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Healthcare professionals have long recognized the association of physical activity with mortality risk — those who engage in more moderate-to-vigorous activity have lower mortality rates. In a new study, researchers across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have shown that smartphones suffice to monitor people’s walking activity. They used sensor data from 100,000 participants to construct models of health status and mortality risk.
Measuring physical activity usually falls into three categories: self-reported questionnaires, walking a fixed distance under timed observation, and wearing activity monitors. The first two focus on quality of movement instead of quantity. However, sensor-based methods are the most advantageous because they measure physical activity during daily living. Unfortunately, access to such wearable sensors is limited due to health inequities.
To circumvent this problem, the researchers turned to smartphones. According to the Pew Research Center, 97% of the US population own a cell phone, and 83% possess a smartphone that contains motion sensors. Since mobile phones are often carried while walking, they could be used to measure physical activity. Although the total measure of activity over 24 hours may not be possible, smartphones can be used to measure the quality of walking.
For their study, the researchers used the UK Biobank, which is the largest national cohort with sensor records that span the last 20 years. They studied 100,000 participants who were demographically representative of the UK population. The categories that were considered included age, sex, race, health disorders, previous hospitalizations, lifestyles, education levels, and income.
Each participant wore activity monitors with motion sensors for one week. Although the wrist sensor was worn differently than how an equivalent smartphone sensor is carried, the motion sensors were able to obtain information on walking intensity from short bursts of normal walking. The researchers analyzed these datasets to model the characteristic motions of these walking sessions to predict mortality risk. The UK Death Registry was used to determine which participants had passed away over a five-year timeframe.
Using Biocluster2, a high-performance computing resource at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the team was able to successfully validate predictive models of mortality risk using only 6 minutes per day of steady walking measured by the sensor. This time period is a vast improvement over the activity monitors, which assume the participants wear the sensors for 10 hours per day. The accuracy achieved was similar to physical measures such as gait speed during short walks, as well as similar to activity monitors that measure total activity.
“Our work is a big advance in health equity,” said Bruce Schatz (EIRH), a professor of library administration in the university library. “Smartphones are ubiquitous in high-income countries and increasingly common in low-income countries. Showing that they can predict mortality as accurately as existing methods implies that health monitors at a population scale are now feasible.”
There are limitations to the study that the researchers would like to address in their future studies. Although they chose a demographically representative population, low-income lifestyles differ from high-income lifestyles even when age and sex are the same. Consequently, walking tests may differ since the 6 minutes of steady walking was chosen to mimic walk tests for hospital patients with cardiopulmonary disorders. The researchers will also broaden their population samples to include the US Precision Medicine Initiative, where the participants will be representative of the US national population, which is more diverse than that of the UK. Since the models rely only on machine learning from sensor inputs, other types of health status may also be accurately predictable, such as cardiac health or asymptomatic detection of infectious diseases like COVID-19.
The research team consisted of Schatz; Haowen Zhou, a visiting scholar in the Schatz group at the IGB and now a graduate student in statistics at the University of Virginia; Ruoqing Zhu (CGD), an associate professor of statistics; Anita Ung, a staff physician at the McKinley Health Center. During this research, Schatz and Ung were faculty in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois, using the IGB facility to collaborate with the Department of Statistics.

A new study from University of Louisville researchers in the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute has found that exposure to e-cigarette aerosols can cause heart arrhythmias in animal models — both in the form of premature and skipped heart beats. The study findings, published Oct. 25 in Nature Communications, suggest exposure to specific chemicals within e-cigarette liquids (e-liquids) promote arrhythmias and cardiac electrical dysfunction.
“Our findings demonstrate that short-term exposure to e-cigarettes can destabilize heart rhythm through specific chemicals within e-liquids,” said Alex Carll, assistant professor in the UofL Department of Physiology who led the study. “These findings suggest that e-cigarette use involving certain flavors or solvent vehicles may disrupt the heart’s electrical conduction and provoke arrhythmias. These effects could increase the risk for atrial or ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac arrest.”
The researchers tested the cardiac impacts of inhaled e-cigarette aerosols solely from the main two ingredients in e-liquids (nicotine-free propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin) or from flavored retail e-liquids containing nicotine. They found that for all e-cigarette aerosols, the animals’ heart rate slowed during puff exposures and sped up afterwards as heart rate variability declined, indicating fight-or-flight stress responses. In addition, e-cigarette puffs from a menthol-flavored e-liquid or from propylene glycol alone caused ventricular arrhythmias and other conduction irregularities in the heart.
