Publisher Health

In a large national survey, adults who struggled with picky eating habits as children overwhelmingly said they benefitted more from positive and encouraging strategies their parents used than forceful or coercive approaches.
The research, led by a team at Duke Health, was conducted among a generation of people who struggled with food avoidance before it was identified in 2013 as a psychiatric condition called Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID).
The researchers said their findings, appearing online Nov. 11 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, provide guidance for both families and behavioral health professionals for developing best practices to deal with extreme food aversions.
When picky eating is severe, it is diagnosed as ARFID. The condition is characterized by health problems such as weight loss and nutritional deficiencies and it can also lead to social and emotional problems when mealtimes become a source of shame, friction and/or conflict.
“It’s not surprising that positive approaches were favored, but it is surprising how overwhelming that position was among this group of adults,” said Nancy Zucker, Ph.D., professor in the Duke’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. Zucker was co-senior author on the study with Guillermo Sapiro, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Zucker, director of the Duke Center for Eating Disorders, said the broad consensus is validation for the current treatment approach that emphasizes positive interactions: “It is robust confirmation for what had been out there in the literature and reinforces the concept that children feeling forced or pressured to eat is not helpful.”
The study was launched more than a decade ago as severe food avoidance was gaining attention and research into the disorder was limited. The online survey was aimed at adults who self-identified as current picky eaters to help understand their perceptions and experiences.

Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.APPLE VALLEY, Calif. — Jose Martinez, a former Army gunner whose right arm and both legs were blown off by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, has a new calling: He’s become one of the most effective lobbyists in a campaign to legalize the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs across the country.On a Zoom call this spring with Connie Leyva, a Democratic legislator in California who has long opposed relaxing drug laws, Mr. Martinez told her how psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, had helped to finally quell the physical pain and suicidal thoughts that had tormented him.Ms. Leyva says she changed her mind even before the call ended, and she later voted yes on the bill, which is expected to become law early next year.“We ask these men and women to go fight for our freedoms,” she said in an interview. “So if this is something that is helping them live a more normal life, I feel like I shouldn’t stand in the way.”In the two years since Oregon, Washington, D.C., and a half-dozen municipalities decriminalized psilocybin, vets have become leading advocates in the drive to legalize psychedelic medicine, which they credit with helping ease the post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression that are often tied to their experiences in the military.The campaign has been propelled by the epidemic of suicides among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also by the national reckoning over the mass incarceration of people on drug charges that has softened public attitudes on prohibition.More than 30,000 service members have taken their own lives in the years since Sept. 11 — four times the number of those who died on the battlefield — and the Department of Veterans Affairs has struggled to address the crisis with the traditional repertoire of pharmacological interventions.The recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan may have marked the end of America’s “forever war,” but the psychological fallout from two decades of military conflict continues to reverberate among many of the 1.9 million personnel who served overseas.“I will not be told no on something that prevents human beings from killing themselves,” Mr. Martinez said.Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger who started Heroic Hearts Project, an organization that connects veterans to psychedelic therapies available in Latin America, also measures the desperation in the daily barrage of emails he gets from vets seeking help.The waiting list for a treatment slot, he said, has stretched to 850 people.“The federal health care system has failed us, which is why veterans have to seek care outside the country,” he said. “They are already turning to psychedelic options in droves so we can either decide to call these veterans criminals, which is what we do now, or we can make sure they can get effective care here at home.”Recent studies have buttressed anecdotal accounts of benefit and helped to quantify the therapeutic value of substances like LSD, psilocybin and MDMA, the drug better known as Ecstasy. A study in Nature Medicine found that MDMA paired with counseling brought marked relief to patients with severe PTSD. Another in the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the potential of psilocybin therapy for treating severe depression.Although current federal law largely prohibits the medical use of these compounds, researchers expect MDMA-assisted talk therapy to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the next year or two, followed soon after by psilocybin, which has already received agency approval as a “breakthrough therapy” for severe depression. In 2019, the F.D.A. gave approval to esketamine, a nasal spray derived from the anesthetic ketamine, for treatment-resistant depression. Off-label use of ketamine for depression has also become increasingly popular.Juliana Mercer, a Marine Corps veteran who helps connect former service members to psychedelic therapies. “I think our voices are impactful because we’ve put our lives on the line for our country,” she said.Damon Casarez for The New York TimesKevin Matthews, a military veteran who led a 2019 ballot measure in Denver that decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms — the first U.S. city to do so — said personal testimonies about psychedelic therapy have been pivotal in winning over skeptics who worry that decriminalization will fuel increased recreational use.