In a new study, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have uncovered insights as to why lupus symptoms and severity present differently in individuals with the autoimmune condition, which affects up to 1.5 million Americans. The team says this is a crucial step forward in understanding biological mechanisms behind lupus, and may also lead to shifts in how clinicians treat patients with the condition.
The full report, published in Cell Reports Medicine on May 13, concludes that specific combinations and elevated levels of immune system proteins, known as interferons, are associated with certain lupus symptoms such as skin rashes, kidney inflammation and joint pain. Interferons normally help to fight infection or disease, but are overactive in lupus, causing widespread inflammation and damage. The study also shows that other common lupus-related symptoms cannot be explained by increased interferon levels.
“For years, we have accumulated knowledge that interferons play a role in lupus,” says corresponding author and rheumatologist Felipe Andrade, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He says this research began with questions about why certain lupus treatments were ineffective for some patients. “We have seen instances where the patient surprisingly didn’t improve — we wondered if certain interferon groups were involved.”
Some lupus treatments are designed to suppress a specific group of interferons, known as interferon I. In clinical trials for these treatments, the team observed some patients failing to improve, despite genetic tests showing high interferon I levels before treatment, or what experts call a high interferon signature. The team believed that two other interferon groups, interferon II and interferon III, may be to blame for these poor treatment responses.
To investigate, the team looked at how different combinations of interferon I, II or III, and their overactivity, may present in people with lupus. Researchers took 341 samples from 191 participants to determine the activity of the three interferon groups, and used human cell lines engineered to react to the presence of each specific interferon group to analyze the samples. Through this process, researchers determined that the majority of participants fell into four categories: those only with increased interferon I; those with a combination of increased interferons I, II and III; those with a combination of increased interferons II and III; or those with normal interferon levels.
Researchers were able to use these findings to also make several associations between these interferon combinations and lupus symptoms. In those with elevated interferon I, lupus was mainly associated with symptoms affecting the skin, such as rashes or sores. Participants with elevated levels of interferon I, II and III exhibited the most severe presentations of lupus, often with significant damage to organ systems, such as the kidneys.
Not every symptom found in lupus was associated with elevated interferons, though. The formation of blood clots and low platelet counts, which also affect clotting, did not have an association with increased levels of interferon groups I, II or III. Researchers say this indicates that both interferon-dependent and other biological mechanisms are involved in this complex disease. The study also found that genetic testing of genes associated with these interferon groups, or the interferon signature, did not always indicate elevated interferon levels. They plan to investigate this in future studies.
“What we’ve seen in our study is that these interferon groups are not isolated; they work as a team in lupus and can give patients different presentations of the disease,” says rheumatologist Eduardo Gómez-Bañuelos, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s first and additional corresponding author. Evaluating a patient’s elevated interferon combinations allows for a better understanding of how they may react to treatments, and would allow clinicians to group them into clinical subtypes of lupus, Gómez-Bañuelos explains.
Additional contributors to this work include Daniel Goldman, Victoria Andrade, Erika Darrah and Michelle Petri, affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Darrah is now also affiliated with AstraZeneca.
Funding for this project includes National Institutes of Health grant numbers R21 AI147598, R21 AI169851, R21 AI176766 and R01 AR069572, as well as from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation.