Conducted in collaboration with Daniel Conklin and Aruni Bhatnagar, professors in the UofL Division of Environmental Medicine, this work adds to a growing body of research on the potential toxicity and health impacts of e-cigarettes reported by the American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center, for which UofL serves as the flagship institute.
“The findings of this study are important because they provide fresh evidence that the use of e-cigarettes could interfere with normal heart rhythms — something we did not know before,” Bhatnagar said. “This is highly concerning given the rapid growth of e-cigarette use, particularly among young people.”
As e-cigarette use has grown nationwide, the potential advantages and harms of vaping have been debated. Since vaping does not involve combustion, it exposes users and bystanders to little if any carbon monoxide, tar or cancer-causing nitrosamines compared with conventional cigarettes. However, e-cigarettes can deliver aldehydes, particles and nicotine at levels comparable to combustible cigarettes. Vaping might help smokers quit combustible cigarettes, but the appeal and addictiveness of e-cigarettes may encourage youth to vape amidst unknown long-term risks or take up smoking. More than 25% of high schoolers and 10% of middle schoolers in the U.S. reported using e-cigarettes before the pandemic.
Additional research by Carll and Matthew Nystoriak, an associate professor of medicine at UofL, to determine the effects of vape flavorings on the heart recently received $3.6 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health.
“Our team’s findings that specific ingredients in e-cigarette liquids promote arrhythmias indicates there is an urgent need for more research into the cardiac effects of these components in both animals and humans,” Carll said.
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Materials provided by University of Louisville. Original written by Betty Coffman. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A new study has revealed significant racial disparities in how quickly minorities with the most common form of lung cancer receive potentially lifesaving radiation therapy compared with their white counterparts.
UVA Cancer Center researchers reviewed data from more than 222,700 patients with non-small cell lung cancer across the country. They found that the mean time to radiation initiation was 61.7 days. For white patients, it was only 60.9 days; for Black patients, it was 65.9 days; and for Asian patients, it was 71.9 days.
These differences can have real consequences, as speedy treatment initiation contributes to better outcomes. A single-week delay in treatment has been associated with a 3.2% and 1.6% increase in the risk of death for patients with stage I and stage II non-small cell lung cancer, respectively.
The troubling findings prompted the UVA researchers to call for further investigation into the underlying causes of the disparities and to urge efforts to ensure equity in treatment access.
“Our results suggest that non-white lung cancer patients have delayed time to cancer treatment compared with white patients, and this is not limited to a particular type of treatment facility,” said senior researcher Rajesh Balkrishnan, PhD, of UVA Cancer Center and the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Department of Public Health Sciences. “Collaboration among providers and community stakeholders and organizations is much needed to increase accessibility and patient knowledge of cancer and to overcome existing disparities in timely care for lung cancer patients.”
Cancer Treatment Disparities
The UVA researchers say there may be multiple reasons for the racial disparities. They note that non-white patients are more likely to be uninsured, face greater socioeconomic barriers to care and may be perceived by doctors as being at risk for not following through with their treatment plans. In addition, minorities are more likely to report less satisfaction with their encounters with care providers.

A global study of over 28,000 people has provided the strongest evidence to date that lowering blood pressure in later life can cut the risk of dementia.
Dr Ruth Peters, Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney and Program Lead for Dementia in The George Institute’s Global Brain Health Initiative, said that in the absence of significant dementia treatment breakthroughs, reducing the risk of developing the disease would be a welcome step forward.
“Given population ageing and the substantial costs of caring for people with dementia, even a small reduction could have considerable global impact,” she said.
“Our study suggests that using readily available treatments to lower blood pressure is currently one of our ‘best bets’ to tackle this insidious disease.”
Dementia is fast becoming a global epidemic, currently affecting an estimated 50 million people worldwide. This is projected to triple by 2050 — mainly driven by aging populations.
It is currently estimated to cost US$20-$40,000 per person with the condition each year.

 Alzheimer’s disease is associated with a reduction of insulin receptors in brain microvessels, which may contribute to brain insulin resistance and the formation of amyloid plaques, one of the disease’s hallmarks. That’s according to a study published today in scientific journal Brain by a team from Université Laval and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
The work leading to the discovery was headed by Frédéric Calon, a professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy and a researcher at the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods and the CHU de Québec–Université Laval Research Centre.
The findings could affect the search for new Alzheimer’s drugs. “Several clinical trials are underway to assess the efficacy of diabetes drugs for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Professor Calon. “Our study shows that drugs do not need to cross the blood–brain barrier of microvessels to affect brain insulin resistance. Instead, they can target insulin receptors located in cerebral microvessels. That expands the range of drugs that could be tested for Alzheimer’s.”
