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A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, has found that exposure to phthalates in the womb is associated with reduced lung function during childhood. The findings of the study, published in Environmental Pollution , support the European Union’s current restrictions on the use of these substances .
Phthalates are chemical compounds that are widely used as plasticisers, as well as in lacquers and varnishes. They are found in a wide variety of consumer products, ranging from toys to food packaging, clothing, detergents, cosmetics, solvents, etc. Over time, phthalates in these products leach into the surrounding environment — for example, into the air, dust and food — making them virtually ubiquitous. Moreover, human exposure to phthalates starts as early as in utero, given that these compounds are able to cross the placental barrier. Phthalates act as endocrine disruptors and have been associated with numerous developmental and reproductive health problems.
“Research has consistently found that gestational phthalate exposure is associated with increased risk of childhood asthma, but the evidence on its possible association with lung function is scarce and unclear,” explained ISGlobal researcher Magda Bosch de Basea, lead author of the study.
The study included 641 mother-child pairs from the INMA Project birth cohorts in Sabadell and Gipuzkoa. Gestational phthalate exposure was analysed using urine samples collected from the mothers during pregnancy. The children’s lung function was assessed by spirometry at various stages of development between the ages of four and eleven years.
As an indication of the ubiquity of these compounds, laboratory analyses detected all nine of the studied phthalate metabolites — i.e. substances into which phthalates are transformed once metabolised by the human body — in nearly 100% of the urine samples examined. At all stages of development, the studied metabolites were associated with decreases in two lung function parameters: forced vital capacity (FVC), which measures the maximum volume of air a person is able to exhale, and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), which measures the maximum exhaled volume in the first second of exhalation. However, the researchers found that the associations between certain metabolites (e.g. MiBP and MBzP) and decreased lung function were generally statistically significant only at younger ages, but not in spirometries performed in later years. This pattern is consistent with the findings of studies in animal models suggesting that the possible effects of these compounds on lung function revert over time.
Moreover, using statistical methods that account for exposure to mixtures of compounds, the study identified MBzP as an important contributor to the observed effect on lung function. “This leads us to believe that this metabolite — MBzP — could be one of the main drivers of the observed association with reduced lung function during childhood,” commented Judith Garcia-Aymerich, head of the Non-Communicable Diseases and Environment Programme at ISGlobal and senior co-author of the study.

Women with severe preeclampsia (severe high blood pressure) during pregnancy may be treated with extended-release nifedipine, a blood pressure-lowering medicine, daily during the labor and delivery process, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal. Women treated with the medicine were less likely to experience dangerously high blood pressure that would require treatment with fast-acting medicines including intravenous (IV) medications.
The study examined whether treatment with nifedipine, an extended-release blood pressure-lowering medication, leading up to labor and delivery may prevent severe blood pressure levels from developing, and, as a result, avoid the need to administer fast-acting IV medications.
According to the American Heart Association, preeclampsia is typically diagnosed after 20 weeks of pregnancy and indicates high blood pressure measures with symptoms such as headaches, vision changes and swelling of the hands, feet, face or eyes. A diagnosis of preeclampsia with severe features typically includes systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure measurement) of 160 mm Hg or higher and/or diastolic blood pressure (the lower number in a blood pressure measurement) of 110 mm Hg or higher, and high protein levels in the urine. It affects up to 8% of pregnancies and increases the risk of stroke, liver or kidney damage and pre-term delivery (delivery before 40 weeks). Delivery of the baby is the only way to start to cure preeclampsia, and symptoms usually go away within days of delivery. However, some women continue to need blood pressure medication for six weeks after delivery or longer.
“We know that bringing down very high blood pressure to a safer range will help prevent maternal and fetal complications. However, besides rapid-acting, IV medicines for severe hypertension during pregnancy, optimal management for hypertension during the labor and delivery process, has not been studied,” said lead study author Erin M. Cleary, M.D., who was a fellow in maternal fetal medicine at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, when the study was conducted.
Severe high blood pressure also raises the risk for complications such as placental abruption, where the placenta, which supplies the baby developing in the uterus with nutrients and oxygen from the mother, detaches from the uterus before the baby is born. This may lead to serious complications for mother and/or the baby.