Trained negotiators can help families struggling with vexing elder-care issues.The four adult children were in agreement.Their father, William Curry, a retired electrical engineer and business executive, was sinking deeper into dementia. They had found a memory care facility about a mile from their parents’ house in Chelmsford, Mass., where they thought Mr. Curry would do better.But their mother, Melissa, who was 83 when her family began urging her to make this change in 2016, remained determined to continue caring for her 81-year-old husband at home, despite the increasing toll on her own health. When her children raised the issue of a move, “she wouldn’t discuss it,” said her daughter, Shannon Curry, 56. “She’d clam up. Sometimes she’d cry.”Yet Melissa Curry’s memory was faltering, too. She would forget to give her husband his medications, or get the doses wrong. The family worried about falls and fires. Even after they persuaded her to accept a hired aide several days a week, the couple was still alone most of the day as well as overnight.As the weeks passed, “we were really at an impasse,” Ms. Curry said. “Do you override your mother?”Enter the mediator. Through a friend, Ms. Curry learned about Elder Decisions, a company offering “elder adult family mediation.” Her parents and siblings all agreed to give it a try. Crystal Thorpe, the company’s principal and founder, and a co-mediator, Rikk Larsen, interviewed family members by phone, then scheduled a session around the parents’ dining room table.Often associated with business disputes or divorce and custody cases, trained mediators can also help families struggling with an array of vexing elder-care issues: appropriate living arrangements, care responsibilities, communication and information sharing, and health and financial decisions.When families seek mediation, they “want to do what is best, but have different perspectives on what ‘best’ might mean,” Ms. Thorpe explained.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Dr. Hilary Cass published a landmark report that led to restrictions on youth gender care in Britain. U.S. health groups said it did not change their support of the care.After 30 years as one of England’s top pediatricians, Dr. Hilary Cass was hoping to begin her retirement by learning to play the saxophone.Instead, she took on a project that would throw her into an international fire: reviewing England’s treatment guidelines for the rapidly rising number of children with gender distress, known as dysphoria.At the time, in 2020, England’s sole youth gender clinic was in disarray. The waiting list had swelled, leaving many young patients waiting years for an appointment. Staff members who said they felt pressure to approve children for puberty-blocking drugs had filed whistle-blower complaints that had spilled into public view. And a former patient had sued the clinic, claiming that she had transitioned as a teenager “after a series of superficial conversations with social workers.”The National Health Service asked Dr. Cass, who had never treated children with gender dysphoria but had served as the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, to independently evaluate how the agency should proceed.Over the next four years, Dr. Cass commissioned systematic reviews of scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care. She also met with young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians.Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was “remarkably weak.” On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with “extreme caution.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of hospitalizations and deaths around the world, affecting more than five million people each year. Predicting outcomes following a brain injury can be challenging, yet families are asked to make decisions about continuing or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment within days of injury.
In a new study, Mass General Brigham investigators analyzed potential clinical outcomes for TBI patients enrolled in the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) study for whom life support was withdrawn. The investigators found that some patients for whom life support was withdrawn may have survived and recovered some level of independence a few months after injury. These findings suggest that delaying decisions on withdrawing life support might be beneficial for some patients.
Families are often asked to make decisions to withdraw life support measures, such as mechanical breathing, within 72 hours of a brain injury. Information relayed by physicians suggesting a poor neurologic prognosis is the most common reason families opt for withdrawing life support measures. However, there are currently no medical guidelines or precise algorithms that determine which patients with severe TBI are likely to recover.
Using data collected over a 7.5-year period on 1,392 TBI patients in intensive care units at 18 United States trauma centers, the researchers created a mathematical model to calculate the likelihood of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, based on properties like demographics, socioeconomic factors and injury characteristics. Then, they paired individuals for whom life-sustaining treatment was not withdrawn (WLST-) to individuals with similar model scores, but for whom life-sustaining treatment was withdrawn (WLST+).
Based on follow-up of their WLST- paired counterparts, the estimated six-month outcomes for a substantial proportion of the WLST+ group was either death or recovery of at least some independence in daily activities. Of survivors, more than 40 percent of the WLST- group recovered at least some independence. In addition, the research team found that remaining in a vegetative state was an unlikely outcome by six-months after injury. Importantly, none of the patients who died in this study were pronounced brain dead, and thus the results are not applicable to brain death.
According to the authors, the findings suggest there is a cyclical, self-fulfilling prophecy taking place: Clinicians assume patients will do poorly based on outcomes data. This assumption results in withdrawal of life support, which in turn increases poor outcomes rates and leads to even more decisions to withdraw life support.
The authors suggest that further studies involving larger sample sizes that allow for more precise matching of WLST+ and WLST- cohorts are needed to understand variable recovery trajectories for patients who sustain traumatic brain injuries.
“Our findings support a more cautious approach to making early decisions on withdrawal of life support,” said corresponding author Yelena Bodien, PhD, of the Department of Neurology’s Center for Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery at Massachusetts General Hospital and of the Spaulding-Harvard Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems. “Traumatic brain injury is a chronic condition that requires long term follow-ups to understand patient outcomes. Delaying decisions regarding life support may be warranted to better identify patients whose condition may improve.”
