Did you know that the world’s deadliest animal is the mosquito? And Aedes aegypti is one of the most dangerous. This bug spreads viruses that cause dengue fever, which was recently declared as an epidemic in Puerto Rico. Research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reports new molecules that label proteins in the unique, alkaline environment of the Ae. aegypti digestive system that could help scientists develop insecticides to fight back.
Though mosquito insecticides exist, the pests are developing resistances, and advancements are needed to reduce their numbers and slow the spread of pathogens they carry, including the malaria parasite and the Zika and dengue viruses. Fortunately for scientists, the digestive system of certain mosquito larvae, including Ae. aegypti, is unique: A pH spikes at the beginning of their midgut, creating a highly alkaline region, then tapers off to a more neutral pH environment as digestion continues. So, Michael Riehle, John Jewett and colleagues wanted to develop molecular probes that would react to this change in pH, only “activating” in the alkaline portion of the midgut.
The team synthesized two base-reactive molecules and a control molecule for their test probes. These were each introduced to groups of 30 to 40 mosquito larvae, which took them up via filter feeding and passed them through their digestive systems. In the alkaline midgut, the two new base-reactive molecules underwent a series of chemical changes, allowing them to bind to proteins in the gut and be detected by the researchers using fluorescence. Larvae that ingested the control molecule did not exhibit this fluorescence. Reaching and labeling larval gut proteins with these molecular probes creates targets that could one day be used to develop new insecticides, according to the team. Additionally, since most organisms have neutral or acidic digestive systems, these alkaline-specific molecular probes wouldn’t affect them, minimizing possible side effects and making future insecticides highly specific for their target. The researchers say that this specificity and adaptability could make insecticides more resilient to change and more effective at fighting mosquito-borne illnesses.
The authors acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation, the 2023 Technology Research Initiative Fund and the National Institutes of Health.

A new type of investigational therapeutic in development for pancreatic cancer has shown unprecedented tumor-fighting abilities in preclinical models of the disease, suggesting it has the potential to offer novel treatment options for nearly all pancreatic tumors, a comprehensive study has found.
The inhibitors in this new class of oral medications, being developed by Revolution Medicines Inc., target the oncogenic or active cancer-causing form of RAS proteins (such as KRAS, NRAS, and HRAS). These RAS “oncoproteins” drive up to a third of all human cancers. The research findings — conducted by a consortium of academic researchers led by Columbia scientists and the scientific team at Revolution Medicines — were published in a paper appearing today in Nature.
Currently the third leading cause of death from cancer, pancreatic cancer kills about 50,000 people annually in the United States alone. Despite decades of research, the disease continues to stymie drug developers and oncologists. What’s especially frustrating is that scientists know exactly what causes most cases at the cellular level. “For over four decades, we have known that there’s one particular RAS protein, called KRAS, that’s mutated and drives about 95% of all pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cases, and we’ve had no direct tools to attack it for most of that time,” says Kenneth Olive, PhD, associate professor of medicine at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of the study’s senior authors.
When the study’s co-senior author, Mallika Singh, PhD, vice president for translational research at Revolution Medicines, told Olive the company had invented a class of inhibitors that had the potential to target all RAS mutations, he was incredulous. “My immediate reaction was skepticism,” says Olive. “But I was curious, and we quickly established a collaboration.”
Preclinical studies soon launched in the Olive lab at Columbia, led by Urszula Wasko, a PhD student in the molecular pharmacology graduate program. Early pilot experiments with RMC-7977 were remarkably effective. “We immediately knew we were working with something entirely different,” says Olive. At the same time, Olive and Revolution Medicines worked to bring together pancreatic cancer experts from other academic institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. “Rather than compete against one another, we established a consortium and agreed to share data in real time. That was transformative,” says Olive.
Pancreatic cancer researchers have developed many different preclinical models of the disease over the years, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Rather than pick one, the expanded team tested RMC-7977 in all of them. “By unleashing a consortium of scientists on this problem, we were able to examine active RAS inhibition in every major class of model for pancreatic cancer, and this inhibitor performed really well in all,” says Olive.
The preclinical tumor model Olive’s lab has long favored is widely recognized for its broad resistance to treatment. “RMC-7977 as a single agent outperformed the best combination regimen that has ever been reported in the literature in that model system,” he says, adding that it’s the first time he’s ever seen tumors routinely get smaller in those systems. Other models the consortium tested yielded similar results.