“Some of these complications may include emergency delivery, blood loss for the mother and may be life threatening for both the mother and baby,” Cleary said. “About 10% of patients treated with a rapid-IV treatment for very high blood pressure may quickly have very low blood pressures. When blood pressure gets too low, too fast, that can lead to other serious complications.”
The study was conducted from June 2020 to April 2022 at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus and included 110 women who were at least 22 weeks pregnant, diagnosed with severe preeclampsia and who underwent induction of labor. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to take one 30 mg pill of nifedipine extended-release each day until delivery, the other half of participants were randomly assigned to take a placebo pill daily until delivery. Neither the study investigators, clinical care team, nor the women knew if they were assigned to take nifedipine or the placebo. Participants were followed through hospital discharge, and chart review was performed through 6 weeks postpartum to monitor for any postpartum readmissions along with reasons for readmission.
The researchers also examined the impact of nifedipine treatment on delivery, if and how long the baby may have needed care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and other adverse outcomes for the mother and/or baby.
The study found: 34% of women in the nifedipine group needed acute hypertension therapy (immediate reduction in blood pressure) compared to 55.1% of those in the placebo group. There were fewer Cesarean deliveries among the women treated with nifedipine: 20.8% of women in the nifedipine treatment group had a Cesarean section, compared to 34.7% of women in the placebo group. The rate of NICU admission for the newborns was lower if the mother was treated with nifedipine (29.1%) compared to the placebo group (47.1%). Poor outcomes for the infant -such as lower Apgar score, low blood sugar levels, high bilirubin or needing extra oxygen — did not differ significantly between the two treatment groups.It’s important to note, however, that the number of participants in this study was too small to determine whether the differences in the NICU and Cesarean rates may hold true or if they may be due to chance or other factors. The researchers plan to conduct larger studies with more participants to better understand if these differences are valid.
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Mount Sinai researchers have published one of the first studies to demonstrate the importance of reactive oxygen species in maintaining stem cell function and preventing inflammation during wound repair, which could provide greater insights into the prevention and treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), according to findings published in the journal Gut on October 3.
Reactive oxygen species are highly reactive chemicals formed from oxygen. They serve as prime signals of cellular dysfunction that contribute to diseases. Secretion of reactive oxygen species in the intestine is necessary for maintaining stem cell function and important for wound repair; however, it can cause inflammatory effects as well. The Mount Sinai team found the key transcription factors driving abnormal stem cell changes, suggesting a significant role of reactive oxygen species in maintaining healthy intestines.
“While it’s clear that regulation of oxygen and reactive oxygen species plays a critical role in chronic diseases generally, and IBD in particular, this study provides a major advance in defining the key role of oxygen species in maintaining a healthy epithelial barrier for IBD,” said senior author Judy H. Cho, MD, Dean for Translational Genetics and Ward-Coleman Chair in Translational Genetics, and Vice Chair of Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The research team studied the role of reactive oxygen species and NOX1, the protein used to produce these chemicals, by examining single-cell gene expression in vitro and in vivo in mice models, as well as ex vivo in the form of human intestinal biopsies obtained following routine colonoscopies. They measured the amount of reactive oxygen species and analyzed the gene expression profile of intestine barrier cells from mice and human patients with a subtype of IBD known as ulcerative colitis. Intestine barrier cells cover the intestine surface and help to digest food, absorb nutrients, and prevent the invasion of gut bacteria. The Mount Sinai researchers compared gene expression data in both inflamed and uninflamed colon tissues.
The researchers found that a combination of NOX1, loss of function — which results in decreased reactive oxygen species, plus the presence of a substance known as TNF that causes inflammation leads to an abnormal increase of microfold cells. Microfold cells, also known as M cells, are crucial to regulating gut immune response. The research team found this abnormal increase in M cells, as a result of loss of reactive oxygen species, in stem cells in both the human and mice models. This increase in epithelial M cells drives increased recruitment of immune cells in mice. By treating intestine cells with reactive oxygen species, they were able to reverse the initial defect caused by losing reactive oxygen species during inflammation.
“Reactive oxygen specifies released by stem cells are critical in maintaining a heathy gut via maintaining proper balance of intestine barrier cell types,” said lead author Nai-Yun Hsu, PhD, Associate Scientist in the Judy Cho Laboratory. The researchers encourage further studies, which they said could include direct reactive oxygen species-stem cell modulation therapy to IBD patients in future treatments.