Read more in the study, published May 13, in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and King’s College London have discovered that how soft or rigid proteins are in certain regions can dictate how fast or slow they enter the nucleus.
Proteins need to come in and out of the nucleus, the control centre of the cell, to give different functions, such as telling the nucleus to switch on or off certain genes. These proteins cross using a channel on the edge of the nucleus called the ‘nuclear pore complex’.
Previous research has shown that the size and composition of these proteins change how easily they can cross, but now this research, published today in Nature Physics, has shown that mechanical properties can also influence protein entry through the pore.
By tracking the movement of proteins in single cells, the team showed that, in proteins of the same size and composition of amino acids (their building blocks), mechanical stability near the protein’s ‘nuclear-localisation sequence’ (a special sequence to allow the protein to enter the nucleus) influenced how fast or slow they could cross.
They identified that proteins with a soft or flexible region next to this sequence were able to cross into the nucleus more quickly.
The researchers then engineered a soft tag that could be added near the sequence on stiffer proteins, to help them to enter the nucleus more easily.
This was tested by tagging a transcription factor — a protein that turns certain genes on — called MRTF, which helps cells move around the body. When a soft tag was attached to MRTF, it was able to enter the nucleus much quicker, increasing cell movement.

The researchers believe this could be a potentially useful tool for delivering drugs to the nucleus more quickly, or by tagging transcription factors to increase the activity of certain genes.
Sergi Garcia-Manyes, Group Leader of the Single Molecule Mechanobiology Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, and Professor of Biophysics at King’s College London, said: “We’ve made a fundamental discovery that the mechanics of a protein — how soft or stiff it is in the region that leads translocation- control its entry into the cell’s nucleus. Although we only looked at the nuclear pore, this mechanism could regulate entry into other parts of the cell, such as the mitochondria or proteasomes. Knowing that a more flexible protein can enter the nucleus quicker could help us design more targeted drugs.”
Rafael Tapia-Rojo, co-first author, former postdoc at the Crick, and now lecturer in Biological Physics at King’s College London, said: “Our findings were rather unanticipated, and it was striking to see how measurements at the single molecule level can be so directly linked to what happens at a cellular level, using a newly designed optomechanical approach.”
The researchers are now investigating how transcription factors have evolved to contain flexible regions that allow them to enter the nucleus more easily.

A study by the University of Cambridge, UK, and Fudan University, China, has found that a single dose of the measles jab is up to 2.6 times more likely to be completely ineffective in children born by C-section, compared to those born naturally.
Failure of the vaccine means that the child’s immune system does not produce antibodies to fight against measles infection, so they remain susceptible to the disease.
A second measles jab was found to induce a robust immunity against measles in C-section children.
Measles is a highly infectious disease, and even low vaccine failure rates can significantly increase the risk of an outbreak.
A potential reason for this effect is linked to the development of the infant’s gut microbiome — the vast collection of microbes that naturally live inside the gut. Other studies have shown that vaginal birth transfers a greater variety of microbes from mother to baby, which can boost the immune system.
“We’ve discovered that the way we’re born — either by C-section or natural birth — has long-term consequences on our immunity to diseases as we grow up,” said Professor Henrik Salje in the University of Cambridge?’s Department of Genetics, joint senior author of the report.
He added: “We know that a lot of children don’t end up having their second measles jab, which is dangerous for them as individuals and for the wider population.

“Infants born by C-section are the ones we really want to be following up to make sure they get their second measles jab, because their first jab is much more likely to fail.”
The results are published today in the journal Nature Microbiology.
At least 95% of the population needs to be fully vaccinated to keep measles under control but the UK is well below this, despite the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine being available through the NHS Routine Childhood Immunisation Programme.
An increasing number of women around the world are choosing to give birth by caesarean section: in the UK a third of all births are by C-section, in Brazil and Turkey over half of all children are born this way.
“With a C-section birth, children aren’t exposed to the mother’s microbiome in the same way as with a vaginal birth. We think this means they take longer to catch up in developing their gut microbiome, and with it, the ability of the immune system to be primed by vaccines against diseases including measles,” said Salje.
