Publisher Health

High blood pressure and diabetes are known risk factors for stroke, but now a new study shows that the amount of risk may decrease as people age. The study is published in the January 18, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“High blood pressure and diabetes are two important risk factors for stroke that can be managed by medication, decreasing a person’s risk,” said study author George Howard, DrPH, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. “Our findings show that their association with stroke risk may be substantially less at older ages, yet other risk factors do not change with age. These differences in risk factors imply that determining whether a person is at high risk for stroke may differ depending on their age.”
The study involved 28,235 people who had never had a stroke. Of this group, 41% were Black and 59% were white. Participants were followed for an average of 11 years.
At the start of the study, participants were interviewed and given physical exams to assess risk factors. Risk factors included high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, atrial fibrillation, heart disease and left ventricular hypertrophy which is the thickening of the heart’s left ventricle. Because of the well-known higher stroke risk in Black people, race was also considered as part of the assessed risk factors, Howard added.
Researchers followed up with participants every six months, confirming strokes by reviewing medical records.
During the study, there were 1,405 strokes over 276,074 person-years. Person-years represent both the number of people in the study and the amount of time each person spends in the study.

Participants were divided into three age groups, which were then compared. The age ranges for those groups varied slightly depending on the data being analyzed by researchers. In general, the younger group included participants ages 45-69, the middle group included people in their late 60s to 70s and the older group included people 74 and older.
Researchers found that people with diabetes in the younger age group were approximately twice as likely to have a stroke as people of similar age who did not have diabetes, while people with diabetes in the older age group had an approximately 30% higher risk of having a stroke than people of similar older age who did not have diabetes.
Researchers also found that people with high blood pressure in the younger age group had an 80% higher risk of having stroke than people of similar age without high blood pressure while that risk went down to 50% for people with high blood pressure in the older age group compared to people of similar age without high blood pressure.
In addition, when researchers examined race as a risk factor, they found a higher stroke risk for Black participants in the younger age group compared to white participants in that group. The race difference decreased in the older age group. For stroke risk factors such as smoking, atrial fibrillation and left ventricular hypertrophy, researchers did not find an age-related change in risk.
“It is important to note that our results do not suggest that treatment of high blood pressure and diabetes becomes unimportant in older age,” said Howard. “Such treatments are still very important for a person’s health. But it also may be wise for doctors to focus on managing risk factors such as atrial fibrillation, smoking and left ventricular hypertrophy as people age.”
Howard also noted that even where the impact of risk factors decreases with age, the total number of people with strokes at older ages may still be larger since overall risk of stroke increases with age. For example, in the younger age group for high blood pressure, researchers estimate that about 2.0% of people with normal blood pressure had a stroke, compared to 3.6% of people with high blood pressure. In the older age group, about 6.2% of people with normal blood pressure had a stroke, compared to 9.3% of people with high blood pressure.
A limitation of the research was that participants’ risk factors were assessed only once at the start of the study, and it’s possible they may have changed over time.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute on Aging.

In November 2018, the Camp Fire burned a total of 239 square miles, destroyed 18,804 structures and killed 85 people, making it the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.
Three years later, researchers at University of California San Diego, published a novel study that looked at the psychological consequences, finding that exposure to “climate trauma” for affected residents resulted in increased and chronic mental health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
In a new study, published in the January 18, 2023 online issue of PLOS Climate, senior author Jyoti Mishra, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine, director of the Neural Engineering and Translation Labs at UC San Diego, and associate director of the UC Climate and Mental Health Initiative, delved deeper with her colleagues. The study team reported that in a subset of persons exposed to the Camp Fire, significant differences in cognitive functioning and underlying brain activity were revealed using electroencephalography (EEG).
Specifically, the researchers found that fire-exposed individuals displayed increased activity in the regions of the brain involved in cognitive control and interference processing — the ability to mentally cope with unwanted and often disturbing thoughts.
“To function well day-to-day, our brains need to process information and manage memories in ways that help achieve goals while ignoring or dispensing with irrelevant or harmful distractions,” said Mishra.
“Climate change is an emerging challenge. It is already well-documented that extreme climate events result in significant psychological impacts. Warming temperatures, for example, have even been linked to greater suicide rates. As planetary warming amplifies, more forest fires are expected in California and globally, with significant implications for mental health effects.

“In this study, we wanted to learn whether and how climate trauma affected and altered cognitive and brain functions in a group of people who had experienced it during the Camp Fire. We found that those who were impacted, directly or indirectly, displayed weaker interference processing. Such weakened cognitive performance may then impair daily functioning and reduce wellbeing.”
The study sample included 27 persons directly exposed to the Camp Fire (for example, their homes were destroyed), 21 who were indirectly exposed (they witnessed the fire, but were not directly impacted) and 27 control individuals. All participants underwent cognitive testing with synchronized EEG brain recordings.
Sixty-seven percent of the individuals directly exposed to the fire reported having experienced recent psychological trauma, as did 14 percent of the indirectly exposed individuals. None of the control individuals reported recent trauma exposure.
The EEG recordings showed that the brains of those individuals reporting trauma worked harder at interference processing and cognitive control, suggesting a compensatory effort but at a cost: potentially heightened risk of neurological dysfunction elsewhere.
“The evidence of diminished interference processing, along with altered functional brain responses, is useful because it can help guide efforts to develop resiliency intervention strategies,” said Mishra.
“As the planet warms, more and more individuals will face extreme climate exposures, like wildfires, and having therapeutic tools that can address underlying neuro-cognitive issues will be an important complement to other socio-behavioral therapies.”
Co-authors include: Gillian K. Grennan from UC San Diego; Mathew C. Withers, California State University at Chico; and Dhakshin S. Ramanathan, UC San Diego and VA San Diego Medical Center.

