr. Lebowitz, 69, a mostly retired businessman, qualified for a state medical marijuana card because he suffered from anxiety, sleep apnea and back pain. He credits cannabis with helping to wean him off several prescription drugs.Then came Covid-19, heightening both his anxiety and his boredom. “It was like the world stopped,” Mr. Lebowitz said. “We’re all suffering from some form of PTSD, all of us.”He found himself smoking several times a day instead of once, and downing three to five shots of añejo tequila daily, too.Even before the pandemic, researchers were reporting on the growing popularity of cannabis among older adults, although the proportion using it (or at least acknowledging its use) remained small.Last spring, an analysis based on the National Survey of Drug Use and Health found that marijuana use in the prior year among people over 65 had jumped 75 percent from 2015 to 2018, from 2.4 percent of that group to 4.2 percent. By 2019, use had reached 5 percent.“I would expect it to continue to increase sharply,” said Dr. Benjamin H. Han, the lead author of the analysis. The data showed use rising particularly among women and among people with higher education and income.A team using a different national data set documented a similar trend last fall. From 2016 to 2018, the proportion of men ages 65 to 69 who reported using marijuana or hashish within the past month had climbed to 8.2 percent from 4.3 percent. Among women, it grew to 3.8 percent from 2.1 percent.“It’s rare to see that much change in a three-year period,” said William Jesdale, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts. “It shocked us.”Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising, though. During that period, “you had the backlash against opioids,” said Donna M. Fick, a researcher who directs the Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence at Penn State. With addiction and overdoses so prevalent, “clinicians are wary of prescribing them to older adults anymore, so people are looking for a solution.”The inexorable increase in legalization plays a part, too. In November, voters in four states (Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota) approved recreational use; the Virginia Legislature did the same last month, with the governor expected to sign the bill.That would bring the total to 16 states, plus the District of Columbia, that permit “adult use” marijuana. Mississippi and South Dakota legalized medical cannabis in November, too, joining 34 other states.“It’s easier to get and it’s also less stigmatized,” Dr. Jesdale said. With less punitive policies and just-say-no rhetoric, “people who used in their youth and may have stepped away might have come back, now that it’s not Demon Weed anymore,” he added.There are no data yet on how the pandemic, with its stress and isolation, affected use among older people. But legal cannabis sales grew by 20 percent last year, according to the National Cannabis Industry Association. Leaf411, a nonprofit, nurse-staffed information hotline, received 50 percent more calls, most from older adults.Researchers therefore expect the numbers will show greater geriatric use. Mental health surveys of older people last year showed rising anxiety and depression, conditions frequently cited as reasons to try cannabis.“I’ve definitely seen my patients who were stable returning for tuneups,” said Eloise Theisen, president of the American Cannabis Nurses Association and a geriatric nurse-practitioner in Walnut Creek, Calif. “Their anxiety was worse. Their insomnia was worse.”The effects of the pandemic varied, of course. Ileane Kent, 80, a retired fund-raiser in Lantana, Fla., has vaped nightly for years, “just to chill out,” she said.She became a legal user for the first time in June, because she no longer wanted to risk entering her supplier’s house. With a medical marijuana card, and as a longtime breast cancer survivor — “Honestly, they don’t turn anyone away,” Ms. Kent said — she now patronizes a dispensary whose Covid protocols she finds more reassuring.Barbara Blaser, 75, a nurse who worked at a dispensary in Oakland, Calif., had for years dealt with pain and anxiety after extensive surgery. She had come to rely on five milligrams of edible cannabis, in the form of one chocolate-covered blueberry, each morning and each evening. But after being laid off last year, she no longer faced a stressful commute or spent hours on her feet, so her use has diminished.Still, the $17.5 billion legal cannabis industry keeps seniors squarely in its marketing sights. Major retailers offer dispensary discounts of 10 to 20 percent on “Silver Sundays” or “Senior Appreciation Days.” Some offer older customers