The University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom, contributed to the research. The study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Sanford J. Grossman Charitable Trust.

As of late September 2022, nearly 78% of U.S. adults but only 31% of children ages 5 to 11 had completed the primary set of vaccinations against Covid-19, according to health authorities.
In an open-access article published in the journal Vaccine, researchers from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania attribute that dramatic discrepancy in part to the acceptance of misinformation about the safety of vaccines in general and the Covid-19 vaccines in particular.
The researchers found that U.S. adult hesitancy to be vaccinated against Covid is associated with misbeliefs about vaccines in general, such as that vaccines contain toxins like antifreeze, and about specific vaccines, such as the fears that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism (false) and the flu vaccine increases your chances of contracting Covid-19 (there is no evidence of this).
However, those same concerns also predicted hesitancy to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11, even among those who had been vaccinated themselves.
“All of the misconceptions we studied focused in one way or another on the safety of vaccination, and that explains why people’s misbeliefs about vaccinating kids are so highly related to their concerns about vaccines in general,” said lead author and APPC research director Dan Romer. “Unfortunately, those concerns weigh even more heavily when adults consider vaccinating children.”
Misbeliefs about vaccine safety were a powerful predictor of the uptake of the Covid vaccines in adults from April to September 2021. For individuals who reported the highest level of belief in misinformation, only 40% had received the recommended doses of Covid vaccination by September 2021. On the other hand, for those who reported the lowest level of belief in misinformation, 96% had reported receiving the vaccines.

Published14 minutes agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has gone to Sweden’s Svante Paabo for his work on human evolution. The Prize committee said he achieved the seemingly impossible task of cracking the genetic code of one of our extinct relatives – Neanderthals.He also performed the “sensational” feat of discovering the previously unknown relative – Denisovans.His work helped explore our own evolutionary history and how humans spread around the planet. The Swedish geneticist’s work gets to the heart of some of the most fundamental questions – where do we come from and what allowed us, Homo sapiens, to succeed while our relatives went extinct. Say good morning to our new medicine laureate Svante Pääbo! Pääbo received the news while enjoying a cup of coffee. After the shock wore off, one of the first things he wondered was if he could share the news with his wife, Linda. Photo: Linda Vigilant pic.twitter.com/l27hnzojaL— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 3, 2022
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on TwitterIn the 1990s, research on working out the human genetic code was taking place at pace. But that relied on fresh samples of pristine DNA.Prof Paabo’s interest was in the old and degraded genetic material from our ancestors. Many thought it was an impossible challenge. But he was, for the first time, able to sequence DNA from a 40,000-year-old piece of bone.Those results showed that Neanderthals – who mostly lived in Europe and Western Asia – were distinct from both modern day humans and chimpanzees.His work focused on hominins – the group of modern humans that includes us, Homo sapiens, but also our extinct relatives. “By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human”, the Nobel committee said.Further comparisons between Neanderthal DNA and humans from around the world showed their DNA was a closer matcher to humans coming from Europe or Asia. This tells us that Homo sapiens had sex and children with Neanderthals after migrating out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. And you can still see the legacy of that today. Between 1-4% of modern human DNA comes from our Neanderthal relatives and this even affects our body’s ability to respond to infection.Cave fingerThe next seismic contribution to human origins came in 2008. Scientists had found a 40,000-year-old finger bone in the Denisova cave, in Siberia.Prof Paabo was able to sequence a sample of DNA and the results showed it was a previously unknown hominin – known as Denisovans. And it turned out Homo sapiens bred with these Denisovans too. In parts of South East Asia up to 6% of people’s DNA is Denisovan.Prof Paabo only heard the news this morning when he was called by Thomas Perlmann, the secretary for the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine.”He was overwhelmed, he was speechless. Very happy,” said Prof Perlmann.He wins the 10m Swedish kronor (£800,000) prize.Follow James on TwitterPrevious winners2021 – David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their work on how the body senses touch and temperature. 2020 – Michael Houghton, Harvey Alter and Charles Rice for the discovery of the virus Hepatitis C.2019 – Sir Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovered how cells sense and adapt to oxygen levels2018 – James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo for discovering how to fight cancer using the body’s immune system2017- Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for unravelling how bodies keep a circadian rhythm or body clock2016 – Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering how cells remain healthy by recycling waste2015 – William C Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura and Youyou Tu for anti-parasite drug discoveriesMore on this storyNeanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out9 FebruaryRelated Internet LinksNobel PrizeThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

It will be the first Nobel Prize awarded this year, with more announcements being made over the coming week.The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be awarded by the Nobel Assembly in Sweden on Monday — the first of several prizes to be given over the next week. The Nobel Prizes, among the highest honors in science, recognize groundbreaking contributions in a variety of fields.Who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2021?The prize was awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries about key mechanisms of how people sense heat, cold, touch and body movements.When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?The Nobel Prize in Physics will be awarded on Tuesday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Last year, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi won for their work detailing humanity’s role in climate change.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded on Wednesday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year, Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan won for their development of a new tool that spurred research into new drugs and reduced the chemistry’s effect on the environment.The Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded on Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year, Abdulrazak Gurnah won for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Last year, Maria Ressa and Dmitri A. Muratov, both journalists, won for their efforts in the struggle to protect press freedoms.Next week, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded on Oct. 10 by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year, the prize went to David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens.All of the prize announcements will also be streamed live by the Nobel Prize organization. Prize winners will receive their awards at a ceremony in Stockholm in December.