To get their results, the researchers used data from previous studies of over 1,500 children in Hunan, China, which included blood samples taken every few weeks from birth to the age of 12. This allowed them to see how levels of measles antibodies in the blood change over the first few years of life, including following vaccination.

They found that 12% of children born via caesarean section had no immune response to their first measles vaccination, as compared to 5% of children born by vaginal delivery. This means that many of the children born by C-section did still mount an immune response following their first vaccination.
Two doses of the measles jab are needed for the body to mount a long-lasting immune response and protect against measles. According to the World Health Organisation,in 2022 only 83% of the world’s children had received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday — the lowest since 2008.
Salje said: “Vaccine hesitancy is really problematic, and measles is top of the list of diseases we’re worried about because it’s so infectious.”
Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases, spread by coughs and sneezes. It starts with cold-like symptoms and a rash, and can lead to serious complications including blindness, seizures, and death.
Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, there were major measles epidemics every few years causing an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year.
The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Eye diseases are becoming more prevalent worldwide, partly because of the aging population, but also because of our greatly increased screen time compared to previous generations. Considering our use of displays will most likely keep rising due to technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, we must improve our diagnostic techniques for the early detection and monitoring of ocular diseases.
Among the arsenal of tools ophthalmologist have at their disposal, electroretinography (ERG) still holds much-untapped potential. Simply put, ERG consists of taking measurements of the electrical potentials generated by neurons and other cells in the retina from the surface of the cornea. Many ocular diseases cause abnormalities in a person’s ERG signals, including glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, and diabetic retinopathy. Although many types of ERG measurement devices exist, few ERG electrodes can measure multiple localized ERG signals from different regions of the retina at the same time. In most cases, such measurements are performed using electrodes placed on hard contact lenses. This makes the procedure more complex, expensive, and particularly uncomfortable for the patient.
Against this background, a research team led by Professor Takeo Miyake from the Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems at Waseda University, Japan, set out to develop a new type of soft ERG multi-electrode system to overcome these issues. Their latest study, published in Advanced Materials Technologieson May 7, 2024, describes their findings. It was co-authored by Saman Azhari from the Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems at Waseda University, as well as Atsushige Ashimori and Kazuhiro Kimura from the Department of Ophthalmology at Yamaguchi University.
The proposed system utilizes a commercially available soft disposable contact lens. The researchers first immersed this contact lens in a solution containing the monomer 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT). They then placed carefully designed gold mesh electrodes with their respective connecting wires onto the inner surface of the contact lens. By circulating a current through the solution containing EDOT, the monomers formed an entangled polymer called PEDOT, which adhered well to the contact lens and fixated the gold components.
A key advantage of this approach is that the PEDOT layer can be overoxidized by using a DC voltage under dry condition, thereby forming a highly insulating layer on the collecting wire. This insulation is critical to ensure different retinal signals flowing through the gold wires do not interfere with one another or with signals originating from other regions of the eye. By carefully designing the gold mesh of the electrodes to spread currents during overoxidation process, the PEDOT encapsulating the mesh region does not overoxidize, thus ensuring good electrical contact with the eye.
The result of this innovative process is a flexible and highly transparent multi-electrode system for ERG measurements that is just as comfortable as commercial disposable contact lenses. The researchers carefully examined the optoelectrical properties of their multi-electrodes and also conducted some experiments on rabbits, as Miyake comments: “Our device was used in animal experiments, confirming its biocompatibility and suggesting a correlation between the location of the electrodes and the intensity of the recorded ERG signals. In other words, our design could enable precise spatial measurements of multiple ERG signals simultaneously.”
Taken together, the findings of this study would help us better understand and diagnose ocular diseases. “The use of augmented and virtual reality devices is growing quickly, and the precise and continuous monitoring of eye conditions will become a necessity,” remarks Miyake. “A smart contact lens such as the one developed in this work could be connected to a local network to transmit the eye’s health condition to an ophthalmologist or healthcare specialist while the user is performing their daily routine. Such systems could prevent irreparable damage to the eyes.”

Men with prostate cancer could significantly reduce the chances of the disease worsening by eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and olive oil, according to new research by UC San Francisco.