free delivery.Older customers at Bud and Bloom, a cannabis dispensary in Santa Ana, Calif., in 2019.Jae C. Hong/Associated PressThe pandemic suspended promotions like the free bus that ferried customers from a retirement development in Orange County, Calif., to a dispensary in nearby Santa Ana called Bud and Bloom, which offered them a catered lunch, new product information and a senior discount. But Glen Turiano, a general manager at the dispensary, hopes to revive the service this summer.Trulieve, another retailer, similarly plans to resume its monthly Silver Tour, which sent a cannabis advocate to assisted living facilities across Florida, where he told residents how to qualify for and use medical cannabis. Green Thumb has reached potential older users at a senior recreational center in Waukegan, Ill.; at a Lunch & Learn event at Century Village in Deerfield Beach, Fla.; and at senior health expos in Pennsylvania.All of which makes health care professionals who treat seniors uneasy. “Older people need to know that the data is very unclear about the safety of these medications,” Ms. Fick said. “Whether or not they actually help is also unclear.”A recent review in JAMA Network Open, for instance, looked at clinical trials of cannabinoids containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and found associations with dizziness and lightheadedness, and with thinking and perception disorders in users over 50. But the authors called the associations “tentative” because the studies were limited and included few participants over 65.A major 2017 report from the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine found evidence that cannabis could alleviate nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, muscle spasms from multiple sclerosis and certain kinds of sleep disorders and chronic pain, although researchers deemed its effect “modest.” But evidence for a long list of other conditions, including neuropathic pain, remains limited or insufficient.“It’s hard to weigh the benefits and the risks,” Dr. Han said. As a geriatrician and addiction medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego, he fears for older patients already susceptible to fall injuries, to interactions from taking multiple drugs and to cognitive impairment.“I worry about any psychoactive substance for older adults,” he said. Moreover, his study showed that cannabis use is increasing among seniors who drink alcohol, a combination that is potentially riskier than using either substance alone.Like other health care professionals whose patients try cannabis, he advocates a “start low, go slow” approach, asking them to monitor the results and report side effects. He also warns patients who haven’t used much weed since the 1960s and 70s that THC concentrations are often stronger now than in their youth.“Older adults generally need less, because their metabolism has slowed,” Ms. Theisen said. That also means that “they can have a delayed onset, so it’s easier to over-consume, especially with products that taste good,” she continued. She urges older adults to consult health care professionals knowledgeable about cannabis — who, she acknowledges, are in short supply.More research into the pros and cons of cannabis use would help answer these questions. But since marijuana remains a federally outlawed Schedule I drug, mounting studies can prove difficult. So its growing use among older people constitutes an uncontrolled experiment, with caution advised.Mr. Lebowitz said he is regaining his equilibrium. Recognizing that he was drinking too heavily, and disliking the resulting hangovers, he has backed off the booze. “It’s really not my drug of choice,” he said.But he is still smoking somewhat more marijuana — preferring strains called Dorothy, White Fire and Purple Roze — than before the world stopped.

As European countries reverse their AstraZeneca suspensions, Ros Atkins looks at how a vaccine hailed as a ‘game-changer’ has seen its reputation tarnished, and its safety questioned – despite being cleared for use by the UK, Europe and the World Health Organization.

Recovering alcoholic Nikki gave up alcohol in July 2020. She posted two photos on Twitter to show the difference seven months of sobriety had on her. Posted under the handle @PosseRecovery, her pictures have been liked more than 200,000 times.Nikki says she now wants to help other people who are struggling to give up alcohol. She told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Stephen Nolan: “Before, everything in my life was chaos and the only thing that has changed is I’ve stopped drinking.”If you are concerned about addiction, help and support is available at BBC Action Line.

