Publisher Health

With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, people were plunged into a situation that required them to acquire information about an emerging scientific issue to assess the adequacy of government actions and programs of significant personal import to each individual.
There are other important scientific issues like climate change or energy sources, but few involve short-term life or death consequences similar to the COVID-19 pandemic.
An international team led by University of Michigan research scientist Jon Miller found that people who earned a college degree and took the required college science courses gained a general level of biological literacy that enabled them to make more informed policy judgments about the effectiveness of the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the last week prior to the 2022 midterm elections, these results are important in understanding how citizens make sense of scientific or technical issues such as viral mutation and transmission and the efficacy of vaccines — and how their government worked to protect them against a deadly virus.
Using a national probability sample of adults, Miller and colleagues asked respondents about the importance of each of a dozen prominent issues ranging from health care to immigration in determining their vote in the 2020 presidential election and then about their views on the substance of each issue. Some of the traditional political issues were completely explained by an individual’s partisanship, but the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic displayed an independent influence on vote choice above and beyond partisanship.
Miller’s team found that nearly 60% of respondents who had a graduate or professional degree held a strongly critical assessment of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, and 45% of those who had completed one to three college science courses were highly critical of the administration’s performance. By comparison, just 6% of respondents with one to three college science courses were strongly supportive of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic.

The immune system’s ability to remember defeated disease-causing germs and prevent subsequent infections remains incompletely understood, but a study in Science Immunology clarifies an important piece of the picture.
Rutgers researchers used specially bred mice to distinguish the functions of two types of immune cells known as tissue-resident memory T cells (Trm cells) that protect against infection and cancer. Their work may help improve vaccine efficacy and combat a variety of autoimmune diseases.
“Understanding what each Trm cell type does allows us to formulate vaccines that generate the most effective type of Trm cell to combat a given infection, and our previous work suggests we can modify vaccines to shift the balance of these two cell types,” said Tessa Bergsbaken, an assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the senior author of the study. “Trm cells are not always beneficial. Certain autoimmune disorders can be driven by Trm cells, and we think what we’ve learned will also help us discover how these cells can turn against us.”
Each new infection leads the immune system to design custom T cells — a type of white blood cell — to defend itself. After the battle is won, the immune system keeps making those same T cells (in far lesser numbers) in case a particular invader returns.
Many T cells circulate throughout the body “looking” for the antigen they’re designed to guard against, but Trm cells embed themselves in barrier tissues that separate the body from the outside world: skin, eyes, nasal passages and the entire digestive tract. Previous research has identified distinct subtypes of Trm cells and differentiated them largely by their expression of two specific proteins, CD103 and CD69. However, the functional differences of the Trm subtypes were unclear.
For the study, researchers designed mice such that they could mark CD103+ Trm cells created in response to a common bacterial infection, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. This, in turn, allowed them to differentiate the response of the CD103+ cells to reinfection from that of CD103- Trm cells.
They found that CD103+ cells didn’t multiply after reinfection or attack the invaders directly. Instead, it was the CD103- cells that multiplied upon reinfection and attacked the bacteria.
“What we saw was essentially a division of labor between these two distinct cells, but the CD103- Trm cells played a more important role,” Bergsbaken said. “Generating a higher number of these CD103- Trm cells during the initial infection or vaccination would likely result in better protection from a subsequent infection.”
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Materials provided by Rutgers University. Original written by Andrew Smith. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Most languages lack a specialized vocabulary to describe smell experiences. People instead use words from other domains, such as “heavy,” “good” or “fruity,” when talking about smells. But which words are really used and how do they relate to each other? This has been answered for English by researchers at Stockholm University by using a fully automatic method that is based on texts from the Internet.
“Our research shows that English smell words mainly distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant smells, on the one hand, and smells of edible and non-edible things, on the other. The smell words can be divided into words that describe offensive, malodorous, fragrant and ‘edible’ smells,” says Thomas Hörberg, researcher in linguistics and psychology, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University. He leads the research project whose results will be published in the scientific journal Cognitive Science. A next step is to examine smell words in Swedish and then continue with other languages.
“This type of identification and division of words that describe smells can be of great use in the food and perfume industry, for example. These fields need standardized vocabularies to be able to describe and categorize smells and tastes,” says Thomas Hörberg.
Previous research on words for smells has been limited to pre-selected words. Subjects have had to make subjective judgments about how well these words describe pre-selected smells. The method used in this research study is instead entirely based on texts from the internet.
“We identify smell words automatically by examining which words people most often use to describe smells in text. We then map the meaning of the words in terms of what smells they describe using an AI method. We therefore do not need to rely on assessments from actual subjects,” says Thomas Hörberg.
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Materials provided by Stockholm University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly more children and young people had already developed diabetic ketoacidosis when diagnosed with type 1 diabetes than in previous years. This is the finding of an international multi-center study with DZD participation now published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
If children and young people have already developed metabolic imbalances (diabetic ketoacidosis) at the time of diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (T1D), this can result in complications such as extended stays in hospital, poorer long-term control of blood sugar levels, brain edema, or even a higher mortality rate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, diabetes centers across the world observed an increased prevalence of diabetic ketoacidosis in diagnosed cases of T1D. DZD researchers, together with international colleagues, investigated whether the number of diabetic ketoacidosis cases associated with the diagnosis of pediatric T1D increased more than expected. To achieve this, they analyzed the number of diabetic ketoacidosis cases before and during the pandemic.
International Multi-center Study
The team evaluated data from 13 national diabetes registers (Australia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia Czech Republic, USA [Colorado], and Wales). The study cohort consisted of 104,290 children and young people aged between 6 months and 18 years old who were diagnosed with T1D between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2021. The observed prevalence of diabetic ketoacidosis during 2020 and 2021 was compared with predictions based on the years before the pandemic (2006-2019).
The Increase in the Prevalence of Diabetic Ketoacidosis during the Pandemic was Greater than Expected
Between 2006 and 2019, 23,775 of 87,228 children had diabetic ketoacidosis when diagnosed with T1D (27.3%). The mean annual increase in the prevalence of diabetic ketoacidosis for the entire cohort between 2006 and 2019 was 1.6%. During the pandemic, the numbers were significantly above the predicted prevalences. In 2020, the adjusted observed prevalence of diabetic ketoacidosis was 39.4% (predicted prevalence 32.5%) and 38.9% in 2021 (predicted prevalence 33.0%).
“The increasing prevalence of diabetic ketoacidosis associated with the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes in children is a global problem. There was already an increase in prevalence before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, this increase was even greater,” summarizes DZD scientist Prof. Reinhard W. Holl from Ulm University. The authors of the study point out that providing a comprehensive explanation of the classic symptoms of T1D in childhood to the general public, those active in the childcare or daycare settings, and primary care physicians could help raise awareness of the symptoms of T1D. Furthermore, public health measures could be used, e.g., implementing a general islet-cell autoantibodies screening program for children to reduce the number of dangerous metabolic imbalances.
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Materials provided by Deutsches Zentrum fuer Diabetesforschung DZD. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