Researchers with the SFU Nanodevice Fabrication Group are developing a new biosensor that can be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases. An overview of their work has been recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Their sensor works by detecting a particular type of small protein, in this case a cytokine known as Tumour Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF alpha), which is involved with inflammation in the body. Abnormal cytokine levels have been linked to a wide variety of diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, cancers, heart disease, autoimmune and cardiovascular disease.
TNF alpha can act as a biomarker, a measurable characteristic indicating health status.
COVID-19 can also cause inflammatory reactions known as ‘cytokine storms,’ and studies have shown that cytokine inhibitors are an effective treatment for improving chances of survival.
“Our goal is to develop a sensor that’s less invasive, less expensive and simpler to use than existing methods,” says Engineering Science Assistant Professor Michael Adachi, the project’s co-lead.
“These sensors are also small and have potential to be placed in doctor’s offices to help diagnose different diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease.”
Adachi says that there are a number of established methods for detecting biomarker proteins such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and mass spectrometry, but they have several drawbacks. These existing methods are expensive, samples need to be sent away to a lab for testing and it can take a day or more to receive the results.

He notes that their biosensor is extremely sensitive and can detect TNF alpha in very low concentrations (10 fM) — well below the concentrations normally found in healthy blood samples (200-300 fM).
Current screening tests for Alzheimer’s disease include a questionnaire to determine if the person has symptoms, brain imaging, or a spinal tap process which involves testing for the biomarker proteins in the cerebral spinal fluid of the potential patient.
The team has completed the proof-of-concept stage, proving that the two-electrode diode sensor is effective in detecting TNF alpha in a laboratory setting. They plan to test the biosensor in clinical trials to ensure it would be able to effectively detect biomarker proteins within a blood sample containing many different interfering proteins and other substances.
“We will continue testing the device’s ability to detect the same proteins using body fluid like blood samples,” says engineering science PhD student Hamidreza Ghanbari. “The other objective is to use the same device but a different receptor to detect proteins that are more specific to Alzheimer’s disease.”
The researchers have also filed a provisional patent application with the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) at SFU. The project takes an interdisciplinary approach combining leadership from Adachi in Engineering Science and professors Karen Kavanagh in the Dept. of Physics and Miriam Rosin in Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology (BPK).

“We need to be sure each sensor is made exactly the same to the tolerance required for the concentration we’re trying to predict or detect, and that’s the real challenge,” says Kavanagh.
How it works
Kavanagh says their sensor depends on properties of a type of semiconductor that is being studied for its two-dimensional (2D) properties, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). This compound has different properties compared to common semiconductors, silicon or gallium arsenide (GaAs), which are much more widely used and well-understood.
Thushani De Silva is an Engineering Science Master’s graduate who worked on the project and emphasizes that the device is based on electrical measurement.
“Basically, we have a semiconductor on the sensing area and when the targeted protein interacts with the sensor, it changes the electrical signal output,” she explains. “By measuring this change, we can measure the concentration of the protein present in the body fluids.”
The team uses a type of nanomaterial called two-dimensional materials, which are potentially atomically thin and used as the sensing layer. DNA sequences called aptamers are applied on top of these 2D materials.
Once a biomarker protein is introduced onto the sensor’s surface it causes minute changes in the electrical properties. By looking at the electrical output of the sensing layer they can determine the concentration of these biomarker proteins in a simple solution.

Patients hospitalized with fractures typically receive an injectable blood thinner, low-molecular-weight heparin, to prevent life-threatening blood clots. A new clinical trial, however, found that inexpensive over-the-counter aspirin is just as effective. The findings, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, may lead surgeons to change their practice and administer aspirin to these patients.
The multi-center randomized clinical trial, which included more than 12,000 patients at 21 trauma centers in the U.S. and Canada, is the largest trial ever conducted on orthopedic trauma patients. This multidisciplinary collaboration between orthopedic surgeons and trauma surgeons points to the importance of evaluating techniques used to prevent post-surgical complications, like blood clots and infections, through high-quality, head-to-head comparison studies.
The trial was co-led by the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium (METRC) based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Many patients with fractures will likely strongly prefer to take a daily aspirin over receiving injections after we found that both give them similar outcomes for prevention of the most serious outcomes from blood clots,” said the study’s principal investigator Robert V. O’Toole, MD, the Hansjörg Wyss Medical Foundation Endowed Professor in Orthopaedic Trauma at UMSOM and Chief of Orthopaedics at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). “We expect our findings from this large-scale trial to have an important impact on clinical practice that may even alter the standard of care.”
Blood clots cause as many as 100,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Patients who experience fractures that require surgery are at increased risk of developing blood clots in the lungs and limbs. Large clots in the lungs even can be life-threatening. Current guidelines recommend prescribing low-molecular-weight heparin (enoxaparin) to prevent these clots, although smaller clinical trials in total joint replacement surgery suggested a potential benefit of aspirin as a less-expensive, widely available option.
The study enrolled 12,211 patients with leg or arm fractures that necessitated surgery or pelvic fractures regardless of the treatment. Half were randomly assigned to receive 30 mg. of injectable low molecular-weight heparin twice daily. The other half received 81 mg. of aspirin twice daily. Patients were followed for 90 days to measure health outcomes from the two treatments.