His first company, Odwalla, was crippled by a bacterial outbreak; he then started Califia Farms, now a leader in the beverage industry.In 1980, Greg Steltenpohl and his hippie friends in Santa Cruz, Calif., bought a juicer for $250, began squeezing fresh orange juice and sold it out of the back of a Volkswagen van to support their real passion: playing jazz.Their little start-up quickly evolved, and by 1990 Mr. Steltenpohl and his friends had become pioneers in the premium fresh juice sector with a company they called Odwalla, named for a song-poem by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. With Odwalla’s natural ingredients and catchy branding, sales had climbed to $59 million by 1996. But the company was suddenly short-circuited that year by an E. coli outbreak in its raw apple juice, which killed a toddler and sickened scores of other consumers. Much of the company’s revenue vanished almost overnight.Mr. Steltenpohl, devastated by the harm his product had caused, left the company in 1998. But he regrouped. And after several years of smaller hits and misses, he built another company, Califia Farms, which makes almond milk, cold-brewed coffee and other nondairy products. Califia, with its distinctive carafe-shaped bottles, is now one of the most successful brands in the nearly $20 billion plant-based beverage industry.“For him to get blown up and then come back and do it again — that’s really rare,” Kiff Gallagher, a longtime friend who also worked with Mr. Steltenpohl, said in a phone interview. “Especially to do it in a way that was aligned with his values,” he added, referring to Mr. Steltenpohl’s commitment to being socially responsible, promoting wellness and protecting the environment.“Anybody can talk about it,” Mr. Gallagher said, “but he showed that it was possible.”Mr. Steltenpohl died on March 11 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 67. His son, Eli, said the cause was complications of a liver transplant he had nine years earlier.Mr. Steltenpohl believed that one could do well by doing good, and he became an early pied piper for the idea that investors should consider environmental, social and good-governance factors when evaluating potential business opportunities.Odwalla was an immediate success, and it scored several public relations coups. When Pope John Paul II visited Monterey in 1987, he was photographed holding a bottle of Odwalla juice. The brand was a favorite of President Bill Clinton. And Steve Jobs often carried a bottle during his Apple presentations. Odwalla went public in 1993.Mr. Steltenpohl, left, with Stephen Williamson, the chief executive of Odwalla, in Half Moon Bay, Calif., in 1992.Odwalla, via Associated PressBut it was partly Mr. Steltenpohl’s much-touted dedication to the purity of his product that contributed to the calamity of the E. coli outbreak.Most companies pasteurize their juices with high heat to destroy bacteria and prolong shelf life. Odwalla thought this unnatural process would interfere with the flavor, and instead froze its juices, which protected their nutrient enzymes, micro-organisms and taste.But it did not kill all the bacteria, and in 1996, a 16-month-old girl died after drinking Odwalla apple juice. More than 60 other people fell ill.Mr. Steltenpohl was generally praised for his quick response. He immediately recalled all apple juice products. He met with the families of some of the victims. The company quickly built a website, an unusual feature in those days, where it kept consumers up-to-date on what it was learning and where to get help. It also discarded one of its founding principles — that fresh was best — and started pasteurizing its apple juice.But pasteurization was not the only issue. The New York Times later found that in the weeks before the outbreak, Odwalla, in response to high production demands, had begun lowering its standards for accepting blemished fruit. And on the day the contaminated juice was pressed, production managers ignored warnings from a company inspector that a batch of apples was too rotten to use without taking special precautions against contaminants.With the company’s words about social responsibility coming back to haunt it, Odwalla pleaded guilty in 1998 to violating federal food safety laws in what officials said was the first criminal conviction in a large-scale food-poisoning outbreak in the United States. It also agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine and paid millions more to settle several civil suits.“The E. coli crisis was a very difficult period for my dad, for the company and for him personally,” Eli Steltenpohl said in an interview. “He was really shaken and heartbroken. It was the total antithesis of the company’s vision of bringing health to people.”During this period, Mr. Steltenpohl consulted one of his mentors, Mr. Jobs, who at the time was staging his famous boardroom coup at Apple to try to turn that company around.