After showing promise in early laboratory research, the cholesterol-lowering drug fenofibrate had no significant effect on COVID-19 outcomes in a multicenter international randomized clinical trial led by Penn Medicine scientists. The study results were presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022 and published in the journal Nature Metabolism.
“Despite the promising effects of fenofibrate on SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, our findings convincingly showed that it is not a useful strategy for decreasing disease severity or preventing bad outcomes in patients with COVID-19,” said first author and principal investigator of the trial, Julio Chirinos, MD, PhD, a professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and co-director of clinical research for the T32 Training Program in Cardiovascular Biology and Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “Despite the time, complexity, and cost associated with executing rigorous clinical trials, they are essential to evaluating the efficacy of medications in patients with COVID-19, since the effectiveness of a medication can be substantially different from what in vitro studies may suggest. Clinical trials are necessary before clinical implementation of drug therapies, even for the case of medications that are already widely available for other indications.”
Fenofibrate is a widely available, low-cost generic drug previously approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration and many other regulatory agencies to reduce the amount of fatty substances, such as cholesterol and triglycerides, in the blood, while increasing “good” cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein cholesterol known as HDL).
The drug was initially targeted for COVID-19 research as part of an effort to test older, previously approved drugs for potential benefit against the virus. In laboratory studies, it was found that excessive production of certain fat molecules by cells is involved in the cellular damage caused by SARS-CoV2. Fenofibrate affected the way cells handle fat in a way that reduced viral replication. In additional laboratory studies, fenofibrate also affected the cellular receptor for the virus, reducing viral replication.
Penn Medicine served as the sponsor of the FEnofibRate as a Metabolic INtervention for COVID-19 (FERMIN) trial, which conducted the study and included 26 collaborating institutions from North America, South America, Europe, and Western Asia.
To test the drug’s effectiveness in people, the study team enrolled 701 participants, with each participant having first experienced COVID-19 symptoms within the past two weeks. The study team randomized assigned 351 patients to be treated with 145 milligrams of fenofibrate (or equivalent preparations in other countries) and 350 with a placebo. Patients were then ranked based on a novel severity score system that measured disease severity along with factors including death, the use of invasive and non-invasive ventilators, length of hospital stay, as well as time to hospitalization and symptom severity among outpatients.
Compared with placebo, fenofibrate had no significant effect either on severity scores or death from any cause, among other metrics. There was similarly no difference in outcomes up to 30 days after the initial randomization. Importantly, the findings were consistent across countries and were not affected by sex, age, race, body mass index, diabetes status, or the time when patients initiated treatment.
The authors noted there could be a number of potential explanations for the drug’s failure to achieve the same results in humans that it did in laboratory cells.
“COVID-19 is complex and involves not only its toxic effect on cells but also on a complex set of systemic host responses,” said co-author Jordana B. Cohen, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension at Penn. “Therefore, cellular effects of drugs observed in a petri dish system may fail to translate to beneficial effects in people with COVID-19 as a result of a wide range of potential phenomena in whole organisms. Our trial reinforces the importance of not equating laboratory efficacy with clinical efficacy in the setting of COVID-19.”
The study team called for further studies to assess whether other interventions designed to affect cellular metabolic pathways can impact outcomes in people with COVID-19.
Support for this research was provided by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (1-U01-TR-003734-01) and Abbott Laboratories.