Because RMC-7977 also inhibits wild-type RAS proteins essential to the health of many normal cells, the scientists also carefully examined normal tissues in the treated animals. This work showed that tumor cells are uniquely sensitive to the inhibitor, while the impact in normal cells was minimal.
Though the initial responses in preclinical tumor models to the inhibitor were impressive, Olive hastens to point out that the tumors were not eliminated.
“In almost every case, the tumor came back,” he says. In tissue culture, the investigators identified another oncogene, called MYC, that was altered in most of the resistant tumors, then developed a combination treatment that was effective against tumor cells that had developed resistance to the active RAS inhibitor. Those results suggest a combinatorial approach that is worth exploring in patients in the future.
In a field with a long history of failed drug development efforts, the new results are cause for optimism, Olive says. “I’ve been working on pancreatic cancer for almost 20 years, and I’ve never seen preclinical results like these. I think there is a real chance this approach will help change the standard of care for pancreatic cancer patients, but only clinical trials can determine that. I’m excited that Columbia is one of many institutions participating in the clinical development of these new agents.”

The introduction of apolicy protecting parental leave benefits in Sweden in 1980 had unintended consequences on child health. The policy led to an increase in premature birth rates. This is shown by a study from researchers at Stockholm University, published in JAMA Pediatrics.
The Swedish so-called speed premium policy was introduced in 1980 in order to protect couples’ level of income-based parental leave benefits when they had children in quick succession. The new study from Stockholm University evaluates the health consequences of the policy. The researchers conclude that by unintentionally encouraging couples to have children within a shorter 24-month interval, the policy led to a 26% increase in the proportion of children born prematurely over the six years that it was in force.
“The results are convincing as the relaxation of the policy to a 30-month window in 1986 was meanwhile associated with an 11% decrease in premature birth rates in the following years. These changes remain in place today,” says Enrico Debiasi, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
Parental leave benefits in Sweden for most parents consist of approximately 80% of their salary prior to childbirth. However, due to a previous non-salaried leave period or a shift to part-time work, parents who already have a child might receive lower benefits for their next child. This is a situation that is very common for Swedish women after a period of parental leave, according to Debiasi.
In order to reduce the risk of low benefits for parents who had children in quick succession, the speed premium policywas introduced. The policy stipulated that among those with children born up to 24 months apart, parental leave benefits would be calculated according to the income received before the first one of those children was born.
“The policy was well-intentioned and offered important socioeconomic benefits for mothers, as has been shown previously. However, it did not anticipate that parents would shorten birth spacing, which is associated with adverse health consequences for the mother and the child,” says Sol Juárez, Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
The policy also encouraged women to postpone having children in order to protect their income, while still achieving their desired number of children, adds Helena Honkaniemi, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
“This resulted in a higher proportion of women having multiple children at advanced ages, which is also a risk factor for several adverse reproductive health outcomes,” she says.
Overall, the new study offers an excellent example of the consequences of not considering health when designing family policies, according to Juárez.
The study was published in the scientific journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances — commonly known as PFAS — are a group of over 14,000 human-made chemicals that have been popular since the 1950s for their diverse skills in resisting heat, water, grease and stains.
They’ve been commonly found in household products like non-stick frypans, clothing, cosmetics, insecticides, and food packaging, as well as specialty industry products, like firefighting foam.
But despite their broad skillset, the chemicals have a dark side: they’re known as ‘forever chemicals’ as once they’re in the environment — or our bodies — they don’t degrade further.
PFAS have been linked to environmental and health issues, including some cancers, but a lot remains unknown about the true scale and potential impacts of the problem — including how much is in our water supply.
A new UNSW-led international study, published today in Nature Geoscience, assessed the levels of PFAS contamination in surface and ground water around the globe.
It found that much of our global source water exceeds PFAS safe drinking limits.
“Many of our source waters are above PFAS regulatory limits,” says senior author of the study, UNSW Engineering Professor Denis O’Carroll.