Proponents say the ability to check drugs for the presence of lethal fentanyl may save lives. But critics say the strips enable drug use.“You smoke weed?” Eufamia Lopez asked the half-dozen young men lounging on benches in a public housing courtyard in the South Bronx.The soft September air reeked of the obvious answer.Ms. Lopez, who works for a New York University health support program, plunged into her spiel. Street drugs — meth, coke, molly, Xanax, heroin and even marijuana — are being cut with fentanyl these days, she said, which can kill you. But you can test your supply before using it to see whether there’s any fentanyl in it. She was giving out free kits.She had their attention, and not just because she is 5-foot-10, frank but ebullient, with cascading black curls scarcely held in check by a brightly colored scarf. The neighborhood, Mott Haven, has one of New York City’s highest overdose rates. After she recited the simple instructions, each man readily accepted a kit with three fentanyl test strips. One asked for a second kit.“I appreciate you,” she said, rewarding him with a smile.The spread of fentanyl, a cheap synthetic opioid 50 times as lethal as heroin, into most kinds of illicit drugs has pushed fatal overdoses to record highs in the United States. Fentanyl test strips have become a popular but contentious tool in response. Supporters say they help drug users make lifesaving decisions. Opponents contend that they facilitate drug use.Test strips are a part of a broader approach called harm reduction, which holds that ending the overdose crisis can be achieved only by first ameliorating the deadliest risks of drug use, then taking steps to curb behavior, such as addiction treatment. President Biden is the first president to embrace harm reduction, and he has made fentanyl test strips a key component in his proposed $307 million harm-reduction drug-control strategy. Within the past year, about 10 states — including Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, where hard-line abstinence views are more typically favored — have legalized test strips and made them more available.But test strips are illegal in about 20 states — including Florida, Texas, Kansas and Kentucky — classified as “drug paraphernalia.”Critics say test strips encourage drug use by giving users the green light if the supply is free of fentanyl. To some opponents, the test strips are even more objectionable than other forms of harm reduction, like distributions of clean syringes, because those at least prevent the spread of H.I.V., hepatitis and other dangerous infections to users and nonusers.A needle on the ground in Mott Haven. “Before Covid I don’t remember people feeling comfortable enough to shoot up in front of everybody,” Ms. Lopez said. “The world has definitely changed for poor people.”Instructions on how to use the strips. In May, Kansas legislators blocked a proposal to legalize the strips. “Fentanyl strips don’t save lives. Let’s be clear. There are individuals that want fentanyl in the drug that they’ve purchased or acquired,” Molly Baumgardner, a Republican state senator, said at the time, according to the Kansas Reflector, which reports on state government.The Biden administration’s drug czar refutes such criticism. “There is no scientific evidence to support this notion that harm-reduction services like fentanyl test strips somehow encourage drug use, but there is significant evidence to support the fact that these tools can save lives,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy.Fentanyl Overdoses: What to KnowCard 1 of 5Devastating losses.