“Steve encouraged him to think outside the box and to look at the moment as one of an opportunity for innovation and progressive thinking and not as a defeat,” Eli Steltenpohl said. “That certainly gave my dad some necessary fire to pull through.”Odwalla never fully recovered. With the company on the verge of bankruptcy, its founders were forced to sell a controlling interest to private equity firms.The Coca-Cola Company acquired Odwalla in 2001 for $181 million, then shut it down last year. In doing so, Coke cited a need for corporate efficiencies and a consumer preference for less sugary drinks, though Mr. Steltenpohl had told The Times in 2016 that Coke never maximized the potential of the brand.“This is not what my dad envisioned for Odwalla,” his son said. “But that made the success of Califia that much sweeter.”In 2010, Mr. Steltenpohl was planning to start another juice company, but he switched gears when he saw the coming wave of nondairy milk alternatives made from nuts, coconut, oats and soy. While he was recovering from his liver transplant surgery, the hospital gave him a protein drink; he found it so distasteful, he told The Times in 2016, that he was inspired to do better, and he was soon churning out premium almond milk, ready-to-drink coffees and barista blends.He named the new company for Queen Califia, a character in a 16th-century Spanish novel who became the spirit of colonial California. Having learned hard lessons from Odwalla, he insisted on tight quality control, less sugar and more nutrition, and on keeping an independent ethos. By 2017, Califia’s bottled coffee was No. 1 in the United States.Greg Andrew Steltenpohl was born on Oct. 20, 1954, in Homestead, Fla. His mother, Benita (Desjardins) Steltenpohl, was a culinary entrepreneur and chef. His father, Jerome, was a civil engineer who moved the family in the 1950s to Southern California, where he worked for defense contractors. Greg grew up in the San Bernardino area.He majored in environmental sciences at Stanford and graduated in 1977. He then moved to Santa Cruz, where he and his friends started selling juice to sustain their band, the Stance, in which he played saxophone.“We’d deliver the juice to restaurants in the morning, study in the afternoon and play jazz in clubs at night,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1993. His partners in both music and business included Jeannine Bonstelle (Bonnie) Bassett, a singer, whom he married in 1985, and Gerry Percy, who played keyboards.His first marriage ended in divorce in 2000. He married Dominique Leveuf in 2005; they divorced in 2020.In addition to his son, Mr. Steltenpohl is survived by his sister, Jan Johnson; his stepsons, Justin and Kevin Meade; and a grandson.Mr. Steltenpohl at Califia Farms headquarters in Los Angeles in 2016. By the next year, the company’s bottled coffee was No. 1 in the United States.Coley Brown for The New York TimesMr. Steltenpohl stepped down as chief executive of Califia Farms in September, although he remained on the company’s board. He bought a house near Mono Lake in central California, giving him easier access to the Sierra Nevada, where he liked to hike and rock climb. He was looking forward to spending more time with his grandson, Theodor, when complications from his liver transplant began to develop.He was proud that Califia had remained independent all these years, having told the BBC in 2017 that he hoped that one day the ability to resist a corporate takeover would become part of a new metric of success.Instead of celebrating quarterly reports, he said, “wouldn’t it be great if we were saying, ‘Wow, they managed to stay independent for 20 years, stayed true to their values, and they grew their sales too’?”

In-school COVID-19 transmission is rare — even among close school contacts of those who test positive for the virus — when schools heed public health precautions such as mandatory masking, social distancing and frequent hand-washing, according to results of a pilot study in Missouri aimed at identifying ways to keep elementary and secondary schools open and safe during the pandemic. A close contact is anyone who has been within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes in a 24-hour period with someone infected with COVID-19.
The study is part of a larger, ongoing collaboration involving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Saint Louis University, the Springfield-Greene and St. Louis County health departments, and school districts in the St. Louis and Springfield, Mo., areas.
The findings are published March 19 in the CDC’s journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The Missouri school findings mirror those of schools in other states, demonstrating that COVID-19 prevention efforts can significantly curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among students, teachers and staff.