“The key to doing that is getting the right people in front of the right constituencies,” he said.Decriminalization advocates have made remarkable progress over the past two years. Last month Seattle embraced the decriminalization of psilocybin and other plant-based psychoactive drugs, and Michigan and several other cities across the country are poised to do the same.But as psychedelics have gained acceptance among mental health professionals, even enthusiastic supporters of decriminalization acknowledge the potential perils of doing so without adequate regulation or professional guidance. Overdoses are rare, and the compounds are not considered addictive, but experts stress the importance of chaperoned drug trips given anecdotal reports about adverse reactions among people with serious disorders like schizophrenia.At first glance, former military personnel might seem unlikely champions for illegal, mind-altering drugs that many Americans associate with the countercultural peaceniks of the 1960s and 1970s. But veterans have become powerful emissaries for psychedelics across the political spectrum.Juliana Mercer, a Marine Corps veteran from San Diego who helps connect former service members to psychedelic therapies, says her lobbying efforts are especially useful with Republican legislators who often harbor antidrug attitudes but hold veterans in high esteem.“It helps that I’m not some stereotypical hippie doing LSD for fun,” she said. “But I think our voices are impactful because we’ve put our lives on the line for our country, and after 20 years of war, we need help healing because nothing has worked so far.”Recent converts include Rick Perry, the former Republican governor of Texas, who earlier this year returned to the State Capitol to join Democratic lawmakers promoting a bill to authorize the clinical study of psilocybin. The bill passed both legislative chambers in June, and became law.Understand the Taliban Takeover in AfghanistanCard 1 of 6Who are the Taliban?

Obesity is a leading cause of fatty liver condition. Patients who had weight-loss surgery showed fewer signs of the disease progressing.One in four American adults has fatty liver disease caused by obesity, not drinking, and there is no medical treatment for it. Doctors say the only way to keep it in check is to lose weight and eat a healthier diet.Now a new study reports that bariatric surgery, in addition to helping with weight loss, can protect the liver. The findings were striking: Of a group of more than 1,100 patients who had an aggressive form of fatty liver disease, those who had weight-loss surgery cut their risk of advanced liver disease, liver cancer or related death by almost 90 percent over the next decade.Only five of the 650 patients who had bariatric surgery later developed one of those severe liver outcomes, compared with 40 of 508 patients who did not have the procedure.The weight-loss surgery patients were also at significantly lower risk for cardiovascular disease, a finding that is consistent with earlier research. They were 70 percent less likely to experience a cardiac event, stroke or heart failure, or to die of heart disease, according to the study published Thursday in JAMA.Dr. Ali Aminian, the director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric and Metabolic Institute and the study’s lead author, said that in all likelihood weight loss had stopped the disease in its tracks.“Obesity is the main driver of the fatty liver — it all starts with obesity,” Dr. Aminian said. “When we have excess fat that accumulates in the liver, it causes fatty liver; then inflammation comes and gets worse and then scar tissue forms and leads to cirrhosis.“When a patient loses weight, fat goes away from everywhere, including the liver; inflammation subsides, and some of the scar tissue can reverse and get better,” Dr. Aminian continued. “Weight loss is the main factor here.”The results were remarkable, said Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer of the Heart and Vascular Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and the study’s senior author.The post-surgical disease result “was the lowest I’ve seen in 30 years of doing studies, an 88 percent reduction in progression to advanced liver disease,” he said.The observational study reviewing cases at the Cleveland Clinic over 12 years did not establish a causal link to lower risks of severe liver or heart conditions from weight-loss procedures, but the findings add to mounting evidence that bariatric surgery can provide health benefits beyond weight loss. About 100 million American adults are dangerously obese; around 250,000 undergo bariatric operations each year.The surgery carries serious risks, however. Sixty-two of the 650 weight-loss surgery patients in the study group developed serious complications after the operation, and four of them died within a year of having the operation.The most commonly performed procedure is called a sleeve gastrectomy. Only one-fifth of the patients studied in this report had that procedure. The vast majority had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery.More than 40 percent of American adults struggle with obesity. About 75 percent have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which is often a silent condition with no obvious symptoms. But one in four or five will develop an aggressive form of the disease called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, which causes fibrosis of the liver, and one in five of those individuals will develop cirrhosis, or scarring of the liver, for which the only cure is a liver transplant.There are no approved drugs or therapies available for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Doctors generally advise patients to lose weight and to switch to a healthier diet in an effort to reduce fat, inflammation and fibrosis in the liver, a vital organ that turns food and drink into nutrients and filters harmful substances from the blood.Obese patients who undergo