“We already knew that PFAS is pervasive in the environment, but I was surprised to find out the large fraction of source waters that are above drinking water advisory recommendations,” he says. “We’re talking above 5 per cent, and it goes over 50 per cent in some cases.”
The research team pulled together PFAS measurements from sources around the world, including government reports, databases, and peer-reviewed literature. Altogether, they collated more than 45,000 data points, which span over roughly 20 years.
It’s the first study to quantify the environmental burden of PFAS on a global scale.
The study also found high concentrations of PFAS in Australia, with many locations above recommended drinking water levels. This tended to be in areas where firefighting foams had been used in the past, like military institutions and fire training facilities.
Prof. O’Carroll stresses that these PFAS traces are found in source water, such as dams, and not drinking water itself — drinking water goes through treatment plants, some of which are designed to reduce the amount of chemicals such as PFAS in our water before it comes out of the tap.
But some water providers — for example, Sydney Water — don’t routinely measure the broad range of PFAS potentially in our drinking water, says Prof. O’Carroll.

“Drinking water is largely safe, and I don’t hesitate drinking it,” he says. “I also don’t suggest that bottled water is better, because it doesn’t mean that they’ve done anything differently than what comes out of the tap.
“But I certainly think that monitoring PFAS levels and making the data easily available is worthwhile.”
A contentious debate: how much PFAS is too much?
Most people in Australia — and in many places around the world — are likely to have low levels of PFAS in their bodies.
But the potential health risks of PFAS chemicals are poorly understood and haven’t been agreed on universally.
According to an Australian Government expert health panel, there is limited to no evidence that PFAS poses clinically significant harm to human health — although further afield, peak bodies in the US and Europe suggest that PFAS is linked to adverse health outcomes, such as lower birth weight in babies, higher levels of cholesterol, reduced kidney function, thyroid disease, altered sex?hormone levels, reduced vaccine response, and liver, kidney, and testicular cancers.
In 2023, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared PFOA, a type of PFAS, a category one human carcinogen.
While PFAS has been linked to many of these health outcomes, they haven’t necessarily been shown to cause them — but given the potential risks and ‘forever’ nature of these chemicals, many regulatory bodies have tightened PFAS use and introduced safe drinking water limits as a precaution.
“Two forms of PFAS initially raised of concerns about 20 years ago: PFOS and PFOA,” says Prof. O’Carroll.
“These chemicals are regulated to different extents around the world. In the US, the proposed drinking water limits for PFOS and PFOA are four nanograms per litre.”
A third PFAS is also regulated in Australia, called PFHxS. Here, the sum of PFOS and PFHxS is limited to 70 nanograms per litre — well above the four nanograms per litre combined PFOS and PFOA limit in the US.
But our acceptable levels for PFOA in drinking water is even higher.
“PFOA, on the other hand, is regulated in Australia at 560 nanograms per litre, which is two orders of magnitude higher than in the US,” says Prof. O’Carroll.
While Australia’s limits seem relaxed compared to the US, both countries’ recommended drinking water guidelines pale when compared to Canada’s: here, rather than limiting only two or three forms of PFAS in drinking water, Canada tallies up the sum of all 14,000 PFAS and limits the overall number to 30 nanograms per litre.
The study found that 69 per cent of global groundwater samples with no known contamination source exceeded Health Canada’s safe drinking water criteria, while 32 per cent of the same samples exceeded the US’s proposed drinking water hazard index.
“There’s debate about what level PFAS should be regulated to,” says Prof. O’Carroll. “Australia has much higher limits than the US, but the question is why.
“Both health bodies would have different reasoning for that, and there’s not a really strong consensus here.”
An underestimated risk
The study suggests that actual PFAS pollution in global water resources could be higher than suspected.
This is, in part, due to us only monitoring and regulating a limited number of the 14,000 PFAS in existence, and also because the levels of PFAS in consumer products are higher than expected.
“There’s a real unknown amount of PFAS that we’re not measuring in the environment,” says Prof. O’Carroll. “Commercial products like garments and food packaging have a lot more PFAS in them than we realise.
“This means we’re likely underestimating the environmental burden posed by PFAS.”
Prof. O’Carroll and his team are now trying to develop their research by quantifying these levels of PFAS from commercial products in the environment.
They’re also working to develop technologies that can degrade PFAS in drinking water systems, and looking at developing predictive models that determine where PFAS will go in the environment.
“Part of this is figuring out how PFAS will associate with different parts of the environment and our bodies — proteins, for example,” says Prof. O’Carroll.
These studies will be in progress over the next two years and aim to be completed by 2026.
In the meantime, Prof. O’Carroll says manufacturers and consumers alike need to be careful and do our due diligence when using products containing PFAS.
“We manufacture and distribute a lot of chemicals without having a full assessment on their potential health impacts,” he says.
“We should have judicious use of some of these chemicals. Just because they’re available, doesn’t mean that we should use them.”