“This work is imperative because keeping kids in school provides not only educational enrichment but also social, psychological and emotional health benefits, particularly for students who rely on school-based services for nutritional, physical and mental health support,” said senior author Johanna S. Salzer, DVM, PhD, a veterinary medical officer with the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
The pilot study involved 57 schools in the Pattonville School District in St. Louis County and the Springfield Public School District in Greene County in southwest Missouri, as well as two private schools in St. Louis County. All schools in the pilot study required students, teachers, staff and visitors to wear masks while on campus or buses.
Other safety measures included a focus on hand hygiene, deep cleaning of facilities, physical distancing in classrooms, daily symptom screenings for COVID-19, installing physical barriers between teachers and students, offering virtual learning options, and increasing ventilation.

New research found patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had a higher risk of stroke, compared with patients who had similar infectious conditions such as influenza and sepsis in prior studies. Those who had an ischemic stroke were more likely to be older, male, Black race, or have high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes or an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) compared with other COVID-19 patients, according to late-breaking science presented today at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2021. The meeting is being held virtually, March 17-19, 2021 and is a world premier meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated to the science of stroke and brain health.
For this analysis, researchers accessed the American Heart Association’s COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry to investigate stroke risk among patients hospitalized for COVID-19, their demographic characteristics, medical histories and in-hospital survival. The COVID-19 Registry data pulled for this study included more than 20,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the U.S. between January and November 2020.
“These findings suggest that COVID-19 may increase the risk for stroke, though the exact mechanism for this is still unknown,” said lead study author Saate S. Shakil, M.D., a cardiology fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. “As the pandemic continues, we are finding that coronavirus is not just a respiratory illness, but a vascular disease that can affect many organ systems.”
Two hundred eighty-one people (1.4%) in the COVID-19 CVD Registry had a stroke confirmed by diagnostic imaging during hospitalization. Of these, 148 patients (52.7%) experienced ischemic stroke; 7 patients (2.5%) had transient ischemic attack (TIA); and 127 patients (45.2%) experienced a bleeding stroke or unspecified type of stroke.
The analysis of COVID-19 patients also found: Those with any type of stroke were more likely to be male (64%) and older (average age 65) than patients without stroke (average age 61); 44% of patients who had an ischemic stroke also had Type 2 diabetes vs. about one-third of patients without stroke, and most of the ischemic stroke patients had high blood pressure (80%) compared to patients without stroke (58%); 18% of ischemic stroke patients had atrial fibrillation, while 9% of those without stroke also had atrial fibrillation; Patients who had a stroke spent an average of 22 days in the hospital, compared to 10 days of hospitalization for patients without stroke; and In-hospital deaths were more than twice as high among stroke patients (37%) compared to patients without stroke (16%).In addition, stroke risk varied by race. Black patients accounted for 27% of the patients in the COVID-19 CVD Registry pool for this analysis; however, 31% of ischemic stroke cases were among Black patients.
“We know the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color, but our research suggests Black Americans may have higher risk of ischemic stroke after contracting the virus, as well,” Shakil said. “Stroke on its own can have devastating consequences and recovering from COVID-19 is often a difficult path for those who survive. Together, they can exact a significant toll on patients who have had both conditions.”
Shakil added, “It is more important than ever that we curb the spread of COVID-19 via public health interventions and widespread vaccine distribution.”
In April 2020, the American Heart Association created the COVID-19 CVD Registry within weeks of the declaration of the global pandemic to rapidly collect and provide insights into patients hospitalized with the novel coronavirus. The Association’s robust Get With the Guidelines registry infrastructure has allowed for rapid data collection, including over 37,000 patient records and more than 135,000 lab reports, with more than 160 registry sites enrolled (data as of 2/23/21).
