Publisher Health

About one-tenth of the world’s population suffers from hunger and nearly one in three people face food insecurity, according to recent estimates. Yet behind those stark figures lurks another, closely related threat: water insecurity.
In a new 25-country study, researchers report a strong link between water insecurity — a lack of reliable access to sufficient water — and food insecurity. The findings, based on data collected for the first time in 2020 by Northwestern University and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) via the Gallup World Poll, suggest that improving access to water could be key to sustainably and effectively addressing food insecurity in many places.
The study found that people who frequently had trouble with water access and use were nearly three times as likely to face food insecurity compared with those who did not. Further, more than two-thirds of people who were water insecure in 2020 were concurrently experiencing food insecurity. Reliable access to water is important not only to maintain proper hydration but also to support cooking, hygiene and farming.
“Water insecurity is a major global health issue and its impact on biological and social well-being is only likely to grow with climate change,” said Hilary Bethancourt, PhD, MPH, research associate at Northwestern University, a member of the research team. “These data suggest that we have seen just the tip of the iceberg of understanding the role that water insecurity plays in food, nutrition and well-being in general.”
Bethancourt will present the findings online at NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE, the flagship annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition held June 14-16. Bethancourt conducted the study with Sera Young, PhD, at Northwestern University, Edward A. Frongillo, PhD, at the University of South Carolina, and Sara Viviani and Carlo Cafiero at FAO.
The researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of over 31,000 people ages 15 and older in 25 low and middle-income countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia. Overall, about 18% of participants were classified as water insecure; this ranged from about 15% in Asia to over 34% in sub-Saharan Africa. Water insecurity was strongly linked with food insecurity overall, though researchers said the relationship varied across regions, likely due to differences in climate, water infrastructure, social services and other factors.
While the study did not assess the causes of food or water insecurity, researchers said several factors could explain the linkage. For those living in poverty, spending money on water can mean less money available for food. For farmers, water insecurity can mean less water available for growing crops and raising livestock. Time is also an issue: traveling far from home to collect water detracts from the time available to generate income or prepare food. Water insecurity could also affect nutritional quality — a subcategory of food insecurity — since lacking the water to cook healthier foods like grains and beans may lead to a greater reliance on ready-to-eat processed foods.
Based on these findings, researchers suggested food insecurity and water insecurity should be measured and addressed in tandem. This would ensure that insufficient water does not pose an additional barrier to food security and in particular to food utilization, for example, by preventing people from using food provided by food assistance programs because there is no water to prepare it. As such, efforts to improve access to water could also bring benefits for food security.
“In some cases, the most sustainable way to improve food security may be through improving water security,” said Bethancourt. “For example, providing households with water on premises may free up time to engage in income-generating activities so that they can purchase more or higher quality food. Providing irrigation can improve farmers’ ability to grow food, raise livestock and produce cash crops.”
Researchers noted that the study methods did not allow them to pinpoint a causal relationship between food insecurity and water insecurity or rule out all other factors that may influence both. Bethancourt said further research is needed to understand the factors that influence the degree to which water insecurity co-exists with or exacerbates food insecurity.