The main finding of the study was that aspirin was “non-inferior,” or no worse than low molecular-weight heparin in preventing death from any cause — 47 patients in the aspirin group died, compared with 45 patients in the heparin group. For other important complications, the researchers also found no differences between the two groups in clots in the lungs (pulmonary embolisms). The incidence of bleeding complications, infection, wound problems, and other adverse events from the treatments was also similar in both groups.
Of all the outcomes studied, the only potential difference noted was in blood clots in the legs, called deep vein thrombosis. This condition was relatively uncommon in both groups as it occurred in 2.5 percent of patients in the aspirin group, and in 1.7 percent of patients in the heparin group.
“This relatively small difference was driven by clots lower in the leg, which are thought to be of less clinical significance and often do not require treatment,” said study co-principal investigator Deborah Stein, MD, MPH, Professor of Surgery at UMSOM and Director of Adult Critical Care Services at UMMC.
The $11.7 million study was funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), (PCS-1511-32745), an independent, non-profit organization that funds comparative clinical effectiveness research to help patients and clinicians make better-informed healthcare decisions.
“This large multicenter study was needed to adequately measure the impact of prophylaxis on the infrequent, but important, outcome of death that is of utmost importance to patients,” said study methods center principal investigator Renan Castillo, PhD, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The trial was called PREVENTion of CLots in Orthopaedic Trauma, or PREVENT CLOT. Patients enrolled in the trial were treated at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at UMMC and 20 other trauma centers in 15 other states, as well as two in Canada. Recruitment started in April 2017 and continued through 2021.
“Many patients don’t like giving themselves injections. It’s not fun in terms of giving the actual injection because it burns, and your stomach tends to bruise more easily compared to aspirin,” said Debra Marvel, a 53-year-old from Columbia, MD, who served as a patient advisor on the study. She received Lovenox (low-molecular-weight heparin) after her legs were crushed in a 2015 pedestrian accident, requiring multiple surgeries at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. “Patients also prefer aspirin because Lovenox can be expensive based on insurance.”
“An estimated one million Americans are hospitalized each year with extremity fractures, and this new finding could help prevent potentially fatal blood clots in these patients using a medication that is cheaper and far easier to administer,”said Mark T. Gladwin, MD, Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Given these important results, we can expect the guidelines for the prevention of blood clots to be revised to include the option of aspirin for patients with traumatic bone fractures.”

A new personalised cancer treatment can radically improve the outlook for some patients with bile duct cancer, finds an international multicentre trial involving researchers at UCL and University College London Hospitals NHS Trust (UCLH).
The Phase II open label clinical trial — the European arm of which was led by UCL researchers — found that patients who were otherwise facing end of life care survived for up to two years when treated with the drug futibatinib.
In September last year, data from the FOENIX-CCA2 trial led to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve* futibatinib, although the UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence has yet to consider the drug.
Set across 13** countries, the trial was sponsored by Taiho Oncology, and the results have now been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Futibatinib targets a particular genetic alteration, called FGFR2 fusion, which is found in around 14% of bile duct cancers.
Of those diagnosed annually in the UK with bile duct cancer, which comprises cholangiocarcinoma and gall bladder cancer, approximately 300 will have this genetic alteration. This is 8,000 in the US.

There are very few treatment options for bile duct cancer and the survival is poor, with patients surviving on average for just 12 months. Although the cancer is uncommon, incidence is on the rise globally.
This international trial recruited 103 patients with bile duct cancer who had undergone at least one chemotherapy treatment, but whose cancer had become resistant. The patients’ cancer tumours had been genetically analysed (molecularly profiled) to check that they had an alteration in a particular group of genes, known as fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR). The drug, futibatinib, is known as an FGFR-2 inhibitor, as it targets this genetic alteration.
When the patients were treated with futibatinib (oral tablet), the results were striking. The drug was more effective at reducing the size of the tumour, with the cancer shrinking by over 40%, compared to 25% with chemotherapy. The drug also produced modest side effects compared to chemotherapy.
Patients on treatment survived for up to two years, even though they had advanced cancer and had sometimes tried up to five other treatments before entering the trial. Without this most patients would have been offered best supportive care.
European lead and senior author on the paper, Professor John Bridgewater (UCL Cancer Institute and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) said: “These results turn treatment for this group of patients on its head. Instead of treating them with the blunderbuss that is chemotherapy, which attacks healthy cells alongside the cancer, we can offer a personalised treatment that just targets a specific alteration within the cancer.