The research was made possible by a longitudinal study that began in 1993 and involves about 1,100 members of some 30 religious congregations in the United States. The participants have agreed to undergo annual medical and psychological tests and donate their brains after death. The Brain article is based on data from 60 deceased individuals who participated in this extensive study.
Examination of their brains revealed that:  Insulin receptors are found primarily in blood microvessels, not neurons, as previously thought.  Alpha-B insulin receptor subunits were less prevalent in the microvessels of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  Cognitive test scores were lower in subjects with fewer alpha-B insulin receptors in their microvessels. Subjects with fewer alpha-B insulin receptors in their microvessels had more beta-amyloid plaques in their brains.Experiments carried out by the researchers on transgenic mice used to study Alzheimer’s disease showed that the quantity of alpha-B receptors in microvessels decreased with age and disease progression.
“Our findings suggest that the loss of alpha-B insulin receptors in brain microvessels contributes to insulin resistance in the brain and cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease,” Professor Calon said.
These findings support the idea that Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease with a strong metabolic component. “Metabolic dysfunction exacerbates Alzheimer’s, and Alzheimer’s amplifies the metabolic problem. It’s a vicious circle,” said Professor Calon.
The authors of the study are Manon Leclerc, Philippe Bourassa, Cynthia Tremblay, Vicky Caron, Camille Sugère, Vincent Emond and Frédéric Calon from Université Laval, and David Bennett from Rush University Medical Center. This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
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Materials provided by Université Laval. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A big group of bacteria found in our soil, our water and our shower heads are harmless for most of us, but a new study indicates they are associated with an increased risk of dying in individuals whose kidneys have failed.
In what appears to be the first study of its kind, investigators at the Medical College of Georgia and Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta looked in the United States Renal Data System at patients with end-stage renal disease, or ESRD, who also had a diagnosis of infection with the nontuberculous mycobacteria, or NTM, group.
They found a significant and independent increase in mortality with an NTM diagnosis in these patients, indicating that early diagnosis and treatment of an NTM infection may improve survival in ESRD patients, they report in the Journal of Investigative Medicine.
“It’s important to be alert that certain patients can be at higher risk for NTM and that NTM carries a risk for mortality,” says Stephanie L. Baer, MD, MCG infectious disease physician and chief of Infection Control and epidemiology at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center.
These “opportunistic” pathogens, which have even been found in dialysis machines, tend to only cause serious problems when a patient has a compromised lung or immune system function.
Patients whose kidneys have failed are considered to have a compromised immune function and generally considered at higher risk of infection, so investigators at MCG and the VA wanted to better identify prevalence, risk factors as well as associated deaths in those who also had an NTM infection.

Interrupting prolonged sitting with periodic activity “snacks” may help maintain muscle mass and quality, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Toronto.
Daniel Moore, an associate professor of muscle physiology at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Eduction (KPE) who led the study, found that short bouts of activity, such as two minutes of walking or body weight sit-to-stand squats, allow the body to use more amino acids from meals to build muscle proteins.
The research was recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
“We know that prolonged sedentary periods impair the body’s ability to filter sugar from the blood following a meal,” says Moore, who heads the Iovate/Muscletech Metabolism & Sports Science Lab at KPE.
“However, breaking up this sedentary period with brief bouts of activity such as two minutes of moderate intensity walking or rising and lowering 15 times from a chair (i.e. body weight squats), can improve the way our body clears sugar from our meals.”
In this instance, the researchers wanted to understand whether breaking up prolonged periods of sitting, a common occurrence in many workplace settings, would increase the ability of our muscles to use the building blocks of protein, called amino acids, from food to help them repair or replace old or damaged proteins.
“This is critical to ensure the body has an adequate quantity and quality of muscle,” says Moore, who co-authored the study with KPE’s Eric Williamson, a recent PhD graduate, Nathan Hodson, a post-doctoral researcher, Stephanie Estafanos, PhD student, Michael Mazzulla, PhD graduate, Jenna Gillen, an assistant professor of exercise physiology, and Dinesh Kumbhare, a scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network, and an associate professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
They studied 12 people (seven men, five women) across three trials for seven and a half hours each. Participants were subjected to prolonged sitting interrupted every 30 minutes by short bouts of walking or body weight squatting. The activity helped improve the efficiency of dietary amino acids used for muscle protein synthesis — the process to repair or replace old or damaged proteins.
“This is significant because prolonged periods of low muscle activity — from sitting, wearing a cast or bed rest — is associated with a loss of muscle mass that occurs in parallel with, or because of, an inability of our muscle to build new proteins after we eat a protein-containing meal,” says Moore.