bariatric surgery generally lose up to 25 percent of their body weight, much more than patients who diet to lose weight. After the surgery, they often require less medication to keep conditions like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol under control.The new study is not definitive, however. It was a retrospective observational study that compared the long-term outcomes of 650 bariatric surgery patients with 508 closely matched patients who did not have surgery. As such, it was not a randomized controlled trial of the kind considered the gold standard in medicine, which randomly assigns patients with similar characteristics to either an intervention arm or a placebo.Several of the paper’s 16 authors consult or receive research funding from companies that make devices used in weight-loss surgery. Both Dr. Aminian and Dr. Nissen receive funding from Medtronic, the largest medical device company in the world, and Dr. Nissen also gets funding from Ethicon, a medical device and surgical instrument manufacturer. They did not receive outside funding for this study, however.One concern in studies like these is that patients who elect weight-loss surgery may be inherently different than those who do not. They may be more motivated; they have the health coverage or the means to cover the procedures; and they are healthy enough that surgeons do not turn them away.In this case, however, Dr. Nissen said, the benefit was so striking that “even if it’s wrong by a factor of twofold, it still means the risk is dramatically reduced.”The study reviewed Cleveland Clinic cases of 1,158 obese patients whose liver biopsies from 2004 to 2016 showed they had advanced nonalcoholic fatty liver disease with fibrosis. Women represented more than 60 percent of the patients; the average age was just under 50; and the median body mass index was 44, which is considered dangerously overweight. Heart disease was also reduced after weight-loss surgery, as earlier studies have shown: Some 8.5 percent of those who had bariatric surgery had a cardiac event, compared with 15.7 percent of those who did not have surgery.“Fatty liver disease is really the most important disease that most Americans know essentially nothing about,” Dr. Nissen said. “It is now a more important cause of liver failure than alcohol is. And with the obesity epidemic, this disease is really increasing at a frightening rate.”

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBlack women are more than four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women in the UK, a review of 2017-2019 deaths shows.The Mbrrace report found women from Asian backgrounds are almost twice as likely to die as white women. Some 495 individuals died during pregnancy or up to a year after birth, out of 2,173,810 having a child.The charity Birthrights is concerned that overall “this bleak picture has not changed in over a decade”.University of Oxford researchers say for the vast majority of people, pregnancy remains very safe in the UK.But despite slight decreases in the maternal death rate in recent years, there have been no significant improvements to these rates since the 2010 to 2012 period.’Equality in Pregnancy’Their current report shows heart disease, epilepsy and stroke continue to be the most common causes of death.And they say in some 37% of cases, improvements in care may have made a difference to the outcome. The report shows the risk of dying in pregnancy or the year after childbirth, for women is:White groups – about seven in 100,000Asian – 12 in 100,000Mixed ethnicity – 15 in 100,000Black groups – about 32 in 100,000The report does not look directly at the individual reasons behind the disparities.However, researchers acknowledge that addressing “wider cultural and structural biases affecting women’s care on the basis of their pregnancy, or the potential to become pregnant, is fundamental to the prevention of maternal mortality”.Lead researcher, Prof Marian Knight, said: “Pregnant women get inequitable care for several reasons. “Healthcare professionals often attribute their symptoms to pregnancy alone and they do not always end up getting the treatment they need because people can be incorrectly concerned about giving them medication. “On top of that is the unconscious bias that black and Asian women can experience. It all adds up. “We know from other studies that the disparity in death rates cannot be fully explained by socio-economic factors and other medical conditions for example. We need to look for other reasons.”Amy Gibbs, chief executive of Birthrights, said the organisation remained deeply concerned that black and brown people’s “basic human rights to safety, dignity and equality in pregnancy and childbirth are not being protected, respected or upheld”. She added: “Emerging themes from our own inquiry, backed up by testimony from healthcare professionals, include feeling unsafe, their concerns being ignored or dismissed, denial of pain relief due to racial stereotypes, and pervasive microaggressions causing harm or distress.”The comprehensive Mbrrace study – which also looks at mental health and cancer care for pregnant women – shows other inequalities continue to grow, with women living in the most deprived areas twice as likely to die than those who live in the most affluent areas. Separately, the review looks at the care of women who give birth over the age of 45.For the 37 births examined closely, fewer than a third of women received care that was fully in line with current guidance. Researchers make a number of broad recommendations, including ensuring women have documented conversations about the risks of pregnancy when older than 45, and that mothers-to-be receive cancer and mental health care promptly. And they advise women to be as healthy as possible before and during pregnancy, and to take folic acid supplements. Protecting human rights in childbirth – BirthrightsMBRRACE-UK_Maternal_Report_2021_-_FINAL_-_WEB_VERSIONThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Exposure to loud noise, such as a firecracker or an ear-splitting concert, is the most common preventable cause of hearing loss. Research suggests that 12% or more of the world population is at risk for noise-induced loss of hearing.