A study of more than 2,000 men with localized prostate cancer found that eating a primarily plant-based diet was associated with a 47% lower risk that their cancer would progress, compared with those who consumed the most animal products.
This amounted to eating just one or two more servings per day of healthy foods, particularly vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, while eating fewer animal products, like dairy and meat. The study followed the men, whose median age was 65 years old, over time to see how dietary factors affected the progression of their cancer.
Plant-based diets include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, vegetable oils, tea and coffee. The researchers measured consumption using a plant-based index and compared the men who scored in the highest 20% to those who scored in the lowest 20%.
“These results could guide people to make better, more healthful choices across their whole diet, rather than adding or removing select foods,” said Vivian N. Liu, formerly lead clinical research coordinator at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health and first author of the study, which appears in JAMA Network Open.
“Progressing to advanced disease is one of many pivotal concerns among patients with prostate cancer, their family, caregivers and physicians,” she said. “This adds to numerous other health benefits associated with consuming a primarily plant-based diet, such as a reduction in diabetes, cardiovascular disease and overall mortality.”
Antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds
Plant-based diets are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and evidence is accumulating that they can be beneficial to patients with prostate cancer, the most common cancer among men in the country after non-melanoma skin cancer.

Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants, as well as anti-inflammatory compounds that have been shown to protect against prostate cancer, and prior research has consistently demonstrated the importance of dietary factors to overall health and well-being.
“Making small changes in one’s diet each day is beneficial,” said senior author Stacey A. Kenfield, ScD, a UCSF professor of urology and the Helen Diller Family Chair in Population Science for Urologic Cancer. “Greater consumption of plant-based food after a prostate cancer diagnosis has also recently been associated with better quality of life, including sexual function, urinary function and vitality, so it’s a win-win on both levels.”
Coauthors: From UCSF, other authors are Erin L. Van Blarigan, ScD; Li Zhang, PhD; Rebecca E. Graff, ScD; Crystal S. Langlais, PhD; Janet E. Cowan, MA; Peter R. Carroll, MD, MPH; and June M. Chan, ScD.

An experimental treatment made from a plant virus is effective at protecting against a broad range of metastatic cancers in mice, shows a new study from the University of California San Diego.
The treatment, composed of nanoparticles fashioned from the cowpea mosaic virus — a virus that infects black-eyed pea plants — showed remarkable success in improving survival rates and suppressing the growth of metastatic tumors across various cancer models, including colon, ovarian, melanoma and breast cancer. Similar outcomes were also observed when the treatment was administered to mice whose tumors were surgically removed.
The findings were published recently in Advanced Science.
The new study builds upon previous research by the lab of Nicole Steinmetz, a professor of nanoengineering, director of the Center for Nano-ImmunoEngineering and co-director of the Center for Engineering in Cancer, all at UC San Diego. Steinmetz and colleagues have been using cowpea mosaic virus nanoparticles to trigger the immune system to fight cancer and prevent it from spreading and recurring. In early studies, the approach involved injecting the plant virus nanoparticles directly into tumors to stimulate an immune response. Even though the virus is non-infectious in mammals, the body’s immune cells still recognize it as foreign, triggering a robust immune reaction against the existing tumor, as well as any future tumors.
Now, Steinmetz and her team show that the plant virus nanoparticles do not need to be injected directly into tumors to be effective. Administering the nanoparticles systemically improved survival rates and inhibited metastasis across various cancer types.
“Here, we do not treat established tumors or metastatic disease — we prevent them from forming. We are providing a systemic treatment to wake up the body’s immune system to eliminate the disease before metastases even form and settle,” said Steinmetz.
To make the nanoparticles, the researchers grew black-eyed pea plants in the lab and infected them with cowpea mosaic virus. Millions of copies of the virus were grown and harvested in the form of ball-shaped nanoparticles, which required no further modification before use in experiments. “Nature’s powerful nanoparticles, as produced in black-eyed pea plants,” said Steinmetz.

The researchers tested the efficacy of the treatment in mouse models of colon, ovarian, melanoma and breast cancers. Mice injected with cowpea mosaic virus nanoparticles — and then challenged with metastatic tumors a week later — exhibited improved survival rates and reduced tumor growth compared to untreated mice. Even when challenged with new tumors a month later, treated mice exhibited similar outcomes.