She was a prominent figure in the field of childhood cancer when, in 1974, she helped create the first Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia.Dr. Audrey E. Evans, a pediatric oncologist in Philadelphia who, seeing that her out-of-town patients’ families sometimes struggled to find affordable accommodations when their children needed extended care helped create the first Ronald McDonald House, a concept that has blossomed into a worldwide network, died on Thursday at her home in Philadelphia. She was 97.Ronald McDonald House Charities announced her death. Susan Campbell, chief executive officer of that organization’s Philadelphia-region operations, called Dr. Evans “a pioneering pediatric oncologist who cared deeply about children and their families.”Dr. Evans was a renowned figure in the world of childhood cancer. In 1971 she developed what has become known as the Evans Staging System, a protocol for assessing patients with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer that involves nerve cells. The system helps determine which children need aggressive treatments and which could be aided with less invasive methods.“More than any other person during the last three decades,” a 2000 article in a cancer journal said of her, “she has transformed our thinking about neuroblastoma.”To countless families, though, Dr. Evans was just as important for having helped create Ronald McDonald Houses, lodgings near medical centers where families can stay at little cost while their children receive treatment.She was chief of pediatric oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and had been pondering how to help families who brought their children from afar for care when she connected with an unlikely ally, the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League — unlikely because Dr. Evans, who was born in England, had no idea what the Eagles or American football were.Fred Hill, a tight end on the Eagles from 1965 to 1971, began raising money for leukemia when he found out that his daughter Kim had the disease. Teammates and the team’s owner, Leonard Tose, got involved, and after a particularly successful fund-raiser the team went looking for a local cause that would be visible to the people who had donated, rather than just giving the money to a national leukemia organization.Jim Murray, then Mr. Tose’s right-hand man and later the team’s general manager, recalled that another doctor referred him to Dr. Evans. When he introduced himself, he said in a phone interview, he had to explain that the Eagles were the local pro football team.That didn’t mean much to her, since she was unfamiliar with the sport, but Mr. Murray got her full attention when he told her he had some money to put toward a charitable cause. She thought of the families of her patients, who would sometimes sleep in their cars or hospital hallways when they brought their children in for treatment. She said she’d love to see a house where these families could stay.Mr. Murray approached an adman, Don Tuckerman, who handled the account for Philadelphia-area McDonald’s restaurants, which were promoting Shamrock Shakes at the time, and asked if the franchises might donate 25 cents to the cause for each one sold. Instead McDonald’s offered all the proceeds from that promotion, with the proviso that the Philadelphia house be named after the company’s familiar clown character, and then took the program national.The original Ronald McDonald House opened on Spruce Street in Philadelphia in 1974. Now, the Ronald McDonald House Charities said, there are 380 houses across the United States and in other countries.Dr. Evans, an Episcopalian, often spoke of feeling called by God to care for children. Mr. Murray also sees a higher hand in their unlikely pairing.“I couldn’t cut open a frog,” he said. “I couldn’t even pass biology, and here I was talking to all these doctors.”“She didn’t know what the Eagles were,” he added, “but God put us together.”The first Ronald McDonald House opened on Spruce Street in Philadelphia in 1974. The program has since gone worldwide.RMHC Philadelphia RegionAudrey Elizabeth Evans was born on March 6, 1925, in York, England, to Leonard and Phyllis (Miller) Evans. Her father worked in paper products manufacturing.“I always knew I wanted to be a doctor,” she said in an interview for a 2017 episode of “Modern Hero,” a documentary series about extraordinary women. “Fortunately, my parents believed that girls should do as well as boys, so off I set.”She graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh in 1953. A Fulbright fellowship brought her to Boston Children’s Hospital, where she studied with Dr. Sidney Farber, the noted cancer researcher, among others. A drawing on his wall showing a circle of caregivers with the family at the center first got her thinking about how illness affected more than just the patient.“A family with a sick child is a sick family,” she said. “So you must think about everybody — the siblings, the mother, the father, maybe grandmother. You must remember that they’re part of a group.”In 1964 she moved to the University of Chicago, and in 1969 she took the job in Philadelphia, where as chief of pediatric oncology she became known for doing things a little differently. Once, for instance, she realized a young patient might be less resistant to treatment if she were allowed to bring her pet rabbit into the unit. Another child brought a parakeet.“Fortunately, nobody liked oncology,” she said in a recent interview. “The people who run the place would rather not go to the oncology floor. So I got away with things I could do in oncology which I’m sure you couldn’t have done on a healthy ward.”She led the oncology unit for 20 years. When she first arrived, feeling the call to care for children, “there wasn’t much else you could do but care,” she said — the mortality rate for young cancer patients was high. She thought she could at least help them through what was ahead.“I knew a lot of them were going to die,” she said, “and I could talk about dying.”But during her tenure the mortality rate dropped — by 50 percent for neuroblastoma patients, according to many accounts. Meanwhile, Ronald McDonald Houses opened by the dozens. The houses, as she envisioned them, would provide not merely a cheap bed but also home-cooked meals and emotional support as “veteran” families mingled with newcomers.