Through a large-scale analysis, researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have uncovered the ways in which consensual touch can benefit a person’s physical and mental wellbeing.
You might recognize the comforting feeling when someone offers you a hug at the end of a stressful day or strokes your shoulder when you’re feeling down. But the question remains: can touch really help you feel better, and does it matter who it’s from or how they touch you? To explore these questions, researchers from the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University Hospital Essen conducted a large-scale analysis of studies exploring touch interventions.
The benefits of touch on mental and physical health
Does touch truly improve someone’s wellbeing? It is an easy question to ask but more complicated to answer. Individual studies often only focus on specific instances and may contradict each other. Combining all these studies together for a large-scale analysis offers a clearer answer: yes, touch substantially improves both physical and mental wellbeing, for example via reduction of pain, anxiety, depression, and stress in adults. But in fact, those with physical or mental health problems (and therefore most in need of support) benefit even more from touch than healthy adults. “This is especially relevant considering how often touch interventions are overlooked” Packheiser, first author, adds.
“A key question of our study is to leverage the hundreds of individual studies out there to identify what type of touch works best,” adds professor Keysers, director of the Social Brain Lab. “What if you don’t have a friend or partner close by to hug you? Would touch from a stranger or even a machine also help? And how often? The study clearly shows that touch can indeed be optimized, but the most important factors are not necessarily those we suspect.”
Interestingly, the person touching you, how they touch you, and the duration of their touch doesn’t make a difference in terms of impact. A long-lasting massage by a therapist could therefore be just as effective as a quick hug offered by a friend. That is, until the frequency of the intervention is considered. The more often a touch intervention is offered, the greater the impact. A quick hug could therefore be even more impactful than a massage if it is offered more frequently.
Human or non-human touch?
The next question was whether touch intervention needs to be human at all. As it turns out, object or robot interventions can be equally effective at improving physical wellbeing. “There are lots of people in need of wellbeing improvements, perhaps because they’re lonely but also because they may be inflicted by clinical conditions. These results indicate that a touch-robot, or even a simple weighted blanket has the potential to help those people,” last author Frédéric Michon explains. However, the benefits of robot and object interventions are less effective for mental wellbeing. Mental health disorders like anxiety or depression might therefore require human touch after all, “perhaps suggestive of the importance for an emotional component associated with the touch,” Michon point out.

While the researchers were equally curious about human-to-animal contact, studies exploring this question are still lacking. “It would be useful to see whether an animal’s or pet’s touch could improve wellbeing, and inversely if they also benefit from it, but unfortunately there simply aren’t enough studies, or properly controlled ones, for us to draw any general conclusions on these topics,” Michon clarifies.
Touch interventions across ages
When the team looked into the impact of touch on newborns, they found out that newborns also benefited significantly from touch. However, the person conducting the touch intervention was more important: the benefits of touch are higher when done by a parent instead of a healthcare worker. “This finding could be impactful,” Packheiser adds. “Death rates due to premature births are high in some countries and the knowledge that a baby benefits more from the touch of their own parent offers another easily implementable form of support for the baby’s health.”
Due to a lack of studies, it proved difficult to draw conclusions about children and teenagers. “Large scale studies like this help us draw more general conclusions but they also help us identify where research is lacking,” Michon explains. “We hope that our findings can steer future research to explore lesser-known questions. This includes animal touch, but also touch across ages, and in specific clinical settings like autistic patients, another category that has not been explored extensively.”