“The benefits that patients saw in the trial were remarkable. It’s important that patients with bile duct cancer get their cancer tested to find out if they have this abnormality. We can’t afford to miss one of these alterations: the difference they could make to treatment outcomes is dramatic.”
There are currently other FGFR inhibitors already in clinical use, including one called pemigatinib, which has been approved for use in the UK by the National Institute for Care and Health Excellence (NICE). However, existing FGFR inhibitors are known to be susceptible to resistance within the cancer. Laboratory tests have shown this is less likely to be a problem with futibatinib, as it targets the FGFR abnormality in a more specific way, and so is likely to be more effective than existing drugs.
Trials are already underway looking at the possibility of using FGFR2 inhibitors as a first line treatment in place of chemotherapy.
Professor Bridgewater said: “The question these trials now need to answer is not whether patients should be getting this treatment, but when.
“Hopefully, this kind of genetically driven treatment will become the new normal for oncology. Personalised treatment has long been a buzz word in cancer, but this trial is the real thing — proving that it can be done and bring huge benefits to specific groups of patients.”
Bile duct cancer is a rare but aggressive disease in which malignant (cancer) cells form in the bile ducts; a network of tubes, which connect the liver, gallbladder, and small intestine.
Helen Morement, CEO of AMMF — The Cholangiocarcinoma Charity, explains: “The success of this trial is warmly welcomed by AMMF and the patients and clinical communities we support.
“For well over a decade there has been little in the treatment armoury for those with an inoperable cholangiocarcinoma. Chemotherapy, although it can be moderately effective for some, it is not effective for all, and the effectiveness is not known until the patient has received several cycles of chemotherapy and may have endured a number of difficult side effects, only to find there has been no advantage for them in reducing or stabilising their cancer.
“Now for those whose cholangiocarcinoma is shown to have the FGFR2 fusion, futibatinib offers an important step forward. Not only is it a more personalised treatment which they know from the outset could have a positive impact on their cancer — bringing with it the hope of extending survival over the more standard chemotherapies and/or best supportive care that might be offered — but, as an oral therapy with tolerable side effects, it has quality of life advantages over conventional chemotherapy, including spending less time in hospital and away from loved ones.
“This important milestone emphasises the necessity for all HCPs to put their cholangiocarcinoma patients forward for molecular testing.
“Already an approved treatment in the USA, we now await NICE approval in due course …”
This was an international trial, with the lead European centre based at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) UCLH Clinical Research Facility (a UCL/UCLH research partnership). Other sites in the UK were Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and the Sarah Cannon Research Institute.
* The US FDA has approved futibatinib for adult patients with previously treated, unresectable, advanced or metastatic bile duct cancer, who have a genetic alternation to fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR). The same group of patients as the trial.
** The 13 participating countries were: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South of Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States.