“People in these houses know the trials of having a sick child,” she told U.S. News & World Report in 1981, “and will help if you want to cry and help if you want to celebrate.”After retiring from medicine, Dr. Evans helped found the St. James School in Philadelphia, which seeks to educate students in an “under-resourced neighborhood,” its website says.Dave Kasievich, the head of the school, said that Dr. Evans knew she would be celebrated for her many achievements.“However,” he wrote on the school’s website, “Dr. Evans would often say that ‘caring’ was the most important thing she did.”In 2005, Dr. Evans married her longtime colleague, Dr. Giulio D’Angio. He died in 2018. She is survived by her stepsons, Carl and Peter D’Angio, and several step-grandchildren and step- great-grandchildren.Julia Fisher Farbman, a documentarian and co-creator of the “Modern Hero” series, had known Dr. Evans since childhood. She is now working on a feature film based on Dr. Evans’s life and interviewed her extensively.“When I would go on walks with her,” she said by email, “she would literally stop and smell the roses, cuddle strangers’ babies, hand out dog treats (which she always carried in her purse despite not having a dog), and she’d strike a conversation with anyone who seemed like they were having a bad day. If you asked her why, she would say, ‘We just made that person’s day a little better — that wasn’t so hard now, was it?’”

The latest shots, which target Omicron and its subvariants, could offer protection against a winter surge in cases. But many people are unsure if they’re eligible.The new, redesigned Covid booster, which now protects against Omicron and its extremely contagious subvariants, appears to have a visibility problem.Federal authorities authorized the shot at the end of August, but by mid- to late September, nearly half of adults had heard little or nothing about it, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, based on the latest of its monthly surveys about attitudes toward the Covid vaccines. That could have troubling implications. The Biden administration has been touting the booster as a means of warding off a fresh fall or winter surge of the virus.“America is not rushing out to get the new booster,” said Drew Altman, the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Most are only dimly aware of it, which is not surprising in a country that seems to have mostly moved on.” He added, “The exception may be older folks, who are at greater risk and early on are more interested in the new booster.” The survey was conducted from Sept. 15 to 26, online and by telephone, among a nationally representative sample of 1,534 adults.Read More on the Coronavirus PandemicAn ‘Anti-Vax’ Capital No More: Vaccine skeptics once found a home in Marin County Calif. Now, the pandemic has made them unwelcome, as Covid vaccine rates soar there.New Boosters: The updated shots were authorized at the end of August, but nearly half of U.S. adults had heard little or nothing about it by mid- to late September, according to a new report.A Persistent Variant: Ten months have passed since Omicron’s debut. Since then it has displayed a remarkable capacity to evolve new tricks.A Blunted Response: Major data gaps, the result of decades of underinvestment in public health, have undercut the U.S. government’s response to Covid — and now to monkeypox.Ever since the first shots were rolled out, people 65 and older, who are the most vulnerable to Covid complications, have been the most compliant with getting the vaccine. They also displayed the broadest awareness of the new booster, the survey found, with almost half reporting either having already received the new dose or aiming to get it “as soon as possible.” Nearly a third of adults overall said they had planned to get it soon as well.But otherwise, confusion over eligibility seemed widespread, according to the survey.The Food and Drug Administration authorized the new booster made by Pfizer and BioNTech for fully vaccinated people as young as 12 and the new Moderna booster for those 18 and older. But among fully vaccinated adults 30 and under, 43 percent said they were unsure of whether the dose had been approved for them, and an additional 19 percent said they did not believe it had been.Dr. Mary Politi, a professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Washington University School of Medicine, said that Americans had been experiencing Covid information overload and, as a consequence, decision-making fatigue. One way to overcome both, she said, “is to keep information simple, clear and consistent.” She added, “Unfortunately, the information coming from various sources has often been conflicting, with uncertain, unclear or changing guidelines.”Older adults were also better informed about their booster eligibility status. Among those 65 and older, more than half knew the booster was recommended, as did nearly half of those between the ages of 50 and 64.While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that fully vaccinated people 12 and older get the updated booster, it urges those 50 and older in particular to get it.The report, which also looked at parents’ views of the vaccine, found that there had been a modest uptick in vaccination among the youngest children since July, when Covid vaccines for those between six months and 4 years old received emergency authorization. At the time, scarcely 7 percent of parents said they intended to get their children vaccinated; that percentage has risen to 19 percent, or nearly one in five parents.But more parents are refusing the vaccine for their children, too. Now 53 percent of parents of children between six months and 4 years say they will “definitely not” let their children get the shots. Last January, 26 percent held that view.While some 60 percent of parents said that their children between the ages of 12 and 17 had been vaccinated, about 30 percent of parents with children in that age group said their children would definitely not get the Covid vaccine.Overall, 77 percent of respondents said they had gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, with nearly half of those saying they had received at least one booster. But 23 percent said they were not vaccinated, and nearly all of that group said they would “definitely not” get it.