Half of all patients discharged from hospital after a heart attack are treated with beta-blockers unnecessarily. This is according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “I am convinced that this will influence future practice,” says Tomas Jernberg, Professor at Karolinska Institutet and lead researcher of the study.
Today, when patients are discharged from hospitals after an acute heart attack, they are regularly treated with beta-blocker drugs such as metoprolol and bisoprolol. Now new research shows that about half of them do not benefit from the treatment and should not receive it at all. These are the patients who have suffered a small heart attack and have retained heart function afterwards. The study will change the way patients are treated in the future, says the lead researcher and last author of the study, Professor Tomas Jernberg from the Department of Clinical Sciences at Karolinska Institutet.
“I am convinced that this will influence future practice. This study has already been mentioned in the European guidelines for cardiac care, so the results are in demand,” he says.
The project was led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Lund University and Uppsala University. More than 5,000 patients at 45 hospitals in Sweden, Estonia and New Zealand who suffered a small heart attack were randomized to either receive or not receive beta-blockers at discharge.
The study began in September 2017 and patients were followed up until November 2023, by which time 7.9 percent of those receiving beta-blockers had the primary outcome of death or a new heart attack, compared to 8.3 percent of those not receiving beta-blockers. This difference is not statistically significant. Nor was there any difference between the groups in the secondary outcomes.
The result means that, unusually, the drug treatment becomes simpler and cheaper for all parties, says Tomas Jernberg.
“Typically, new research results in the addition of a medication to a patient’s regimen. However, this study shows that patients will benefit from taking one fewer drug.” ”
But he immediately warns patients not to stop their treatment on their own accord. The current study is only about the effect of starting treatment after a small heart attack, not after a larger one. Nor does it show anything about the effects of stopping treatment. More importantly, stopping medication should always be done in consultation with the treating physician.

“This is for several reasons. There may be other causes, other diagnoses, behind the use of beta-blockers. Then there is the fact that if you are going to stop, you should stop beta-blockers gradually. If you do it too quickly, you can get some heart palpitations and other discomfort. So, it is very important that you talk to your doctor before stopping any heart medication,” says Tomas Jernberg.
The research was funded by the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation. The researchers report that there are no conflicts of interest.
Facts:
In Sweden, around 20,000 people have a heart attack every year. Half of them have a small heart attack with retained heart function afterward. This means that the heart can still pump out more than 50 percent of the volume in the left chamber of the heart, known as preserved left ventricular systolic function.
The reasons behind the current practice of giving everyone a beta-blocker after a heart attack can be traced back to the 1980s when studies showed unequivocally that it was beneficial. But since then, other cardiovascular treatments have improved, as have diagnostics, so doctors are now detecting many of the heart attacks that were never classified as infarctions before. This, together with the fact that the incidence of heart attacks has steadily declined since the 1980s, means that today’s heart attacks are generally smaller and with a higher proportion of people with preserved left ventricular function.

A new approach to the guidance, planning and conduct of heart bypass surgery has been successfully tested on patients for the first time in a clinical trial coordinated by a research team at University of Galway.
The FAST TRACK CABG study, overseen by the University’s CORRIB Research Centre for Advanced Imaging and Core Lab, has seen heart surgeons plan and carry out coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), based solely on non-invasive cardiac-CT scan images, with HeartFlow’s AI-powered blood flow analysis of the patient’s coronary arteries.
The research was published today in the European Heart Journal.
The key findings of this first-in-human study is the 99.1% feasibility, which means that heart bypass surgery without undergoing invasive diagnostic catheterisation is feasible and safe, driven by the good diagnostic accuracy of the cardiac CT scan and AI-powered blood flow analysis.
The trial was sponsored by University of Galway and funded by GE Healthcare (Chicago, USA) and HeartFlow, Inc. (Redwood City, California, USA).
In comparing the safety and effectiveness of heart bypass surgery, the trial had similar outcomes to recent surgical groups of patients who underwent conventional invasive angiogram investigations, which involves inserting a catheter through an artery in the wrist or groin to access diseased arteries and using dye to visualise blockages.
The findings of the FAST TRACK CABG trial suggest that the less invasive approach to heart bypass surgery offers comparable safety and efficacy to established methods. The research team noted that safety issues inherent to invasive investigation can be replaced by a non-invasive technique using CT scan imaging and AI-powered blood flow analysis.