“Our results highlight the importance of breaking up prolonged sedentary periods with brief activity snacks. We believe they also highlight that moving after we eat can make our nutrition better and could allow more dietary amino acids from smaller meals or lower quality types of protein to be used more efficiently.”
The study was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine, among others.
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Materials provided by University of Toronto. Original written by Jelena Damjanovic. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A study reviewing data from nearly 3,000 counties in the United States has found that living in a community with easy access to grocery stores and affordable, healthy food is associated with lower heart failure death rates, according to new research published today in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal.
Food insecurity occurs when healthy food is not readily available on a daily basis, due to poverty or socioeconomic challenges, causing people to go hungry or eat food that is of reduced quality, variety or desirability. While previous research has confirmed that food insecurity is associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes, little research is available about the local food environment and its potential relationship to death from heart failure. A 2019 paper published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that, on a county level in the U.S., poverty was the strongest socioeconomic factor associated with heart failure and coronary heart disease, and the association was stronger for heart failure than coronary heart disease.
“Heart failure mortality is on the rise in populations that live in socioeconomic deprivation, and, importantly, we believe that nutrition plays a role in heart failure mortality, and food insecurity may be particularly detrimental in this population,” said lead study author Keerthi T. Gondi, M.D., an internal medicine resident at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “We know that important relationships exist among food access and food affordability and heart health. This will have to be addressed in order to make changes to the burden of cardiovascular disease in populations that live in socioeconomic deprivation moving forward.”
This study is one of the first analyses to investigate the association between local food environments and heart failure mortality. Heart failure is a chronic, progressive condition in which the heart muscle becomes so weak it no longer pumps blood as it should. According to Gondi, he and his colleagues examined the death rate from heart failure because it is a consistent metric reported across all US counties, providing an ability to comprehensively evaluate heart failure outcomes at the population level. In 2019, heart failure death accounted for nearly more than 86,000 deaths in the U.S., according to the Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update for 2022.
The researchers sought to determine whether food environment by county level was associated with heart failure death rates. They reviewed 2018 data from the National Vital Statistics System — a database of all births and deaths in the U.S. — and examined the potential for associations among the heart failure death rates in each county with the county’s 2018 Food Insecurity Percentage score and Food Environment Index score.
The researchers collected each county’s Food Insecurity Percentage score — the percentage of the population who lack adequate, consistent access to healthy food — and Food Environment Index score — an index ranked from 0 (worst) to 10 (best) based on a composite of metrics including affordability of nutritious food, food insecurity, grocery store proximity, transportation and socioeconomic factors — from the USDA’s Food Environment Atlas and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings. The Food Environment Atlas assembles statistics on food environment indicators and provides a spatial overview of a community’s ability to access healthy food.

A new method to study the proteins released by cells, which could lead to the development of new tools to track diseases including cancer, has been developed by scientists at the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London.
Biomarkers are highly valuable tools that allow doctors to study biology and disease, for example, diagnose a disease from a blood or tissue sample, predict if a treatment will be effective in an individual or see how much of a drug is reaching diseased cells.
But finding these biomarkers is challenging. To help diagnose disease, scientists need to identify proteins that are uniquely made by diseased or cancerous cells but are not released by healthy cells.
In their study, published in Nature Communications today (25 October) the team developed a new method that identifies proteins released by a specific type of cell, even if the cells are in a complex environment with lots of other cell types.
“When you have a sample containing various cell lines, it is very difficult to identify the proteins that came from a specific line. Of course, in the laboratory, we can create experiments with only one type of cell, however these conditions do not mirror what happens in the body where complex interactions between cells could affect their behaviour and so the proteins they release,” explains Ben Schumann, lead author and group leader at the Crick and Imperial College London.
The new method is centred around adding chemical tags to sugar molecules which are added to cells. While all cells absorb the sugar, the researchers genetically modify the cell type they want to study, so that only this type adds the sugar to its proteins. When the cells make these proteins, they remain marked with the chemical tag, meaning that researchers can identify them.
The method uses bioorthogonal or ‘click’ chemistry which was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. One of the prize recipients, Carbolyn Bertozzi from Stanford University, is a co-author of this study. The chemical tag is selected so that it ‘clicks’ with another molecule that helps the researchers isolate the desired proteins or add a fluorescent tag to them.
The researchers showed their method, called Bio-Orthogonal Cell line-specific Tagging of Glycoproteins (BOCTAG), worked in cell cultures with multiple cell lines and also in mice, where the researchers successfully tagged proteins from particular cancer cells.
“In this study, we looked at proteins made by cancer cells, but our method could also be used in other fields including immunology or the study of infectious disease. It could also be used to better understand disease biology, including how tumour cells change as a result of complex interactions in the body,” says Anna Cioce, first author and postdoctoral training fellow at the Crick.