The researchers are particularly excited about the treatment’s effectiveness post-surgery. In another set of experiments, administering the nanoparticles after surgical removal of tumors resulted in improved survival rates and decreased tumor regrowth in mice.
“Even if you perform surgery to remove the tumors, no surgery is perfect and there is outgrowth of metastasis if no additional treatment is provided,” said Steinmetz. “Here, we use our plant virus nanoparticles after surgery to boost the immune system to reject any residual disease and prevent circulating tumor cells from metastatic seeding. We found that it works really, really well!”
The goal is to gear up for clinical trials. As the research progresses, the team will be conducting safety studies and exploring the treatment’s efficacy in pet animals with cancer. Future studies will also focus on understanding the mechanisms underlying the immune-boosting properties of cowpea mosaic virus nanoparticles.
This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (R01-CA224605, R01-CA274640, R01-CA253615) and the Shaughnessy Family Fund for Nano-ImmunoEngineering at UC San Diego.

Published21 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By Jayne McCormack & Marie-Louise ConnollyBBC News NI political correspondentThe leaking of information from executive meetings during the Covid pandemic was “tolerated rather than challenged”, Robin Swann has said.The health minister is giving evidence at the UK Covid inquiry in Belfast.The inquiry has already heard from other ministers who expressed annoyance about leaks to the media. Mr Swann also said that by the end of January 2020 there had been no formal meeting on Covid with the first minister and deputy first minister.The Stormont Executive met for the first time on 3 February 2020, and the inquiry heard preparations were turned up to moderate. Mr Swann accepted that changing the mode to “moderate” did not convey the seriousness of what was happening. He said at that first executive meeting, ministers’ heads were probably in other places. The first cases of the virus were confirmed in the UK in late January 2020 and events unfolded rapidly, with the first lockdown in Northern Ireland announced in March.’Cinderella service’Earlier, Mr Swann said it was frustrating that information was often leaked “in real time” to the media.He said he often felt it was a “deliberate” attempt to condition how the conversation about restrictions would go when the executive met.He told the inquiry papers were often shared late with executive colleagues and would be leaked to the media, allowing a “narrative” to be established.He added there were various attempts to stop the leaking of information, which became “so endemic that it became tolerated rather than challenged”.”At times there was a live feed from the meetings, which left it extremely challenging at times for ministers to be open”, Mr Swann said.Robin Swann appears before the Covid-19 InquiryInquiry chair Baroness Hallett asked him if banning electronic devices was ever discussed as an option, to which the minister responded that various attempts to stop leaking were made.The minister told the inquiry that there was one attempt at a leak inquiry undertaken by the then permanent secretary of the Department of Finance, Sue Gray.He said he did not believe a finding ever came from that.Mr Swann went on to describe how “opportunities were lost” during the pandemic as there had been no government in place for three years prior. “Green sites could have been up and running to deal with cancer cases” while simultaneously dealing with Covid, he said. He added that social care was reduced to a “Cinderella service” due to the mounting pressure on the healthcare system. ‘Lonely and challenging’The health minister said it was a “lonely and challenging position” as the sole Ulster Unionist minister in the executive during the pandemic. Mr Swann was appointed health minister in January 2020 when power sharing at Stormont returned.But he added that on recollection it was also a “strength” as he did not have to answer to party political colleagues. He said that during the pandemic, he believed he did have support from other parties.First Minister Michelle O’Neill is due to give evidence on Tuesday, with her former partner in the Executive Office, Baroness Foster due to appear on Wednesday.During the pandemic, Ms O’Neill was deputy first minister from January 2020 until February 2022, while Baroness Foster was first minister from January 2020 until June 2021.The inquiry is due to conclude sitting in Belfast on Thursday, when Sue Gray, who is now chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, is due to give evidence.More on this storyDOH not ‘direct’ enough about Covid preparationsPublished2 days agoGap in early NI response to covid – top scientistPublished5 days agoReplacing Swann during Covid bizarre idea – BeattiePublished2 MayLeaks were one of my largest frustrations – Swann. Video, 00:00:43Leaks were one of my largest frustrations – SwannPublished24 minutes ago0:43