A new study found that children ages 3 to 5 who consumed more ultraprocessed foods had poorer locomotor skills than children who consumed less of these foods. It also showed lower cardiovascular fitness in 12- to 15-year-olds who consumed more ultraprocessed foods.
Although previous research has shown that consuming ultraprocessed foods is linked with a higher risk for cardiovascular disease in adults, this is one of the first studies to show a link between consumption of these foods and lower levels of physical fitness in children.
Ultraprocessed foods were categorized in this study as including packaged snacks, breakfast cereals, candies, soda, sweetened juices and yogurts, canned soups and prepared foods like pizza, hotdogs, burgers and chicken nuggets.
“Healthy dietary and exercise behaviors are established at a very young age,” said research team leader Jacqueline Vernarelli, PhD, associate professor and director for the Master of Public Health program at Sacred Heart University. “Our findings point to the need to educate families about cost-effective ways to reduce ultraprocessed food intake to help decrease the risk for cardiovascular health problems in adulthood.”
Vernarelli will present the findings online at NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE, the flagship annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition held June 14-16.
To examine the association between physical fitness and ultraprocessed foods during various stages of childhood, the researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) National Youth Fitness Survey.
This 2012 survey used interviews and fitness tests to collect data on physical activity, fitness levels and food intake for more than 1,500 U.S. children aged 3 to 15. Ultra-processed foods were identified using NOVA, which categorizes food and beverage items according to the level of food processing.
For children 5 years old and under, the researchers used locomotor development as a measure of physical fitness. The analysis revealed that children with the lowest locomotor development scores consumed 273 calories more per day of ultraprocessed foods than children with the highest locomotor development scores.
Cardiovascular fitness was used as a physical fitness measure in the older children. The study showed that teens and preteens with good cardiovascular fitness consumed 226 fewer calories daily from ultraprocessed foods than those who did not have healthy cardiovascular fitness.
“Though highly processed convenience foods are easy to throw into a school bag, our research shows the importance of preparing healthy snacks and meals,” said Vernarelli. “Think of it like saving for retirement: You’re making decisions now that will influence your child’s future.”
As a next step, the researchers plan to look more closely at consumption patterns for ultraprocessed food by age group. For example, do kids eat more of these foods for breakfast, at lunch or for snacks? A better understanding of how and when these foods are consumed could help inform future interventions designed to encourage healthy eating.
Vernarelli will present this research on-demand starting at noon on Tuesday, June 14, during the NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE Relationship Between Dietary Patterns and Behavioral/Societal Outcomes session (abstract; presentation details).
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A new study finds that the feline reaction to catnip and silver vine helps to stave off mosquitoes and other bloodsucking insects.Cats, so often, are a mystery, even to those that know them best. Why do they sleep so much? Why do they want your full attention one minute, none the next? How can they find their way back home after being stranded miles away for years? The writer Haruki Murakami, who is known for putting cats in his novels and essays, once confessed to not knowing why he does so; a cat “sort of naturally slips in,” he said.Another mystery: Why do cats love catnip? When exposed to the plant, which is related to mint, the majority of domestic cats will lick it, rub against it, chew it and roll around in it. They brim with euphoria, getting high off the stuff. They also go wild for other plants, particularly silver vine, which is not closely related to catnip but elicits the same response from felines, including big cats like jaguars and tigers.For years, this behavior was just another cat-related enigma. But a new study, published Tuesday in the journal iScience, suggests that the reaction to catnip and silver vine might be explained by the bug repellent effect of iridoids, the chemicals in the plants that induce the high.Researchers, led by Masao Miyazaki, an animal behavior scientist at Iwate University in Japan, found that the amount of these iridoids released by the plant increased by more than 2,000 percent when the plant was damaged by cats. So perhaps kitty’s high confers an evolutionary advantage: keeping bloodsucking insects at bay.Kristyn Vitale, a cat behavior expert at Unity College who was not associated with the research, noted that the study built on strong previous work. Last year, the same lab published a study that found that cats would try their best to coat themselves in DEET-like iridoids, whether by rolling on the chemicals or by rising up to nuzzle them with their cheeks. “This indicates there may be a benefit to the cat physically placing the compounds on their body,” Dr. Vitale said.Carlo Siracusa, an animal behaviorist at the University of Pennsylvania who also was not involved in the research, concurred. “The evidence shows that they want to impregnate their body with the smell,” he said. But, he added, “keep in mind that a sizable chunk of cats don’t show this behavior. So why would they have been selected in this way?”A cat rubbed itself against silver vine in a lab. While silver vine is not closely related to catnip, it triggers the same reaction from felines.Masao MiyazakiAs an evolutionary adaptation, bug-repellent iridoids probably do more to protect plants from herbivorous insects than to help cats avoid bug bites. Plants often release irritants when damaged, which helps to ward off attackers, and they emit other chemicals that communicate danger to their neighbors. “Plants are masters of chemical warfare,” said Marco Gallio, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University who was not affiliated with the new study.Last year, Dr. Gallio and his colleagues published a report that linked the primary bug repellent in catnip, nepetalactone, to a receptor protein that triggers irritation in mosquitoes and related insects. The receptor, which is also present in humans and cats, can be set off by tear gas. But Dr. Gallio found that although nepetalactone had no negative effect on humans and sent felines into spasms of ecstasy, it did activate this particular receptor (called TRPA1) in many insects — an added bonus for cats rolling around in their drug of choice.In their most recent study, Dr. Miyazaki and his associates measured the chemical composition of the air immediately above leaves — both intact and damaged — of catnip and silver vine. Then they measured the iridoid levels in the leaves themselves. They found that catnip leaves mangled by cats released at least 20 times more nepetalactone than intact leaves did, while damaged silver vine leaves released at least eight times the amount of similar iridoids than did intact leaves. The cats’ interactions with silver vine also changed the composition of the plant’s bug-repelling cocktail, making it even more potent.After rubbing their faces and bodies against the plants, cats are sure to be coated in a robust layer of Pest Begone.This finding, paired with Dr. Miyazaki and his team’s previous research, supports nascent claims that at least part of the benefit of the kitty catnip craze is to stave off mosquitoes and flies. Such behavior, called “self-anointing,” would not be the first of its kind in the animal kingdom. Mexican spider monkeys have been known to smear themselves with different kinds of leaves, probably to serve a social or sexual purpose, and hedgehogs often rub toxins onto their spines.Still, there are many questions left to be answered, including why seemingly only felines exhibit a euphoric response to catnip and silver vine, and why only some of these felines do so. Dr. Gallio, while enthusiastic about the new study, offered a cautious approach. “What do I know?” he said. “I wasn’t there to see evolution happen.”