Cancer cells use sugar molecules on their surface to disable attacks by the body’s immune system. Researchers at the University of Basel now report on how this mechanism can be neutralized.
The immune system is actually extremely well equipped to get rid of abnormal cells. As a safety mechanism, special features are built into healthy cells so that the immune system recognizes them, thus preventing a mistaken attack. However, cancer cells sneakily manipulate these safety mechanisms in such a way that the immune system leaves them alone.
Over the past few years, immunotherapies have revolutionized cancer treatment. These include therapies that prevent cancer cells from inhibiting the immune response. This involves blocking what are known as “immune checkpoints” using artificially produced proteins, which allows the immune cells to successfully attack the cancer cells.
“With many tumors, however, there have only been modest levels of success. That’s why we’re looking for new approaches to engage anti-tumor immune responses more efficiently,” explains Professor Heinz Läubli from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel. In the specialist journal Science Translational Medicine, his team, together with that of recent Nobel laureate Professor Carolyn Bertozzi from Stanford University, reports on a promising new approach. By altering sugar molecules on the surface of cancer cells in mice, the researchers were able to produce a significant increase in anti-tumor immune response.
How immune cells turn traitor
Their focus is on sugar molecules on the surface of the cancer cells, as well as on the cells in their immediate vicinity. These particular sugars, which contain sialic acid, also occur on healthy cells, and are important for cell-to-cell communication. However, tumors boost the proportion of these sugars on their surface.
Certain immune cells called macrophages recognize these sialic acid sugars and inadvertently turn traitor: they give other nearby immune cells the impression that all is well. The research team’s experiments on mice have now been able to demonstrate that the sialic acid sugars can be removed, or at least very much reduced, with the help of an enzyme. This means that the macrophages no longer prevent the tumor coming under immunological attack.
A target structure for new therapies
More precise analyses have enabled the researchers to identify in mice exactly which receptor it is on the macrophages that recognizes the sialic acid sugars. If the equivalent receptor could be identified in humans, then that could be another interesting target in the bid to tackle cancer cells with the aid of the patient’s own immune system.
“The combination of our approach with the immune checkpoint blockade methods that have already been established meant we could really put the brakes on tumor growth in the laboratory mice,” says Professor Läubli. As a next step, the researchers aim to seek ways of removing the sialic acid sugars from the tumor and its surroundings in as targeted a manner as possible, in order to avoid disrupting the function of healthy cells and eliminate side effects.
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Materials provided by University of Basel. Original written by Angelika Jacobs. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Inflammatory bowel disease is a risk factor for giving birth preterm even when in apparent disease remission, a University of Gothenburg study shows. If corroborated, the results may eventually affect recommendations for women with ulcerative colitis who tries to conceive.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is chronic inflammatory disease with a prevalence of approximately 0.5 percent. IBD, which includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, and — unlike irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) — causes visible damage to the mucous membrane (mucosa) lining the intestines. Characteristic of IBD is its recurrent tendency for symptoms to flare up (relapse), followed periods of low or no disease activity (remission).
Onset of IBD commonly occurs at age 15-30. Questions about its impact on pregnancy and the fetus are therefore common. IBD has previously been linked to negative birth outcomes, such as preterm birth (birth