Trial chairman Professor Patrick W Serruys, Established Professor of Interventional Medicine and Innovation at University of Galway, said: “The results of this trial have the potential to simplify the planning for patients undergoing heart bypass surgery. The trial and the central role played by the CORRIB Core Lab puts University of Galway on the frontline of cardiovascular diagnosis, planning and treatment of coronary artery disease.”
The study was carried out in leading cardiac care hospitals in Europe and the US and involved 114 patients who had severe blockages in multiple vessels, limiting blood flow to their heart.
The cardiac CT used in this study (Revolution CT, GE Healthcare) has a special resolution that makes the non-invasive images as good or even better than the images traditionally obtained by a direct injection of contrast dye in the artery of the heart through a catheter.
During the trial, the analysis of high resolution cardiovascular imagery and data was carried out by the CORRIB Core Lab team and shared by telemedicine with surgeons in trial hospitals.
The HeartFlowTM Analysis, which provides AI-powered blood flow analysis called Fractional Flow Reserve derived from CT (FFRCT), quantifies how poorly the narrowed vessel provides blood to the heart muscle, assisted the surgeon in clearly identifying which of the patient’s vessels should receive a bypass graft.
Professor Serruys added: “The potential for surgeons to address even the most intricate cases of coronary artery disease using only a non-invasive CT scan, and FFRCT represents a monumental shift in healthcare. Following the example of the surgeon, interventional cardiologists could similarly consider circumventing traditional invasive cineangiography and instead rely solely on CT scans for procedural planning. This approach not only alleviates the diagnostic burden in cath labs but also paves the way for transforming them into dedicated ‘interventional suites’- ultimately enhancing patient workflows.”
Dr Yoshi Onuma, Professor of Interventional Cardiology at University of Galway and the medical director of CORRIB Research Centre, said: “Exploring the potential for minimising diagnostic catheterisation procedures is important for several reasons- a catheterisation procedure is invasive and it is unpleasant for the patient. It is also costly for the health service. While there is a minimal risk associated with the procedure, it is not entirely risk free.
D Dr John Puskas, Mount Sinai Morningside, New York and Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Emory University Hospital Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia, said: “As the only North American surgeon, enrolling many patients in this trial, I have a unique perspective: I can conclusively state that there is no loss in diagnostic precision or accuracy nor any decrement in the quality of surgical planning or performance when the surgical team is guided solely by data from a latest-generation, non-invasive coronary CT scan. Once the surgeon is familiar with this new imaging modality, there are several ways in which it is actually a better guide than the historical invasive coronary angiogram.”

A global survey found harmful levels even in water samples taken far any obvious source of contamination.They’re in makeup, dental floss and menstrual products. They’re in nonstick pans and takeout food wrappers. Same with rain jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and artificial turf on sports fields.They’re PFAS: a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are also called “forever chemicals” because the bonds in their chemical compounds are so strong they don’t break down for hundreds to thousands of years, if at all.They’re also in our water.A new study of more than 45,000 water samples around the world found that about 31 percent of groundwater samples tested that weren’t near any obvious source of contamination have PFAS levels considered harmful to human health by the Environmental Protection Agency. About 16 percent of surface water samples tested, which were also not near any known source, have similarly hazardous PFAS levels.This finding “sets off alarm bells,” said Denis O’Carroll, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New South Wales and one of the authors of the study, which was published on Monday in Nature Geoscience. “Not just for PFAS, but also for all the other chemicals that we put out into the environment. We don’t necessarily know their long-term impacts to us or the ecosystem.”High levels of exposure to some PFAS chemicals have been linked to higher cholesterol, liver and immune system damage, hypertension and pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, as well as kidney and testicular cancer.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.