Researchers from the University of Helsinki and KU Leuven in Belgium investigated the arrival and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Finland in 2020. According to the analysis, a total of 42 independent virus lineages arrived in Finland in spring 2020, of which only a handful caused large chains of transmission.
The COVID-19 pandemic began at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since then, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread rapidly despite attempts to restrict it. By mid-April 2022, the number of reported coronavirus infection cases exceeded 500 million globally, with the total number of deaths at over 6.2 million.
In a recently completed study, researchers from the University of Helsinki and KU Leuven in Belgium investigated the arrival and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Finland in 2020. The results have been published in the Communications Medicine journal.
“Research on the geographical evolutionary history of coronaviruses revealed that in the spring of 2020, an estimated 42 independent virus lineages arrived in Finland primarily from Italy, Austria and Spain. Four of these lineages caused two-thirds of the entire epidemic in Finland in spring 2020, while a single virus lineage from Spain led to a major transmission chain that covered one-third of the epidemic in the country. However, most of the 42 lineages did not lead to community transmission in Finland,” says Postdoctoral Researcher Ravi Kant.
“In the early stages of the pandemic, one of the biggest problems in monitoring the chains of transmission was the genetic similarity of the virus everywhere in the world — there were very few differences in the viral genome between individual countries and chains of transmission. Philippe Lemey’s research group developed an analysis technique that combines data on human mobility at individual and population levels with the sequence analysis of the viral genome. We applied this technique to Finnish sequencing data,” says Postdoctoral Researcher Teemu Smura.
Coronavirus landed in Finland from Austria, Italy and Spain
According to the researchers, Austria, Spain and Italy were the most significant sources of coronavirus spreading to Finland in 2020. These countries also had the earliest infection spikes in February 2020.

Recovery from severe COVID-19 is characterized by a reduction of certain white blood cells and changes in the molecular regulation of the immune system. This is the conclusion of an international research team coordinated by DZNE, which reports on this in the journal Cell Reports Medicine. The scientists examined the blood of 139 patients who had received intensive care. Using a novel method of data analysis, they identified — despite individual differences in the time course of the disease — mechanisms of shared relevance that characterized the recovery process from an immunological perspective. These findings demonstrate a novel approach for assessing disease status, which could contribute to more targeted and thus more effective treatment.
The current study is the result of an international effort in which DZNE collaborated with Helmholtz Zentrum München, Technion Institute in Israel and Radbourg University in the Netherlands. The challenge faced by the researchers was to identify commonalities in the data from different patients. This is because in COVID-19, as in many other diseases, the recovery process can vary greatly from person to person, as evidenced, for example, by how symptoms develop over time and how long hospitalization lasts.
“This makes it difficult to identify generalizable cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the disease. However, such insights are relevant for understanding the nature of the disease and the body’s response — and thus for deciding on the optimal treatment,” says bioinformatician and genome researcher Dr. Amit Frishberg, first author of the current publication. “Therefore, to analyze the data, we used a novel method that we recently developed. Our computational approach is designed to discover common patterns in the variety of findings from different patients that may not be obvious.”
Blood Analyses
COVID-19 can affect multiple organs. However, the disease is known to be significantly shaped by the immune response. “This response is reflected in the blood because that is where the white blood cells circulate,” Frishberg says. “These cells are essential components of the immune system. Therefore, our study focused on the blood of patients.”
In total, the researchers studied blood samples from 139 adults, their ages ranged from 21 to 86 years, and most were male. The data came from three different cohorts. All patients had received treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU) including ventilation: 105 recovered to the point that were eventually discharged from the ICU, while 34 died. From most of the individuals studied here, there were multiple blood samples, usually collected during a period of approximately three weeks after admission to the ICU. Also, self-reported health status three months after ICU admission (and subsequent discharge) was available for some patients.