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have participated in the largest and most rigorous clinical trial to date of psilocybin (a psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms), pointing to the possibility that COMP360 psilocybin with psychological support could be a beneficial therapeutic strategy for people with treatment-resistant depression (TRD).
Prompted by promising preliminary findings, this funded multi-centre, randomised, double-blind, phase 2b clinical trial was launched in 2018 to determine the safety and potential antidepressant effects of a single dose of COMP360 psilocybin (25mg or 10mg), compared to 1mg, with psychological support in people with TRD. The study was sponsored by COMPASS Pathways, a mental health company based in the UK, who also developed COMP360 — their proprietary formulation of synthetic psilocybin administered in conjunction with psychological support.
The trial, which included 233 people with TRD across 10 countries, including the Irish site at Tallaght University Hospital showed that patients who received a single dose of 25mg COMP360 psilocybin experienced a highly statistically and clinically significant rapid reduction in symptoms of depression compared to 1mg at 3 weeks (p

Performing open bypass surgery to restore circulation for people with a severe form of peripheral artery disease (PAD) — a condition that limits blood flow to the legs and feet — resulted in better outcomes for specific patients compared to a less-invasive procedure, a National Institutes of Health-supported clinical research trial has found.
More than 8.5 million adults in the United States live with PAD, a condition in which blood flow to one or both legs is reduced by a buildup of fatty plaque in the arteries. One in 10 develop a severe form of PAD called chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI), a painful and debilitating condition that can lead to amputation if untreated. Up to about 22 million people worldwide have CLTI, which is also associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.
“Given the projected rise in the number of patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia, it is critically important that we understand the full impact of our interventions for this disease,” said Matthew Menard, M.D., a study author and associate professor of surgery and co-director of the endovascular surgery program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. “These findings help do that and also can assist clinicians and caregivers in providing the best possible care to patients.”
The Best Endovascular versus Best Surgical Therapy for Patients with CLTI (BEST-CLI) trial is a landmark study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and simultaneously presented as late-breaking research at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022.
To better understand the effectiveness of two common treatments for CLTI, researchers enrolled 1,830 adults who were planning to have revascularization, a procedure used to restore blood flow in their blocked arteries, and who were eligible for both treatment strategies.
One treatment strategy was an open bypass surgery, in which blood is redirected around the blocked leg artery by using a segment of a healthy vein. The other strategy was an endovascular procedure — one performed inside the blood vessels where a balloon is dilated and/or a stent is placed in the blocked segment of the artery to improve blood flow. To compare the surgical strategy to the less-invasive endovascular approach, researchers randomized participants into one of two parallel trials conducted at 150 medical centers in the United States, Canada, Finland, Italy, and New Zealand between 2014-2021.

Beer is one of the oldest and most popular beverages in the world, with some people loving and others hating the distinct, bitter taste of the hops used to flavor its many varieties. But an especially “hoppy” brew might have unique health benefits. Recent research published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience reports that chemicals extracted from hop flowers can, in lab dishes, inhibit the clumping of amyloid beta proteins, which is associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
AD is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease, often marked by memory loss and personality changes in older adults. Part of the difficulty in treating the disease is the time lag between the start of underlying biochemical processes and the onset of symptoms, with several years separating them. This means that irreversible damage to the nervous system occurs before one even realizes they may have the disease. Accordingly, preventative strategies and therapeutics that can intervene before symptoms appear are of increasing interest.
One of these strategies involves “nutraceuticals,” or foods that have some type of medicinal or nutritional function. The hop flowers used to flavor beers have been explored as one of these potential nutraceuticals, with previous studies suggesting that the plant could interfere with the accumulation of amyloid beta proteins associated with AD. So, Cristina Airoldi, Alessandro Palmioli and colleagues wanted to investigate which chemical compounds in hops had this effect.
To identify these compounds, the researchers created and characterized extracts of four common varieties of hops using a method similar to that used in the brewing process. In tests, they found that the extracts had antioxidant properties and could prevent amyloid beta proteins from clumping in human nerve cells. The most successful extract was from the Tettnang hop, found in many types of lagers and lighter ales. When that extract was separated into fractions, the one containing a high level of polyphenols showed the most potent antibiotic and aggregation-inhibiting activity. It also promoted processes that allow the body to clear out misfolded, neurotoxic proteins. Finally, the team tested the Tettnang extract in a C. elegans model and found that it protected the worms from AD-related paralysis, though the effect was not very pronounced. The researchers say that although this work may not justify drinking more bitter brews, it shows that hop compounds could serve as the basis for nutraceuticals that combat the development of AD.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR).
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Materials provided by American Chemical Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.