“The next step for our team will be to continue developing this method and learning more about how cells produce different proteins depending on their environment,” adds Ben.
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Materials provided by The Francis Crick Institute. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Published13 minutes agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By Marie-Louise ConnollyBBC News NI Health CorrespondentAn endometriosis sufferer has said her reproductive organs are so damaged by a three-year delay for surgery, it has affected her ability to have children.Claire Nicholls, 29, has been in pain for years with the condition – which involves tissue similar to the lining of the womb growing elsewhere.Northern Ireland has the longest gynaecological waiting lists in the UK, according to a professional body.It is calling for two regional endometriosis centres.The Department of Health said it could not comment on individual cases but added that specialist centres would require investment.The report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists found 36,900 women in Northern Ireland are on a gynaecology waiting list – a 42% increase since the start of the pandemic. Dr Hans Nagar, a consultant gynaecological surgeon at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, said women need to be seen much quicker.He also said regional centres would house specialists under one roof, which would address the hospital waiting lists.’In my head’Ms Nicholls said she was passed from “pillar to post” and for 10 years, medical professionals did not seem to believe how much pain she was actually in. She has stage four endometriosis, which is the most severe and widespread.”The pain can be excruciating, at times I can’t get out of bed and I have also had to attend the emergency department,” she said.After opting to go private, her surgeon said he was unable to see many of her organs due to the amount of scarred tissue caused by the delay in surgery. “He told me the scarred tissue and adhesions were all around my organs… they couldn’t remove it all as it could have damaged other organs including my bladder – it was just too severe,” she said.One of her fallopian tubes is irreversibly damaged which she has been told will have a “huge impact” on her ability to have children. Ms Nicholls, who owns a beauty business, says she is angry and hurt, and she knows a lot of women in a similar position because they were also not listened to.”I was told the pain was in my head and that it was normal to experience this amount of pain – pain that was there almost every day and not just around my period,” she said.Endometriosis surgery waiting lists BBC News NI can reveal that 323 women are on endometriosis surgical waiting lists.Western Trust: 28 patients are waiting to have surgery – the longest wait is about three years Southern Trust: 37 patients – the longest wait is about three yearsBelfast Trust: 167 patients – the longest wait is four yearsNorthern Trust: 91 patients – the longest wait is more than three and a half yearsHowever, that is not the whole picture as the South Eastern Trust says it does not hold specific information about patients suffering from endometriosis.Ms Nicholls is on hormone replacement therapy to treat the pain and to try to protect her reproductive organs.This means she has been put into premature menopause.”To think I had to be induced into a state of menopause in order to help me is just shocking – I was told if I wanted to protect my fertility options I had no other option,” she said.What is endometriosis? It is where tissue like that in the lining of the womb grows elsewhere in the body – often around the reproductive organs, bowel and bladderLike the womb lining, the tissue builds up and bleeds every month, but with no way to escape the body, the blood is trapped, leading to inflammation, pain and formation of scar tissueFor some women there are no symptoms, but for others it is debilitating and can cause • chronic pelvic pain, painful sex, painful bowel and bladder movements, fatigue and difficulties getting pregnantThere is no cure but treatments can reduce symptomsThey include hormone treatment, pain relief and surgery – including hysterectomyEndo Warriors NI said women who had the disease have had “enough of being fobbed off” and too many are being “permanently damaged”.Hayley Scott, from the support group, said they were not being listened to by either medics or politicians, and the usual reply was that there was no budget. ‘Life-changing’ drug offers endometriosis hopeWATCH: ‘Doctors would tell me it’s in my head’The report from the Royal College – Left for Too Long – makes a number of recommendations including a shift in the way gynaecology is prioritised as a speciality across the health service. It says elective recovery must address the unequal growth of gynaecology waiting lists compared to other specialities and there should be a concentrated effort in each region to end the postcode lottery for gynaecology care. It also found waiting lists for elective gynaecology might result in fewer incidental diagnoses of suspected gynaecological cancers.In a statement, the Department of Health said its “direction of travel is to develop specialist endometriosis care” but it required investment.”Full accreditation requires regular theatre sessions which requires investment in specialist nursing staff and dedicated surgical resources,” it said.”We are unable to give confirmation of details regarding location or timescales at this time.”More on this storyEndometriosis: ‘Doctors would tell me it’s in my head’30 March’Life-changing’ drug offers endometriosis hope9 March 2021MPs to launch inquiry into endometriosis care6 October 2019Endometriosis sufferers ‘not getting good deal’7 October 2019