Published20 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingBy Philippa RoxbyHealth reporterPeople with “long Covid” have evidence of continuing inflammation in their blood, which could help understanding of the condition and how it may be treated, a UK study suggests.It found the presence of certain proteins increased the risk of specific symptoms, such as fatigue, in people sick enough to need hospital treatment.It is unclear whether milder cases of Covid have the same effect on the body.A test remains a long way off – but the findings may prompt future trials.Long Covid – symptoms lasting at least 12 weeks after a Covid infection – is thought to have affected millions of people around the world.Some of the most common symptoms are:extreme tirednessfeeling short of breath problems with memory and concentration – or brain fog Others can include:sleeping problemsloss of smellanxietyThe chances of developing long-term symptoms do not seem linked to how ill people were when first infected – many people who had mild symptoms say they are affected.The UK’s largest long Covid study, led by Imperial College London, followed up 650 hospital patients with severe Covid.Six months later:426 said they still had at least one long Covid symptom233 had completely recoveredAnd those with long Covid showed evidence of a continuing and active pattern of inflammatory proteins in their blood.These chemicals appeared when the body fought infection but usually disappeared within six months, the researchers said.Image source, TracyTracy Evans, 59, from Bridlington, N Yorks, worked as a care assistant and support worker before catching Covid in early 2021.She spent three months in hospital and six weeks in intensive care.”I was so close to death, because they were going to turn me off,” she says. Tracy has been unable to work since because of continuing symptoms, including severe fatigue and brain fog. “Any exertion I am breathless. I’m tired just having a shower or getting dressed. I can’t make a bed without people thinking I’ve run a marathon. “I’m in pain all the time. Constantly in pain,” she says.When she wrote down her symptoms for a doctor they filled an A4 piece of paper. “Sometimes with the brain fog, it feels like you’ve got dementia. “It’s not a life, it’s an existence.”Try existing drugsThe researchers behind the study, in Nature Immunology, also found that some proteins in the blood of those with long Covid could be linked to specific symptoms they were experiencing.For example, people with gastrointestinal symptoms had increased levels of a marker called SCG3, which has previously been linked to impaired communication between the gut and the brain. This could help divide long Covid patients into different sub-groups and be useful for designing clinical trials, especially for treatments that target immune responses and inflammation, the researchers said.Dr Felicity Liew, clinical research fellow from Imperial College London, said the findings indicate that inflammation “could be a common feature of long Covid after hospitalisation, regardless of symptom type”.And this may open the door to drugs which already exist being tried against long Covid, such as those for treating rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune condition which causes inflammation of the joints.Lead research Professor Peter Openshaw said: “This work provides strong evidence that long Covid is caused by post-viral inflammation but shows layers of complexity. He added: “We hope that our work opens the way to the development of specific tests and treatments for the various types of long Covid and believe that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to treatment may not work.”Trials hopeThe researchers admit they don’t know if people who had a mild Covid infection before developing long Covid are also affected by the same immune mechanisms. They will continue to monitor what happens to the signs of inflammation as time goes by and symptoms improve and disappear, as happens to most people with long Covid.Dr Liew said she hoped the study would lead to identification of new treatments for the long-lasting symptoms of other illnesses if they were found to affect people in the same way as long Covid.Prof Eleanor Riley, honorary professor of immunology and infectious disease, at the University of Edinburgh, said the data “should usher in a series of clinical trials for treatment of long-Covid” using several licensed drugs that target inflammation. She said the study opened up new avenues for the investigation of ME/CFS, which is currently very poorly understood, because many of the symptoms of that condition and long Covid appear to overlap.More on this storyHealth staff start court fight over long CovidPublished6 MarchScans reveal new clues to long Covid symptomsPublished23 September 2023Brain fog after Covid linked to blood clots – studyPublished31 August 2023Long Covid: Three years and no magic bulletPublished26 March 2023Long Covid: What’s changed, and what we know nowPublished18 November 2022Related Internet LinksLong-term effects of COVID-19 (long COVID) – NHSThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Premature babies especially benefited from skin-to-skin contact, and women tended to respond more strongly than men did.A hug, a handshake, a therapeutic massage. A newborn lying on a mother’s bare chest.Physical touch can buoy well-being and lessen pain, depression and anxiety, according to a large new analysis of published research released on Monday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands systematically reviewed years of research on touch, strokes, hugs and rubs. They also combined data from 137 studies, which included nearly 13,000 adults, children and infants. Each study compared individuals who had been physically touched in some way over the course of an experiment — or had touched an object like a fuzzy stuffed toy — to similar individuals who had not.For example, one study showed that daily 20-minute gentle massages for six weeks in older people with dementia decreased aggressiveness and reduced the levels of a stress marker in the blood. Another found that massages boosted the mood of breast cancer patients. One study even showed that healthy young adults who caressed a robotic baby seal were happier, and felt less pain from a mild heat stimulus, than those who read an article about an astronomer.Positive effects were particularly noticeable in premature babies, who “massively improve” with skin-to-skin contact, said Frédéric Michon, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and one of the study’s authors.“There have been a lot of claims that touch is good, touch is healthy, touch is something that we all need,” said Rebecca Boehme, a neuroscientist at Linkoping University in Sweden, who reviewed the study for the journal. “But actually, nobody had looked at it from this broad, bird’s eye perspective.”The analysis revealed some interesting and sometimes mysterious patterns. Among adults, sick people showed greater mental health benefits from touch than healthy people did. Who was doing the touching — a familiar person or a health care worker — didn’t matter. But the source of the touch did matter to newborns.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.