Loud sounds can cause a loss of auditory nerve cells in the inner ear, which are responsible for sending acoustic information to the brain, resulting in hearing difficulty. However, the mechanism behind this hearing loss is not fully understood.
Now, a new study from Keck Medicine of USC links this type of inner ear nerve damage to a condition known as endolymphatic hydrops, a buildup of fluid in the inner ear, showing that these both occur at noise exposure levels people might encounter in their daily life.
Additionally, researchers found that treating the resulting fluid buildup with a readily available saline solution lessened nerve damage in the inner ear.
“This research provides clues to better understand how and when noise-induced damage to the ears occurs and suggests new ways to detect and prevent hearing loss,” said John Oghalai, MD, an otolaryngologist with Keck Medicine, chair of the USC Caruso Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery and lead author of the study.
A previous study by Oghalai conducted on mice exposed to blast pressure waves simulating a bomb explosion linked nerve damage with fluid buildup in the inner ear.

For 30 years, mysterious clusters of proteins found on the cell body of neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain, both intrigued and baffled James Trimmer.
Now, the distinguished professor of physiology and membrane biology at the UC Davis School of Medicine may finally have an answer. In a new study published in PNAS, Trimmer and his colleagues reveal these protein clusters are calcium signaling “hotspots” in the neuron that play a crucial role in activating gene transcription.
Transcription allows portions of the neuron’s DNA to be “transcribed” into strands of RNA that are then used to create the proteins needed by the cell.
Structures found in many animals
Trimmer’s lab studies the enigmatic clusters in mice, but they exist in invertebrates and all vertebrates — including humans. Trimmer estimates that there can be 50 to 100 of these large clusters on a single neuron.
He and his colleagues knew that the clusters are formed by a protein that passes potassium ions through membranes (a potassium channel). They also knew these clusters contain a particular type of calcium channel. Calcium channels allow calcium to enter cells, where it triggers a variety of physiological responses depending on the type of cell.

Even within a single patient with cancer, there is a vast diversity of individual tumor cells, which display distinct behaviors related to growth, metastasis, and responses to chemotherapy. To carry out these behaviors, each cancer cell uses its genes to make the needed molecules in a unique way known as its “gene expression signature.” To correlate gene expression signatures with cancer progression and chemotherapy resistance, a team of scientists led by Rong Lu from USC and Akil A. Merchant from Cedars-Sinai have introduced a new genetic technology in a study published in Nature Communications.
To develop the experimental system, first author Humberto Contreras-Trujillo from USC and his colleagues combined two existing technologies. The first enabled the researchers to read the gene expression signatures of individual cancer cells from patients with leukemia. The second technology, developed by the Lu Lab, allowed the scientists to label individual leukemia cells with heritable, DNA-based “barcodes,” offering a way to track not only the cells but also their progeny during disease progression.
Using this experimental system, the team analyzed the gene expression signatures of a representative sample of barcoded leukemia cells, and then transplanted the remainder of the cells into mice.
Distinct gene expression signatures correlated with the various organs where the cancer cells ended up in the mice. For example, cancer cells with high expression of a gene called CMC2 tended to colonize the ovaries, while cells with low levels of CMC2 expression established colonies in the blood and spleen.
Other cancer cells with elevated expression of the genes BTK, DNAJC, and LRIF1 tended to generate progeny in discrete pockets of bone marrow. When the scientists deactivated these genes, leukemia cells accelerated migration, losing their ability to adhere to other cells in the bone marrow.