Scientists are still trying to understand why many breast cancer survivors experience troubling cognitive problems for years after treatment. Inflammation is one possible culprit. A new long-term study of older breast cancer survivors published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and co-led by UCLA researchers adds important evidence to that potential link.
Higher levels of an inflammatory marker known as C-reactive protein (CRP) were related to older breast cancer survivors reporting cognitive problems in the new study.
“Blood tests for CRP are used routinely in the clinic to determine risk of heart disease. Our study suggests this common test for inflammation might also be an indicator of risk for cognitive problems reported by breast cancer survivors,” said study lead author Judith Carroll, an associate professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and faculty member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.
The study, called the Thinking and Living with Cancer (TLC) Study, is one of the first long-term efforts to examine the potential link between chronic inflammation and cognition in breast cancer survivors 60 and older, who make up a majority of the nearly 4 million breast cancer survivors in the United States. Previous research has focused largely on younger women and women immediately after therapy, making it difficult to draw conclusions about CRP’s role in long-term cognitive problems among older breast cancer survivors.
In TLC, teams of researchers from around the country talked to, and obtained blood samples from, hundreds of breast cancer survivors and women without cancer up to 6 times over the course of 5 years. The study was motivated by hearing from survivors and advocates that cognitive problems are one of their major worries.
“Cognitive issues affect women’s daily lives years after completing treatment, and their reports of their own ability to complete tasks and remember things was the strongest indicator of problems in this study,” said co-senior study author Dr. Jeanne Mandelblatt, a professor of oncology at Georgetown University who is the lead of the TLC study.
“Being able to test for levels of inflammation at the same time that cognition was being rigorously evaluated gave the TLC team a potential window into the biology underlying cognitive concerns,” said Elizabeth C. Breen, a professor emerita of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA, who also served as co-senior study author.
Cognition, from the perspective of each woman, was evaluated through a commonly used questionnaire assessing how the women perceive their ability to remember things like names and direction, ability to concentrate, and other aspects of everyday life. The study found higher CRP levels among survivors were predictive of lower reported cognitive function among breast cancer survivors. There was no similar relationship between CRP levels and reported cognition in the women without cancer.
Cognitive performance, as measured by standardized neuropsychological tests, failed to show a link between CRP and cognition. The authors say this may indicate women are more sensitive to differences in their everyday cognitive function, self-reporting changes that other tests miss.
The authors said their study supports the need for research on whether interventions that can lower inflammation — including increased physical activity, better sleep, and anti-inflammatory medications — may prevent or reduce cognitive concerns in older breast cancer survivors.
Other study authors include Zev M. Nakamura, Brent J. Small, Xingtao Zhou, Harvey J. Cohen, Tim A. Ahles, Jaeil Ahn, Traci N. Bethea, Martine Extermann, Deena Graham, Claudine Isaacs, Heather S.L. Jim, Paul B. Jacobsen, Brenna C. McDonald, Sunita K. Patel, Kelly Rentscher, James Root, Andrew J. Saykin, Danielle B. Tometich, Kathleen Van Dyk, and Wanting Zhai. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.