Co-authors are Sophia Emmons-Bell, B.A.; Christine Rutan, B.A.; Jason Walchok, B.A., N.R.P.; James A. de Lemos, M.D.; Babak Navi, M.D., M.S.; Alexander E. Merkler, M.D., M.S.; Gregory A. Roth, M.D., M.P.H.; and Mitchell S.V. Elkind, M.D., M.S., FAHA, FAAN. Disclosures are available in the abstract.
This study was funded by the American Heart Association.
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Medical cannabis is a subject of much debate. There is still a lot we do not know about cannabis, but researchers from the Department of Neuroscience at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences have made a new discovery that may prove vital to future research into and treatment with medical cannabis.
Cannabinoids are compounds found in cannabis and in the central nervous system. Using a mouse model, the researchers have demonstrated that a specific synthetic cannabinoid (cannabinoid WIN55,212-2) reduces essential tremor by activating the support cells of the spinal cord and brain, known as astrocytes. Previous research into medical cannabis has focussed on the nerve cells, the so-called neurons.
‘We have focussed on the disease essential tremor. It causes involuntary shaking, which can be extremely inhibitory and seriously reduce the patient’s quality of life. However, the cannabinoid might also have a beneficial effect on sclerosis and spinal cord injuries, for example, which also cause involuntary shaking’, says Associate Professor Jean-François Perrier from the Department of Neuroscience, who has headed the research project.
‘We discovered that an injection with the cannabinoid WIN55,212-2 into the spinal cord turns on the astrocytes in the spinal cord and prompts them to release the substance adenosine, which subsequently reduces nerve activity and thus the undesired shaking’.
Targeted treatment with no problematic side effects
That astrocytes are part of the explanation for the effect of cannabis is a completely new approach to understanding the medical effect of cannabis, and it may help improve the treatment of patients suffering from involuntary shaking.
The spinal cord is responsible for most our movements. Both voluntary and spontaneous movements are triggered when the spinal cord’s motor neurons are activated. The motor neurons connect the spinal cord with the muscles, and each time a motor neuron sends impulses to the muscles, it leads to contraction and thus movement. Involuntary shaking occurs when the motor neurons send out conflicting signals at the same time. And that is why the researchers have focussed on the spinal cord.
‘One might imagine a new approach to medical cannabis for shaking, where you — during the development of cannabis-based medicinal products — target the treatment either at the spinal cord or the astrocytes — or, at best, the astrocytes of the spinal cord’, says Postdoc Eva Carlsen, who did most of the tests during her PhD and postdoc projects.
‘Using this approach will avoid affecting the neurons in the brain responsible for our memory and cognitive abilities, and we would be able to offer patients suffering from involuntary shaking effective treatment without exposing them to any of the most problematic side effects of medical cannabis’.
The next step is to do clinical tests on patients suffering from essential tremor to determine whether the new approach has the same effect on humans.

A new antibiotic compound clears infection of multi-drug resistant gonorrhea in mice in a single oral dose, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State and Emory University. The compound targets a molecular pathway found in bacteria but not humans and could lead to new treatments for gonorrhea and infections from other bacteria, such as tuberculosis and MRSA.
The research team, which also includes scientists from the biopharmaceutical company Microbiotix, the Uniformed Services University, and Florida State, published their results in a paper appearing March 19 in the journal Nature Communications.
Gonorrhea infects more than 500 thousand people in the United States each year, and several strains of the bacteria that causes the disease, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, are resistant to multiple antibiotics in use today. For this reason, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists multi-drug resistant gonorrhea as one of the five most dangerous urgent threats today.
“Many current antibiotics target the process of translation — when proteins are made based on information in genetic material — within the bacteria,” said Ken Keiler, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State and an author of the paper. “Over the last decade, we have been investigating a family of compounds that instead inhibit the trans-translation pathway in bacteria, which bacteria use to fix certain kinds of errors during protein synthesis. In this paper, we provide a proof-of-concept that inhibiting the trans-translation pathway can effectively clear multi-drug resistant gonorrhea in animals.”