The guidance builds on growing evidence, after decades of sometimes conflicting research, that even small amounts of alcohol can have serious health consequences.Canadian health officials have overhauled their guidelines for alcohol consumption, warning that no amount is healthy and recommending that people reduce drinking as much as possible.The new guidelines, issued Tuesday, represent a major shift from the previous ones introduced in 2011, which recommended that women consume no more than 10 drinks per week and that men limit themselves to 15.The experts who developed the guidelines said the new approach builds on growing evidence, after decades of sometimes conflicting research, that even small amounts of alcohol can have serious health consequences.Instead of recommending that people limit themselves to a specific number of drinks per week, the guidelines outline a “continuum of risk” associated with drinking even a few glasses of wine or beer over a seven-day period.The risk is “low” for people who consume two standard drinks or fewer per week; “moderate” for those who consume between three and six standard drinks per week; and “increasingly high” for those who consume seven or more standard drinks per week, according to the guidelines, which were issued in a report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.The report defines a standard drink as a 12-ounce bottle of beer that is 5 percent alcohol, a five-ounce glass of wine that is 12 percent alcohol or a 1.5-ounce shot glass of a spirit that is 40 percent alcohol.“Research shows that no amount or kind of alcohol is good for your health,” the report states. “It doesn’t matter what kind of alcohol it is — wine, beer, cider or spirits. Drinking alcohol, even a small amount, is damaging to everyone, regardless of age, sex, gender, ethnicity, tolerance for alcohol or lifestyle. That’s why if you drink, it’s better to drink less.”Recent research has found that even low levels of drinking slightly increase the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, and the risk goes up significantly for people who drink excessively.Research published in November revealed that between 2015 and 2019, excessive alcohol use resulted in roughly 140,000 deaths per year in the United States. About 40 percent of those deaths had acute causes, like car crashes. But a majority were caused by chronic conditions attributed to alcohol, such as liver disease, cancer and heart disease.Dr. Catherine Paradis, interim associate director of research at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, said that consumption of even two drinks per week has been associated with an elevated risk of seven types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer, as well as cardiovascular disease.Dr. Paradis, who was a co-chairwoman of the panel that developed the new guidelines, noted that the World Health Organization had recently declared that the harms associated with drinking alcohol had been “systematically evaluated over the years and are well documented” and that “when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.”The good news, the report said, is that any reduction in alcohol consumption is beneficial. This is true even for those who do not cut their drinking to low or moderate levels. In fact, those consuming high levels of alcohol have much to gain by reducing their consumption by as much as possible, the report states.“We have this line: Drink less, live more,” said Dr. Alexander Caudarella, chief executive of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. “The idea is that any reduction of alcohol will significantly reduce your risk.”The new guidelines depart from the specific drink limits called for in other Western countries.Australia, for example, recommends no more than 10 drinks a week and no more than four drinks on any one day. Britain recommends drinking no more than six medium glasses of wine or six pints of beer per week. The guidelines in the United States call for two drinks or fewer a day for men and one drink or fewer per day for women.Canadian health officials said they hoped their less prescriptive approach would encourage consumers to make healthier choices.“The guidance is really a fundamentally different way of looking at alcohol and saying we need to be much more open and transparent about what are the risks associated with it and what the science has shown us,” Dr. Caudarella said. “It’s really putting it out there in a way that lets people assess their own risk level and work toward it.”To encourage consumers to cut down on their drinking, the report recommended that all alcoholic beverages sold in Canada come with warning labels, similar to those on cigarettes. Evidence shows that adding health warnings to alcohol labels can increase public awareness of the link between alcohol consumption and cancer, the report states.Beer Canada, a national trade group trade that represents than 50 Canadian brewing companies, said that it continued to support the 2011 guidelines and that the process of updating those guidelines “lacked full transparency and, to date, has not included the essential rigor of an expert technical peer review.”“Beer Canada and Canadian brewers have a long history promoting moderation and responsible consumption,” the group said in a statement. “Beer Canada believes the decision whether to drink, and if so how much, is a personal one. Responsible, moderate consumption can be part of a balanced lifestyle for most adults of legal drinking age.”Dan Paszkowski, president and chief executive of Wine Growers Canada, which represents the country’s wineries, said the group had introduced a campaign, “The Right Amount,” in 2021 to promote “responsible consumption of wine.”“It’s essential for Canadians to have confidence in public health institutions and the messaging must be informative, not persuasive, and based on sound science,” Mr. Paszkowski wrote in wrote in an opinion piece published this week in The Hill Times, a news outlet focused on Canadian politics and government. “From some to none, the right amount is different for every person.”

Published10 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Department of Health and Social CareBy Joan CumminsBBC Midlands TodayMore than 600 jobs are set to go at the first Covid-19 testing “mega lab” to be set up in the UK.The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory opened in June 2021 in Leamington Spa and was the largest of its kind in the country.Up to 8.5 million tests were processed there, but now it is being scaled down, the UK Health and Security Agency said. Staff were informed on Tuesday. Officials hope the site could be used by the pharmaceutical industry.Councillor Andrew Day, Conservative leader of Warwick District Council, said: “We were told it was going to be here to deal with the medical testing. “In a funny kind of way I am actually pleased that we don’t need to be doing so much Covid testing.”However, he called for the site to be used to “create yet more jobs and more opportunities in the bio-medical sciences area”.The facility was transformed from a disused warehouse in 2021 and converted under emergency Covid legislation. The scheme has only recently received retrospective planning permission.Staff were upset at hearing the news, with one member of staff saying they were proud to have helped during the pandemic, but feel money and a workforce is now being being wasted.The local authority says it is working to help staff find new jobs.Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington Spa Matt Western told BBC News he wanted answers about the running of the lab, amid reports the project had cost more than £1bn.”At the time it was not clear whether this way going to be an NHS facility or a private facility,” he said.”Questions need to be asked about where those agency workers came from, who made money from that.”They kept them as agency workers, because clearly, it was very convenient for them to be so because given they’re now facing four weeks’ notice they can be disposed of and that’s desperately tragic.”Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: newsonline.westmidlands@bbc.co.ukMore on this storyNew ‘mega lab’ opens to speed up Covid-19 testing13 July 2021Two new Covid testing ‘mega labs’ in early 202116 November 2020Related Internet LinksDepartment of Health and Social CareThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