“In our study, we were able to identify previously unknown genes that are involved in disease progression and chemotherapy resistance. These genes may provide new targets for future therapies,” said Lu, who is a Richard N. Merkin Assistant Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine, and Gerontology at USC, and a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Scholar.

A comprehensive study — conducted by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and other groups — has shown that gene editing, specifically gene knockout (KO), with CRISPR-Cas9 can favor cells with mutated forms of genes linked to cancer. The findings highlight the need to monitor patients undergoing CRISPR-Cas9-based gene therapy for cancer-related mutations. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
“Our study shows that in many different cell types, CRISPR gene-editing can confer a selective advantage to cells harboring mutations in genes associated with cancer, such as p53 and KRAS,” says co-senior author Ani Deshpande, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “We have shown that when CRISPR-Cas9 is used to edit the genome, cells with cancer-associated mutations are likely to be selected to survive — and this is more widespread than scientists previously understood.”
CRISPR-Cas9 works by creating double-stranded DNA breaks at specific points in a DNA sequence, allowing scientists to target and edit specific genes. However, the p53 gene responds to double-stranded breaks by arresting cell growth, meaning that cells that have undergone CRISPR would grow and divide less effectively. This means that cells with mutations in the p53 gene can continue to grow and divide normally, giving them a competitive advantage.
The p53 gene stops cell division if a genomic error arises and attempts to correct the problem. If the error cannot be fixed, p53 will initiate programmed cell death before the cells can become cancerous. This makes p53 a critical anti-cancer gene and losing its function can make people more susceptible to tumors.
“The p53 gene is so important that it’s actually nicknamed the ‘guardian of the genome,'” says Deshpande.
Computational biologists led by Eytan Ruppin, Ph.D., chief of the Cancer Data Science Laboratory at the NCI Center for Cancer Research and co-leader of the study, analyzed p53 responses to double-stranded breaks in nearly 1,000 human cell lines. In almost every cell type, they found that after CRISPR-Cas9 KO, cells with normal p53 genes exhibited slower growth, while those with mutated p53 genes were less affected, allowing them to grow faster and outcompete the normal cells. They also found that CRISPR may confer an advantage to cells with other cancer-associated mutations, like those of the KRAS oncogene.
“This is not the first time researchers have shown CRISPR may introduce potentially dangerous changes,” says Ruppin, “However, it is the first time these effects have been demonstrated in so many diverse cells.
The findings point to a need for caution in the use of CRISPR-based gene therapies, particularly when treating individuals with underlying mutations in p53 or KRAS genes.”There are CRISPR therapies being developed to correct mutations in many human tissues, but as others have noted before, we need to proceed with caution, because we may be selecting for cells that carry mutations in key cancer driver genes when using CRISPR-Cas9 editing, and that could be potentially dangerous. However, fortunately and importantly, additional new CRISPR editing techniques that have been recently developed are much less likely to carry this risk, if at all,” adds Ruppin.
“Early CRISPR techniques generated double-stranded breaks, but more modern iterations make simpler edits to target DNA,” says Deshpande. “If we use a non-cutting version of CRISPR we are likely to avoid many of these problems, which could be very good news for patients.”
Despite the potential risks, the authors believe that CRISPR remains an exciting and revolutionary approach and that barriers like this are not insurmountable. Both senior authors note that promising medical technologies must often overcome hurdles before they are safe enough to be used in patients.