The researchers previously identified a promising trans-translation inhibitor that clears gonorrhea infection in lab cultures but is ineffective in animals because the compound breaks down. In this study, members of the research team at Microbiotix strategically altered the compound to identify which portions of its structure were necessary to inhibit the pathway and which could be changed to improve its stability.
“Our iterative optimization campaign evaluated over 500 versions of the compound to assess their potency, toxicity, and other pharmacological properties,” said Zachary Aron, director of chemistry at Microbiotix and an author of the paper. “We determined that the central region of the compound plays a critical role in blocking the trans-translation pathway, however modifications at the periphery could be altered to modulate its pharmacological properties. By altering a functional group to sidestep the primary mechanism of metabolism, we can create versions of the compound that are much more stable in animals.”
Members of the research team at the Uniformed Services University then tested one of these modified compounds, MBX-4132, in mice. Their experiments utilized the gonorrhea strain WHO-X, an extremely virulent pathogen that is resistant to almost all approved antibiotics. A single oral dose of the compound completely cleared the infection in 80% of mice within six days, and the bacterial load in the remaining 20% was dramatically reduced.

A growing number of studies show that the environmental factors and lifestyle habits of pregnant women play an important role in the health of their child. But how about the semen quality of young men? Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, showed two years ago that only 38% of Swiss men had semne parameters above the thresholds set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for fertile men. Epidemiologists from the Institut de recherche en santé, environnement et travail (IRSET, Rennes, France), in collaboration with the UNIGE team analyzed the potential impact of endocrine disruptors on semen quality of men whose mothers were working at the early stages of their pregnancy. Their results, published in the journal Human Reproduction, show that men who have been exposed in utero to products known to contain endocrine disruptors are twice more likely to have semen volume and total sperm count per ejaculation below the reference values set by the WHO.
Endocrine disrupters are chemical substances of natural or synthetic origin which can interfere with the endocrine system and causes adverse health effects in an organism, or its progeny, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “Several animal studies have already shown that gestational exposure to certain endocrine disruptors can influence the development of the male reproductive system, as well as the sperm production and semen quality in adulthood,” explains Ronan Garlantézec, a researcher at the IRSET, the Rennes University Hospital Centre (CHU) and University of Rennes 1. “In view of the results obtained by Serge Nef’s team on the semen quality of young Swiss men, we were interested in studying the potential effect of exposure to endocrine disruptors during pregnancy as one out of many possible reasons behind the observed trends,” he continues.
The semen of more than 1000 conscripts analysed
The team of Serge Nef, professor at the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development of the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, has evaluated semen quality of around 3000 conscripts, 1045 out of which had their mother working during pregnancy. “For each of them, a semen quality analysis was carried out to determine the semen volume, as well as the sperm concentration, motility and morphology,” explains the Serge Nef. “A detailed questionnaire was also sent to the parents before the semen analysis was carried out, covering in particular the maternal jobs exerted during the conscripts’ pregnancy period.”
This allowed for the analysis of semen parameters of men whose mothers were employed during their pregnancy. “The maternal jobs were classified according to the International Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88 of the International Labour Office of the WHO),” explains Luc Multigner, research director at the IRSET. “Exposure to products containing endocrine disruptors during pregnancy has been defined using a job-exposure matrix, which makes it possible to attribute the maternal exposure a probability score.” This has enabled epidemiologists to establish probabilities of exposure to one or more categories of products that may contain endocrine disruptors according to the mother’s occupation.
Endocrine disruptors associated with poorer sperm quality
The results of this study show that young men exposed in utero to endocrine disruptors are twice as likely to have values below the reference values established by the WHO, both in terms of the semen volume (threshold at 2 ml) and the total number of spermatozoa per ejaculation (40 million). “In our study, the products most associated with these anomalies were pesticides, phthalates and heavy metals,” notes Ronan Garlantézec.