The annual sobriety challenge is more popular than ever, but like many New Year’s resolutions, it can end early in failure. But there are still benefits to trying, experts say.Hilary Sheinbaum’s first Dry January started as a dare.She was texting with a friend on New Year’s Eve several years ago when, she said, “tipsy me” proposed they both cut out alcohol, a huge part of both of their personal and professional lives, for a month.She made it to the end of January. Her friend did not.“He ended up losing, I won, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” said Ms. Sheinbaum, who is now on her seventh Dry January and has chronicled her efforts in a book, “The Dry Challenge.”If you are the friend, and not Ms. Sheinbaum, in this scenario, you are not alone.With the proliferation of nonalcoholic beer and spirits, an embrace of a “sober-curious” lifestyle by Gen Z and millennials and new research that shows any amount of alcohol is just plain bad for your health, Dry January is more popular than ever. But as with many New Year’s resolutions, failure often happens a couple of weeks in, a phenomenon that has been called Quitters’ Day.“Don’t be surprised that it’s not getting a whole lot easier by mid-January,” said Wendy Wood, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California and the author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits.”“It doesn’t mean that you have lost your resolve, that you’re not motivated to do this,” she said, adding that forming new habits, and dropping old ones, can take several months.Dry January is good for you, even if you don’t make it all the way.Quitting alcohol cold turkey can take a toll on your physical and mental health, especially if your daily habits include high consumption. Dry January is meant for social drinkers, not for people seeking recovery, experts say.After seven Dry Januarys, Ms. Sheinbaum’s No. 1 rule is to be kind to yourself. If you slip up on occasion, “call it a Single-Drink January, a Damp January, and start over the next day,” she said. “You can still be successful.”Even a short period of sobriety is good for your health, experts say.“Most people have the very wrong idea that if you do a Dry January and you are not sober the entire time then you’re failure and need to go to rehab,” said Adi Jaffe, a mental health and addiction expert in Los Angeles. “The test that some people take on to see if they can stay sober for a month is worth it and interesting.”By taking a month off from drinking, Dr. Jaffe said, people can learn more about themselves, including their relationship with alcohol, their sleep patterns and stressors in their lives.“Dry January is an incredible time to self reflect and identify these pain points and create and maintain new rituals,” he said.Old habits die hard for a reason.Social drinking can be a routine for many people, and breaking that pattern is difficult. Blame it on your brain, Dr. Wood said.“It’s really part of a memory system that your old habits will be activated — it’s how we can drive without thinking too much about what we’re doing,” she said. “It’s also how we persist with habits we may not want to perform. That is a normal consequence of habit memory: Be prepared that you’re going to have to persist at this effort for control for a little while longer.”Once a habit is formed, Dr. Wood said, the response becomes automatic.“Even if you’ve decided this is Dry January and you’re not going to drink anymore,” she said, “the habit is still in mind, and you have to actively inhibit or control it in order to keep with your resolution of a Dry January, and you have to do that every single time you would normally be drinking alcohol. Yes, it gets easier over time, but habit memory is very slow to decay.”New habits can replace old habits.Habits can take several months to change, Dr. Wood said, and she recommended two steps to make things easier.First, change the context of your drinking habits. People attempt to “control themselves instead of working on the information that is activating the unwanted habit,” she said.If going out to dinner will tempt you to drink, skip it. If there are people you tend to drink with, skip them. If you’re going to be tempted by having alcohol in your house, open or not, remove it altogether.Second, substitute a behavior. That could mean swapping alcohol for juice or a nonalcoholic version of the drink, or plan activities that do not involve drinking.Ms. Sheinbaum, the Dry January M.V.P., suggested taking point on organizing social plans with friends that are not alcohol-centric, such as a fitness class, bowling or a game night — something, she said, that “isn’t posting up at a bar.”Ms. Sheinbaum’s No. 1 rule for Dry January is to be kind to yourself if you slip up. “Call it a Single-Drink January, a Damp January, and start over the next day,” she said.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesShe also recommended recruiting a friend.“There is strength in numbers,” she said. “You can cheer each other on, you can celebrate wins, you can vent to each other if you’re having a hard time with it.”Plus, if you’re able to stick with Dry January, there’s a good chance you can keep it going in some form. Research has shown that people who take a month off from drinking continue to drink less in the weeks that follow. One study found that people who took part in Dry January were still drinking less in August.Nonalcoholic alternatives can help you push through to the end.If sparkling water in a wine glass or a juice aren’t doing it for you, consider replacing your go-to order with a nonalcoholic version, including nonalcoholic wine, champagne, beer or even a nonalcoholic aperitivo.For David J. Wallace, just because he’s not drinking alcohol this month doesn’t mean he can’t embellish a little. Mr. Wallace owns Dream House Lounge, a sober bar and wellness space in New Orleans. His favorite cocktail these days is called the lavender dream, a zero-proof mezcal-based cocktail.