University of Queensland researchers have found enjoying a daily latte or a black coffee causes no increased risk to pregnancy.
Dr Gunn-Helen Moen, Dr Daniel Hwang and Caroline Brito Nunes from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience used genetics to analyse coffee drinking behaviour, and their findings show limited coffee consumption during pregnancy didn’t increase the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth.
“Current World Health Organisation guidelines say pregnant women should drink less than 300mg of caffeine, or two to three cups per day,” Dr Moen said.
“But that’s based on observational studies where it’s difficult to separate coffee drinking from other risk factors like smoking, alcohol or poor diet.
“We wanted to find out if coffee alone really does increase the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, and the research shows this isn’t the case.”
Dr Hwang said coffee drinking behaviour is partly due to genetics, with a specific set of genetic variants affecting how much coffee we drink.

Children who learn to play well with others at pre-school age tend to enjoy better mental health as they get older, new research shows. The findings provide the first clear evidence that ‘peer play ability’, the capacity to play successfully with other children, has a protective effect on mental health.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed data from almost 1,700 children, collected when they were aged three and seven. Those with better peer play ability at age three consistently showed fewer signs of poor mental health four years later. They tended to have lower hyperactivity, parents and teachers reported fewer conduct and emotional problems, and they were less likely to get into fights or disagreements with other children.
Importantly, this connection generally held true even when the researchers focused on sub-groups of children who were particularly at risk of mental health problems. It also applied when they considered other risk factors for mental health — such as poverty levels, or cases in which the mother had experienced serious psychological distress during or immediately after pregnancy.
The findings suggest that giving young children who might be vulnerable to mental health issues access to well-supported opportunities to play with peers — for example, at playgroups run by early years specialists — could be a way to significantly benefit their long-term mental health.
Dr Jenny Gibson, from the Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “We think this connection exists because through playing with others, children acquire the skills to build strong friendships as they get older and start school. Even if they are at risk of poor mental health, those friendship networks will often get them through.”
Vicky Yiran Zhao, a PhD Student in PEDAL and first author on the study added: “What matters is the quality, rather than the quantity, of peer play. Games with peers that encourage children to collaborate, for example, or activities that promote sharing, will have positive knock-on benefits.”
The researchers used data from 1,676 children in the Growing up in Australia study, which is tracking the development of children born in Australia between March 2003 and February 2004. It includes a record, provided by parents and carers, of how well the children played in different situations at age three. This covered different types of peer play, including simple games; imaginative pretend play; goal-directed activities (such as building a tower from blocks); and collaborative games like hide-and-seek.

A graph of how long Americans sleep forms a U-shaped pattern across our lives, with age 40 being the low point and hours of sleep starting to creep back up about age 50, Medical College of Georgia investigators report.
Our sleep efficiency, which basically means how much of the time we devote to sleeping that we actually sleep, tends to decrease across our lifetime, but investigators were surprised to find efficiency stabilized from ages 30 to 60, says Dr. Xiaoling Wang, genetic epidemiologist at MCG’s Georgia Prevention Institute and corresponding author of the study in the journal Scientific Reports.
True sleep time is tough to measure in a large database of individuals who provide a representative sample of the country, particularly since most assessments are self-reports of sleep, says first author, Dr. Shaoyong Su, also a genetic epidemiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute and the study’s first author.
The main innovations in the study include its representative sampling technique, broadly inclusive age and the use of accelerometers to measure movement and get a more objective idea of how much participants slept.
For this study, investigators used what is considered a representative sample of 200 million Americans: 11,279 participants age 6 and older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, which focuses on different populations or health topics. Data on these participants was collected from 2011-14 but released in late 2020, and this is the first time that 24-hour accelerometer data was available in a nationally representative sample.
Participants wore accelerometers on their nondominant wrist 24-hours a day for seven consecutive days. While the device does not directly measure sleep time, the premise is that measuring movement gives you some indication of whether you are asleep or not, says coauthor Dr. Vaughn McCall, chair of the MCG Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior and an expert in the trifecta of insomnia, depression and suicide.