Additional study authors include Sanju Sinha, Kuoyuan Cheng, Brid M. Ryan and Ji Luo at the NCI; Mark D.M. Leiserson at the University of Maryland; Karina Barbosa, Prashant Jain, Anagha Deshpande and Ze’ev Ronai at Sanford Burnham Prebys; and Joo Sang Lee at the Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Republic of Korea. Sanju Sinha, Kuoyuan Cheng and Karina Barbosa are the co-first authors, making key contributions to this study.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesFrench vaccine maker Valneva is seeking an apology from the UK government for casting doubt on whether its Covid jab would get approval. Valneva said it would not rule out seeking “legal recourse” for loss of earnings and damages.The UK government had about 100 million doses of Valneva’s vaccine on order before it dropped the deal in September. The vaccine would have been produced in Livingston, West Lothian.UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid told the House of Commons that the vaccine would not have gained UK regulatory approval. Positive trial results for Valneva Covid vaccine UK scraps Covid vaccine deal with ValnevaValneva’s chief financial officer David Lawrence told BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime that Mr Javid’s comments had a devastating impact on the business. “We had to do a lot of work to rebuild and restore confidence in the vaccine” he said.He said Mr Javid’s comments were “very clearly wrong” and “we’d love to hear an apology from him.”On Wednesday, the European Commission agreed a contract to supply up to 60 million doses of the Valneva jab, subject to approval by the European Medicines Agency.Image source, Getty ImagesMr Javid’s addressed parliament the day after the UK vaccine deal was scrapped, which Valneva said could have been worth up to £1.2bn. Valneva’s share price dropped 35% at the time.Mr Javid said it was “clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency here in the UK”. However, he later amended his comments in the parliament’s official record to say that Valneva’s vaccine had not yet got and may not get approval. Mr Lawrence acknowledged that Mr Javid had later corrected himself, but said the damage he did to the company was “significant”. The results of Valneva’s clinical trial have since been published. Mr Lawrence described them as “absolutely phenomenal”. He added: “Our clinical data wasn’t ready and available at that time, and we’ve since reported it to show that our vaccine looks great. “That apology would help many potential customers understand he made a mistake and there was nothing wrong with our vaccine.”‘Legal recourse’Mr Lawrence said Valneva was still seeking an amicable resolution with the UK government.But he added: “As to legal recourse, we haven’t ruled out any of our options yet.” The Valneva vaccine uses inactivated Covid-19 virus in a similar way to flu vaccines, and is seen by some as having the potential to win over people wary of vaccines that use new technology.Trial results suggested those who received the Valneva jab had high levels of neutralising antibodies against Covid – with the jab outperforming the AstraZeneca vaccine on this measure in head-to-head tests.Valneva has also met Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Mr Lawrence said it was with a view to supplying doses directly to Scotland in the future. The Scottish government has said it would continue to engage with Valneva on a regular basis’Phenomenal progress’The UK Department of Health and Social Care said it could not comment on commercial decisions but added its decision would have no impact on vaccine supplies for the autumn.A spokeswoman added: “Every step has been taken to ensure we have the supplies we need to keep building our huge wall of defence against this virus.”Clinical trials for the Valneva candidate vaccine have not yet been completed. “As such, our independent medicines regulator – the MHRA – has not approved the Valneva candidate vaccine for use in the UK.”She added the vaccination programme is continuing to make “phenomenal progress” with four out of every five adults now fully vaccinated against Covid.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesA dog has tested positive for Covid – the first documented case of its kind in the UK – officials have confirmed. They believe the pet, who is recovering at home, caught it from its owner. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says cases like this are extremely rare and there is no strong evidence to suggest that dogs, cats or other pets are passing on the virus to humans. Owners and people who work with animals should wash their hands regularly though for good hygiene. Animal fur can act as a carrier for the Covid-19 virus for short periods of time, in the same way as other surfaces, such as door handles, says the advice.Do not share food, food bowls or utensils with your pet.The UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss said: “The infected dog was undergoing treatment for another unrelated condition and is now recovering.”It is very rare for dogs to be infected and they will usually only show mild clinical signs, and recover within a few days.”There is no clear evidence to suggest that pets directly transmit the virus to humans. We will continue to monitor this situation closely and will update our guidance to pet owners should the situation change.”Covid and animalsSome coronaviruses that infect animals can be spread to people and then spread between people, but this is also very rare. It has been suggested that the Covid-19 virus probably originated in bats. There have been reports of other animals infected with Sars-CoV-2. Denmark killed millions of mink in November 2020 amid concerns about a mutated form of coronavirus detected in this species. A few cases of Covid in pet cats, dogs and ferrets have been recorded around the world too. And four lions, along with two keepers, tested positive at Barcelona Zoo. The list of animals which have been infected includes:big cats in captivitydomestic catsdogsferretsfruit batsminknon-human primatespangolinspigs raccoon dogsrodentswhite-tailed deerAccording to the UKHSA, there have been documented cases of humans catching Covid from mink and from ferrets. If you’re concerned about your pet because it has respiratory or digestive problems and a temperature, you should contact your vet who will decide if it needs a Covid test.And if you are self-isolating because of Covid, do not kiss or cuddle your pet or let them sleep in your bed. But do think about arranging for someone else who is not self-isolating to care for your animals. If there is no-one to help but you need assistance, you should contact your vet.Covid spreads from person to person through small droplets, aerosols and through direct contact. Surfaces and belongings can also be contaminated when people with the infection cough or sneeze or touch them.UKHSAThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.