“I prefer a more sophisticated sip, I want it to taste like an adult beverage and not a plain old juice,” he said. “I still love complex flavors like smoky, floral and citrus to give you some complexities.”In New Orleans, “where there’s temptation everywhere,” a sober space like Dream House can help people “stick it out,” said Mr. Wallace, who has seen a steady flow of Dry January participants walk through the doors. The lounge offers zero-proof cocktails, botanical mixes and elixirs, an oxygen bar and bottle shop with alcohol-free spirits. But he also offers programming around mental and spiritual health.“When you’re thinking about embarking on Dry January, it is thinking about wellness overall and wellness on a higher level,” Mr. Wallace said.Mr. Wallace said he expects another surge of customers after Mardi Gras, during Lent.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals ended a global trial after independent experts determined the vaccine was not effective. But there are other possibilities in the pipeline, scientists said.The only vaccine against H.I.V. still being tested in late-stage clinical trials has proved ineffective, its manufacturer announced on Wednesday, another disappointment in a field long beset by failure.Dozens of H.I.V. vaccine candidates have been tested and discarded over the past few decades. The latest defeat sets progress toward a vaccine back by three to five years, experts said. Still, other options in early-stage trials may yet turn out to provide a powerful bulwark against H.I.V.The news is “disappointing, but it isn’t the end of the effort toward developing a vaccine,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until December, said in an interview. “There are other strategic approaches.”An ongoing study called PrEPVacc in Eastern and Southern Africa is evaluating a combination of experimental H.I.V. vaccines and preventive drugs. Scientists have made headway in developing powerful antibodies that can neutralize the virus. And they are testing new vaccine technologies, including mRNA, against H.I.V.Still, the loss of the latest candidate underscores the challenges of designing a vaccine for an adversary as wily as H.I.V. Four decades after its discovery, the virus still infects about 1.5 million people each year, and kills about 650,000.The Fight Against H.I.V.An estimated 40 million people are living with H.I.V. worldwide. About 10 million of them do not have access to treatment.Injectable PrEP: An injection every two months rather than a daily pill could shield many more women from H.I.V., but the shot is unavailable in places that need it most.The Search for a Vaccine: Janssen Pharmaceuticals ended a global trial after experts determined the vaccine was not effective. But there are other possibilities in the pipeline.Left Behind: Sub-Saharan Africa has made steady progress in delivering lifesaving medication to adults. But young patients are harder to reach.A Promising Treatment: In 2022, researchers announced that a woman became the third person ever to be cured of H.I.V. thanks to a new transplant method that could help more people from racially diverse backgrounds.For people in wealthier nations, H.I.V. is not the death sentence it once was. Powerful drugs can suppress the virus in infected individuals. There are several options available to prevent infection: Oral pills and shots given every two months are already approved in the United States, for example, and a shot that would only need to be given every six months is in late-stage trials.But these medications must be taken for the rest of the patient’s life, and are often inaccessible to those who need them the most. A vaccine would be the ideal way to thwart the virus.“The ultimate prevention modality for any infection, particularly viral infection, is a vaccine that’s safe and effective,” Dr. Fauci said. “That’s the reason why the field is going to continue to pursue very active research in that area.”The trial now ending, called Mosaico, began in 2019 and was led by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of Johnson & Johnson. It tested the vaccine in 3,900 cisgender men (those who have always identified as male) and transgender individuals who have sex with cisgender men and transgender individuals, in more than 50 sites in nine countries in North America, South America and in Europe.The vaccine contained a mosaic of components meant to target several different subtypes of H.I.V. present worldwide. But the immune response it provoked against the virus did not include significant amounts of the so-called neutralizing antibodies that are considered the most powerful weapons against infection.While the trial’s failure does not spell the end of the mosaic approach, it does signal that a successful vaccine should rouse the body to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies, Dr. Fauci said.After reviewing early data from the trial, an independent data and safety monitoring board concluded that while the vaccine was safe, it did not prevent more H.I.V. infections than a placebo did. The board recommended that the company stop the trial and inform the participants.The outcome did not entirely surprise experts, because a study of the same vaccine, called Imbokodo, was halted in 2021. That trial tested the vaccine in cisgender women in five sub-Saharan African countries.The failure of the studies is particularly disappointing partly because they were funded by Johnson & Johnson, said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the H.I.V. prevention organization AVAC.“Not that many companies get involved in infectious disease vaccines, so to see this not getting to market is a disappointment and a setback,” Mr. Warren said.The news should prompt policymakers and activists to think of ways to make the existing tools for preventing H.I.V. more widely accessible, he added: “It’s not that all hope is lost, it’s that we need to redirect our resources to greatest impact.”