Transplanting a uterus is an effective, safe method to remedy infertility when a functioning uterus is lacking. This is the conclusion from the world’s first complete study of uterine transplantation, conducted at the University of Gothenburg.
The study, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, covers transplantation of uteri from living donors. The operations were headed by Mats Brännström, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, and chief physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
After seven of the study’s nine transplants, in vitrofertilization (IVF) treatment ensued. In this group of seven women, six (86%) became pregnant and gave birth. Three had two children each, making the total number of babies nine.
In terms of what is known as the “clinical pregnancy rate as well, the study shows good IVF results. The probability of pregnancy per individual embryo returned to a transplanted uterus was 33%, which is no different from the success rate of IVF treatments overall.
Participants followed up
The researchers note that few cases were studied. Nonetheless, the material — including extensive, long-term follow-ups of participants’ physical and mental health — is of top world class in the area.

Percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) is an efficient, minimally-invasive, gold standard procedure used for removing large kidney stones. Creating an access from the skin on the back to the kidney — called renal access, is a crucial yet challenging step in PCNL. An inefficiently created renal access can lead to severe complications including massive bleeding, thoracis and bowel injuries, renal pelvis perforation, or even sepsis. It is therefore no surprise that it takes years of training and practice to perform this procedure efficiently. There are two main renal access methods adopted during PCNL — fluoroscopic guidance and ultrasound (US) guidance with or without fluoroscopy. Both approaches deliver similar postoperative outcomes but require experience-based expertise.
Many novel methods and technologies are being tested and used in clinical practice to bridge this gap in skill requirement. While some offer better imaging guidance, others provide precise percutaneous access. Nonetheless, most techniques are still challenging for beginners. This inspired a research team led by Assistant Professors Kazumi Taguchi and Shuzo Hamamoto, and Chair and Professor Takahiro Yasui from Nagoya City University (NCU) Graduate School of Medical Sciences (Nephro-urology), to question if artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robotic devices could be used for improved guidance compared with conventional US guidance. Specifically, they wanted to see if the AI-powered device called the Automated Needle Targeting with X-ray (ANT-X), which was developed by the Singaporean medical start-up, NDR Medical Technology, offers better precision in percutaneous renal access along with automated needle trajectory.
The team conducted a randomized, single-blind, controlled trial comparing their robotic-assisted fluoroscopic-guided (RAF) method with US-guided PCNL. The results of this trial were made available online on May 13, 2022 and published on June 13, 2022 in The Journal of Urology. “This was the first human study comparing RAF with conventional ultrasound guidance for renal access during PCNL,and the first clinical application of the ANT-X,” says Dr. Taguchi.
The trial was conducted at NCU Hospital between January 2020 and May 2021 with 71 patients — 36 in the RAF group and 35 in the US group. The primary outcome of the study was single puncture success, with stone-free rate (SFR), complication rate, parameters measured during renal access, and fluoroscopy time as secondary outcomes.
The single puncture success rate was ~34 and 50 percent in the US and RAF groups, respectively. The average number of needle punctures were significantly fewer in the RAF group (1.82 times) as opposed to the US group (2.51 times). In 14.3 percent of US-guided cases the resident was unable to obtain renal access due to procedural difficulty and needed a surgeon change. However, none of the RAF cases faced this issue. The median needle puncture duration was also significantly shorter in the RAF group (5.5 minutes vs. 8.0 minutes). There were no significant differences in the other secondary outcomes. These results revealed that using RAF guidance reduced the mean number of needle punctures by 0.73 times.
Multiple renal accesses during PCNL are directly linked to postoperative complications including, decreased renal function. Therefore, the low needle puncture frequency and shorter puncture duration, as demonstrated by the ANT-X, may provide better long-term outcome for patients. While the actual PCNL was performed by residents in both RAF and US groups, the renal access was created by a single, novice surgeon in the RAF group, using ANT-X. This demonstrates the safety and convenience of the novel robotic device, which could possibly reduce surgeons’ training load and allow more hospitals to offer PCNL procedures.
Dr. Taguchi outlines the potential advantages of their RAF device saying,”The ANT-X simplifies a complex procedure, like PCNL, making it easier for more doctors to perform it and help more number of patients in the process. Being an AI-powered robotic technology, this technique may pave the way for automating similar interventional surgeries that could shorten the procedure time, relieve the burden off of senior doctors, and perhaps reduce the occurrence of complications .” With such promising results, ANT-X and other similar robotic-assisted platforms might be the future of percutaneous procedures in urology and other medical fields.
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