“These observations do not determine the future fertility of young men, and only a follow-up over time will make it possible to assess the consequences. Nevertheless, the results could explain, at least in part, the low semen quality of some young Swiss men,” Serge Nef continues. An additional study is already planned in this same population to study the link between maternal occupational exposure to endocrine disruptors and changes in sexual hormones during adulthood.
Preventing exposure to endocrine disruptors
The results of this study suggest an association between the mother’s occupational exposure to endocrine disruptors and a decrease in several semen parameters in their children during adulthood. “It therefore appears necessary to inform women planning to conceive and during their early stages of pregnancy of the potential hazards of exposure to these substances, which could alter their children’s fertility,” underlines Luc Multigner. “Similarly, it would be interesting to carry out a similar study in women, in order to evaluate whether the impact of endocrine disruptors is the same on the female reproductive system, although this is much more complex to carry out,” explains Ronan Garlantézec. Finally, the data concerns mothers 25 years ago. Since then, the professions exerted by women have greatly evolved, as has the presence of endocrine disruptors in the products used. “Hence the crucial preventive role of this study,” concludes Serge Nef.
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For the first time researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Radboudumc, Maastricht UMC+ and international colleagues have gained insight into the “hidden genetic defects” of the general European population. This is important because these defects, if inherited from both father and mother, can lead to all kinds of illnesses in their children. Research in the Dutch and Estonian population shows that every person has two to four such hidden genetic defects. In 1 in 100 couples, this leads to a situation with an increased risk of a genetic disease for future children. In the case of consanguinity, even 20 percent of the couples appear to be at high risk. This research is published in The American Journal of Human Genetics and Genetics in Medicine.
The genes of a every person are half maternal, half paternal. Therefor you have two copies of each gene. Sometimes one of those two copies is defective, without making you sick because the other gene still functions properly. In this case we call it a ‘hidden genetic defect’ (in scientific terms: an autosomal recessive gene). Such a hidden genetic defect can cause problems if a child inherits the same hidden defect, the same mutated gene, from both father and mother. Both parents are healthy and have never suffered from the hidden genetic defect. But when these two hidden genetic defects (maternal en paternal) come together in the child, the disease manifests itself.
Hidden defects in sight
How often such hidden genetic defects occur in the general population has been unclear. By screening all the genes of nearly 6,500 people in the Dutch and Estonian population researchers from Radboudumc and Maastricht UMC+ have now obtained insight into how often such hidden defects that can lead to disease are present in a single individual. Christian Gilissen, researcher at Radboudumc: “Every human being appears to have on average 2 to 4 such hidden genetic defects. Therefore the chance that a European couple is at risk of having a sick child due to two such defects is about 1 percent. The risk increases sharply in consanguineous couples. In a relationship of cousins, about sixteen percent of the couples are at high risk, with a particularly increased risks for skeletal disorders or intellectual disabilities.”
Higher risk with consanguinity
In addition to this research, published in The American Journal of Human Genetics, research was also conducted in the hospital’s clinical practice coordinated by Maastricht UMC+, together with Radboudumc and Amsterdam UMC. This study, published in Genetics in Medicine, addresses the question of risk determination of hidden genetic defects in cousin relationships prior to a desired pregnancy. Clinical Molecular Geneticist Aimee Paulussen of Maastricht UMC+: “We mapped the risk in 100 consanguineous couples. About 20 percent of these couples were found to have an increased risk of serious disorders in their offspring through these hidden genetic defects. These results from clinical practice confirm the data already found in the population study mentioned above.”
Valuable testing
Professor Han Brunner, head of the Department of Clinical Genetics Maastricht as well as the Department of Genetics Nijmegen, is involved in both studies. He sees them as a clear incentive to make genetic testing available to couples with a possible increased risk because of such hidden genetic defects: “Certainly for these couples, this information can help them to make an informed decision when starting a family. They can consider pre-implantation diagnostics and IVF to allow selection of embryos without these defects.”
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Materials provided by Radboud University Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.