From her kitchen table in rural Illinois, Ms. Richter started a global foundation for families who shared her son’s rare genetic disorder.By the time her son Charley was a toddler, Mary Kaye Richter, a florist who was raising her family on a 750-acre farm outside Belleville, Ill., knew that there was something very different about him.At birth, the child had skin that was dry and scaly, prone to flaking off. As a baby, he was abnormally fussy in hot weather. By 18 months, he had only the sparsest wisps of blond hair, and had yet to produce a single tooth.When Ms. Richter took her son to a dentist to investigate, an X-ray revealed that he had no permanent teeth. Perplexed, the dentist dug deep into his dental school textbooks and concluded that Charley had an extraordinarily rare disorder called hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia.Ectodermal dysplasias are a group of genetic conditions characterized by an inability to sweat because of an absence or malfunction of sweat glands; irregularities with hair, nails and teeth; and other characteristics. As if the diagnosis was not challenging enough, Ms. Richter was told that there were only seven other cases in the United States at the time — so research was minimal, and support networks were essentially nonexistent.Instead of caving to fate, Ms. Richter decided to create her own support network. From the kitchen table of her farmhouse amid the rows of corn and soybeans, she started the National Foundation for Ectodermal Dysplasias. The foundation soon discovered dozens of other cases, then hundreds.By the time Ms. Richter died, at 77 on Nov. 24 at her home in Trenton, Ill., surrounded by holiday garlands and her collection of glass figurines, the organization was serving more than 9,200 families worldwide and had raised more than $3.6 million to fund research at more than 40 medical facilities around the world. What started as a personal crusade was now a global one.Charley Richter said his mother died of cancer.“I had seen too many kids, and at that time too many adults, who struggled because they didn’t have teeth,” Ms. Richter said in a video interview in 2021 marking the organization’s 40th anniversary. “They didn’t get jobs, they didn’t have friends. It was sad.”“I wanted every kid to have a chance at a good life,” she added.Ms. Richter with her son Charley at his farm. Thanks to her efforts, he said, he has lived a productive and fulfilling life.AlamyMary Kathleen Heberer (she later adopted the middle name Kaye) was born on April 20, 1945, in Belleville, a small town near St. Louis. She was the youngest of three children of Henry and Lillian (Wittlich) Heberer, who ran a farm outside the nearby town of Freeburg.After high school, she abandoned the agrarian life for a year to attend the University of Illinois, but she soon returned to marry another farmer, Norman Richter. The couple had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Sharon, while Ms. Richter ran a flower shop in her 20s. Her youngest son, Charley, was born in April 1978.After his diagnosis in the fall of 1979, Ms. Richter felt helpless as she tried to find out more about his disorder. “You might call a lot of places, and go a lot of places, but virtually no one could tell you anything other than ‘Well, I maybe saw one case 20 years ago’ or whatever,” Ms. Richter recalled in the 2021 interview. “When it came to really useful information about living and school and life span and education and all of those things that are critical to a parent, it wasn’t there.”The first step was to find other people facing the same challenges. She reached out to more than 60 dental schools and associations and found out the condition was not nearly as rare as imagined. But treatments were hard to come by.At a minimum, her youngest son needed dentures — not only to eat but for aesthetic reasons, too. In addition to a lack of teeth, which could affect one’s jaw profile, people with ectodermal dysplasia tend to have a prominent forehead, thin lips and dark skin around the eyes. (The character actor Michael Berryman, who appeared with Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975 and starred in the 1977 horror film “The Hills Have Eyes,” is a rare example in the public eye.)But even finding dentures proved a struggle. Back then, “the belief in the dental community was ‘Oh, they’ve got to be at least a teenager before we even start,’” Ms. Richter said in a video interview last year. “Well, if you wait until they’re a teenager, any damage that is going to be done to their psyche is going to be complete.”She finally secured them when Charley was 3.The boy then had a hard time playing outside during blazing Midwestern summers. So they improvised.“Mom would give me a Popsicle,” Mr. Richter, who is now 44, recalled by phone, adding, “I’d come back inside and my hair would be blue or red or whatever, because I had been rubbing it on my head to stay cool.”Ms. Richter found a solution in the early 1980s while watching an episode of “That’s Incredible!,” an ABC reality show about ordinary Americans unusual experiences. The episode featured a young boy with the same condition as Charley who had been fitted with a cooling suit, courtesy of NASA. Ms. Richter contacted the network to find the boy’s family, which soon led her to other afflicted families who had seen the show.Before long, her son had a vest of his own, filled with tubes that he pumped with ice water. But he found it embarrassing and at times cumbersome, like when he wore it under his Little League uniform.“Of course it worked,” Mr. Richter said. “Did it make a kid who wanted to just be like a normal kid feel like he stuck out even more? It certainly did. I would much rather just go jump in a trough of water.”Fund-raising for medical research became a focus of the foundation. “Mary Kaye realized some 40 years ago that if we don’t fund this research, nobody will,” Mary Fete, the foundation’s executive director, said by phone.The foundation also provided information and support to families, as well as running conferences around the world on ectodermal dysplasias. It continues to raise funds for a potential cure and operates on an annual budget of about $1 million.There is already a test for unborn babies to see if they have a mutation in the gene that can cause some forms of the disorder. Researchers are now testing injections of a missing protein into the amniotic fluid of women carrying fetuses affected by one of the most common forms of ectodermal dysplasia.So far, the research has yielded promising results in animals and humans — six baby boys have been treated, with promising results, Ms. Fete said — and there is currently a clinical trial further studying the treatment in humans so it can be approved by the federal government for use. The goal is for the treatment to hit the market by 2026.Ms. Richter in 1991 with children she met through her organization, the National Foundation for Ectodermal Dysplasias. “I wanted every kid to have a chance at a good life,” she once said.National Foundation for Ectodermal DysplasiasNear the end of her life, Ms. Richter recalled the pointed advice that the head of another nonprofit group gave her when she was starting out: “Don’t do it!”Running a foundation would consume her life, the person said. It did. And she did not have the slightest regret.“You have to give it your all,” Ms. Richter said in a blog post on the foundation’s website, “or it won’t work.”In addition to her son Charley, Ms. Richter is survived by her husband; her other son, Michael; her daughter, Sharon Grimes; and seven grandchildren.Thanks to his mother’s tireless advocacy and support, Charley Richter said, he has lived a productive and fulfilling life. He now runs the family farm, which has expanded to about 2,000 acres. He married (though he later divorced) and has two daughters.And despite his condition, he manages to toil in the fields under the broiling sun. “I stay cool farming the same way I did when I played soccer in high school,” he said. “Lots of water, in me and on me.”